• Rebrand follows years of significant investment in the platform
• Recent innovation has resulted in an 80% growth in the platform’s user base

Fintech provider finova, formally DPR Group, today announces the rebrand of eKeeper and Burrow to finova Broker Platform - offering brokers a range of digital solutions to enhance their efficiency as well as their customer experience.

finova’s SaaS cloud platform has undergone a period of considerable innovation, leading to 80% growth in new users over the last two years. Currently, the platform serves over 3,000 users across 680 broker firms of varying sizes.

The finova Broker Platform provides mortgage advisers with a range of modules that support the end-to-end customer journey from onboarding to retention:

• Customer Onboarding module: a tool designed to attract new customers and make their onboarding process as seamless and efficient as possible
• Digital Qualification services for credit checks and AML: streamline customer qualifications with instant credit checks and anti-money laundering checks.
• Case Management & CRM: manage and engage with customers all in one place with finova’s highly configurable CRM solution. With customisable products and workflows, full management information suite, communication tools to keep customers fully informed of case progress and cloud-based storage with all data and documents securely stored on a bank grade infrastructure – it has been designed to suit every broker’s needs.
• Client portal: an online module which enables brokers and customers to collaborate on their application, with all relevant documentation stored in one place and easily modifiable
• Customer Retention Module: Using marketing automation, the module engages with consumers during the initial term of their mortgage and prompts them to renew through a timely stream of personalised emails.

David Bennett, Commercial Director at finova comments:

“In the last two years we have strived to improve the quality of this product, from integrating several valuable features to making the platform as accessible as possible. We are pleased to see our efforts result in a large boost in new sales, as well as a strong retention, which we hope to continue as we move forwards as finova.

“Having already delivered new onboarding tools, client portals and retention solutions, work is already underway on single sign-on and verification services, all of which will be integrated to the existing solution. By innovating to create value, we aim to support businesses in the mortgage and savings market, regardless of their scope or size.”

Game-changing console will ultimately transform plan management and empower a data-driven, agile approach to responding to disruptions

Fusion Risk Management, Inc. (“Fusion”), a leading provider of operational resilience, risk management, and business continuity software and services, today announced the launch of its Dynamic Response Console, an agile solution which will ultimately transform the way the industry views and executes traditional plan management.

Following the recent launch of Fusion’s Scenario Testing functionality, where clients can test and model ‘what if’ scenarios to measure the impact of different responses, the Dynamic Response Console utilizes the same technology to inform tailored data driven responses to these scenarios. The technology will be particularly useful for large scale events which affect organizations across multiple locations, enabling clients to make better informed decisions based on real-time data, rather than relying on static plans.

“Fusion’s Dynamic Response Console was created to give our clients a more efficient way to access the most up-to date, data-driven, agile response actions. We know that static plans can sometimes be stored across different locations, and large run books can take time to sift through – none of which is efficient during a crisis. Leveraging Fusion’s Dynamic Response Console will enable customers to quickly visualize the impacts of disruption, immediately understand what actions need to be taken to recover and in what order, allowing them to immediately protect the most business critical applications,” said David Halford, Vice President of Continuity Solutions, Fusion Risk Management.

Dynamic Response Console uses the foundational data gathered from a company’s static data plans and reorganizes the information in a way that most efficiently informs an up-to-date response. Users are able to review and edit the responses to improve the visualization and adjust the sequence of response to ensure the most critical applications are recovered first. In the event of a disruption, the system will facilitate action supported by scenario-based, dynamically built responses, bringing to life all the information previously gathered, and then leverage the responses through Fusion’s Incident Manager.

Halford continued, “Dynamic Response Console offers the power to create a tailored response based on a particular scenario and impacted asset. For example, if a customer loses a data center, then the system would pull all the specific actions required associated with that data center and impacted applications. If they lost a site due to a weather event such as a hurricane, the system would automatically aggregate the relevant plans, allowing the client to quickly and efficiently initiate their response.”

Fusion’s Dynamic Response Console will be rolled out via three phases, with the first phase launching in November this year. The first phase will enable clients to generate composite responses based on the scenario and impacted assets from plan and procedure data already stored in Fusion. Over the next 1-2 years, phase two and three of Fusion’s Dynamic Response Console will ultimately deliver real-time, automatically generated response strategies tailored to specific disruptive events, empowering organizations to think beyond static plan management and implement a data-driven approach.

Fusion is highlighting its new Dynamic Console capabilities during its headline sponsorship at BCI World Virtual, Nov. 3-4, 2021.

For more information, visit www.fusionrm.com.

Brings Simple-to-Deploy, Advanced AI and Digital Footprint Technology to World's Most Popular Ecommerce Shopping Platform

SEON, the fraud fighters, today announced that its fraud detection and prevention app is now available on Shopify. SEON’s new app delivers smarter, easier fraud checks to help reduce chargebacks, lost payments and goods, and smarter fraud checks powered by AI and machine learning to Shopify’s 1.75 million merchants globally. 

E-commerce merchants of all sizes have the same privacy, fraud and banking concerns, but rarely can afford large teams of security experts or the custom enterprise-grade solutions available today. With no technical or fraud risk knowledge required, the advanced, flexible and transparent integration can be set up with one click to ensure a frictionless customer experience. SEON’s Shopify fraud prevention solution reduces losses and increases profits by enhancing Shopify’s fraud defenses and it amplifies protection using automated, real-time data checks and assigned risk scores, powered by SEON’s intelligent scoring engine.

With SEON’s industry-leading device fingerprinting and data enrichment technology, customers’ digital footprints - a trail of publicly available data belonging to the same online user including visited websites, email addresses, and data submitted to online services - are compiled and analysed. This includes checking 35+ social media and online signals as a fraudster cannot match this scale, depth and breadth of social and digital footprints in our highly connected world. The analysis will help vendors radically improve risk assessment accuracy, reduce false declines and ensure orders are legitimate before fulfilling them. Additionally, SEON is offering a free for life plan for Shopify users so even the smallest shops can access cutting-edge fraud protection for their businesses. 

“Merchants of all sizes want to understand and simplify their fraud fighting efforts, but today’s enterprise solutions are too difficult and expensive for smaller online businesses to integrate. Most AI and blackbox machine learning fraud detection solutions also keep the actual fundamentals of how they fight fraud a secret and how risk assessments are made, making it hard for merchants to understand why a transaction is declined,” said Tamas Kadar, CEO of SEON. “We’re democratising fraud fighting with fully transparent, simple and powerful solutions that give any size business the opportunity to use enterprise-grade fraud prevention software to better protect their operations.” 

To learn more about SEON’s Shopify app, visit our website or watch this app walkthrough video, or visit the Shopify app store. 

·       Currensea, which offers the UK’s first open banking-enabled direct debit travel card, launches its ‘powered-by’ programme, allowing charities and businesses to offer custom branded cards which allow people to allocate savings made on foreign exchange charges to a specific purpose.

·       The Currensea card uses open banking to allow travellers to make overseas transactions directly from funds in their current account, whilst avoiding high bank fees and saving at least 85% on every transaction.

·       Users can donate a portion, or all of the savings they made on foreign exchange fees to a selection of organisations, while accessing the best rates of 0-0.5% above the FX base rate, contrary to the average of 3.25% charged by banks per transaction abroad.

·       The first charity signed up to offer the new service is the Cameron Bespolka Trust which will use donations to help young people to connect with nature and animals.

Fintech Currensea, which has created the UK’s first open banking powered direct debit travel card saving users at least 85% on foreign exchange (FX) charges, is launching a first-of-its-kind concept to allow cardholders to convert these savings into donations.

Currensea provides its users with access to the best FX rates at only 0% to 0.5% above the FX base rate. With banks charging 3-5% per transaction abroad, this results in savings of at least 85% on every transaction abroad. The Currensea card uses open banking to partner with someone’s existing bank account, allowing travellers to make overseas transactions directly from funds in their current account, while avoiding high bank fees.

With this new ‘powered-by’ service, Currensea helps charities and businesses to issue their own branded card to supporters, customers, or employees. The cards allow users to donate a portion, or all, of the savings they make using the card, while removing the fees. For example, a user spending $1500 while visiting the USA can choose to contribute 50% of their savings – over £20 – while still saving money on foreign exchange.

The first charity to sign up to this new service is the Cameron Bespolka Trust, a charity that encourages young people to connect with nature and animals. In partnership with the RSPB, the Trust is renovating Cameron’s Cottage, a unique residential educational facility for young people to immerse themselves in nature.  This is one of the charity’s projects that the donations made by Currensea card users will contribute towards.

James Lynn, Co-Founder, Currensea, comments: “Our ‘powered-by’ cards provide people with more choice on where their hard-earned money goes. Rather than being hit by unexpected fees – an average of 3.25% per transaction – people have a choice; they can either benefit from the full savings of at least 85% or automatically allocate funds to a specific purpose or donate to the causes that mean the most to them. Rather than lining the pockets of banks, people can now save money on holiday as well as donate to their chosen charity. This latest partnership with the Cameron Bespolka Trust allows us to help travellers benefit from a new way to give back.”

Kevin Bespolka, Founder Trustee, Cameron Bespolka, comments: “We're delighted to be partnering with Currensea on its ‘powered -by’ product. We used our cards widely this summer in Europe and we hope our donors will do the same as they start travelling again. The card is an excellent way for our supporters to save fees and make donating as easy as possible.”

Cabital, a leading digital assets institution, today announced that it seeks to apply for formal approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) under the Payment Services Act 2019 to provide digital payment token services as a Major Payment Institution.

Securing regulatory approval under the Payment Services Act will enable Cabital to directly support customers to trade in digital payment tokens legally in Singapore. 

Raymond Hsu, Cabital’s Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer, said: 

“When Cabital secures formal regulatory approval from MAS, we will be in a great position to support customers in tapping into the growth of cryptocurrencies as a new and exciting asset class across Singapore. 

“Cabital has been using Chainalysis’ KYT and Reactor products since our formation to empower us to meet applicable regulatory requirements on Anti-Money Laundering (AML) in each of our markets with ease and agility, including Singapore in the future. I look forward to leading Cabital with our outstanding compliance team into the future in a safe and secure fashion.”

Ulisse Dell'Orto, Chainalysis’ Managing Director of APAC, said: 

“As adoption continues, regulators are searching for ways to protect consumers without stifling the industry’s innovation. Chainalysis’ data platform will provide Cabital, a leading digital asset institution, with the tools necessary to build user confidence while evolving with the ever-changing cryptocurrency landscape. We look forward to enabling Cabital to fulfil its regulatory obligations and further pursuing our joint mission of building trust in blockchains.”

Chainalysis’ Chainalysis KYT (Know Your Transaction) and Chainalysis Reactor products are instrumental in Cabital’s journey to build a robust and sustainable Compliance programme. Chainalysis KYT detects patterns of high risk activity, ranging from OFAC sanctioned addresses and darknet markets, to scams and anomalous transactions. Chainalysis Reactor connects cryptocurrency transactions on a real-time basis to facilitate transparency in identifying counterparty transaction risk.

As regulators continue to scrutinize the growing cryptocurrency industry, companies that interact with digital assets must now comply with new legislation from their local government agencies. Know Your Customer (KYC) and AML requirements are now compulsory and must be strictly adhered to protect users from nefarious activities.

Last month, Cabital announced that it has added the European Union’s Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) to its growing list of payment methods, enabling customers to seamlessly change between euros and cryptocurrencies to generate high-yield passive income.

The SEPA announcement came after Cabital’s recent successful $4 million seed round that was led by SIG, Dragonfly, and GSR, increasing our valuation to $40 million. That followed Cabital’s recent successful angel round where the company raised $3 million.

CryptoCompare, the leading digital asset market data and index provider, has received authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and is now regulated as a Benchmark Administrator.

The FCA authorisation, awarded to CryptoCompare’s data and index subsidiary, CC Data Limited, licenses CryptoCompare to issue benchmarks for financial instruments, financial contracts and the measurement of fund performance. CCCAGG, CryptoCompare’s proprietary family of benchmarks for pricing digital assets, is based on 24-hour, volume-weighted average calculation, time-penalty factor and outlier methodology, covering 500+ liquid asset pairs.

“As digital asset markets continue to grow, it is vital that investors can access highly reliable and accurate benchmarks which are based upon market-leading research and methodologies,” said Charles Hayter, CEO of CryptoCompare. “Over the last seven years, our pioneering standards have brought rigour and accuracy to this flourishing sector. I am delighted that CryptoCompare has now achieved FCA authorisation, creating new avenues for institutional and retail investors to gain exposure to our standard-setting digital asset indices.”

CryptoCompare’s FCA authorisation allows service providers to create regulated financial products that are underpinned by CryptoCompare’s suite of leading digital asset indices. This includes the creation and issuance of investment product referencing indices; reference rates, contract settlement pricing, portfolio asset allocation and the measurement of fund performance.

CryptoCompare’s industry-standard indices are relied upon by a diverse range of globally recognised clients, offering comprehensive market valuation benchmarks that power leading digital asset financial products. These indices, based on CryptoCompare’s proprietary methodology and research, provide institutional-grade access to the largest and most liquid digital assets.

Northern Bank Ltd, trading as Danske Bank UK is announcing that it has partnered up with the European open banking platform, Aiia (recently acquired by Mastercard) to deliver innovative digital solutions to help its more than 20.000 business and corporate customers through its business banking platform, District.

The partnership will give all of Danske Bank UK’s customers a hassle-free and simple approach to managing company funds in one place and remove obstacles from switching between business banking platforms to get a full overview of their financial situation across banks. The new feature ‘Accounts from other banks’ utilises open banking and provides real financial transparency for business customers. In the coming weeks, Danske Bank will pilot this new feature with businesses keen on using the new product extension. 

The partnership also opens up for a new market entry for Aiia, who will be focusing heavily on empowering the UK and Ireland with their high quality and privacy driven approach to open banking. Today, the open banking platform connects to more than 3,000 banks across Europe and the UK is a key market in Aiia’s expansion plans for 2022.

Commenting on the collaboration, David Thompson, Head of Digital Channels of Danske Bank UK says: 

“We’re delighted to sign this agreement with Aiia, which will allow us to deliver innovative digital solutions for our customers. Many of our business customers use more than one bank and they have told us it's difficult to overview all their accounts and transactions. In response to this feedback we’ve developed “Accounts from other banks”, which enables businesses to view accounts and payments across banks in a single view in our business banking platform, District. Partnering with Aiia in the UK was the natural choice for us, as they’ve shown full commitment to building a secure and compliant platform through a quality driven approach”

Commenting on the collaboration, Jonas Vogt Rasmussen, Head of Banking of Aiia says: 

“We’re happy and honored to empower Danske Bank UK and enable the bank to enhance user experience for their business and corporate customers. With Aiia, Danske Bank starts by solving the inconvenient and time-consuming affair for multi-banked businesses of switching between different banking platforms to get a complete financial overview. The solution will be a one-stop shop for businesses and shows exactly that the core of open banking and the future of financial services is about delivering convenience on a day-to-day level. Yet again, Danske Bank proves that they’re at the digital forefront of banking innovation.”

In the future, Danske Bank UK plans to add open banking payments, make the open banking features available to their retail customers as well as power other impactful use cases with open banking