As consumer expectations towards digital user experience are increasing, more and more banks are striving to provide great customer experience on their digital banking channels – online, mobile, and tablet banking.

Online research from Equifax reveals nearly one third (31%) of people believe they won’t be able to pay off debt within their lifetime, and over one in 10 (12%) say they won’t even be able to reduce their debt levels.

The survey, conducted with Gorkana, indicates those aged 18-24 are the most pessimistic about debt, just half (50%) believe they will pay back their debt in full within their lifetime, compared to 78% of 55-64 year olds. Males are more confident they’ll manage to clear their debts in their lifetime (73%) than females (65%).

Belgazprombank, a leading lender in Belarus, has implemented a system from FICO that screens financial transactions and customers in order to prevent financial crime. FICO^® TONBELLER^® Siron^® Embargo checks banking applicants and individual transactions to ensure that the bank and its customers do not do business with individuals on restricted lists, such as those who are involved in terrorist activities, and manages the risk of working with politically exposed persons.

SWIFT is launching a Business Intelligence gpi Observer Analytics tool, a new resource for gpi banks to gain more comprehensive business insights into their gpi traffic flows.  

The unique market and competitive analysis that gpi Observer Analytics provides will allow financial institutions to act on reliable and fact-based information to understand the current itinerary and speed of their payment instructions.

Kamakura Corporation reported today that Taipei-based E.Sun Commercial Bank has signed an agreement to implement Kamakura's suite of solutions for asset and liability management (ALM), interest rate risk and liquidity management, and interest rate risk in the banking book (IRRBB), as well as managing its liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) and net stable funding ratio (NSFR) in accordance with Basel III regulations. E.Sun selected Kamakura's system after a comprehensive evaluation of available options.

TEMCO, Korean startup preparing supply chain based on bitcoin (RSK), said it has successfully secured institutional investment from "Korea Investment Partners" (KIP), the foremost leading venture capital of Korea. KIP has been investing in growing billion-dollar companies such as: Naver, Kakao, Korbit, DoubleU Games, Bithumb and now TEMCO. KIP will serve as one of the key business partners in TEMCO's exponential growth.

Rubrik, the Cloud Data Management company, today announced it has been selected by the Scottish Government's Agriculture and Rural Economy (ARE) Directorate to protect and manage its mission critical data. Rubrik is delivering a scalable and centralized data management solution for backup, disaster recovery and archival, allowing ARE to easily and reliably demonstrate security compliance. 

Finastra today announced that Torsten Pull has joined the company as General Manager for Corporate Banking. Torsten brings over 19 years’ experience in global transaction banking, having held a range of senior leadership positions at Deutsche Bank. At Finastra he will take charge of all corporate banking products and solutions, covering lending, trade, supply chain finance, cash management and corporate channels.

Sberbank has launched a pilot project that involves reviewing loan applications without proof of income documents. 

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the global standards organization driving the adoption of Enterprise Ethereum, and Hyperledger, The Linux Foundation open source collaborative effort advancing cross-industry blockchain technologies, today jointly announced they have become Associate Members, respectively, within each other’s organization.