Mortgage adviser, Affinity Mortgages have chosen Mortgage Brain as its partner to help drive efficiency across the business.

The new partnership enables Affinity to benefit from The Key, Mortgage Brain’s point-of-sale compliance and CRM system and its integration with MortgageBrain Anywhere, Mortgage Brain’s online sourcing system.

B-North, the Manchester-based firm building an SME lending bank for the UK, has announced the appointment of Ron Emerson CBE as its Chairman, effective from 16 September.

Ron was the founding Chairman of the British Business Bank (BBB), the UK government's economic development bank aimed at improving access to finance for the small and mid-sized business sector.

Oromia International Bank, a decade-old private commercial bank, has gone live with an advanced core banking solution.

ICS Financial System (ICSFS), a company from the United Kingdom, developed the system that works for interest-free, corporate internet, retail and mobile banking services. The system was fully implemented last month after the duo signed the agreement two years ago.

ICSFS secured the project after vying with seven other companies. FLEXCUBE and ICSFS both passed the technical evaluation and demonstration stages.

Leading open banking platform provider, Token.io, today announces the appointment of Todd Clyde to the position of CEO, effective immediately. Token’s Founder and current CEO, Steve Kirsch, assumes the role of Chief Innovation Officer and retains his position on Token’s Board. Todd assumes the leadership role following three successful years as Token’s COO. 

Nomanini, the pioneering fintech platform for the informal retail ecosystem, has today announced a $4m funding round led by Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank, and completed by Goodwell Investments, an Amsterdam-based investment firm focused on fintech and financial inclusion. 

CitiConnect®, Citi's API connectivity platform has reached a new milestone, with more than 157 million API calls processed since its launch in November 2016. The APIs for Treasury Services, accessed through CitiConnect®, allow clients to seamlessly access a growing number of Citi solutions directly into their treasury workstations or enterprise resource platforms (ERP). Of the total API calls, the majority were from companies located in the Asia Pacific and European regions, reflecting the rapid growth of instant payments schemes in these areas.

To the general public, Metro Bank might look as though it is thriving. It’s just been announced that it’s topped a survey of British customers for overall service quality, and came joint top with First Direct as a bank customers would recommend to family and friends. It has just opened a new store (they intentionally don’t call them branches) in Birmingham and next month will see their 69th and 70th stores open in Solihull and Merry Hill. The Merry Hill store will even be a drive-thru so customers don’t have to leave their car. 

SEBA Crypto AG (SEBA) announced it has successfully obtained a banking and securities dealer licence* from the Swiss regulator FINMA. This represents a milestone for the entire digital asset market ecosystem, as a new secure and integrated access point to the crypto world is now available. The 2018 founded start-up, led by CEO Guido Bühler, has successfully built a licenced and supervised bank within 17 months. The official go-live is expected to take place in early October 2019. The already announced cooperation between Julius Baer and SEBA will enter into force at this time.

Aschheim (Munich). Wirecard, the global innovation leader for digital financial technology, and emonvia, which was founded as a joint venture by one of Germany's largest energy providers, N-Ergie AG, are cooperating in the field of e-mobility. Together the companies are launching charge@work, a secure and sustainable all-in-one charging solution for company car parks. More than 60,000 corporate customers and public utilities throughout Germany use the energy services of N-Ergie, which recently recorded annual sales of EUR 2.8 billion.

The key role and responsibility of financial regulators is to identify and correct market deficiencies that have an adverse effect on investors and end-clients. For this reason, regulators are especially sensitive to corporate conduct that is intended to solicit investments from the public and enrich the corporation's bank account. A good example is the reaction of many financial regulators around the world to the public sale of digital tokens ("ICOs") during the second half of 2017 and 2018.