Douugh Ltd (ASX: DOU) & (OTCQB: DOUUF), the banking ‘super app’ on a mission to help customers manage and grow their money, today announced it has entered into a $20 million equity placement facility agreement with Long State Investments Limited.

Based in New York City, Long State has significant experience in investing in disruptive early-stage public companies in high growth-oriented sectors, including fintechs.

The Agreement will provide Douugh with a fully flexible, on demand funding facility. Douugh can nominate Long State to subscribe for newly-issued ordinary Douugh shares under the facility at any time over the next 36 months, up to a total amount of $20m, with the timing, quantum and minimum issue price of the shares issued to Long State under the Agreement entirely at Douugh’s discretion.

Commenting on the funding arrangement, Douugh’s Founder and CEO Andy Taylor said:

“We’re on a mission to help everyday people better spend, budget, save and invest their money. The securing of this facility with Long State provides us with tremendous funding flexibility and access to the growth capital needed to further develop our banking super app and accelerate growth.”

“Access to this fully flexible strategic funding facility should enable Douugh to achieve economies of scale and therefore maximise gross margin and profitability, with the timing of the drawing down of funds being completely at our discretion. Further, it grants us the opportunity to capitalise on emerging B2B enterprise licensing opportunities, allowing potential partners to white-label our technology for their own customers' use.”

“We remain focused on optimising our conversion funnel and increasing customer activation and engagement through targeted growth initiatives and the development of new features. Our goal is to unlock the platform revenue opportunity prior to dialing up paid marketing channels, as we work to accelerate our path to unit profitability.” 

“The pending launch of Crypto and Single Stock trading services are crucial to the banking super app positioning in the eyes of consumers to increase the value of our subscription to accelerate earnings and increase the number of customers using Douugh as their main financial institution.”

Long State’s Managing Director, Philip Ho said:

“Douugh is a leading innovator in the consumer fintech segment with its purpose-led approach to disrupting retail banking. With a strong financial platform and broad base of global partnerships, plus its pending launch of Crypto investing and high-yield DeFi saving features, we believe Douugh now has the necessary product foundation to unlock its revenue opportunity and gain significant market share in the US, Australia and beyond.”

Following a successful pilot, leading mortgage technology provider, Twenty7Tec, today announces that Pepper Money has been rolled out to all APPLY enabled users of the CloudTwenty7 platform.

This integration leverages the Twenty7Tec APPLY module, as well as the finova Distribution Hub, which Pepper is utilising as part of its origination solution.

This means that Advisers can now submit Decision in Principle (DIP) applications to Pepper Money directly from within the CloudTwenty7 platform, avoiding duplication and speeding up cases. DIP decisions are then sent back to the CloudTwenty7 and displayed to the adviser and case information post-DIP will be available in the adviser portal to aid in the completion of the full application, reducing re-keying of data.

Nathan Reilly, Director of Lender Relationships at Twenty7Tec “The rekeying of data remains a challenge for advisers, particularly for specialist cases where a number of options will often be explored. By working with the team at Pepper Money and finova, we’re pleased to have reduced this challenge for CloudTwenty7 users by delivering a more efficient submission process”

Paul Adams, Sales Director at Pepper Money, said: “At Pepper Money, we’re not just known for our great specialist mortgage products, we also have a reputation for market leading service. Great service in the intermediary mortgage market isn’t just about individual underwriting, named case owners and responding quickly to phone calls, it’s also about investigating other ways to make life easier for brokers, and this integration does just that. We’re very pleased partner with Twenty7Tec on this launch of Pepper Money on its APPLY module.”

Qi clients can now access a whole new level of market insights

with RETINA’s second-generation AI-powered real time notifications and signals

Quant Insight (Qi), the ground-breaking macro analytics provider for institutional investors, has rolled out RETINA™ 2.0, which includes major updates, new features, and improved functionality. 

Qi’s RETINA™ (Real Time Notifications and Alerts) uses cutting edge data science and analytics to process and boil down the torrent of macro and market information to identify key shifts under the surface of global financial markets, covering 5,000+ instruments across all asset classes. Key signals are then pushed into clients’ workflows in real time via the Symphony and Slack messaging platforms. The result is unparalleled market transparency and giving back to users the one thing they lack most – time.

RETINA™ is fully customisable, and users can set it to monitor whatever they want to track. Notifications cover important shifts in macro factors including Nowcasting (real GDP across 20 countries), inflation expectations, financial conditions and more, as well as alerts on misalignments and mis-pricings. Users can also set the number of signals they want to receive, whether that is a stream of ideas, or just a handful of extremely robust, high-conviction data driven insights.   

Each signal has a “signal strength” indication – a level of confidence in each individual idea. New metrics encompassing historical back tests, the profile of macro-warranted fair value plus a trend and momentum overlay help determine which signals present the highest probabilities.

RETINA™ 2.0 offers added interactivity. A user can pick a security and ask the Qi trade bot to track it continuously. The bot will then push a notification to the user in Symphony or Slack if it detects any significant change in macro regime, valuation and/or momentum. Aside from tracking, users can interact with the RETINA could-based market “brain” by asking for a full analysis of any security.

Another major feature new to RETINA™ 2.0, is the introduction of alerts on Qi’s Vol Indicator – a way for clients to gain early insights into a potential period of volatility for chosen assets. 

What’s more, RETINA™ 2.0 will also include a Performance Table which is broken down by asset class and summarises the performance of the previous month’s signals. The performance table also includes a Bullish vs. Bearish ratio and number of trades closed against those still open, allowing traders to gain a holistic overview of how assets classes in their portfolio have performed in the last four weeks. 

RETINA™ is already being used by world-leading hedge fund portfolio managers and institutional investors with hundreds of billions in AUM.

Mahmood Noorani, Co-Founder and CEO for Quant Insight, comments: 

“Quant Insight’s core idea is that in this age of data overload, processing power, data science and ground-breaking technology are more important than ever. Investors who incorporate hard evidence based on cutting edge quantitative analysis now have the advantage.

“Quant Insight has made significant leaps and bounds as a company in recent months, with a new offering for retail investors, iQbyQi, and a number of major partnerships in the works. 

“However, RETINA™ is, and always will be, our flagship product. RETINA provides live alerts when any important macro factor – inflation expectations, measures of risk appetite or moves in credit markets – experiences a large shift. And what’s even more important is that users can see the impact that all the information out there is having on asset prices.

“In short, RETINA™ is a source of trade ideas, a way to track a user’s trade position and pushes notifications alerting user of any changes in the underlying macro landscape all customised and delivered seamlessly into the user’s daily workflow.” 

The combination of LEIs and official organizational roles within digital ID credentials promotes greater trust in the authenticity of an entity’s authorized representatives, enabling new digital identity management use cases

A newly published ISO standard, ISO 5009, has the potential to extend the utility and value of Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)-based digital identity tools, by facilitating inclusion of ‘official organizational role’ detail within them, in a consistent manner.

ISO 5009 paves the way for these tools – such as verifiable LEI (vLEI) credentials and digital certificates with embedded LEIs – to become a universally trusted method of digitally confirming the authenticity of people authorized to act on behalf of an organization. Irrefutable confirmation of this authenticity - a person’s name and official role - is critical when sensitive business activities are performed digitally, such as the remote approval of transactions, or e-signing contracts.

Published in February 2022, ISO 5009 permits global uniformity of the listing of official organizational roles by jurisdiction in a structured way. This means that roles of persons acting officially on behalf of an organization may be specified by a legal entity and incorporated into existing and future digital assets leveraging the LEI.

There are currently two types of LEI-based digital assets:

• The vLEI is a digitally trustworthy version of the 20-digit LEI code which is automatically verified, without the need for human intervention. Once a legal entity has obtained its vLEI, it can proceed with the issuance of additional vLEI credentials to authorized members of the organization. The vLEI wraps the LEI, a person’s name, and their role inside a cryptographically secure organizational credential, enabling each component to be verified digitally. With ISO 5009, official organizational roles can be represented in vLEI credentials in a standard way.
• Digital certificates with embedded LEIs. The ISO 5009 standard can be used to specify in a standard way the optional Role extension contained in X.509 public key certificates with embedded LEIs, as outlined in ISO 17442.

The development of the ISO 5009 standard was initially proposed by GLEIF to bring clarity and structure to the role information held in both of these LEI-based digital tools. As an active participant of ISO/TC 68, GLEIF led the development work. The ISO technical management board assigned the Maintenance Agency to the Swiss Association for Standardization (SNV), which passed its responsibilities to GLEIF. Therefore, GLEIF will remain closely involved in the management of the operations of the ISO 5009 going forwards, as the operational Maintenance Agency for the standard.

“The Official Organizational Roles standard (ISO 5009) builds upon the successful LEI (ISO 17442) in both governance and functionality. ISO 5009 has a myriad of uses related to corporate governance and reporting that up until now were not adequately being addressed. Both ISO TC 68 and overall society greatly benefit from the leadership of GLEIF,” explains Jim Northey ISO TC 68 Chair and Non-executive Director, the FIX Trading Community.

Stephan Wolf, CEO from GLEIF comments: “In business and regulatory exchanges, it is important to confirm the official roles of people acting on behalf of organizations. In a digital context this can be challenging yet uncompromisingly necessary as we move towards creating and sustaining a digital global economy. For this reason, GLEIF has been committed to the realization of this ISO standard as it is a significant step forward towards addressing that challenge.

The publication of ISO 5009 is a standardization milestone that facilitates a universal approach to the inclusion of official organizational role information in digital ID credentials. This will make it far easier – and perhaps more widely expected - to include role related data in these credentials thanks to a consistent approach. In time, this has the potential for LEI-based digital ID tools to become more widespread thanks to their extended utility; not only can they verify the identity of a legal entity, but they can also verify the identity of that legal entity’s representatives in official organizational roles.”

In February 2022, GLEIF published a vLEI Ecosystem Governance Framework, together with a technical supporting infrastructure. For more information on that announcement and the concept of the vLEI itself, please visit the GLEIF website.

New research from Provenir outlines the greatest risk analysis challenges, opportunities, and trends fintech decision-makers expect to see in 2022

Key findings:

• 79% of decision-makers plan to invest in a real-time risk decisioning platform
• Fraud prevention is the biggest driver for investments in AI-enabled risk decisioning (91%)
• Only 22% of respondents believe their organisation’s current risk model is accurate at least 76% of the time

According to the latest study from Provenir, a global leader in AI-powered risk decisioning software for the fintech industry, fraud prevention is the biggest driver for investments in AI-enabled risk decisioning this year.

The survey, which canvassed the views of 100 decision-makers from fintechs and financial services firms across Europe, found that other major drivers for investments in AI-enabled risk decisioning include automating decisions across the credit lifecycle (68%), competitive pricing (65%) and cost savings and operational efficiency (61%).

The survey also highlights the role that alternative data can play in the fight against fraud, with 68% of those surveyed choosing to incorporate alternative data for the purpose of improving fraud detection.

The report also found that access to data is the biggest challenge to an organisation’s risk strategy (88%), closely followed by a lack of a centralised view of data across the customer lifecycle (74%).

Overall, the findings show that current confidence in credit model accuracy is low, with only 22% of respondents believing that their organization’s current risk model is accurate at least most of the time. No respondents believed that their organisation’s risk model is completely accurate.

“The risk of fraud has heightened across the entire financial services landscape, and with attacks only becoming more sophisticated and widespread, it is positive to see that more firms are turning to AI-enabled technologies to minimise these threats,” said Carol Hamilton, SVP, Global Solutions at Provenir. “The key benefit of using AI-enabled decisioning for fraud detection is its ability to get smarter with each decision it processes. So, as fraudsters evolve their methods, AI models can use real-time data to identify new patterns, learn, and adapt to constantly detect fraud threats and minimise risk.”

You can find the full results of the survey here.