Colt Technology Services has today announced the appointment of Mirko Voltolini as Vice President of Strategy and Innovation. In this newly created role, Mirko will seek to underpin Colt’s product capabilities with innovation and the latest emerging technologies in order to ensure Colt remains an industry leader. This role will also go beyond products and technology, with Mirko and his team playing a pivotal role in defining and driving the execution of Colt’s broader strategy.

Raindrop is a flexible, smart and secure solution specifically designed for self-employed workers to save for their futures in one easy-to-use online platform.

A new fully digital, flexible and smart pension platform, designed specifically for self-employed workers, has officially launched this week.

Yooz, the cloud-based Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) automation software company, has today unveiled Yooz Rising, its new and improved AP automation solution.

With improved user experience and new features, Yooz Rising has been launched in early 2021 and has already been successfully adopted by more than 500 organisations across the EMEA market.

Railsbank, the leading global Banking-as-a-Service platform, is helping to power sync., the world’s first digital smart open banking app.

Masthaven Bank has continued to strengthen and diversify its leadership team with the announcement of the promotions of Shelley Connelly and Sabahe Mrizag to Director level. 

Employee benefit and reward pioneer Ben has raised $2.5m in a round led by Cherry Ventures and Seedcamp. The round was also supported by notable FinTech and HRTech angel investors including Paul Forster of Indeed.com, Taavet Hinrikus of Transferwise, Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas of GoCardless (now Index Ventures), Philip Reynolds of Workday, and Matt Robinson of Nested.

Montagu Private Equity (“Montagu”), a leading European private equity firm, today announces it has agreed to acquire a majority position in ITRS Group (“ITRS”), a leading global provider of real-time monitoring and analytics software from TA Associates (“TA”), who will remain a minority holder alongside Montagu and Management. Completion is expected next month, subject to customary closing requirements. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. 

Regulation and operational efficiency requirements are driving a move away from traditional Periodic Review (PR), towards real-time, ongoing customer due diligence - also known as continual or perpetual KYC. However, even with the benefits it promises (reduced caseloads, improved customer experience, less costs etc) adoption amongst financial services has been slow.

LedgerEdge, the next-generation ecosystem for corporate bond trading, announces it has selected Yaala Labs, a provider of cloud-native capital markets infrastructure, to support its technology delivery. The partnership will enable LedgerEdge to launch a global corporate bond trading venue built on distributed ledger technology, expected in the second half of 2021.

Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) received Plug and Play’s Global Innovation Award for its innovation efforts and active engagement with fintechs and startups through its partnership programs. Despite the difficult situation in 2020, RBI and its subsidiary banks have entered multiple long-term collaborations with fintechs.