European consumers feel they have more power over businesses, and are increasingly willing to use it, research from Quadient – formerly GMC Software – has revealed. In a Lightspeed survey of 8,061 adults in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands, more than three quarters (76 percent) of respondents said they would switch from a business that doesn’t meet their customer experience expectations.

Hitachi, Ltd. today launched Hitachi Vantara, a new business entity to leverage the broad portfolio of innovation, development and experience from across Hitachi Group companies to deliver data-driven solutions for commercial and industrial enterprises.

Callidus Software Inc., a global leader in cloud-based sales, marketing, learning, and customer experience solutions, announced today that it has acquired OrientDB Ltd., a leading provider of multi-model database technologies.

Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, today released the latest findings of the Breach Level Index, a global database of public data breaches, revealing 918 data breaches led to 1.9 billion data records being compromised worldwide in the first half of 2017. Compared to the last six months of 2016, the number of lost, stolen or compromised records increased by a staggering 164%.

Kuwait-based Path Solutions, an international core banking system provider for Islamic banks and financial institutions, has announced the signing of a licence agreement with Sudan Financial Services Company (“SFSC”), giving Path Solutions unrestricted access to deploy its iMAL Enterprise Islamic & Investment System across their business.

SWIFT gives two FinTech startups the opportunity to work with the co-operative and gpi banks over a three-month period to further enhance cross-border payments, leveraging on SWIFT gpi. 

“Why it's simply impassible!
Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and cloud technologies are increasingly appearing on the horizon. This could be exactly what the doctor, or banker ordered given the legal mandates for open banking and General Data Protection Regulation for 2018. These three key technology groups can accelerate the financial services industry move into the digital age:

Wealthsimple, a leading digital wealth manager, continues to make smart investing accessible and low-cost to more people with today's announcement of the company's expansion to the United Kingdom.