SteelEye, the compliance technology and data analytics firm, has reinforced its commitment to ensuring institutional-grade data security by achieving System and Organisation Controls (SOC) 2 compliance.

The external accreditation demonstrates SteelEye’s ongoing commitment to best-in-class data security – a move the company believes will strengthen its growth prospects in North America.

SOC 2 is a gold standard in the financial industry that assesses firms’ safeguarding of customer data. Defined by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), it covers the principles of Security, Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity and Privacy.

The SOC 2 accreditation follows a record year of growth for SteelEye, where the company saw revenues grow by 88 percent in 2021. The firm – which is headquartered in the UK – expanded into the US last year, appointing RegTech veteran Brian Lynch to lead its North American operations. 

Brian Lynch, President of SteelEye Americas, said: “US financial firms are highly regulated and demand the highest levels of data security. SteelEye has always had robust processes and controls in place to ensure customer data is treated with the utmost care and confidentiality. The SOC 2 certification provides an independent confirmation of our commitment to our clients’ data security and opens opportunities for accelerated growth across the US and Canada. “

Matt Smith, CEO of SteelEye, added: “Having SOC 2 status puts SteelEye at the forefront of global regulatory compliance. The compliance landscape is constantly evolving and has been accelerated by the shift towards remote and hybrid work patterns. Our agile data platform, which is underpinned by the highest security standards, enables us to provide a truly unique solution for our clients’ regulatory needs.”

Founded in 2017, SteelEye today has over 120 institutional clients worldwide with offices in London, New York, Paris, Bengaluru, and Braga.

The underwriting facility will help Shojin provide a more diverse portfolio for investors on its unique property investment platform

Shojin Property Partners, the fintech company that lowers the barriers to entry for individuals looking to access institutional-grade real estate investment opportunities, has closed a £5m underwriting facility. Provided by a London-based family office, which has made provision to increase the facility to £10m as dealflow grows, the capital will enable Shojin Property Partners to guarantee finance for new deals before launching them on its global investment platform. 

This underwriting facility sits alongside Shojin Property Partners’ current Series A fundraise, which is due to complete shortly. The company moved into profitability in 2020 having previously raised external funding of £1.7m from private investors and is on track to generate almost £2m in revenue in the year to June 2022.

Operating in an online real estate investment market forecast to grow from $15bn today to $800bn by 2027, Shojin was created to democratise the market by opening up investment opportunities to global investors on a fractional basis.  Typically, such institutional-grade property deals are only accessible to the top 1% of the world’s adult population, who control 45% of global wealth. Shojin enables investors to access this market from as little as £5,000.  

The underwriting facility will provide certainty to borrowers and investors, as real estate developers need the funds to be available on the day of completion for the underlying property or land. By underwriting the funding for a specific project in advance of sharing the opportunity with its investor pool, Shojin is able to mitigate any inherent uncertainty in the fundraising process.

CEO of Shojin Property Partners, Jatin Ondhia, said: “We are delighted that we now have access to further capital. Not only does this facility show the confidence our family office partners have in our investment platform, but it will help us provide more diverse investment opportunities for our investors. As a fintech startup that is already profitable, we look forward to offering more exciting projects for investors as we move to close out our Series A fundraise.” 

Shojin concentrates on residential, PRS (private rented sector), senior living, and student accommodation projects providing investors with expected returns of 15-25% per annum. The company specialises in providing junior funding such as equity or mezzanine to mid-market developers who struggle to raise junior capital as their own business grows.  This contrasts with the tremendous growth in availability of senior funding since the 2008 financial crisis. Shojin offers investors four core products to cater for their appetite for risk - Development Equity (higher risk), Mezzanine Loans (medium risk), Asset Investment and Bridge Loans (low risk). 

- New partnership signals new banking payment method adopted by ITV

ITV has today announced that it is partnering with Ecospend, a leading UK provider of open banking technology, to offer customers the ability to ‘pay-by-bank’ for its ITV Win competitions, which feature on headline shows, such as I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! 

Ecospend’s open banking payment method will launch on the ITV Win website and could potentially later offer an off the screen QR code functionality to let viewers pay for an ITV win entry directly from the screen.

As a result of the partnership, payment processing times will become instant and bypass all card processing fees, acquirer fees and issuer fees. As such, ITV will be able to significantly reduce the cost of processing payments. It will be ITV’s most cost-effective payment solution to date, allowing them to pay a fraction of the cost of regular card transactions. 

It will sit alongside the broadcaster’s existing payment methods, which include PayPal, Apple Pay, and card payments.

Ecospend’s payment solution requires no card information or personal data to be inputted. It will also significantly reduce the risk of fraud and eliminate chargebacks, both of which can incur significant costs. The technology provides a more secure payment process, with every transaction authorised by bank level security.

James Hickman, COO, Ecospend, comments: “This is one of the highest profile examples of the benefits that open banking payments technology is bringing to Britons. Through the ‘pay by bank’ pathway, we are bringing both significant efficiencies to ITV, while also opening the door to an improved way for ITV Win participants to enter their favourite competitions. 

“This partnership represents another major step in the adoption of open banking technology, and as such, is also an explicit example of how Ecospend’s technology can be used to modernise the payments landscape and bring real benefits to businesses, and their customers.”

Paul Gill, ITV’s Director of Commissioning, Commercial and Operations, Interactive & ITL, said: “At ITV we are committed to ensuring that our viewers can take part in their favourite competitions in the easiest, and most convenient way possible, and adopting open banking technology allows us to do exactly this.”

Regulation, Retail Investment Growth and Fintech Innovation Influencing the Democratisation of Corporate Governance

A new whitepaper focused on the growth of retail investment in Europe, and the corresponding need for financial intermediaries to reappraise how they service the increased corporate governance requirements of the retail investor, was released today by Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR), a global Fintech leader.

The whitepaper, titled The Rise of the Retail Investor, assesses the European regulatory agenda and the continued roll-out of the Capital Markets Union that reinforces the objective for a more engaged and empowered retail investor community. It highlights specific regulatory drivers, such as the Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II), that mandated financial intermediaries - including banks, brokers and wealth managers - to provide voting solutions to their underlying retail investors for the first time. It explores how these retail investors, together with social media, can potentially influence meeting outcomes around topical issues like director remuneration, climate change and the ESG policies adopted by issuers and asset managers.

“Some of the world’s leading banks and brokers have recognised the importance of regulatory and social change impacting their business and many have stepped up their investor communications product offerings, with the most advanced now looking at ways to incorporate ESG sentiment from their mutual fund holders,” said Demi Derem, General Manager, International Bank Broker-Dealer Communication Solutions at Broadridge. “We have witnessed a strong demand for our ESG-focused retail voting solutions and this whitepaper highlights how the industry is managing the implementation of the rising standards in corporate governance communications. The whitepaper also examines how some firms are looking over the industry horizon, to build brand reputation and trust, while leveraging Fintech innovation to achieve best-in-class compliance and strengthen their core service propositions against their peers.”

Network B plugs into Nordigen’s free open banking platform for raw transactional data as an alternative to card linking. 

Network B is one of the leading loyalty platforms in the UK, creating solutions for publishers and advertisers alike. Their expertise lies in the establishment and support of existing white-label and API-powered loyalty programs. These programs include reward sectors such as card-linked offers, affiliates, gift cards, employee benefits and closed-loop rewards schemes. Businesses connecting to Network B benefit from the platform fully taking over the control of all aspects of loyalty programs, including user wallets, transaction processing, withdrawals, customer communication and more. 

“We are excited to be partnering with Nordigen and utilising their solution to provide our clients with more ways to connect to our service. We prioritise our users and their experience with our platform, and believe that open banking will make client onboarding easier across the board,” says Brad Blake, the CEO and co-founder of Network B.

Network B already utilises card-linked transaction tracking and will now expand to include open banking connections for users who would prefer this method.   

“Open banking is versatile and can span across various industries. When creating our platform, our goal was to democratise financial data and make it accessible to more companies to establish better connections with their users and further their services. We are glad to be seeing just that happen through partnerships such as this one with Network B,” notes co-founder and CEO of Nordigen, Rolands Mesters. 

New functionality allows investors to instantly fund accounts and trade without waiting days for clearing

WealthKernel, a provider of digital investment services and infrastructure, today launched Instant Matching Deposits powered by ClearBank, the cloud-based clearing bank. Instant Matching Deposits allows investors to instantly fund their accounts and begin trading without waiting days for payments to clear, and benefit from additional consumer protections and improved reliability.

ClearBank is powering the service by providing access to the Faster Payments Service scheme to speed transactions and Client Money Accounts to allow WealthKernel’s clients to automate reconciliations.
Retail investing has dramatically increased to the point where retail trading now accounts for almost as much volume as mutual funds and hedge funds combined. This has in part been driven by higher disposable incomes available to many due to Covid-19 lockdowns and a persistently low-interest rate environment. It is also being driven by the simple and low-cost access to new digital-first trading and wealth management offerings, provided either by dedicated apps or banks, fintechs or other institutions who have integrated this functionality into their offering. In this increasingly crowded market, trading and wealth management providers are looking to rapidly embed new services and capabilities that allow them to create specialist services for specific, and often underserved demographics, as well as differentiate their offering from competitors.

Instant Matching Deposits will allow the customers of WealthKernel’s trading and wealth management providers to instantly fund and trade without waiting for payments to clear. This is particularly compelling for new and perhaps more risk-averse customers who can be concerned about the status of funds while they are settling. By removing manual processes through the automated reconciliation and allocation of investments to the right account, the service dramatically improves scalability and reduces potential errors, in addition to accelerating retail customers’ investment journeys.

ClearBank is also providing WealthKernel with Client Money Accounts which WealthKernel will use to hold the funds on behalf of its customers in accordance with its obligation to protect their money under CASS 7. In addition, ClearBank will provide WealthKernel with connection to the real-time Faster Payments Service scheme, via APIs.

“WealthKernel prides itself on working with diverse businesses that are disrupting the investment sector and creating positive change, be it through the likes of ESG-focused investment programmes or by supporting demographics who are often underserved by existing products,” said Karan Shanmugarajah, CEO of WealthKernel. “To give these innovative companies the best chance to succeed, they need a better trading tech stack that is easy to embed and scale. By partnering with ClearBank and utilising its embedded banking infrastructure, we’re addressing this need and are confident that the solution will open up the market for our clients and ensure a better experience for their end-users.”

“ClearBank is proud to work with fintechs like WealthKernel that want to challenge the status quo by pioneering new services and capabilities that help providers to both innovate and differentiate as well as create better and more inclusive services,” said Charles McManus, CEO of ClearBank.

“WealthKernel’s new Instant Matching Deposits product demonstrates how our embedded banking technology can help financial service providers to create pioneering services that meet the demands of new customer segments as well as improve operational efficiencies and provide elasticity. With this new service launch and the recent funding raise, WealthKernel is perfectly positioned to push the industry forward and we’re excited to be part of that journey.”

In December 2021, WealthKernel secured a US$7m investment in an extension of its Series A funding round, led by XTX Ventures and ETFS Capital. The firm is using the funds to support integration of intraday trading, and the expansion of its services into European markets.

Form3, the leading cloud-native payment technology provider, today announced that it has strengthened its Executive Management team to expand its geographical footprint and product offering in the US, to capture market opportunities in payment technology.

Dave Scola joins as Chief Executive for the US to lead the company's expansion into the US market as Form3 builds out its product capability to include Real-Time Payments and Automated Clearing House connectivity with both the Federal Reserve and The Clearing House.

Dave has over 20 years' experience in transaction banking and payments services and has extensive experience leading large, multifunctional teams in financial services. Dave joins from SWIFT, where he was Chief Executive of the Americas, UK and Ireland. Previously, Dave was Head of Financial Institutions for Barclays Corporate Bank based in London and New York and has also worked in transaction banking at Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York.

Michael Mueller, Chief Executive Officer, Form3 said: "The US market is an enormous opportunity for Form3 and it was essential that we find the right leader to spearhead our growth there. For that reason, I am delighted to welcome Dave as our US Chief Executive. He is an experienced leader with deep knowledge of the payments landscape and the US market with a successful track record in transformation and innovation. His passion for driving large, multi-functional teams aligned against the needs of a broad set of financial institutions aligns with Form3's customer-first approach to transform payments technology, together with our customers and partners around the globe."

Dave Scola commented: 

Form3 already employs over 340 people in 27markets and expects to continue to grow in people terms by around 60% in next 12 months. As the single largest payment market in the world, the US is an essential part of that growth strategy.

New network will provide scalability, with the highest levels of privacy and smart contracting capabilities for Central Bank Digital Currency 

Today, London-based SETL and New York-based Digital Asset announce that they are entering into a partnership to create a new protocol which can be used by regulated institutions to launch interoperable tokens. 

The new protocol, modelled on the Regulated Liability Network (RLN) initiative first proposed by Citibank’s Tony McLaughlin, will be developed and operated as a part of that global RLN, and  enable banks, central banks and other regulated institutions to create tokens for their customers. Each token will represent a promise from the issuer to the holder of the token. Transferring tokens between banks will be handled by the network which will mint, burn and transfer tokens in a co-ordinated single operation to achieve real-time settlement between the customers of any regulated institution.

This announcement follows recent news from SETL highlighting tests of its version of the RLN implemented on AWS, to a sustained volume of over 1m transactions per second.  Digital Asset works with leading market infrastructures and financial institutions, including BNP Paribas, HKEX, ASX and Nasdaq, among others, to create a range of interoperable smart securities using Daml, the company’s blockchain agnostic smart contract framework.

The initiative also chimes with opinions recently published on the New York Fed's blog suggesting that tokenising regulated deposits is a better way forward than expanding the less regulated stable coin market.

Philippe Morel, CEO of SETL, commented on the partnership: “There is real momentum behind the RLN model and we are excited to join forces with the Digital Asset team to fulfill the promise of blockchain and DLT for banks and their customers everywhere. This approach will be easy for organisations to embrace and will provide an equally simple model for CBDC, bank and e-money coins, as well as any kind of tokenised liability such as bonds, loans and shares.”

Yuval Rooz, CEO of Digital Asset, noted: “We have always taken pride in enabling our clients to innovate and this is no exception. Interoperability is a major goal for us and by working with SETL we will produce a world class network with the ability to connect and communicate across all existing clients’ solutions to serve the regulated community. This network will serve as a key building block as we develop the Global Economic Network and to connect the leading financial institutions and usher in a new wave of innovation across the globe.

Digital Asset’s Daml language allows banks and custodians to describe any kind of financial instrument or contractual agreement in a smart contract which then automatically governs interactions between parties during the lifecycle of the arrangement. SETL’s RLN network, announced in November 2021, focuses on speed and scale. The network applies event management software to process millions of requests to produce an ordered global state that allows thousands of banks to have a common view of their token activities.

Shaul Kfir, Chief Architect at Digital Asset, said: “SETL’s approach to the RLN complements our own technology perfectly. SETL and Digital Asset have an unrivalled combined experience in working with tier-one institutions to solve the unique challenges they have in bringing innovative ideas to their clients.“

Anthony Culligan, SETL’s Chief Engineer, noted: “The RLN approach finally gives regulated institutions a token network that is fit for purpose. This new network lines up technology and regulation in a way that other blockchains simply fail to match. It is an open protocol and breaks the silo of closed loop systems.” On working with Digital Asset, Culligan added “Digital Asset and SETL are on the same page on how we can deliver this to the financial community. We have two first class technology teams and will create a world beating product.”

The joint initiative will be ready for testing later this year and could start onboarding its first use cases shortly after. In the meantime, SETL and Digital Asset will allow interested institutions to open a partition on its prototype network to test use-cases and to familiarise themselves with the new protocol.

Over 70 challenger banks select Temenos Banking Cloud as their platform of choice

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, today launched new Temenos Banking Services designed specifically to meet the unique requirements of challenger banks. These services can be deployed rapidly on the Temenos Banking Cloud, accelerating challengers’ time-to-market with innovative products and services and helping them scale fast and at a fraction of traditional implementation costs.

With challenger banks such as Alex Bank, Flowe, FlowBank, Green Dot, Varo Bank, Virgin Money Australia and WeLab Bank having selected Temenos open platform for composable banking, Temenos has exceeded the 70-neobank customer milestone and is now launching a range of new, functionality-rich banking services to cater for this fast-growing segment.

The new Composable Temenos Banking Services include Retail Banking – a comprehensive service to quickly deliver retail deposits, loans and accounts – Financial Crime Mitigation, Payments, and Explainable AI (XAI) for Retail Lending to offer hyper-personalized and differentiated banking experiences.

Temenos Banking Services accelerate time-to-market and the speed of innovation for neobanks by quickly and easily combining the full list of Temenos Banking Capabilities and the wider ecosystem of pre-integrated solutions on the Temenos Exchange.

Unlike other vendor solutions, with the Temenos Banking Cloud, neobanks can access pre-composed, integrated banking services, which takes away painful and time-consuming integrations and major upgrades. These new banking services on the Temenos Banking Cloud can be rapidly consumed from a self-service portal and easily configured, extended or deployed anywhere.

Banks can configure underlying Temenos Banking Capabilities with ease in a low code environment, or select pre-configured country specific Model Bank deployments out- of- the box. Temenos low code platform allows the bank itself or through partners to extend the banking services and build its own technology where differentiation delivers a competitive advantage. By having a unique configuration of best-in-class software components, neobanks are highly flexible for the future and can deliver leading customer services.

As an example Varo Bank, the first all-digital, nationally chartered bank in the U.S., operates at 75% lower cost than incumbent banks powered by the Temenos core banking platform. Temenos cloud-native platform for composable banking has helped Varo to scale its business. Temenos core banking platform allows the bank to offer digital services at scale and bring financial inclusion to millions of Americans.

Colin Walsh, Chief Executive Officer, Varo Bank, said: “The Temenos Banking Cloud enables Varo to scale based on customer demands, deploy the new product, and substantially drive down operational costs. The functionality of the Temenos banking platform allows Varo to circumvent the use of multiple third-party providers for payments and processing, and accelerates time to market.”

Max Chuard, Chief Executive Officer, Temenos, said: “We see great traction globally where challenger banks – free from the constraints of legacy technology – recognize the power of the Temenos Banking Cloud. We have industry-leading levels of investment in innovation. We will be investing over USD 1bn in R&D in just the next few years. With Temenos open platform and the out-of-the-box functionality that we offer with the Model Bank we are helping challengers launch faster, bring new products to market, be more agile and grow profitably. Our cloud technology enables challengers to benefit from lower total cost of ownership and agility, rapid innovation and can offer outstanding banking experiences.”

 Chaser, the global accounts receivables SaaS platform and credit control service provider, today released SMS invoice chasing functionality to allow users to send invoice payment reminders to their customers that are otherwise hard to reach by email. 

On average, emails receive a 25% open rate, whilst SMS messages have an average open rate of 98% (Tyntec). With the average business owed $300,000 in late payments (QuickBooks), businesses need to do what they can to ensure that their payment reminders get noticed and customers can pay their invoices easily. 

SMS chasing allows users to send invoice payment reminder messages to their customers instantly from one central cloud system. SMS messages can be sent using customisable templates that comprise editable and personalised fields like business name, due date, invoice amount, making the messages look like they were hand-typed. This allows users to edit with their usual style of communication with customers, giving each automated message a human touch. 

These SMS payment reminders can be used alongside email reminders in automatic chasing schedules, which send at the days and times that users choose. Using a combination of both email and SMS chasing helps users increase their chances of reaching customers faster and getting paid faster. It is designed so that recipients can pay their invoice instantly via their SMS message, which links them directly to a payment portal gateway. View this fact sheet to see all features and capabilities of SMS payment chasing.

After recently reaching the milestone of helping users chase and recover 10 billion USD in late payments, this is the next step for Chaser in helping businesses worldwide to reduce late payments and improve their cash flow.

"The release of SMS chasing is another milestone in Chaser's mission to help businesses get paid for their work. This will let users cut through the noise and reach customers on the go by sending personalised payment reminders directly to their phone. It lets businesses reach their customers more efficiently, and reduces payment friction with instant payment links for SMS recipients." - Sonia Dorais, CEO of Chaser.