The Bank of England lost 161 electronic devices between September 2018 and August 2021.

The data has been obtained by Parliament Street Think Tank through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. A total of 25 devices were lost or stolen just in 2021 alone. 

In 2018 a total of 70 devices were reported missing or lost and 12 were reported stolen. In 2019, the number decreased, with 46 missing and 8 stolen. In 2021, a total of 16 devices were reported lost and 9 were stolen.

The highest number of missing devices were mobile phones, with a total of 57 lost or stolen in 2018, 30 lost or stolen in 2019 and 17 in 2021.

Laptops were the next highest devices to go missing. In 2018, 14 laptops were reported missing and 6 stolen. In 2019, 17 laptops were reported lost and 6 stolen and in 2021, 3 laptops went missing and 5 stolen.

This year The Bank of England was accused of moving too slow, according to experts, who say it needs to get a grip on the financial sector’s plans to outsource customer data storage. The loss of so many devices raises concerns that banks are not doing enough to keep data secure.

Edward Blake, Area Vice President EMEA, Absolute Software comments:

“With workforces now dispersed due to remote working, the use of personal phones and newly purchased laptops has gone up, and therefore so has the threat posed by hackers.”

“If a lost or stolen device ends up in the wrong hands, the Bank of England could be facing consequences far more severe than the cost to replace them. For example, sophisticated cyber criminals can steal the data contained on these devices, access more businesses files, or intercept emails between colleagues, for the purpose of data theft, monetary gain, high-profile scams, or ransomware.”

“Preventing this requires a robust system to ensure the latest encryption and security updates are installed to track, freeze and wipe devices in the event of loss or theft, keeping hackers locked out.”

World CX Summit - FSI – ASEAN digitally congregated some of the distinguished speakers in the CX and FSI ecosystem, while global technology leaders showcased their CX solutions in the presence of more than 200 pre-qualified delegates across ASEAN. CX visionaries shed light on key areas of CX including tech trends and opportunities in the digitization of the banking and insurance industry, where digital payments, digital banks, and fintech have gained prominence.

(An image from World CX Summit - FSI – ASEAN’s panel discussion streamed live on 21 October 2021)

As a part of the world tour, the ASEAN edition of World CX Summit - FSI gathered pre-qualified CX leaders, Marketers & FSI experts virtually on 21 October 2021; to discuss how the latest technologies and customer insights can be combined to change CX as we know it.

The fifth global edition featured keynotes, panel discussions, tech talks, private consultation rooms, private networking rooms, and more on Vmeets – a virtual events platform. CX leaders and enthusiasts had engaging sessions with speakers in Q&A sessions and emphasized the changing dynamics of customer experience across the globe.

The summit presented an impressive line-up of speakers including:

• Anthony Rogalski, Solutions Consultant, UserTesting
• Landon Barnes, Principal Solutions Consultant, UserTesting
• Gavin Neil Olsen, Regional Manager, FSI, Sitecore
• Mike Plimsoll, Snr. Director, Industry Strategy & Marketing, Sitecore
• Allan Tumbaga, Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Marketing Officer, Pru Life UK
• Sourabh Chitrachar, Regional VP- IT Strategy & Transformation, Liberty Mutual Insurance
• Rachel Chen, Chief Digital Officer, Aviva Singlife
• Mohd Afdhal Bin Mohd Nayan, Chief Transformation Officer, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC)
• Chatrudee Ngamvalairatt, EVP, Customer Experience Management, Bank Of Ayudhya (Krungsri Bank)
• Tomasz Kurczyk, Chief Digital and Transformation Officer, AXA Insurance
• Mohamed Keraine, Head of Retail, Philippines & Head of Retail Development Asia, ING
• Mujtanibul Ahmed Sakib, Division Customer Experience Director, Wing Bank
• Jennifer Villalobos, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Prudential Life Assurance Public Company Ltd

Highlights of World CX Summit-FSI - ASEAN:

The summit started with an opening keynote by Mohd Afdhal Bin Mohd Nayan, Chief Transformation Officer at Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, where he shared his insights on, ‘How the Financial Service industry is driving Superior Digital Experience’. He was found quoting, “Delivering customer service is an integral part of banks in society, by addressing the new customer needs and concerns and improving own efficiency and effectiveness."

Sonny Supriyadi, VP - Head, Pricing and Data Analytics at Maybank; Gavin Neil Olsen, FSI DX lead, Southeast Asia at Sitecore and Mike Plimsoll, Snr. Director, Industry Strategy & Marketing at Sitecore discussed at length on topic ‘Know your customer, know your data’. Gavin stated, “The FSI sector is in the early stages of becoming digitally agile and meeting the needs of customers in an always-on platform economy. The first step is to streamline the content lifecycle and data capture to enable new services for existing customers. This is where FSI providers need to be focusing their efforts now — especially as they suddenly have a lot of customers who are online for the first time. This means implementing “content anywhere” processes to allow agility across all channels, owned, earned, and bought, from desktop, mobile, and physical channels, for all aspects of the content lifecycle. Our experience is that fully merging physical and digital channels is a huge culture shift for everyone — customers, employees, and management. The challenge is to build a seamless CX (customer experience) that reaches across all touchpoints and makes a difference to your bottom line, and brand loyalty.”

Landon Barnes, Principal Solutions Consultant at UserTesting spoke at length on ‘3 Reasons Companies Miss the Mark on Customer Centricity and How to Fix it’. He was quoted saying, “Businesses have to think from the customer perspective and how they want to do business and how quickly they want those experiences."

While speaking about ‘Digital Transformation for Banking In 2021: Leveraging low code technology to accelerate customer-facing and operational processes’, Andrew Fenton, Chief Sales Officer EMEA & APAC at Creatio, mentioned that, “There is a huge amount of disruption and challenges within the world of banking and this forces the technology trends towards omnichannel communication."

Riva Uy, Solution Architect Manager at OutSystems and Marouen Zelleg, Senior Director at OutSystems shed light on the topic ‘Reimagining Customer Experience, Empowered with Fast and Agile technology’.  Riva stated, “The demand and the supply for fintech are rising as many companies are massively evolving their business strategy.”

"Virtual events are an excellent opportunity for everyone in the industry to come together during these difficult times. Affordable and intelligent CX & FSI solutions & strategies are the need of the hour", says Mithun Shetty, CEO of Trescon.

• New architectural designs from the South Westminster Business Alliance show how the future hybrid workspace could look
• Created by Gensler, the pre-fabricated ‘pods’ are designed to be easily transported and installed in local areas to support hybrid working and encourage people back to the office.
• The ‘pods’ incorporate anti-viral features with sustainable materials and are currently undergoing feasibility testing.

New designs have shed light on what the future office could look like as businesses continue to reimagine their workspaces to suit hybrid working. 

Commissioned by the South Westminster Business Alliance, the Hexa Pods are prefabricated structures designed to create a fully COVID secure environment. They can be easily transported, modified and installed in open spaces, near to people’s homes or within urban centres to support flexible working outside of traditional office locations.

Created by award winning architects’ Gensler, the pods also have a unique ability to switch between being an indoor and outdoor space and are able to achieve far higher hygiene standard than traditional offices. Innovative elements include copper surfaces for enhanced microbial resistance, cross-ventilation and air filters to prevent the transmission of viruses.

Environmental features have also been included such transparent solar panels for the roof and the use of reclaimed wood to ensure they blend into their surroundings, as well as having a lower carbon impact in production.

According to the South Westminster Business Alliance around one third (35 per cent) of office workers in London are still concerned about contracting COVID-19 when returning to work. Six in then (62 per cent) say that taking public transport worries them while the pandemic is ongoing.   

Over the last eighteen months, businesses have been weighing up options for how their offices will look in the future. The CEO of the South Westminster Business Alliance, Ruth Duston hopes these designs will serve as inspiration as we come to live alongside COVID-19.  “It is a fact of life that we will be learning to live alongside COVID-19 for many years”, she commented.

“Thankfully we have a tremendously effective vaccine but we also need to think boldly about how our offices will look. These designs are just one example of how we can fundamentally rethink these spaces to make them safe, flexible and welcoming environments which support new ways of working. We need people back in offices not just so companies can build collaborative cultures but also to ensure our city centres remain vibrant places.”

Ian Mulcahey, Principal, Director of Cities, Gensler, said: “As we are finally returning to the heart of our cities for work once again, we see our streets filled with sound of people meeting, socialising and enjoying their city. The Hexa Pod provides an exciting first step for the return to the office where colleagues can finally meet, collaborate and focus on work together in an open air setting in Central London.’

The Hexa Pods are currently undergoing feasibility testing to see if they could be rolled out in Westminster and Victoria.

    The Indian tech firm sets up global headquarters in London working with support from the Department for International Trade

·      Eyeing a revenue of USD 100 million globally in the next 2 years

QPS, the world’s leading card issuance and processing platform, today announced that it would be hiring more than 200 employees across verticals to support its aggressive expansion plans in the overseas market. Currently at a strength of 40 employees, QPS plans to double its workforce in key office like Dubai and London. Apart from that, major focus would also be given to expand its technology team which is based out of Bengaluru.

Speaking on this development, Vinay Kalantri, Founder & CEO – QPS Global said, “Launched in 2019, QPS Global is the new kid on the block in terms of Card Issuance operating across categories – Prepaid card, debit Cards and Credit cards. We have successfully disrupted the mould of the legacy infrastructure and rapidly becoming the partner of choice for multiple companies trying to adopt new and innovative technologies. In the last 6 months we have successfully expanded our business operations cross India, Europe and the Middle East. We are eyeing a revenue of USD 100 million in the coming 2 years.”

QPS is focussed on breaking the mould of this legacy ecosystem by constantly evolving its backend technology. With the help of world-class APIs along and a dedicated developer portal with a modern core banking platform, QPS provides an instantly accessible private sandbox environment for its clients. Companies could now have a modern card system showing real time data points on credit limits, reward points, transactions, etc. It also gives companies a unique plug-and-play model that would enable them to launch new features with absolute ease.

QPS has recently expanded its business operations across Europe by investing £10m and setting up an office in London. Post which, QPS also announced an investment of USD 10 million to expand its operations across the Middle East and setting up its office base in Dubai.

Vinay further added, “We have invested heavily in our technology team thereby creating a disruptive back-end stack that benefits our customers tremendously. Traditionally, if legacy platforms had to launch a new service, it would have taken them anywhere between 3-6 months to launch, test and execute their new offering. However, with our technology stack, our clients can now launch new products and services directly to their customers within 3-4 weeks. We offer a simple ‘plug-n-play’ solution to our clients that enables them to offer new services and increase their revenues.”

Going forward, the start-up is also looking at expanding its business operations across markets like India, UAE, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bahrain Egypt, KSA and Bhutan.

Today, we announce that multinational group Prytek Holdings Pte. Ltd. (“Prytek” or the “Group”) has completed a strategic investment in Hirewell, a US-based talent acquisition solutions firm, as it continues its expansion.

Prytek enters the Human Capital space by investing into Hirewell, a US-based talent acquisition solutions firm and merging ICV, an AI sourcing solution (a Prytek technology company) to create a vertical integrated holding and delivering a managed service solution. This combined solution includes data technology, natural language programming, and business intelligence to marketplaces and offers an entire recruiting managed service.

Prytek will provide strategic capital to accelerate Hirewell’s organic growth and invest in technology to integrate it into its managed services. Prytek will became a majority holder in Hirewell and with this partnership, will combine Hirewell’s 20+ years of recruiting expertise with Prytek’s technical acumen. As part of this investment, Hirewell is acquiring Tel Aviv based software company, ICV.

Prytek builds vertically integrated solutions by merging deep tech SaaS companies (which Prytek owns) with manage service companies to increase efficiency and by replacing basic human functionality with AI. Prytek focuses on several industry sectors including fintech (through its financial services division Delta Capita), cyber and digital transformation training, HR-tech and cybersecurity, and was founded by Igor Rybakov and Andrey Yashunsky in 2017 . 

Hirewell is a US-based talent acquisition solutions firm, that offers a wide variety of services, including Managed Recruiting Services, Interim Talent Solutions, and embedded On-Demand recruiting. Hirewell has dedicated recruiters with deep functional knowledge in technology, digital marketing, human resources, sales, finance & accounting, and real estate services

For four years ICV has been perfecting technology that utilizes Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to greatly reduce the time recruiters spend searching for talent. Embedding ICV’s technology into Hirewell’s Managed Recruiting Services will differentiate both firms in a competitive market. The combined organizations will allow organizations to hire the best talent in a cost-effective manner.

Other managed services which Prytek has built is Delta Capita (financial services division of Prytek) and QAssure (which merged with prooV, which is the information technology division of Prytek).

Andrey Yashunksy Prytek’s Co CEO & Co-Founder stated: “This investment enhances our vertical supply chain to ThriveDX (a portfolio company of Prytek) where we build vertical integrated solutions for Cyber and IT education for universities and corporates. Now, we will not only be able to create new experts, but also manage their placements and solve corporate clients end to end for their recruiting needs. ”

Matt Massucci, Founder and CEO of Hirewell stated: “The talent acquisition space has evolved and skill sets have gotten more complex over the last 20 years. Yet, technology has struggled to truly disrupt the industry. Recruiters are increasingly relying on multiple tools. Most of which don't integrate, or have limited functionality. We are thrilled to partner with Prytek and ICV to address these challenges. We are excited to continue delivering successful results to our clients, while integrating best in class technology to make the process more efficient.”

Ran Weiss, CTO and Co-Founder of ICV stated: “After years of intensive research on natural language processing and machine learning technologies, we developed smart matching and sourcing solutions for human resources and are thrilled about introducing our technology to the North American market. Combining our technology with Hirewell's decades of experience will address the difficulties in recruiting employees in today's current job search jungle. The merger is a natural fit and we're ready to propel Hirewell's technology efforts forward.”

• The fintech banking platform finalizes a seed round with Banca Sella as lead investor
• Platform is aimed at around 6 million small companies, professionals and self-employed in Italy

Tot is a new fintech banking platform that aims to digitalize the administrative and financial management for professionals, freelancers, and microenterprises with up to 10 employees, creating efficiency and offering simple planning and control tools. The goal is to free up precious time and give small businesses that are crucial to the economy the access to advanced administration and planning resources they need to help them grow. Tot will allow them to easily monitor and manage their expenditure, collection and earnings, along with the timetable to set aside provisions for taxes, and much more.

The international evolution of the fintech market and regulation has so far affected mainly the payments sector, reshaping the way consumers use financial services. This evolution in now beginning to impact services dedicated to microenterprises and professionals, and Italy’s fintech sector continues to confirm its ability and readiness to seize market opportunities.

The Tot start-up is aimed at microenterprises, which in Italy alone number 821,000 - equal to 79.5% of total companies*. This number, when added to the over 5 million self-employed with VAT numbers**, represents an enormous pool of users that until now has been underserved by traditional financial institutions. Due to the lack of a targeted product offer, these businesses do not yet see digitalization as a priority. As a result, they risk losing efficiency and competitiveness in the medium term.

This strong market potential, combined with the skills and experience of its three founders, has enabled Tot to finalize a first seed funding round for €2 million, led by Banca Sella, ahead of actual market entry, scheduled starting from Italy for early 2022, with the aim to expand in further European countries in the following years.

Tot’s three founders are Doris Messina, current Chief Digital Transformation Officer of Banca Sella; Bruno Reggiani, former Country Manager Italy of Penta; and Andrea Susta, formerly in the Digital Marketing team of Fabrick.

Doris Messina, CEO and Co-Founder of Tot, said: "We are thrilled to have the opportunity to generate added value by bringing services to the market that we hope will quickly contribute to improving the lives of small businesses by supporting their development. We are also happy that Banca Sella, among the most innovative banking operators in Europe, is the first important investor. We are certain that Banca Sella will bring value in terms of vision along with its financial resources.”     

American Express offering virtual workshops, mentoring opportunities, work experience and a toolkit to help people into the industry

Blueprint for All has partnered with global payments company and credit card provider, American Express, to deliver a specialised Financial Services programme for its members. The course is designed to provide 18–30 year olds living in the UK from a diverse ethnic heritage with the expertise, advice and network to pursue a career in financial services.

Launching this month, the course will consist of monthly virtual workshops and expert-led careers talks by American Express colleagues on topics ranging from CV writing to building confidence and a personal brand.  Alongside specialist workshops, American Express will provide mentoring opportunities to participants to help navigate their way into the industry.  The mentors will help participants improve on areas such as communication, as well as professional and personal development.

Both the workshops and the mentoring programme are free to join and funded by American Express.

Sonia Watson, CEO of Blueprint for All, said: “We are proud to be working with our corporate partner, American Express, to support and inspire participants. We are passionate about ensuring that everyone, irrespective of their race, ethnicity or background, has the opportunity to create their own blueprint - which this programme allows, creating tangible opportunities for young people to gain access to the financial sector.”

Rounded courses like this exist to improve the representation of people with diverse ethnic heritage within different industry sectors.

Young people with diverse ethnic heritage can be under-represented in the workplace and may struggle to find positive role models, and the partnership with American Express aims to counter this. Rebecca Shogunle, an alumni of a previous Blueprint for All course commented: “Having a mentor, hearing from industry experts and seeing behind the scenes really inspired me. I feel incredibly lucky to have found my passion and be able to follow my dream.”

Blueprint for All has also worked with American Express’ colleague networks including BEN (Black Engagement Network) and ANA (Asian Network at Amex) as well as its Serve2Gether UK colleague volunteering programme to develop ‘A Guide to Financial Services’ toolkit. This resource aims to demystify the industry, offering insights, and empowering a diverse future workforce. The toolkit designed for participants of the course, although available to all members, exists as both a great introduction and takeaway from the course.  

American Express also funds Blueprint for All’s Creative Pathways course, which supports those seeking development and exposure in creative industries.

Volt launches in Brazil to accelerate global open banking payments revolution

Leading open payments fintech targets LATAM region as next strategic growth market

São Paulo, November 11, 2021 – Volt, the leading open payments gateway, today announces its expansion to Brazil following a period of rapid growth for the fintech company. Volt has now integrated Brazil’s domestic instant payments network Pix – and established its physical presence in São Paulo – as it builds upon its proposition as the global leader in real-time payments everywhere.

Already strongly established in Europe with over 5,000 bank connections on the PSD2 Open Banking network, the expansion sees Volt bring its real-time payments offering to the Brazilian market. Volt customers can now access Latin America’s largest and fastest growing markets, whilst cutting out the region’s lengthy settlement times (from 28 days to two seconds) and costly card infrastructure, whilst boosting payment conversion rates. For those without a domestic presence, Volt acts as the merchant of record in-country and manages currency export, FX and declarations to the Central Bank of Brazil.

Since its inception in November 2020, Pix now has over 90 million active accounts, with over 500 million BRL processed in October 2021, making it the digital payment method of choice for Brazilian consumers. This pace of growth only continues to rise, with over 17 million new users between September to October 2021 alone. Now, merchants and payment service providers (PSPs) in the region can unlock a faster and more secure way to pay for their customers by integrating Volt.

Following the company’s record-breaking $23.5m funding round – the largest Series A on record for the Open Banking industry – the announcement marks the latest step in Volt’s expansive growth plans in response to rising demand for real-time payments everywhere.

André Faria, Ex-Adyen VP and Volt founding director, LATAM, comments: “Brazil’s rapidly growing ecommerce market and traditionally underserved customer base has created a landscape ripe for payments innovation. A year since its inception, we have seen a stratospheric rise of the Pix platform with unrivalled consumer adoption. By building on this already well-established instant payments network, we are enabling both domestic and export payments for local and international businesses – whether they have an on-the-ground presence or not – at the speed of now.”

Tom Greenwood, Founder and CEO at Volt, comments: “Pix is a shining example of the power of instant payments, creating a huge opportunity for ambitious global merchants. From NPP in Australia to Singapore’s FAST network, real-time payment networks are developing at an unprecedented pace across the globe. Our decision to expand into Brazil aligns with our ambition to unite these disparate and often fragmented systems into a single and unified payments interface through which merchants can receive payments account-to-account and in real-time.

India’s largest trade finance platform, Vayana Network, announced the raising of INR 283 crore in Series C funding round. Vayana saw participation from existing and new investors, including Chiratae Ventures, CDC group, Jungle Ventures, March Capital, Marshall Wace and some of the large family offices from India and abroad.

Sharing his thoughts, Ram Iyer, Founder and CEO, Vayana Network said, “Over the last 4 years, we have grown 20x on quarterly financing volumes and have reached USD 8 bn in total financing to date. But more than these numbers, we have always defined our role as enablers who provide access to affordable and convenient finance to every member of the supply chain. We have strongly believed that every segment of the supply chain and for every type of trade, there needs to be a relevant product that allows the business to grow sustainably. Given our strong presence in credit enabling infrastructure such as GST and e-invoicing coupled with the launch of our Good Business Score (GBS), we have managed to reach the smallest of businesses, connecting them to the largest lenders. Our investors Chiratae and Jungle placed trust in us from the beginning and now we have some incredible global financial institutions, development institutions and growth funds strengthening us to accelerate our journey to this goal.”

TC Meenakshi Sundaram, MD and Co-Founder, Chiratae Ventures, which has been one of the earliest investors in Vayana said, “Vayana has been committed to making trade finance easier, accessible and affordable for all businesses in a supply chain, irrespective of size. This single-minded focus has helped them to grow at a rapid pace and become the market leader. Across the globe and especially in India, MSMEs play the crucial role of being growth engines of an economy; despite which they suffer from delayed payments and lack of access to low-cost formal sources of finance. Vayana not only facilitates access but has worked towards making MSMEs credit ready through its GST compliance and analytics business. In Vayana, we have found the right partner to provide a solution for cash flow based lending, while simultaneously helping small businesses grow sustainably.” 

According to Amit Rajpal, Chief Executive Officer Asia and Portfolio Manager of Marshall Wace, “The supply chain industry in India is at a place that requires new-age startups, like Vayana, that build key financial infrastructure for all stakeholders to easily operate with transparency and fluidity.”

Vayana creates supply chain finance programs that help in lowering the credit costs by over 50% and improving the coverage by 100%. Vayana’s compliance business which consists of GST Suvidha Provider (GSP) services holds over 20% market share of the e-invoicing in India. The analytics business (GBS) helps customers to monitor the health of their business. Vayana recently received in-principle approval to set up an ITFS platform at the GIFT City (Gujarat).

Iyer added, “Our vision is to create an ecosystem where financing is embedded in a transaction and becomes an almost invisible part of any B2B trade – as simple as swiping a credit card. With our existing and upcoming suite of products, we will solve related challenges such as market discovery, effortless compliance and monitoring, helping every business in a supply chain operate at its best.”

CryptoUK, the trusted voice of the UK crypto industry, has today announced the appointment of Rob McWilliam as its new non-executive director (NED).

Mr McWilliam has held executive roles at two of the most customer-centric businesses in the world, as finance director and vice president of Amazon UK and most recently as chief financial officer of Asda Walmart.

A qualified accountant and experienced NED, Mr McWilliam has current non-executive board appointments at Card Factory PLC and Jisc, the digital agency for UK universities and colleges.

Mr McWilliam, who will take up the role immediately, said: “Crypto is approaching an inflection point of global adoption, and the UK is already the home of many of the world’s most innovative companies, entrepreneurs and developers. I am excited to support CryptoUK in helping create an environment in which the UK is at the centre of innovation, investment and job creation as the technology goes mainstream.

“Whether it’s sending payments, helping us save for the future or simplifying accounting, all of this can be faster, cheaper, more secure and more accessible with crypto.”

Mr McWilliam said that in order to achieve this, he wanted to see the development of a regulatory framework that builds trust, protects customers, whether individuals or companies, and provides crypto businesses with a clear framework within which to operate.

He also wanted to see accelerated adoption of crypto and blockchain technologies across UK businesses, deploying many of the ideas being developed here in Britain, building confidence with business leaders of the benefits of adoption and correcting some of the crypto myths.

Ian Taylor, executive director of CryptoUK, said: “We are thrilled to welcome Rob to the team. His extensive experience in the governance of large customer-centric organisations combined with a history of managing stakeholders including government regulators and a genuine passion for all things crypto make him the perfect non-executive director for CryptoUK.”

CryptoUK is an independent industry body that exists as a cohesive, credible voice for the evolving UK crypto industry, working directly with policymakers and market players to advocate for better education, mutual understanding, and fair and balanced policy.