The pilot of Lendex, Mortgage Brain’s new multi-lender submission and application gateway, is off to a tremendous start.

Coventry Building Society, NatWest and Platform are all available through the Lendex pilot, with a further two lenders expected to be live in the near future. Collectively they represent around 32% of mortgages sold in the UK. Letters of Intent have also been signed by a number of other lenders, including Lloyds Banking Group, which will see that figure rise to over 57% of the market.

Russian food producer Cherkizovo Group has connected to Sberbank’s banking services via National Settlement Depository's Transit 2.0 platform. The Group’s connection to the platform has been implemented and tested remotely.

As part of the agreement for technological partnership for interchanging financial messages via Transit 2.0 concluded by NSD and Sberbank, corporate clients have been able to automate their electronic interactions with Sberbank through Fintech API at NSD’s platform.

Dreams (www.getdreams.com), the Stockholm-born fintech empowering millennials to save and feel better about their money, today announces a strategic partnership with Silverlake Symmetri, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Silverlake Axis Ltd (SAL), which provides software solutions and services to the Banking, Insurance, Retail, Government, Payment and Logistics industries.

Over 25 businesses in the Cardiff and Newport area have joined the #helptheheroesdiff campaign, it has been announced today. Together, the businesses are helping provide weekly food parcels to over 600 staff across seven NHS hospitals* around the Cardiff, Vale and Newport area throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

 B-North, the Manchester-based firm building an SME lending bank for the UK, has chosen Leeds based RegTech innovator, TruNarrative, to provide a full suite of customer onboarding and compliance capabilities that will enable B-North to deliver crucial business lending up to 10x faster than large incumbents.

Bruce Curry, vice president for collections and recovery consulting and sales in EMEA at global analytics software provider FICO, urges the collections community to ensure it gets its data strategies right to handle the challenges resulting from COVID-19.

Koine is pleased to announce that it has been awarded in-principle approval (IPA) to provide custody in relation to Virtual Assets in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM).  The IPA was granted by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of ADGM.

With a growing demand for institutional investment in virtual assets with the emerging growth of institutional investors in digital securities, Koine's regulated services will meet the needs of both Koine customers, as well as the broader digital asset community.

Online shopping has outstripped all other forms of spending over the past month, with more than half of UK shoppers (57 per cent) saying they are shopping online more than ever and record numbers signing up to virtual experiences like home fitness classes, TV and film subscriptions and online learning during lockdown.

Responses from 183 senior leaders across firms based in Luxembourg’s financial centre – including a mix of global and local asset managers, banks, insurers and professional service providers – revealed that three quarters (74%) of them do not expect to see economic conditions normalise to pre-crisis levels for at least 1 year, and potentially 2 to 3 years.