The completion of an initiative to break the barrier of gender bias preventing women from becoming leaders in technology has been announced. With 32% of women still believing a gender gap exists, placing a major hurdle between them and their future careers, Compass Plus  introduced an educational programme specifically for women.

Avelacom, the high-performance global connectivity and IT infrastructure provider for the financial services industry, has deployed a new point-of-presence (PoP) in Ashburn, Virginia, with direct connectivity to Amazon AWS US – East–1 region. Its AWS Ashburn to AWS Dublin, one of the most popular routes for cryptocurrency arbitrage, is now the fastest line available in the market at a guaranteed 65.3ms round-trip latency.

AccessFintech, which delivers collaboration, transparency and control to the financial services industry, and Cappitech, a leading provider of regulatory reporting, best execution analysis and business intelligence solutions for the financial services industry, today announced they will collaborate to deliver greater governance and risk controls for market participants by providing their combined solution to clients across the financial ecosystem.

BTON Financial, the independent outsourced dealing desk for asset managers, has announced the appointment of Emmett Cawley as Head of Data Science and Algos and Justin Hudson as Head of Sales, to lead the firm’s expansion strategy. Emmet and Justin will be instrumental in delivering BTON Financial’s mission to support asset managers in taking advantage of the emerging liquidity and execution opportunities while also ensuring regulatory compliance.

Founded in 1923, Vantage Bank Texas (Vantage) — the family-owned community bank operating across Texas and Mexico — today announced that it has selected Backbase’s digital platform to develop dynamic user journeys across its entire client base.

Path Solutions has revealed its new Intelligent Digital initiative roadmap with the launch of Path Digital and Path Intelligence platforms which will enable forward-thinking banks to maintain competitive advantage by providing their customers with a consistent and seamless intelligent digital banking experience while harnessing the full potential of data.

Masthaven Bank has launched a digital development programme for its female leaders which aims to hone their leadership skills, develop as professionals and help them build stronger peer support communities at work.  The announcement follows research from the bank which suggests brokers feel that gender diversity - while still an issue for the financial services sector – has improved over the past five years.

Following a competitive tender process, Ikano Bank, an international consumer finance bank, has chosen Nets, a European payment services provider, to provide a full-scale lending platform, issuer processing and related services. The four-year contract significantly extends Nets’ existing card processing relationship with Ikano Bank and reflects Nets’ continued expansion to support banks and issuers across Europe.

Equifax, the business and consumer insights expert, is partnering with CreditLadder.co.uk, the UK’s largest rent reporting platform, to include rental payment data in Equifax credit assessments.