Nordea Bank Abp has decided to adjust its organisational set-up to support the three priorities announced earlier in the autumn – drive income growth initiatives, create great customer experiences and optimise operational efficiency. Nordea is also appointing Sara Mella as Head of Personal Banking, Christina Gadeberg as Head of Group People and Erik Ekman as Head of Group Business Support.

Odgers Berndtson, a leading global executive search firm, has added Google and Sage as lead partners on Rebus, an industry-wide mentoring initiative to fast-track senior women across the UK technology sector.

Mentors from more than 50 leading UK technology companies have so far pledged support, including Vodafone, TalkTalk, ARM Holdings, NVIDIA, SAP and Blackberry. Rebus was launched in October with founding partners Odgers Berndtson, Avanade and BT, and already has over 60 mentors for events in 2020.

 VibePay, the social payment app, today announces it is available for download from both the iOS and Android app stores, although access remains exclusive at this time.  Following its closed beta launch in September, to which only the dedicated Vibe Community were invited, just over 12,000 people have signed up to a waiting list to gain access to the VibePay app. 

Odoo, a leader in open-source all-in-one business software, announced today that it has closed a $90 million minority investment led by global growth equity investor Summit Partners, with participation from Odoo’s executive management team and existing investor SRIW and its affiliate Noshaq. New investor Summit Partners joins management and current shareholders, including SRIW, Sofinnova and XAnge in supporting Odoo’s rapid product development pace and continued global expansion.

When digital trading platforms started gaining in prominence and market share, many people believed that brick-and-mortar companies were doomed. That the future belonged solely to digital trade. As with most predictions, the reality was far more complicated and lay somewhere in the middle.

The establishment of giants like Amazon, Alibaba and some smaller platforms has paved a major highway for digital trade, but the future held something more than just a single global warehouse connected to an online store. The future was hybrid.

Marketplaces in the B2B market

“At IDEX Biometrics, we’re seeing the potential for a lot of growth in the biometric payment card and access control markets for 2020. We expect to see positive developments in manufacturing and certification of biometric payment cards, thanks to increasing consumer demands for secure payments. It’s my strong belief that both the biometric payment card and access control markets will fully materialise in the coming year. Therefore, my predictions for the biometric industry in 2020 are:

While FinTech start-ups have been showcasing their rapid dynamism and proving themselves to represent a real threat to traditional financial institutions, in recent years, and even months, it has become increasingly difficult not to address the elephant in the room. Big tech companies such as Amazon and Google, have been dipping their toes into the financial services space and showcasing their ability to launch a range of financial products.

In just the past few years we can pinpoint several moves by tech giants which reinforce their intentions:

With the 2022 Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) deadline looming, banks are fast coming to grips with the amount of work still to be done to achieve a successful implementation. In this Q&A, the experts at Wolters Kluwer Finance, Risk & Reporting examine what’s yet to be done.

 State Street Corporation today announced a new digital asset  pilot in collaboration with Gemini Trust Company, LLC (Gemini), a cryptocurrency exchange and custodian. The pilot builds on ongoing research and development in the digital asset space to combine Gemini Custody^TM with State Street’s back office reporting.

The Financial Conduct Authority has issued a call for input on proposals to extend open banking rules to a wider range of products, under a new model billed as 'open finance'.