The financial services sector is an intensive data-driven industry that manages enormous volumes of confidential client and customer data. As they accumulate data at an incredible rate, it can give organisations a goldmine of analytics that contribute to growth and profitability.

But data management in financial institutions is complex and demanding. Huge volumes of data can often exist in an unorganised state and stored in disparate places. Each data type can vary, and multiple silos can lead to segmented access. Legacy systems can be difficult to shed and unifying data from a wide range of sources is challenging.

There are also increasing compliance burdens from the ever-growing number of strict regulations to keep data safe. Financial firms must comply with hundreds of existing and emerging regulations that put pressure on a company’s data management structure. Many financial institutions are struggling with an IT infrastructure made up of disparate systems across different departments, and often holding differing information on the same customers.

With big data comes big responsibility

Without a complete and accurate overview of the customer and data across the enterprise, many institutions may struggle to fully benefit from initiatives such as Know Your Customer (KYC) or Customer 360. These due diligence processes provide a valuable framework and guidelines to help organisations better understand the profile and legitimacy of potential customers.     

With vast amount of data, it’s crucial to establish a system that enables meaningful insights. Financial institutions need access to data that is up-to-date, consistent, and precise, and isn’t replicated elsewhere.  Bringing it all together in one coherent place is vital for long-term success.

Simplicity is the key

Enterprise data fabrics are primed to help with this. This emerging data management architecture connects multiple locations, types, and sources of data, and provides ways to access that data. It offers a much-needed architectural approach to accurate data visibility and intelligent curation across the entire business, without the problems associated with data warehouses and data lakes. Enterprise data fabrics transform and harmonise data from different sources on demand to make it usable and actionable for a wide variety of business applications.

Smart data fabrics take the approach a step further by supporting advanced data analytics and future-proofing data management. They incorporate a wide range of analytics capabilities, including data exploration, business intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning. This enables organisations to gain new insights and power prescriptive services and applications.

Implementing this technology makes data more accessible from a smaller number of places, which helps institutions gain the agility needed to enhance data governance and operational efficiency. By having a more connected eco-system, the sharing of data can also become more seamless and, when using the right data platform technology, more secure.

Better practices increase the value of data

Using a smart data fabric to streamline data architecture can help financial institutions overcome the many complicated and diverse data management and data governance challenges. It reduces the amount of time spent processing and organising data and supports risk management by minimising compliance issues. It elevates the value of data, providing the right data just in time regardless of where it is stored.

Removing complexity can help financial services leverage data to anticipate customer needs and make more intelligent business decisions. It enables them to futureproof their operations, giving them the agility to rapidly evolve with changing market trends, from emerging regulation and customer demand, to market volatility and everything in between.

Smart data fabrics simplify data architecture and provides a consistent, accurate, real-time view of their data assets that significantly contributes to the improvement of data governance amongst financial services organisations. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg, as it can also enhance security, speed, and agility, and allow institutions to achieve elegant simplicity within their IT estate.

A data architecture fit for the future

In a climate of fierce competition, financial institutions must rethink their approaches to data and adapt their current data management strategies to be ready for the future. Data management systems that have been prevalent in the past can no longer handle the volumes of data or the demands of that data needed to move businesses forward. This is an information age and data is a business’s greatest asset. The financial institutions that don’t successfully modernise their data architecture now risk losing customers, market share, and profits.

Horizon Software, a leading provider of electronic trading solutions and algorithmic technology, today announces that the Bank of China International (BOCI) has chosen to go-live with Horizon Software’s Structured Products RFQ Solution to maximise efficiency and deliver top automated solutions to their clients.

The aim of this project is to provide BOCI with a system to receive, handle and monitor structured product RFQ requests that come in from clients via both email and messaging systems. As a result, the bank will be able to effectively monitor the different statuses and main characteristics of the RFQs, to​ price those RFQ requests using BOCI’s Numerix pricer​, generate the responses accordingly, and remove manual actions from sales traders. Using Horizon’s sophisticated instruments, such as the vanilla ELN, the accumulators, the barrier, and the range accrual notes will help to reduce the time required to respond to the individual needs of clients.  This subsequently allows for the handling of a larger volume of RFQs.

Headquartered in Hong Kong with more than 50 subsidiaries around the world, BOCI provides clients with a full range of investment banking products and services in both mainland China and overseas capital markets, including share issuance, merger and acquisition, bond issuance, fixed income, private banking, private equity, global commodities, asset management, equity derivatives, and leveraged and structured financing.

Andy Tai, Senior Executive IT at BOC International,  said: “From a tech manager perspective, the software that Horizon provides supports a powerful client-server framework, which allows the BOCI to integrate various internal systems together.  Another key strength of Horizon’s software is the user-friendliness of the GUI, which provides BOCI with various configurable and useful features out of the box.  This development project is the result of a joint effort, and Horizon is a great partner in project management, working to solid deliverables.Mr Ngai Ho Shum, Deputy Department Head of Equity Derivatives, BOCI, also noted that: “The solution provided by Horizon Software has been enhancing the RFQ process over the legacy system, offering our salespeople a smoother user experience. We are looking forward to extending the product scope for the solution moving forward”.

Emmanuel Faure, Head of Sales APAC at Horizon Software, said: “We are honoured to deliver our RFQ solution to BOCI as this marks a key milestone for Horizon in the world of Structured Products. Horizon benefits from a vast experience in supporting clients for structured products and through this new collaboration, BOCI will be able to overcome withstanding technology challenges and deliver the best automated solutions to their clients”.

As preparations get underway for the IDC Middle East CIO Summit 2022, International Data Corporation (IDC) is delighted to announce that Gulf Business Machines (GBM) has been appointed as the event's Strategic Partner. The IDC Middle East CIO Summit is one of the most anticipated tech events in the region, and next year's 15th annual edition will serve as the platform of choice for prominent business leaders, influential IT heads, and respected industry analysts from around the world as they share their collective expertise and exchange valuable ideas.

"We are thrilled to welcome GBM on board as our Strategic Partner for next year's edition of the IDC Middle East CIO Summit," says Jyoti Lalchandani, IDC's group vice president and regional managing director for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. "The journey to becoming a 'Future Enterprise' has accelerated, spurred by significant investments in new customer experiences, new digital ecosystem business models, digital supply chains, and 'Future of Work' models.

"This all needs to be supported by resilient, cloud-enabled digital infrastructure and applications, rapid app development, digital platforms, data-driven and AI-enabled intelligence, comprehensive security, and unwavering trust. Together with GBM and our partners, our aim is to help ICT leaders across the Middle East to develop the capabilities, performance metrics, and organization structures required to thrive in the new digital economy."

With more than 30 years of experience, GBM is a leading end-to-end digital solutions provider, offering a broad portfolio that includes industry-leading digital infrastructure, digital business solutions, security, and services.

"The IDC Middle East CIO Summit has come to be known as one of the foremost events for thought-provoking insights on the future of the digital economy," says Amr Refaat, CEO of GBM said. "It has played a pivotal role in introducing industry best practices and helping organizations adapt and build resilient economies. Today, as the region stands at the threshold of growth and transformation, collaborative discussions are instrumental in helping accelerate digital adoption among regional businesses. The IDC Middle East CIO Summit is a crucial platform for the technology industry to share its vision for digital evolution and as the Strategic Partner of the summit we look forward to sharing GBM’s global knowledge and local expertise with our industry partners."

The IDC Middle East CIO Summit 2022 will run under the theme 'Accelerating the Journey to a Digital First World' on February 22-24. Taking place in a hybrid format, the IDC Middle East CIO Summit will incorporate a two-day in-person gathering at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Dubai International Financial Centre, followed by a one-day virtual event, hosting more than 500 CIOs and influential business leaders from across the region. The annual IDC Middle East CIO Summit is the place to come for thought-provoking, in-depth discussions about cutting-edge tech solutions, emerging use cases, and proven strategies for driving success. For 15 straight years, it has served as the ICT world's premier source of learning about the industry's latest developments.

Where there is data, there is regulation. Most financial institutions including banks and insurance companies deal with a complex web of external, local and global regulations, all requiring them to submit regular reports about their business to comply with KYC, AML, CFT, and other regulations..

However, due to obsolete IT infrastructure, data silos, and lack of data taxonomies, and manual processes, meeting these regulations proves to be a far more challenging task – and financial institutions are not prepared.

In this detailed post, you’ll get an overview of how banks prepare data and how it is no longer effective. Additionally, you’ll get to know:

• Expectations in regulatory reporting  
• Data quality challenges that threaten compliance  
• Cost of failing to meet regulatory compliances  
• Why Excel is no longer the right tool for compliance data preparation 

• Approaches to Remediation – Self-service data preparation tools  

Let’s get started.  

Expectations in Regulatory Reporting 

The increasing complexities of financial crimes coupled with multiple financial crises have escalated stricter guidelines for institutions. The banking world has experienced tougher regulations that demand comprehensive capital analysis reviews, comprehensive liquidity reviews, supervisory reviews, and evaluation processes among others. All these regulations, whether it’s the BCBS 239, the CCAR, Basel III or MiFID II are inherently data-centric.

These regulations were brought in for multiple purposes – for instance, the Dodd-Frank is to ensure transparency in record keeping while the CCAR and BCBS 239 are focused on data quality, data lineage and overall data management with a special emphasis on proving and improving data governance.  

These regulations have imposed a new mode of operation adding new complexities to regulatory compliance. There is more to come. As digital transactions and online commerce take precedence over traditional banking, these compliances are expected to increase to counter money laundering and financial crimes carried over the internet.  

Put simply, banks are required to keep up with technology and the evasive world of digital finance. The problem? Financial institutes are not. Not for cultural transformations, not for technology transformations, not even for data transformations. The pace is slow, resources are limited but the pressure to comply is mounting. Failure to demonstrate a compliant solution can result in massive regulatory and reputational risks – including hefty fines, imprisonment of executives, and loss of reputation.  

Cost of Failing to Meet Regulatory Compliance Standards  

The cost of compliance to the regulatory standards consumes approximately 20% of “run-the-bank” cost base of a financial services provider and about 40% of “change the bank” costs for ventures presently in progress. Dodd-Frank and BCBS-239 support consumer protection; however, call for investment to manage at scale, placing a burden on the profits of the financial sector. Failing to comply has resulted in more than 200 billion dollars in fines during the past five years and has also caused an increase in the concerns for personal accountability for the banking executives.  

Cost of Failing to Meet Regulatory Compliance Standards

Local banks are also not exempted. The American Bankers Association recently conducted a survey of small American banks and established that approximately 50 percent of small American banks have dropped their product offerings, lowered staff because of the stress of regulatory compliance, and the consumer support is not up to the mark needed for compliance. 

Regulatory reporting demands a swift merger of varied data available throughout the financial organization. This can be an extremely costly and resource-intensive task. Even when financial organizations are spending approximately 4.5 billion dollars annually on compliance only, they are still paying billions of dollars in fine. Diverse data management for regulatory reporting is a multi-tiered challenge for the modern-day financial sector. 

Key Data Preparation Challenges in Regulatory Compliance  

Experts agree that resources in financial institutes need to spend 80% of their time in analytics review (including reviewing data for sanctions compliance), while 20% on data preparation (which encapsulates operations as data cleansing, data standardization, data profiling, data matching etc.). The sheer volume and complexity of data coupled with limited human and technological resources have resulted in teams spending more time on data treatment and preparation rather than on analytics. This mainly because regulatory reporting is still considered a subsidiary, backside function handled manually by IT resources working in silos. But there are other hurdles too – hurdles that are preventing organizations from establishing a foolproof regulatory system.  

Over the years, we’ve worked with several of the largest banks and financial institutes in the US and across the globe to help them with data quality challenges. Almost every client we’ve worked with cited one or all of the following hurdles:  

Disparate Data Sources: A wide network of vendors and partners and a spread of multiple branches means banks are dealing with disparate data sources. They are struggling with the consolidation of data from multiple sources including Excel files, relational databases, and cloud applications. For every report or analytics review, banks need to collect data from these multiple sources which could take up to months due to data integration, conversion and transformation challenges. .

Reliance on out-dated Systems: Too often, traditional financial institutions (FIs) are still getting by with the same systems they’ve had in place for the past 20 or 30 years, so it’s hardly surprising that these solutions aren’t well-equipped for today’s digitally-focused, omni-channel environment.

Financial data is stored in obsolete mainframe systems. In fact, an overwhelming majority of the top 100 banks in the world depend on it. The problems exacerbate further when data is moved between or stored across on-premise relational databases and cloud web applications as it presents greater data conversion challenges, requiring more person-hours and costs.

Data Exists in Silos:  As banks rely on legacy systems, their business data structures are often fragmented, resulting in data silos.

For instance, some banks still don’t have a centralized data management system for a consolidated view of each stakeholder information such as customers, vendors, partners, and accounts. This means that at the time of analytics reviews, the organization will have a difficult time pulling and consolidating this data from multiple systems. Siloed data makes for one of the most time-consuming activities as firms struggle to extract data from a host of apps, platforms, and  systems.  

More importantly, data silos exist independently, each with their own unique identifiers - customer codes, social security numbers, or other proprietary data – that act as a major barrier for accurate record linkage. As a result, the end users face a tedious task in reconciling conflicting customer or account information, increasing the risks for poor customer tracking, fraud and identity theft, and regulatory non-compliance.

Poor Data Quality: For most financial institutions, data quality remains an ongoing challenge, with its integrity degraded by inconsistent taxonomies, inaccuracy, incompleteness, and duplication. According to a study conducted by Oracle Financial Services and the Center of Financial Professionals, inconsistent data, and poor data quality resulting from siloed systems are two of the barriers to achieving BCBS 239 compliance. 

The siloed systems, thus, can bring their own problems of inconsistent file naming conventions, disparate formats and other redundant data that can undermine the reliability of existing data as it gets updated with new, incoming information.

Identifying duplicates becomes an almost impossible task. End users must spend considerable time to determine if two or multiple records refer to the same entity or not which could be in the form of different order of numbers and/or letters and other variations. Alternatively, there could be seemingly similar duplicate records with slight variations that are in fact different entities altogether. 

Data Preparation Still a Manual Process: There is still a heavy dependence on manual methods to prepare data. Excel sheets and SQL programming are still being employed in aggregating complex data – which break apart beyond a few thousand records and thus unstable or require significant refinement for scripts to work smoothly across complex datasets. . This manual approach prevents financial institutes from keeping up with new demands – both in terms of customer and regulatory expectations.  

Regulatory reporting demands data to be clean, accurate, complete, and consistent. But one of the biggest roadblocks to meeting these demands is impaired technology coupled with a stubborn insistence of sticking to outdated data preparation methods that worked well in the past but are no longer helpful in managing current data needs.  

Either the technology in use doesn’t have the breadth of data quality solutions - ease of exporting data, data standardization and data deduplication through a deduping software – or it may not be robust enough to run real-time API workflows to automate data quality tasks with minimal false positives.

Why Excel and SQL Programming are No Longer Effective Tools for Data Preparation  

The Federal Reserve and regulators are now less tolerant of manual solutions and workarounds that are no longer a match to the scope, volume, and granularity of data that need to be submitted to regulatory authorities.  

Adding fuel to fire is the counter-intuitive reporting architecture of many firms that still delivers individual reports by business area, preventing the accurate calculation and reporting of risks across entities or by product mix. Plagued by disparate systems, inconsistent data sets, manual data entry errors, and mounting compliance pressures, professionals spend a significant amount of time and effort in data aggregation and reconciliation via Excel or SQL codes.  

Highly limited in the face of vast volumes and varieties of data, common technologies like Excel first introduced 40 years ago to complete regulatory reporting can no longer meet the required speed and demands. Some of the main challenges of using these technologies are:  

Limited Data Preparation Features: Excel is not intuitive and requires the user to create formulas and rules for every transformation. For instance, it takes multiple formulas and repetitive actions to remove white spaces or accidental punctuation marks in text fields. Moreover, unlike ML-based solutions that evolve with time to encapsulate new problems, Excel is still more or less the same as it was 40 years ago. It has limited data preparation features such as integration with other data sources, or profiling, or even click-based data cleansing. Lastly, it cannot be used to dedupe data which is one of the leading challenges professionals face when consolidating data from multiple sources.  

Data Lineage Limitations: One of the key requirements of regulatory reporting is visibility. Stakeholders want to know exactly how data has been transformed before being submitted to a regulator. Excel does not automatically keep records of transformations. Users often have to go back through their work and manually demonstrate the steps they took to reach the desired level of accuracy. Financial institutions must use data preparation software that automatically records all transformations and preserves the structure of this data.  

Requiring Expert Users: Both SQL and Excel require expert/advanced programmers or users making the regulatory reporting an IT task instead of a business task. Not every financial or regulatory compliance analyst is technically sound in SQL or in data management for that matter. Data analysts or programmers on the other hand are not owners of compliance data and therefore do not have as robust an understanding of the nature of this data as do the people owning it. This crisscross between IT and financial analysts is one of the leading causes of siloed data preparation that hampers a progressive approach to data management.  

Organizations must acknowledge the fact that common technologies like spreadsheets and SQL are only effective when preparing data at a small scale – for regulatory reporting – which demands accuracy – they are hardly ideal. Today, financial institutions need automated, ML-based solutions that are powerful enough to allow for agile data preparation while allowing your departments to easily consolidate, merge, dedupe, and clean data for regulatory compliance. The platform must be intuitive, allows for easy integration and an easy-to-use interface that does not depend on the expertise and availability of programmers or IT experts.  

Approaches to Remediation – ML-Based Self-Service Data Preparation Tools  

While most experts talk about culture change, data transformation journeys, and a complete overhaul of infrastructure, we believe the right approach to remediation lies in first acknowledging core problems with data quality and understanding challenges with regards to processes.  

For instance, firms can start by improving the quality of their data before moving on to bigger transformation initiatives like migrations or new infrastructure implementations. As the saying goes, the devil is in the detail, and in this case, it’s not the infrastructure or technology that’s hampering progress, it’s quite literally the details in a bank’s data source.  

The first step to remediation, therefore, is in preparing data for compliance. And this can be done by using a top-in-line self-service data preparation tool that allows for:  

• Integration of data sources into a single, one-stop platform  
• In-depth profiling of data to discover errors and anomalies  

• Cleansing of data according to pre-defined and customized rules, patterns or logic  
• Merging and deduplicating data with a 100% match accuracy  
• Consolidating data into one single source of truth which can be presented for regulatory reporting  
• Data lineage – show every transformation as it happens  

The Bottom Line….  

Regulatory reporting demands data accuracy and integrity, both of which cannot be achieved via manual processing of data. Financial firms need data preparation tools that can evolve with time and allow them the flexibility of preparing massive volumes and multiple varieties of data as effortlessly as possible. The goal is to minimize repetitive tasks to make time for the core business.  

Banking Industry Veteran to Support Company’s Product Direction and Business Strategy as It Continues Expansion in U.S. Market

Mirato, provider of the first AI-enabled third-party risk management (TPRM) intelligence platform, today announced that Joseph Lau has joined the firm as director of TPRM. Lau brings more than 20 years of industry experience to his new position working with the Mirato team to support customers in the areas of product and business development.

Lau has served in a variety of senior leadership roles in risk management and technology infrastructure over his career, most recently as vice president of third-party assessments at Santander Bank. Prior to joining Santander Bank, he was vice president of third-party assurance at Citizens Bank. Lau has also held various roles in information technology at H.C. Starck, Bayer Corporation and the Gillette Company. Lau earned a B.S. in business administration from Northeastern University.

Lau’s role is a new one at Mirato, and it represents another step in the company’s ongoing U.S. expansion. Earlier this year, Mirato opened an office in New York and appointed Eran Abramovitz U.S. sales director, and the company is actively working to enhance its technology and diversify its customer base in North America.

“As a former banking executive, Joseph brings a valuable perspective to Mirato, and his experience and expertise will help customers to better define their TPRM strategies and incorporate new technologies,” said Aki Eldar, Mirato co-founder and CEO. “His background will be an asset to us as we continue to prove our technology in the U.S.”

Mirato’s TPRM intelligence platform extracts data from questionnaires, evidence documents and external data sources (financial, cyber, ESG, AML, etc.) and turns it into actionable insights about an organization’s risk exposure to services, fourth parties, people, locations and other areas. Leveraging AI and natural language processing (NLP), Mirato enables banks to cut down due diligence labor costs and dramatically reduce the time of manual tasks associated with TPRM.  

“I am excited to be joining the Mirato team as the company takes its technology to new levels,” said Lau. “Mirato’s platform is a game-changer for third-party risk management, with the potential to drive significant efficiency in banks’ TPRM programs.  I look forward to helping the company realize the promise of its technology.”

Please click here for an image.

Global study reveals sell-side firms have potential for transformational levels of efficiency as firms average of 9.1 post-trade processing solutions due to legacy fragmented infrastructure

Most sell-side firms have a huge opportunity to transform their post-trade technology and operations to a more streamlined processing model, according to a newly released white paper sponsored by global Fintech leader Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.. 

The white paper, The Case for a Multi-Asset Post-Trade Approach, published by Firebrand Research, highlights the findings of a new global survey that finds sell-side firms have an average of 9.1 post-trade processing solutions due to legacy infrastructures which are fragmented by either geography, asset class or both. Many sell-side firms continue to maintain separate middle and back-office operations and technologies for dealing with various asset classes. Regional regulatory and market practice divergence at the global level has accentuated the issue by adding regional silos into the mix, which has further increased duplication of effort and cost. 

The study analyzes the current pain points and pressures in post-trade operations and the drivers of future innovation.

Key findings include:

·           Mixed capabilities across asset classes - Most sell-side firm respondents felt that their post-trade infrastructures have relatively good coverage of asset classes such as fixed income, but little or no coverage of newer or more esoteric asset classes.

·           Streamlining - Survey interviewees note that there is a significant pressure for their firm to move away from manual processes and silos to a more integrated solution with a single, streamlined workflow and centralised set of records across all asset classes.

·           How to digitally transform - The more “harmonised” the post-trade environment, the easier it is to apply technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up exception resolution and deliver workflow efficiencies, both of which are currently problematic in the post-trade environments of many sell-side firms.

The white paper concludes that sell-side firms need to become more joined up across asset classes to meet these challenges and digitally transform their post-trade operations for the future.

“To meet the increasing regulatory and market challenges of today and tomorrow, sell-side firms need to regularly review their post-trade technology,” said Danny Green, General Manager of Post-trade Processing Solutions at Broadridge International.  “A range of advanced solutions are available to solve operational issues that firms are facing with their post-trade technology and Broadridge’s continual investment in its next-gen technology stack enables us to help firms achieve transformational levels of efficiency and adapt to the rapidly modernizing post-trade landscape.”

“The fewer silo-based systems that a sell-side firm has to manage, the better from the operational oversight and risk mitigation perspective,” said Virginie O’Shea, founder and CEO of Firebrand Research. “By adopting a unified, multi-asset solution on an agile, mutualised service basis, firms can position themselves for improved cost/income ratios, enhanced levels of efficiency and responsiveness to service change, a more robust risk and control framework, and the ability to provide a better client experience.”

To download the white paper, click here.

The annual award by The Software Report recognizes women that demonstrate admirable leadership across a variety of roles within the software industry

Creatio, a global software company that provides a leading no-code platform for process management and CRM, today announced its Founder and CEO, Katherine Kostereva, has been listed as #1 in The Top 50 Women Leaders in SaaS of 2021. The winners were selected by The Software Report (TSR) for their contributions to their companies and expertise in the development of business strategies, based on careful analysis of their professional experience and nominations by peers and colleagues. The Software Report is a leading online publication that provides software market research and insights to over 28,000 software executives and professionals.

According to TSR, “A commonality found among high-performing executive teams is the presence of women in key roles. This year’s awardees have made a definitive and lasting impact on their organizations, from spearheading cloud adoption pushes to espousing diversity in the workplace to driving overall company growth. The COVID-19 era has compelled many businesses to accelerate their adoption and roll-out of cloud-based software solutions, and these women have enabled their companies to meet the challenge presented by this surge in demand.”

Katherine’s strategic vision, operational discipline, and compelling leadership style have been the driving forces behind Creatio’s success to date. Under Katherine’s leadership, the company has united 700 employees around a single goal to create a world where everyone can automate business ideas in minutes. Creatio’s no-code platform for workflow automation and CRM helps organizations all over the world automate their ideas in minutes. Ten million workflows are launched daily in 100 countries by its clients. Creatio is recognized as a Leader and Strong Performer in multiple Gartner and Forrester reports, and its products receive raving end-user reviews on peer-to-peer portals. Creatio’s culture is about genuine care for its clients and partners, passion, going the extra mile, and staying positive.

Katherine Kostereva has also been recognized with Silver Stevie® Award in 2021 Stevie Awards for Women in Business, Top 25 SaaS Influencers: Ones to Watch in 2021, Top 50 SaaS CEOs and Top 50 Women Leaders in SaaS in 2018-2020, the Winner of a Gold Stevie® Award in the Female Entrepreneur of the Year category in 2020, the Executive Leader of the Year in the 7th Annual 2020 Customer Sales and Service World Awards, and more.

Juno offers billing, payments solutions and banking services for more than 35,000 small and medium-sized businesses in the country

EBANX, a leading fintech company for payment solutions in Latin America, announced today it has finalized the acquisition of Juno, a Brazilian payments company that enables digital commerce through billing and banking services in the country. Juno, one of the main players in the local payments industry in Brazil, has long-time expertise in the field. Juno's customers include more than 35,000 small and medium companies in Brazil that use its billing and payments solutions, including its digital account Conta Juno.

The completion of Juno's acquisition by EBANX follows a USD $430 million Series C investment that EBANX received from Advent International in June, as well as the acquisition of shares in the Brazilian Banco Topázio, which is helping to optimize the company's foreign-exchange operations.

"Juno is a trusted partner that has an outstanding history in the payments industry, offering innovative services and helping thousands of Brazilian companies and entrepreneurs to sell online. We are honored to have them onboard, to provide Brazilian companies and consumers with broadened access to the very best payment solutions," said João Del Valle, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of EBANX.

Founded in 2014, Juno's platform allows Brazilian merchants to sell online through Pix, boleto bancário and credit cards, in addition to managing their payments flow in their own digital accounts. Besides enabling payments with Pix, Juno offers BaaS (Banking as a Service) capabilities and is a member of the Brazilian Interbank Payments Chamber (CIP), which acts as a clearinghouse that validates user data for security purposes and identity check. The solutions developed by Juno have led to a total volume of more than BRL 4.7 billion in 2020, representing a growth of over 130 percent, and they have positioned it as one of the most important fintechs serving SMBs and larger corporations in Brazil.

"This is an exciting moment in the history of Juno. EBANX's trust in our work proves the value of our solutions and gives us the opportunity to grow our services and portfolio. We are very happy to be part of EBANX's big dream and what we can achieve together from now on,” said Juno Product Director André Carréraat.

At today’s Spending Review, the government has announced its plans for spending over the next three years, from 2022/23. This includes a number of measures to support smaller businesses, to be delivered by the British Business Bank.

Catherine Lewis La Torre, Chief Executive, British Business Bank, said: “The package the Chancellor has announced today enables us to build on our range of programmes to support sustainable economic growth by increasing the supply, diversity and demand for finance for UK smaller businesses.

“We welcome the provision of this funding to deliver our expanded programme of activity, enabling us to make over £4.9bn of financial commitments and loans. This includes £1.6bn to provide investment funds for the Devolved Nations, and the North, Midlands, and South West of England, £150m to invest alongside business angels across the UK, and resources to provide 33,000 Start-Up Loans over the next three years.”

“A six-month extension to the Recovery Loan Scheme will also provide valuable support for smaller businesses as they look beyond the pandemic towards the opportunities available to them in the recovery.”

The announcements in the Spending Review include:

Supporting finance across the regions and Nations of the UK – expanded Regional Funds and Regional Angels Programme

The British Business Bank’s three regional funds – the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, the Midlands Engine Investment Fund, and the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Fund – and the Northern Ireland Growth Finance Fund have delivered over £1bn of public and private sector funding to smaller businesses in those regions, helping to address regional funding gaps.

The government recognises the success of these funds in its £1.6bn commitment to a next generation of funds:

• £660m for the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, including an expansion into the North East of England
• £400m for the Midlands Engine Investment Fund
• £200m to provide a new fund for businesses in the South West of England, building on the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Investment Fund.
• £150m to provide a new fund for Scottish businesses
• £130m to provide a new fund for Welsh businesses
• £70m to expand provision for businesses in Northern Ireland

We look forward to working with the Devolved Administrations’ economic development banks and local stakeholders to deliver this increased support.

We also welcome the additional funding for the Regional Angels Programme, which will enable commitments of a further £150 million over three years, investing alongside angel syndicates into high potential businesses across all the UK’s regions and nations. The programme has fully committed its initial £100m allocation, with 85% of investments outside London helping to reduce regional imbalances in access to seed and early-stage equity finance for smaller businesses.

Multi-year settlement for Start Up Loans

The government also announced that it will provide funding for 33,000 Start Up Loans over the next three years, maintaining delivery at the expanded level agreed at Spending Review 2020.

We welcome this extension to the programme, which means that even more people across the UK will now be able to access the finance they need to start a business. The programme has a strong record of providing funding to less well represented groups including women, people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, and the unemployed. This new funding will help create more opportunities for the best talent to access finance regardless of factors such as social background, gender, ethnicity and age.

Extension of Recovery Loan Scheme

At Autumn Budget 2021 the Chancellor announced that the Recovery Loan Scheme will be extended by six months to 30 June 2022, having already seen total funding of over £1bn offered to businesses by the scheme’s diverse range of accredited partners.

Ongoing activities

The government has confirmed that throughout the three years from 2022/23 it will continue to provide the British Business Bank with the resources to help drive sustainable growth and prosperity across the UK, and to enable the transition to a net zero economy, by supporting access to finance for smaller businesses. This includes confirming funding for the Future Fund Breakthrough programme and the Life Sciences Investment Programme, both of which launched this year.

Sovcombank has reduced its ownership stake in SPB Exchange from 12.9% to 9.99% by selling part of its stockholding. The Bank’s stake was purchased by shareholders, some of the Bank’s key partners, as well as the management company Sovcombank Asset Management. Each buyer purchased an insignificant share.

Sovcombank decided to reduce its equity stake in SPB Exchange in order to bring its share below 10% so as to treat this holding as an immaterial investment.

Sergey Khotimskiy, co-owner and First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sovcombank, said:

“This transaction will enable us to manage capital more effectively right away, especially in the context of the Bank of Russia’s plans to regulate dead assets. At the same time, we gave access to a first-class investment idea to our shareholders, major partners and customers. The Bank is not planning to further reduce its stake in the Exchange, and our management company may increase it.”