Imagine you have a short-term cash need [university fees for your kids] but you do have some long-term bonds in your investments portfolio. Wouldn’t it be great if your bank allows you to temporarily block these assets and get a short term loan facility to bridge the gap?

Lending against liquid assets that customers hold within their bank, is an underexploited market opportunity. If delivered well with the right level of automation and self-service capability, it creates great value for banks and their customers. Below we give an overview of some of these benefits.

Ingenico Group, the world leader in integrated payment solutions, has today announced its work with Europe’s leading fancy dress costume and merchandise shop,Funidelia.

 Funidelia was established in 2011 when co-founders Carlos Larraz (CEO) and Toño Escartin (chief business development officer) spotted a gap in the market for a Europe-based fancy dress supplier, having seen friends import costumes from the US and paying costly customs taxes and shipping costs.

SunTec, the leader in revenue management, relationship-based pricing, billing, and customer experience orchestration, announced the successful rollout of Customer Centricity System, powered by SunTec Xelerate^®, at MSB (formerly known as Maritime Bank), Vietnam. This implementation will further empower MSB with additional capabilities to innovate, offer and effectively manage customer centric products & services for each target segment as well as bring delight for its valuable customers through personalized offers at a customer level.

CloudCheckr, the largest privately held independent Cloud Management Platform (CMP) provider specializing in comprehensive cloud cost management, cloud security and compliance, announced the appointment of Tim McKinnonas CEO and as a member of the Board of Directors.

The majority (90%) of banking and financial services CIOs find integrating new communications with legacy systems a challenge, according to new research from global cloud communications software provider, IMImobile. This comes at a time when almost all (98%) banking and financial services CIOs feel under pressure to deliver the customer experience (CX) expected by both customers and the wider business.

A new report, ‘The State of IT – The Employee Verdict’, reveals that more than half (55%) of financial services workers in the UK lose at least an hour a month to IT problems, with an average 1 hour 23 minutes lost. Although 95% of financial services workers stated they had IT issues at work, less than two thirds (62%) actually reached out to IT support or service desks to solve them.

Axioma, the leading global provider of enterprise risk management, portfolio construction and regulatory reporting solutions, has launched the next generation of its Axioma RiskTM solution which significantly enhances its Fixed Income and Multi-Asset Risk Models. These new, bottom-up risk models are constructed using Axioma’s proprietary methodology for modeling global fixed income returns across both developed and emerging markets.

Trade Ledger, the world’s first open banking business lending platform has launched a new turn-key Automated Invoice Finance Platform for banks and alternative finance providers looking to deliver faster and more flexible working capital solutions to their business customers. Launched to coincide with the commercial finance sector’s key event, the NACFB Expo, the solution is designed to help financial institutions adopt state-of-the-art technology without having to make major infrastructure changes or commit significant IT investment.

Specialist provider of tech and cyber-security staffing solutions, La Fosse Associates, has launched a first-of-its-kind pro bono recruitment and advisory practice to help charities combat the threat of a cyber-attack on their organisations. La Fosse Pro Bono will operat