Cleo, the financial assistant designed for Gen-Z, has raised $44M in Series B funding to continue fighting for the world's financial health. The Series B is led by EQT Ventures with participation from existing investors Balderton Capital, LocalGlobe and SBI.

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, today announced that it won the Business Culture Award 2020 for ‘Best Business Culture in a Crisis’. The prestigious awards celebrate forward-thinking companies that have created outstanding work-environments, enabling their employees to perform to their very best, facilitating exceptional business performance and customer delivery.

Copper.co, the London-based digital asset infrastructure provider, today announced it will serve as an official custodian for Flare Networks.

Flare is building the world’s first Turing-complete Federated Byzantine Agreement-based smart contract network. Its native asset, the Spark (FLR) token, will be distributed to XRP holders over a 36-month period, based upon a snapshot taken at 12:00am UTC on Saturday 12 December 2020.

Tradeteq, the global hub for trade finance distribution, has today announced its collaboration with Microsoft. The collaboration enables the build-out of a market infrastructure which allows financial institutions to efficiently run trade finance distribution workflow processes while complying efficiently with data residency requirements. Tradeteq will be providing its platform through Microsoft’s flexible cloud platform Azure with access to over 60 regions globally. 

Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ:OKTA), the leading independent provider of identity for the enterprise, has announced that current board member and audit committee chair, Mike Kourey, will become Chief Financial Officer in March 2021. As part of this transition, Kourey will step down from the audit committee, which he has chaired since 2015, and resign from Okta’s board when he assumes the CFO role.

The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) is to extend the Global LEI System to create a fully digitized LEI service capable of enabling instant and automated identity verification between counterparties operating across all industry sectors, globally.

Given this year's extraordinary events, the financial services sector is likely to become more competitive heading into 2021, as firms try to claw back lost ground. Organisations looking to secure their market position will need to consider not just how they can better deliver their core competencies, but also how they can improve their back-office performance and make themselves more efficient.

Tech Nation, the growth platform for tech companies and leaders,  announces new signatories Atom bank, Co-operative Bank, Nationwide Building Society, TSB, and Virgin Money to the Fintech Pledge, joining existing signatories Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Santander.

BPC, the leading provider of digital payment solutions, has unveiled its new mobile and digital banking app solution, designed to provide banks and fintechs with a comprehensive set of features that go beyond traditional banking. The app solution offers ease of use and fast implementation for banks that wish to accelerate their digital transformation and fintechs that need to go to market fast.