The SWIFT Institute announces the launch of a new competition targeted at university students. The SWIFT Institute Challenge 2016 asks students to address a real world challenge being faced by remittance senders, receivers and their banks, and is open to any UK-based recognised university, or centre of learning, with an interest in banking.

 ParFX, the wholesale electronic trading platform, today expanded the number of currencies offered on its platform with the addition of the Hungarian forint (HUF). 

In recent years, the Hungarian forint has become increasingly popular among the global FX trading community, with approximately 90% of Hungarian forint trades executed outside of Hungary’s domestic borders. According to the Bank for International Settlements, it is one of the 25 most actively traded currencies in the world.¹ 

SWIFT announces today that the Innotribe Startup Challenge for Africa is open for applications. For the second year running, the Innotribe Startup Challenge for Africa will be part of SWIFT’s African Regional Conference (ARC) held in Mauritius from 17-19 May. 

Third party risk management is making headlines and for some very good reasons. Why? Structural factors are forcing a complete rethink of current practices.  Financial institutions and third parties are each facing their own challenges as third party risk management receives greater focus than ever before. 

Factor #1: RELIANCE

Neonet, the independent agency broker and execution specialist, announces that it recently joined AIM Italia, Italy’s leading growth market for SMEs, as a member firm.
 
“As an independent agency brokerage, we constantly review our access to all available European liquidity.  Recent customer demand for access to Italy’s SMEs lead to our decision to become a member of AIM Italia”, said Tim Wildenberg, Chief Executive Officer of Neonet.  “We are delighted to offer our clients access to SMEs listed on AIM Italia.”
 

The PSD2 (Payments Services Directive 2) and Open API (application programming interface) standards in banking will come into force in the UK (and the wider EU) within two years. The UK Government is backing these initiatives with the aim to provide consumers with more secure, less expensive and easy-to-use financial services. These developments will affect both retail and corporate banking. But how will this drive innovation and competition in financial services, and where are banks in the race to take advantage of the new approaches?

The complete recipe for a financial services app that stands out from the crowd

So, you want to design a financial services app. But how do you make it stand out from the thousands of others already in the market? From our experience, customer centricity is the key, where by ‘customer’ we mean ‘real people’. Technical components influence speed and performance, but a fully explored customer journey creates a satisfying app experience. Here’s the complete recipe for an appealing and useful financial services app:

Gresham Computing plc, a leading provider of real-time financial transaction control and enterprise data integrity solutions, today announced a trading update for the year ended 31 December 2015 ("FY 2015").

The Group expects to report revenues for the year up 16% to £14.8 million and Adjusted EBITDA* up 142% to £2.7 million in-line with expectations.

With a wealth of new ideas and innovation continually coming to market, the UK’s financial technology sector is a very exciting place to be. New start-ups are constantly emerging, causing incredible changes in the industry.

It’s perhaps not surprising then that many investors’ sights are set on London, a hub for financial services and technology innovation. Indeed, in 2014 alone, the UK government estimates the domestic financial technology sector attracted a massive £342 million in investment and generated £20 billion in revenue.