• Partnership forms key pillar of Cushon’s new impact-led investment strategy with 10% allocation to corporate bonds
• Bond investments are focused on the most promising companies that are accelerating toward net zero, aiming to increase long-term sustainable returns
• The investment strategy will invest in environmentally protective projects benefiting people and planet including alternative energy, reforestation and social housing
• Cushon’s updated investment strategy will include the largest Master Trust allocation to private markets - 15% - making Cushon the first DC pensions provider to deliver climate and social impact across 100% of its portfolio

Cushon Master Trust, the world’s first net zero pension, is partnering with fund managers Wellington Management and Lombard Odier Investment Managers as part of its new investment strategy launching in early 2022.

Wellington Management and Lombard Odier Investment Managers will manage listed bonds focusing on the most promising companies that are accelerating towards net zero with the aim of supporting that transition – aiming to deliver safer long-term returns. Wellington will manage impact bonds with both a climate and social focus whilst Lombard Odier Investment Managers will manage bonds focussed on positive climate impact and funding companies working towards a green society.

Examples of projects that the fund managers will invest in include companies working towards creating a greener society, such as those pursuing innovations in alternative energy, and funding academic institutions that are developing tools and research to support social inequality reduction goals, such as Howard University.

As Cushon’s research shows that 62% of employees would engage more if they knew their pension was having a positive impact on climate change, both partnerships are integral to Cushon’s new investment strategy goals to further improve member engagement levels, and ultimately outcomes, by sustainably navigating investment risk as the world transitions to a net zero economy.

Roger Mattingly, Chair of the Cushon Master Trust said: “The expertise of two of the largest global players will be integral to delivering excellent retirement outcomes for our members whilst demonstrating our commitment to sustainable investing. We’re looking forward to working closely with both Wellington and Lombard Odier to continue leading the pensions industry in reducing emissions to benefit both people and the planet – and improving members’ long-term risk-adjusted returns.”

James Bradbury, Head of UK Defined Contribution at Wellington Management, said: “Wellington Management is delighted to be partnering with Cushon to drive innovation in the UK Defined Contribution market. We believe our strength in impact and sustainable investing across asset classes makes us uniquely positioned to put Cushon’s members’ capital to work to address some of the world’s biggest social and environmental problems, whilst focusing on strong investment returns.”

Nathalia Barazal, Co-Head of Lombard Odier Investment Managers (LOIM), added: “At LOIM we recognise the importance of fostering sustainable investment outcomes for clients, and in Cushon we have found a partner that shares this philosophy. The environmental transition is the industry’s most pressing challenge, but also presents a significant investment opportunity. We are delighted to be working with Cushon to provide scalable opportunities to position capital into an environmentally-friendly economy, and help investors looking to benefit from the sustainability transition.”

Cushon’s new strategy aims to increase the potential for greater investment returns by focusing on greener companies which are generally expected to perform better in the longer term - forecasts suggest that green investments will hit $1tn in 2023, up from $297bn in 2020^[1]. Cushon’s 200,000 members’ pensions will be invested in environmental projects such as the planting of new sustainable forests and in financing new wind and solar farms. It will reduce risk and enhance long-term returns by improving diversification across a portfolio of sustainable and responsible investments.

In addition to these impact bonds, the new investment strategy offers the largest Master Trust allocation to private markets (15%) and the first in the DC sector to deliver climate impact across 100% of the portfolio. This allocation will be managed by Schroders Capital, with focus on projects including sustainable infrastructure, clean tech, natural capital and climate insurance, as well as social and affordable housing.

The U.S.-based startup is set to roll out its innovative one-click checkout technology to Marquee Brands' exceptional portfolio of direct-to-consumer websites starting this spring.

Acquisition bolsters Diligent’s data, analytics and ESG offerings to drive better decision-making in the evolving fields of shareholder activism, proxy voting and corporate governance

Diligent, the global leader in modern governance providing SaaS solutions across governance, risk, compliance and ESG, today announced that it has acquired Insightia, a leading SaaS provider of expert insights and intelligent analytics for listed companies, with a focus on shareholder activism, proxy voting and corporate governance. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Formed from the 2020 merger of Activist Insight and Proxy Insight, Insightia offers a single source of global public company information to a range of global investment banks, law firms, proxy solicitors, and other corporate advisors. Representative clients include PJT CamberView, Glass Lewis, Morrow Sodali, FTI Consulting, and Georgeson. 

Bringing together Diligent’s leading governance, analytics and ESG solutions with Insightia’s vital intelligence across a variety of public company data will provide clients with even more meaningful insights to power their board and organizations’ governance practices. Clients will have access to a rich ecosystem of organizational risk assessments and data tools in areas spanning board composition, executive compensation, supply chain due diligence, and ESG standards and frameworks. Diligent will also pursue a range of potential solution integrations with Insightia, including adding activist investor alerts within its Boards application, enabling clients to better monitor susceptibility to activism.

Brian Stafford, CEO of Diligent, said: “From our regular interactions with board members, business leaders and investors, we understand that having access to the most comprehensive and relevant data facilitates better guidance and confident decision-making. That is why we are so pleased to bring onboard Insightia’s deep experience and market-leading intelligent analytics, particularly against the backdrop of a marketplace where shareholder engagement is rapidly evolving. Current and future clients can look forward to even more insights on the issues that matter most so that they can continue to build successful, equitable and sustainable organizations.”

Kerry Pogue, Co-Founder and CEO of Insightia, said: “We are excited to benefit from Diligent’s expertise and resources as a leading SaaS organization in this next phase of Insightia’s growth journey. Combining our capabilities with Diligent’s governance, analytics and ESG solutions is a compelling next step as we look to scale our offerings globally for the benefit of our clients. Both companies are incredibly complementary in terms of their strategy and culture, and our team looks forward to being part of Diligent and accelerating the reach of our mission.”

District Capital Partners served as the exclusive financial advisor, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP served as the legal advisor to Diligent. Taylor Wessing served as the legal advisor to Insightia.

Wise, the global technology company building the best way to move money around the world, has been awarded the Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, recognising the UK’s Best Places to Work in 2022. 

The Employees’ Choice Award, now in its 14th year, is based solely on the input of employees, who provide anonymous feedback about their job, work environment and employer on Glassdoor, the worldwide leader on insights about jobs and companies. 

Wise ranks 20 out of 50 on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work U.K. list with an overall company rating of 4.4. Key elements where reviews are measured include: 

1. Satisfaction with the company overall

2. Career opportunities, compensation and benefits 

3. Culture and values

4. Senior management 

5. Diversity and inclusion

6. Work/life balance. 

In addition, employees are asked to describe the best reasons to work at their companies as well as any downsides.

Hayley Bucur, Senior People Team Leader at Wise commented: At Wise, we strive to do the right thing by everyone involved in achieving our mission. It’s not an easy job to save our 11 million customers £1bn a year, and it’s the actions of each and every person here that make it possible.

Our people have had plenty to do over the last year, including a rebrand, a listing, and the pandemic to deal with, so to know our Wisers enjoy working here is such a huge compliment to the business. It just goes to prove that we’re able to do great things, and take good care of each other at the same time. 

The .LERN blockchain top-level domain will give access to decentralized storage and data privacy for global learners

Avrilar, the immersive device and application management platform for enterprises and institutions, will provide .lern domains free for a limited time through the NexBloc bDNS platform. Avrilar makes virtual and augmented reality learning and training more manageable by providing a SaaS-based platform for cross-device integration and application flow. In addition, Avrilar is deploying .lern domains for users wanting additional control of their identities and data and lifelong access to their data without fear of censorship or data destruction.

Eddie Quiroz, Co-Founder of Avrilar, stated that, "Avrilar is bridging device management and personal authentication for learning applications and intends to build out a cross-metaverse ecosystem for enterprises and institutions. NexBloc provides the perfect choice for building into a Web 3.0 internet where blockchain domains replace the current centralized structures."

NexBloc, a leading provider of blockchain domain name services, has announced that the .(dot)lern giveaway promotion will be closing on January 31st, 2022. The giveaway aims to prepare the world for the personal management of data using the decentralized web (Web 3.0 or Web3) and distributed computing. Users can acquire a .lern blockchain domain and own it forever, trade it, sell it or even pass it to future generations.

Through the .lern Domain Name Giveaway, users will be able to register for up to two free .lern domain names. With this, users of a personalized .lern domain can manage their identity and associated data with it rather than leave that information in a provider's hand. This giveaway offers an excellent opportunity to take full advantage of the increased privacy and personal data control that blockchain DNS (bDNS) provides. Avrilar and NexBloc are encouraging everyone to move to the decentralized web and, by offering free .lern domains, expects to improve awareness and the benefits knowledge of the space.

Intending to create an ultra-safe login system for the decentralized web, NexBloc is at the forefront of the blockchain DNS (bDNS) revolution by developing multi-chain systems to create linkages to the decentralized web. In all, with the advent of blockchain technology and its continuous development over recent years, a future switch to Blockchain as a primary system for sign-in options becomes more imminent than ever.

ABN AMRO Bank among the banks that have successfully transitioned to new structured and more complex message formats for Guarantees and Standby Letters of Credit

Norwegian software vendor Commercial Banking Applications AS (CBA), has confirmed that its IBAS GTF – Global Trade Finance Factory solution – enabled a seamless transition for all clients to the new structured message formats included in the latest SWIFT Release 2021. ABN AMRO Bank was one of several banks to successfully complete the switch over in November 2021 using CBA’s IBAS solution.

“The changes involved in this transition were numerous and complex – affecting the whole trade finance transaction flow from the customer front-end, through to back-office workflows, third-party transaction monitoring, quality control and master data management – making it essential to work closely with our technology partner CBA to plan and test all workflows in advance,” said Frans Westdorp, Product Owner Trade Finance Core Systems, Reporting and Enablement at ABN AMRO Bank. “This was the biggest change in trade finance ever, so we’re absolutely thrilled that everything went so smoothly, both around the immediate cutover date and in the weeks that have followed.”

After first making a preliminary version of the new IBAS release available to IBAS user banks in a cloud environment, CBA then released its IBAS GTF solution in early June, allowing additional time for testing in advance of the planned SWIFT changes. Banks needed to ensure all back-office applications, front-end systems, APIs and other interfaces were prepared for the move away from unstructured messages to more complex and structured message types that allow for increased automation and straight-through processing.

Rolf Hauge, CEO and founder, CBA, explained: “ABN AMRO Bank’s global trade finance operations – supported by CBA’s IBAS GTF platform – are very sophisticated and highly automated. It was critical the bank could seamlessly transition to SWIFT’s new complex message types with no impact on its day-to-day operations. The bank uses our software on a multi-country basis, and I’m pleased to say that its customers around the world, equipped with our front-end, have not experienced any impact in how they conduct their trade finance transactions. Even if the result of a Guarantee or Standby LC request is a highly structured and complex SWIFT message, it is important that the complexity does not burden the bank’s customers or employees. IBAS does all the heavy lifting in terms of automatically translating customer requirements for Guarantees and Standby LC requests into the required formats.”

IBAS GTF optimises the business logic associated with handling the new requirements for Standby LCs, which must now always be issued, advised and amended using the same message type as Guarantees.  The front-end customers are guided through the submission process, helping them understand the nature of the Standby LC transaction and how it differs to a Guarantee. Similarly, at the back end, bank staff benefit from software that’s not only SWIFT compliant, but also tailor-made in line with Standby LC market practice. This makes the entire process more transparent and straightforward for all parties involved.

“To sum up, IBAS GTF gives ABN AMRO Bank the best of both worlds: simplicity – not impacting the customer or the bank’s operations; and complexity – allowing the bank to increase automation and explore opportunities associated with more structured message types. Usually, there is a trade-off between simplicity and complexity in software solutions, but thanks to the sophisticated business logic in IBAS we are delighted to have been able to achieve both,” said Westdorp.

Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry, is attending the NRF 2022 Retail’s Big Show in New-York, on January 16-18, showcasing innovative and futuristic live demos in a high-tech immersive experience room.

Retail's Big Show will be in-person, bringing an entire industry back together.

Immersive eXperience room to live a next level demo experience

The Worldline’s POS NEXT-GEN terminals address different verticals in the retail industry such as fashion, grocery, hospitality and DIY among others and offer different solutions whilst using cases for each. In our immersive experience room, visitors can live the ‘next level’ by embracing and experiencing a 360° environment of their choice.

Worldline adapts payment options to customer demands and new retail behaviors

A survey of more than 200 merchants by Forrester Consulting reports that 56% of merchants are looking to adapt their offerings to business changes as a result of their experience over the past 18 months. As merchants adopt new sales platforms (such as social networks and/or marketplaces), they need to consolidate online and offline payment processes and adapt to the cultural payment habits of the countries where they operate. Indeed, 57% of European merchants now make geographic expansion their number one priority (Forrester study).

In order to offer payment options for each market that buyers trust, whether they are offline or online, Worldline, as the European leader in payments, offers the right solutions for merchant internationalisation.

Lots of innovations for a better customer experience on & off line:

• Livestream commerce, that allows retailers, influencers or celebrities promote and discuss products and services with shoppers via live streaming video, is already transforming the consumer experience. Worldline and Livescale are thrilled to present Live Shopping, an embedded commerce solution that is fully personalised and branded throughout the customer journey, with seamless in-video checkout capabilities across social media and websites.
• Omnichannel shopping experiences with smartphone autonomous checkouts, single payment acceptance platform, in-store picking processes and innovative payment solutions to improve, via many use cases, customer engagement and loyalty.
• New payments experience in-store with smartPOS (Android terminals), softPOS, value added services on payment terminals, payments by QR Code, loyalty rewards, biometrics for face and palm recognition.
• Digital commerce with single integration to enable the processing of all major credit and debit cards but also give access to a multitude of payments means worldwide.
• Mobility with payment solution that allows drivers to pay for charging their electric vehicle, unattended payments and digital mobility experience engaging customers with mobile or vocal payments in service stations allowing voice commerce.

Experience payments in retail environment through virtual reality on Ingenico booth

Ingenico, a Worldline brand is attending on booth #3736 to showcase solutions and innovations via Virtual Reality in the metaverse to enhance proximity commerce experience.

The move sees Atom offer far higher rates than those available from the traditional high street banks and is yet another example of Atom driving value back into the savings market.

Atom’s top rated app (rated 4.8/5 by Apple users and 4.9/5 by Android users) means that these rates are available in minutes to existing and new to bank customers.

Details of the new rates are:

The below rates go live at 00:01 on Wednesday 12^th January 2022:

6 month fixed saver: 0.75% (1^st)

1 year fixed saver: 1.35% (2^nd)

2 year fixed saver: 1.60% (1^st)

3 year fixed saver: 1.75% (5^th)

5 year fixed saver: 1.80% (8^th)

Mark Mullen, Chief Executive Officer at Atom, said:

“Another new year but the same old story from the traditional high street banks who continue to offer rock bottom rates to savers.  Atom has always helped savers get a fair return on their hard-earned money, and once again when other, much bigger banks are sitting on their hands and looking embarrassed, Atom are increasing rates on all of fixed rate savings products. 

“Saving with Atom is easy and quick, and our award-winning savings range is available to everyone through our top rated app. As a saver with Atom your money supports our lending to UK small businesses and to people wanting to buy their own homes, and because of our digital business model we can give you more value for your savings whilst also giving great value to our borrowers. It’s about time that other banks did the same, but in the meantime we’re delighted to be on the side of both savers and borrowers as we create a new model for banking in the UK.”

“Total savings deposits from customers have grown 16% to £2.5bn and a Trustpilot rating of 4.6 show the current high level of customer satisfaction. At Atom, we believe in being a bank people can trust, and in giving customers great value products, with a fully digital, hassle free account opening experience.”

 F.INSTITUTE, a Dutch full-service finance company for Life Sciences, Clean and Deep Tech companies, has expanded its portfolio with the launch of three new products: the Incubator, Seed and Series packages. The company has also expanded its CFO Services to include Partnering and M&A Services, and Fundraising Services. These products emphasize F.INSTITUTE’s ambition to become the European one-stop market leader for financial services for start-ups and scale-ups. 

F.INSTITUTE now offers specific financial packages for a fixed monthly fee to a market in which accurate and consistent bookkeeping is essential to ambitious entrepreneurs, in order to provide them with the freedom to focus on carefully guiding their most promising technologies to market. The three packages are designed for companies looking to scale up their business model and with big ambitions that call for heavyweight financial expertise to stay ahead of the pack. 

F.INSTITUTE currently manages services for over 100 start-ups and scale-ups, reporting to more than 200 VCs monthly. 

“When we started F.INSTITUTE, we saw the need for experts in the industry offering insights that go beyond financials and help to guide a company’s strategy and operations. Our customers also rely on our relationships with venture capitalists and industry professionals. After intensive investments in people, automated processes, and integrated reporting models, we can now support even more companies with our specific insights and knowledge. We have therefore created financial packages that are specific for each development stage of a company to ensure that management can focus on its core business,” says Rik van den Berg, co-founder of F.INSTITUTE.