In the midst of the global virus pandemic, the mandated shutdown of commercial activity creates significant future risk. But as we recover, banks can play an essential role to rebuild businesses and livelihoods, earning new trust that will help all of us to emerge stronger than ever, says Sanat Rao.

Finding time for strategy

Scorable has launched its second product release to further enhance the scope and accuracy of its credit risk analysis, helping fixed-income managers make better investment decisions. The company's innovative artificial intelligence (AI) solution enables asset managers to monitor corporate bonds and credit spreads and to anticipate rating changes before they occur or markets price them in. 

Anti-money-laundering pioneers SmartSearch this Sunday achieved 15^th position in the Sunday Times Profit Track list. The list recognises the British companies with the fastest-growing profits over the last three years.

SmartSearch’s success comes on the back of an increase of more than 80% in profits over the past year, and a sixfold rise over the three-year period looked at by the Sunday Times.

CLS, a market infrastructure group delivering settlement, processing and data solutions, announced today that Keith Tippell has been appointed as the new Head of Product.

He will be responsible for overseeing CLS’s existing product suite and all new product development in the Settlement and Processing business lines.

PXP Financial, the global expert in acquiring and payment processing, today announces four major new hires. Following a successful expansion into the US earlier in 2020, PXP Financial welcomes Arne Matthias as Chief Operating Officer, and Anschana Caravaca as Head of Gaming to the team. Additionally, Dave Janse joins as Head of Business Development, and Armin Pichler as Head of HR.

Northern Trust (Nasdaq: NTRS) has named Alison Pain as chief technology officer (CTO) for the Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) region.

Nigerian fintech platform Okra has secured a $1mn pre-seed fundraise from TLcom Ca

Konsentus today announced that two senior members of the commercial team at the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), have joined Konsentus as VP, Business Development, to scale up operations as Open Banking takes off across the UK and Europe.

Paul Hughes, most recently, Head of Business Development at the OBIE, also held senior positions at Vocalink, U.S. Bankcorp (Elavon), RBS and Barclays. He is joined by Peter Mortlock, a senior Sales Executive from OBIE whose extensive payments experience includes roles with Vocalink, Snatch and Verifone.

Today the British Business Bank has announced that it has approved four new lenders for accreditation under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), which provides financial support to smaller businesses (SMEs) across the UK that are losing revenue and seeing their cashflow disrupted, as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak. The new CBILS lenders are Allied Irish Bank (GB)/AIB (NI), ThinCats, Paragon Bank and IGF (Independent Growth Finance).