With new cross border capabilities, millions of U.S. customers are now able to shop British merchants - just in time for the holiday shopping season

Clearpay’s cross border shoppers transact around 24% more frequently than domestic shoppers only 

Clearpay, a leader in “Buy Now, Pay Later” payments, known as Afterpay (ASX: APT) outside the UK and Europe, has introduced cross border trading for its 6,000+ UK merchant partners - allowing them to offer their products to buyers in the U.S. With Australian, Canadian and New Zealand customers already shopping from Clearpay’s merchants, this addition will mean UK merchants can now reach more than 20 million U.S. shoppers. 

In the UK, online shopping saw accelerated growth  by the equivalent of ‘three to four years’ during the pandemic. In addition, it is estimated that e-commerce now represents a US$4.89 trillion GMV opportunity globally. Once logged in to Clearpay, shoppers see the total basket amount in their local currency during checkout and will be charged this amount. They also benefit from the flexibility and convenience of paying in four instalments over time, without incurring interest or currency conversion fees. Participating UK merchants can open their store fronts to these shoppers without paying set-up or currency conversion fees. 

Afterpay first introduced cross-border shopping in Australia and New Zealand in March 2019, followed by the UK in mid 2020. Towards the end of 2020, Afterpay enabled U.S. merchants to sell to consumers abroad. Between July 2020 and June 2021, global cross border sales increased by approximately 120%. 

Rich Bayer, Clearpay’s UK Country Manager, said: “With Clearpay’s new cross border offering, we’re delivering to our merchant partners new customers who are proven to convert from browsers to buyers at a much higher rate - bringing increased sales, without additional set-up costs or fees. I’m thrilled that merchants in the UK will now have an added opportunity to grow their business just in time for the busy holiday season.” 

Additionally, Ashish Damani will take over as President and Chief Financial Officer, and Abanti Mitra to take over as Chairperson of the Board, while Deepak Vaidya will continue as an Independent Director

Spandana Sphoorty Financial Limited’s  Board of Directors met today and discussed several critical matters related to the leadership transition and business operations.

Key Leadership Updates:

Spandana has announced that Mr. Shalabh Saxena has accepted the position of Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the company. Mr. Saxena is currently serving as the MD & CEO of Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd., one of the leading microfinance institutions in the country. He brings over 27 years of experience with various financial institutions, including Canara HSBC OBC Life Insurance and Standard Chartered Bank.

Also, Mr. Ashish Damani has accepted the position of President and Chief Financial Officer of the Company. Mr. Damani has nearly two decades of experience at Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd. and is currently serving as its Chief Financial Officer. Both Mr. Saxena and Mr. Damani will join Spandana soon.

“With his immense experience in financial services and strong command of the microfinance industry, Shalabh is the right person to lead Spandana,” said Mr. K R Kamath, former Chairman & Managing Director of Punjab National Bank, and Chairman of the Management Committee of the Board of Spandana. He further added, “Spandana is on a positive growth trajectory, and we are very confident our market leadership will gain further traction under Shalabh’s direction.”

Furthermore, the Board appointed Ms. Abanti Mitra, an independent director with Spandana since 2011, as non-executive Chairperson of the Board, with immediate effect. Outgoing Chairman, Mr. Deepak Vaidya, will continue to serve on the Board as an independent director.

Mr. Vaidya said that “After several years of service as Chairman of the Board, I am delighted to hand over the role to Abanti. Her long association with the company and almost two decades of experience with the microfinance industry make her the ideal person to guide Spandana in its next phase of growth. I will continue to support the company as an independent director on the Board.”

Business Updates:

The Management Committee of the Board is fully engaged in supporting day-to-day operations. Spandana continues to perform strongly under the experienced leadership of its Chief Business Officer Mr. Amit Biswal, Chief Risk Officer Ms. Sharmila Kunguma and Company Secretary Mr. Ramesh Periasamy. The field team has responded positively to the transition, and Spandana continues to grow on various operational parameters significantly. Spandana has also hired independent third-party firms Alvarez & Marsal, PwC and CAM to provide support and conduct special review exercises during the leadership transition, and they are already fully engaged.

Spandana’s business demonstrated healthy performance in the quarter that ended September 30, 2021 (unaudited basis), with standalone collection efficiency for the entire quarter of 105% and 113% for the month of September, including pre-payments. Excluding these, the standalone collection efficiency was 97% for the entire quarter and 99% for the month, respectively.

For the partial month of November, till November 16, 2021, the Company collected approximately INR 400 crore (standalone basis), which includes approximately INR 30 crore of advance collections done at the end of October related to loan instalments due in November, which is in line with collection trends from previous months. It has sufficient liquidity with cash and cash equivalents of approximately INR 1,300 crore, and additional undrawn sanctions of over INR 1,000 crore. It has been making all lender repayments on schedule and has already repaid INR 154 crore as of November 17, 2021. Further, it is on track to make additional repayments of INR 181 crore for the rest of the month.

The standalone disbursal volumes are also healthy at over Rs. 1,150 crores for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, with September alone accounting for Rs. 578 crores, resulting in closing assets under management (“AUM”) of Rs. 7,034 crores (standalone basis). The company has also now recommenced new branch openings and new customer acquisitions, which will be further ramped up in the coming weeks.

The company has resumed the audit of the financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, following a brief transition-related hiatus. It expects to be able to announce results in the next few weeks.

The Management Committee is also in the process of addressing gaps in the transition of services from the previous Managing Director, Ms. Padmaja Reddy. Shortly prior to her resignation, Ms. Reddy had transferred the company’s IT systems to a new IT vendor and outsourced its management to that vendor. There has been no meaningful impact on the day-to-day business operations of the company from this. However, to ensure a smooth transition and business continuity, Spandana is taking steps to engage with this new vendor appropriately and has also made good progress on creating a parallel IT environment. Additionally, some potential concerns have been brought to the Board’s notice regarding certain gold loan branches of Spandana’s subsidiary, Criss Financial Limited. It is currently in the process of confirming the status of the same. The matter relates to its branches with a combined portfolio of less than 1% of Spandana’s consolidated AUM, and therefore would not have a material financial impact on the company.

Spandana’s Board reiterates its aim to grow the company and take it to greater heights with a professional and highly pedigreed management team. It remains fully committed to supporting the business and ensuring a smooth management transition and robust long-term trajectory.

U.S.financial regulators have approved a new rule that requires banking organizations to report any “significant” cybersecurity incident within 36 hours of discovery. 

Under the rule, banks must inform their primary federal regulator about incidents that have — or are reasonably likely to materially affect — the viability of their operations, their ability to deliver products and services, or the stability of the U.S. financial sector. That could include large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that disrupt customer access to banking services, or computer hacking incidents that disable banking operations for extended periods of time.

Additionally, banks — which the rule defines as “banking organizations” including national banks, federal associations, and federal branches of foreign banks — must notify customers “as soon as possible” if the incident has or might materially affect their customers for four hours or more.

“Computer-security incidents can result from destructive malware or malicious software (cyberattacks), as well as non-malicious failure of hardware and software, personnel errors, and other causes,” the Computer-Security Incident Notification Final Rule explains. “Cyberattacks targeting the financial services industry have increased in frequency and severity in recent years. These cyberattacks can adversely affect banking organizations’ networks, data, and systems, and ultimately their ability to resume normal operation.”

The final rule, approved by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board), and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), will take effect on April 1, 2022, with full compliance expected by May 1, 2022.

The FDIC told TechCrunch in a statement that the rules “would apply to only those entities that are insured or regulated by the three banking agencies (FDIC, Federal Reserve or Office of the Comptroller of the Currency), or organizations that provide services to a regulated bank.”

Financial regulators first proposed the notification requirement in December, but after receiving some negative feedback from industry groups, it was forced to change some elements of the final rule. The original version, for example, said that banks would have to report incidents if they “believed in good faith” they had suffered a significant cyber incident, but the industry warned that this could lead to over-reporting of a wide range of incidents, and the rule was changed. 

“After considering the comments carefully, the agencies are replacing the ‘good faith belief’ standard with a banking organization’s determination,” the final rule summary states. “The agencies agree with commenters who criticized the proposed ‘believes in good faith’ standard as too subjective and imprecise.”

The Bank Policy Institute, one of the industry groups that had commented on the regulation, said in a statement that it supported the final rule.

“BPI recognizes the value of timely notification and supports the final rule, which establishes a clear timeline and flexible process for notifying regulators and affected parties when a significant incident occurs,” said Heather Hogsett, BPI’s senior vice president of Technology and Risk Strategy. “The rule also importantly maintains a clear distinction between notification and reporting. Cyber incident notification encourages early collaboration between regulators and banks so that regulators are made aware of circumstances that may have broader implications across the financial system while banks work to respond to, and investigate the incident.”

British Business Investments, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc, today publishes its Annual Report and Accounts for 2020/21.

Key highlights include:

·       A record number of 18 commitments to new and existing delivery partners, totalling £473m

·       In its seventh year of operation, cumulative commitments are up 19% year-on-year to over £3bn

·       Support for almost 30,000 smaller businesses across the UK, 85% of which are outside of London

·       A strong returns performance, delivering pre-tax profit of £107.4m

Judith Hartley, CEO, British Business Investments, said: “We are pleased to report a strong performance by British Business Investments during 2020/21 and a record year in terms of a number of new commitments and diversification of our portfolio. We have continued to make commitments throughout the pandemic, as we wanted to help ensure the UK’s smaller businesses could continue to access finance. We are now invested in every nation and region of the UK, and are supporting almost 30,000 small businesses, 85% of which are located outside London. Our financial performance has also been strong this year, with pre-tax profit of £107.4m”

In 2020/21, British Business Investments continued to deliver strongly against the four objectives set by its parent, British Business Bank plc:

1.     Increase the supply of finance to smaller businesses across the UK: As at 31 March 2021, British Business Investments had made total commitments of over £3bn to finance providers to support funding to UK smaller businesses since its inception in 2014. New commitments in 20/21 were £473m. Third parties invest alongside us and in addition to our new commitments of £473m, they have invested a further £1.23bn, meaning that total funding of more than £1.7bn has been delivered to the UK market this financial year.

2.     Help to create a more diverse finance market: In 2020/21, British Business Investments made 18 commitments, including to nine new delivery partners. This increases total portfolio investments to 77, up from 59 last year, through 50 different delivery partners.

3.     Identify and help to address regional imbalances in access to finance: British Business Investments is providing funding to almost 30,000 businesses, 85% of which are based outside of London.

4.     Manage taxpayer’s money efficiently, whilst generating a commercial rate of return: Income from investments was £120.5m, delivering pre-tax profit of £107.4m, compared to £35.4m and £22.2m respectively in the previous financial year

Francis Small, Chair of British Business Investments, said: “As the pandemic tested the UK economy, British Business Investments continued to invest to make sure finance was available to support smaller businesses. By remaining alert to its impact on the UK’s smaller businesses and our delivery partners, we were able to adapt our response throughout the year. Consequently, we’ve achieved strong results in extremely challenging circumstances.”

British Business Investments supports the development of more diverse debt and equity finance markets throughout the UK. To increase the choice of finance for smaller businesses, British Business Investments provides funding through a wide range of finance providers – including peer to peer lenders, small-cap private debt funds, challenger banks, asset finance providers, equity funds-of-funds and regionally-based early-stage investors.

• Valar Ventures, Moonfire and Album VC, along with founders from a number of billon-dollar fintech successes invest in London-based start-up

• Bound, tipped by VCs to be the next big European fintech, is building a platform to make currency hedging easy for SMEs

• Taking just 30 mins to set up, Bound can save the average business £70,000+ a year

The company has already received $7m in seed capital from some of the founders and VCs behind Klarna, Stash, MX and Qonto to help it transform the UK’s SME forex market.

Institutional investors in the company’s seed round include three of the world’s leading venture capital firms — Valar Ventures, Moonfire and Album VC.

Bound, which is an Appointed Representative of MJ Hudson Advisers Limited, takes the financial complexity and forex nous out of managing currency risk. It gives SMEs a simple and effective way to protect their currency similar to that of a large corporation.

Crucially, Bound’s clients do not need to be finance experts or understand the complex hedging strategies used by forex pros globally, only that their money transfers are being optimised 24/7, 365.

The Bound platform provides customers with a simple interface free of finance jargon and even integrates with some of the major accounting systems commonly used by SMEs.

James Fitzgerald, General Partner at Valar Ventures, commented:

“The market Bound is targeting is massively underserved and offers a huge opportunity for transformation. We believe Bound could become one of the major European fintechs in the years ahead. The management team has a clear vision of where the company is going and what it’s out to achieve: Democratising currency hedging and making it easily accessible to SMEs, something that is insanely overdue.”

Seth Phillips, founder, Bound, added:

“Being backed by some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs and VCs is an important validation of our vision. Right now, currency hedging, to the average SME, is confusing and complicated but it doesn’t need to be. We're on a mission to help SMEs effortlessly protect their businesses from ever-changing currency rates and save them billions in the process. We have an aggressive strategy to acquire market share and are encouraging anyone who wants to be involved in our growth story to get in touch. We’re aiming to triple the size of our team in the next few months and are looking for smart people in multiple roles.”

Stefan Cars, Founder and CEO of Snowfall Travel added:

“The travel industry is rife with currency risk but Bound makes that risk easy to manage for companies of our size. It’s a gamechanger for any SME trading internationally that is exposed to currency fluctuations. Best of all, it’s affordable, easy to set up and totally free of all finance jargon.”

Bound is currently hiring for a number of positions, including development, product and marketing roles. To apply, please visit: http://www.bound.co/careers

AstroPay, a global leader in online payment solutions, announced today that it has signed agreements to partner with leading international e-commerce platforms including WooCommerce, VTEX and PrestaShop to expand its e-commerce reach and access wider consumer base in new markets.

Merchants using the platforms or trading on marketplaces will now have the option to effortlessly download AstroPay’s online payment plugin and add the function to their checkout pages, enabling them to receive payments instantly and directly on the platform while allowing customers to conveniently make online purchases using AstroPay. 

This functionality allows merchants to actively grow and connect to global consumers, while allowing users to make payments conveniently and securely with their preferred payment methods.

Mikael Lijtenstein, CEO of AstroPay said: "Merchants of all sizes have come to realize the potential that comes with an e-commerce business model, and online payments has played a significant role in the growth of e-commerce over recent years.  We built AstroPay to meet the changing needs of today’s fast growing global businesses, and these partnerships gives WooCommerce, VTEX and PrestaShop’s merchants the means to meet demands for more choice and better payment experience.

“AstroPay will help platforms and merchants reach millions more people worldwide with our simple and accessible payment solutions. We continue to work with other platforms and strategic partners on development of new plugins to allow us to grow together and achieve further consolidation in e-commerce."

AstroPay has a dedicated team that focuses on enhancing payment solutions for vertical e-commerce, developing innovative products and working together with e-commerce stakeholders to allow small and medium-sized businesses to bolster their operations and enhance user experience.

Integration with EKM opens up the company’s contact centre platform to over 80,000 UK businesses

TelcoSwitch, a leading software provider of unified communications and compliance solutions, has announced that its omnichannel customer experience platform for contact centres, 3Sixty, now offers integration with EKM, the UK’s number 1 e-commerce provider. 

This is the latest in a host of supported integrations that already includes the likes of Shopify, Xero, Salesforce, Zendesk, and MailChimp, and further opens up the possibility of combining the company’s powerful omnichannel contact centre solution with an online shopping platform trusted by over 80,000 businesses.

Customers of EKM can now view purchases, order statuses, delivery updates, refunds and more, on a single screen within the TelcoSwitch customer experience platform, which already offers voice, email, social media channels, web chat and chatbot features that enable contact centre agents to deliver premium service levels to their customers.

Russell Lux, CEO at TelcoSwitch, said: “We have always been proud to be a British-owned and run company, serving businesses across the country. So ensuring online retailers can now benefit from utilising our omnichannel platform with the UK’s largest e-commerce platform is a natural fit. 

We believe 3Sixty is the perfect contact centre SaaS solution to combine with EKM’s online stores to provide excellent customer experiences over a host of communications channels, and we’re excited to continue building powerful integrations between our platform and the third-party services that businesses rely on.”

KNEIP, a leader in fund data management and reporting solutions for the asset management industry, today announced a partnership with Nasdaq to register investment funds in Europe on the Nasdaq Fund Network (NFN), providing enhanced transparency and accessibility of investment products in Europe with standardised 5-character symbol.

NFN facilitates the collection and dissemination of fund data, allowing investors to find relevant, accurate and reliable pricing data on funds. Asset managers register their products on the network and receive a unique NFN Identifier. NFN then disseminates the data, making it searchable on one of the largest distribution networks, which pipes into online brokerages and major market data vendors.

KNEIP, are leaders in fund data management and reporting solutions for the asset management industry covering 40% of the European UCITs.  KNEIP proactively manages clients’ data by providing accurate and consistent checks between vendors and platforms. Together with Nasdaq Fund Network, KNEIP will continue to provide accurate client data to the industry whilst leveraging the distribution channels of Nasdaq Fund Network and improving the discoverability and ease of use with the NFN symbol.

Commenting on the partnership, Enrique Sacau, Chief Executive Officer of KNEIP says: “We are obviously delighted to take to market a concept that has served the asset management industry in the United States very well and which has clear benefits for our European customers and partners. We are proud to be the exclusive European fund administration partner of Nasdaq Fund Network.”

“We believe all market participants are better served by access to information. Through NFN, Nasdaq helps provide the framework to a wide range of investment products more accessible to the general investing public,” said Oliver Albers, SVP Investment Intelligence, Nasdaq. “We are pleased to partner with KNEIP to help asset managers bring more awareness to investment funds and provide investors with daily access to transparent fund data to help inform investment decisions.”