• The Springboard to Sustainable Recovery report finds 50% of UK’s carbon reduction can be delivered by SMEs
• Transition to net-zero could create up to 130,000 new jobs and around 30,000 new SMEs, as per the Springboard to Sustainable Recovery report
• NatWest targets £100 billion of Climate and Sustainable Funding and Financing for its customers by the end of 2025 and plans to launch SME green loan

A report published today by NatWest sets out the potential opportunity that exists for the UK economy from the transition to net-zero, finding that SMEs could create up to 130,000 new jobs, produce around 30,000 new businesses and result in an estimated £160 billion opportunity for the UK economy. The report finds that there is a significant opportunity for the UK to be a global leader in the transition to net-zero.

The report also found that the UK’s 6 million Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can achieve 50% of the UK’s Net Zero decarbonisation goals, if they receive the right support through funding, knowledge, and training.

NatWest has announced a series of initiatives, leading with a target to provide £100 billion of Climate and Sustainable Funding and Financing (CSFF) by the end of 2025 (from 1 July 2021). Part of this new CSFF target will help to support the investment needed to transition the UK to a net zero economy and will help to support the bank’s customers including SMEs on their transition to a net zero and a more sustainable economy[1]. 

This marks an acceleration in NatWest’s ambition to support UK decarbonisation and the Government’s Net Zero Strategy, in-line with the 10-point plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. The report and its associated initiatives are intended to support the efforts to halve the bank’s financed emissions by 2030 and meet the net zero targets by 2050, in line with its commitments as a founding member of the Net Zero Banking Alliance.

While the report’s finding that less than 10% of SMEs currently see climate action as a source of future growth, it found that SMEs have two distinct opportunities to create value from delivering climate action: driving business value by reducing their own emissions and unlocking growth through wider climate action. With the right support, the vast majority of SMEs could benefit financially from reducing their carbon footprint, and through supporting the UK’s transition by delivering activity like residential retrofitting, installing renewable power equipment, upgrades to the electricity grid and installing electric vehicle charge points.

The report calls on financial institutions, government, industry bodies and large corporates to play their role in collectively supporting SMEs to unlock the climate opportunity.

NatWest also plans to launch a new green loan product for SME customers, new specialist Accelerators for Clean Transport and Circular Economy, new tools for businesses to monitor their carbon footprint, and mandatory climate training for all its relationship managers in collaboration with University of Cambridge and University of Edinburgh.

The report makes six clear recommendations where SMEs need most support to achieve effective transition:

1.    Funding Access – financing that reflects the societal benefit of delivering climate action and ensures that business initiatives and investments make financial sense.

2.    Awareness – support to recognise the opportunity from climate action, highlighting key skills required to transition successfully.

3.    Knowledge – help to reduce their impact and improve their ability to measure and report their impact.

4.    Skills and capabilities – support to develop new skills to deliver transition, such as training employees, achieving accreditations and certification, and management capabilities.

5.    Market access – improved financial certainty of the benefits of broader climate action.

6.    Navigation – support to navigate the complex and evolving landscape, understanding what support is available and what will most benefit their business.

Alison Rose, Chief Executive, NatWest Group said:

“According to the Springboard to Sustainable Recovery report published today, SMEs play a critical role in the UK economy, contributing around 50% of total UK turnover and around 60% of employment. We have identified the potential opportunities as being worth £160bn for SMEs and the UK economy, and we want to do everything possible to support our customers in achieving a share of that prize. This report is the response to what our business customers are telling us they need in terms of practical support as they face a complex decision-making process.

“We are with them on every step of the journey that takes them from awareness and understanding, to ability to act, and finally to achieving positive climate and financial impact.  Our ambition to play a leading role in the UK’s transition to a net zero economy is why we are targeting £100 billion of Climate and Sustainable Funding and Financing by the end of 2025.

“I’m firmly of the view that we should never underestimate the power of the small - and in this instance SMEs - for leveraging big advances. What this report tells us, in clear numbers, is that all sectors of the economy will need to play their part in helping the UK achieve its climate ambitions. We must look at this not just as an imperative, but as an opportunity for businesses.”

Lord Nicholas Stern, Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment, said:

“In the fifteen years since we published The Stern Review, governments and businesses have been slow to recognise the enormous and growing threat that climate change poses to economic development. This report by NatWest is timely and important, and makes it clear that the UK’s small, start up and innovative firms need support to capitalise on the emerging opportunities from the transition to a low-carbon economy.

“Fifteen years from now, we will know whether we will succeed or fail to meet the UK’s net-zero target, and the UK’s SMEs will play a defining role in the outcome.”

The report is the second in NatWest’s ‘Springboard’ series of reports, following March’s ‘Springboard to Recovery’ report into SME recovery, post-pandemic. The report was created in consultation with partners including McKinsey, Microsoft, British Chambers of Commerce, Federation of Small Businesses, CBI, Blackrock, CoGo, HVM Catapult, ScaleUp Institute and National Farmers Union (NFU).

The full report can be found here: natwestbusinesshub.com

• Staking services will enable institutions to earn rewards on Proof-of-Stake protocols including Polkadot, Tezos, and Cardano

• The platform addresses market demand for institutional-grade digital asset yield and earning services

• Comprehensive earning services include staking, DeFi, and centralized lending and borrowing

SEBA Bank, a fully integrated, FINMA licensed digital assets banking platform, today announced the launch of SEBA Earn, an institutional-grade solution enabling clients to earn yield on their crypto holdings. 

The launch of SEBA Earn caters to growing demand from institutions to manage a range of digital asset yield use cases from staking to decentralized finance (DeFi), and centralized lending and borrowing. SEBA Earn’s comprehensive staking management platform will enable institutions and individuals to generate rewards from their crypto investment on networks including Tezos, Polkadot, and Cardano; with more protocols coming in the coming months. 

As the DeFi industry has rapidly grown to reach a total value locked of over USD 80 billion, institutional investors are seeking trusted and regulated counterparties to provide services in the space. SEBA Bank will be the first regulated bank to offer a FINMA licensed gateway that will enable professional and institutional investors to access yields in permissioned DeFi protocols. 

SEBA Earn will also provide support for centralized lending and borrowing services, enabling investors to generate yield by lending Bitcoin and Ethereum directly with SEBA Bank. As part of the ongoing development of SEBA Earn, SEBA Bank will continue integrating support for additional coins.

Guido Buehler, CEO of SEBA Bank, commented, “It is clear that as institutional interest in digital assets accelerates, investors have a broader appetite for crypto assets, with a particular interest in earning services like staking, DeFi and centralized crypto borrowing and lending. SEBA Earn, our comprehensive digital asset earning offering, provides professional and institutional players with a flexible platform and a trusted, regulated provider to securely enter the space. Innovation is a core tenet of our philosophy at SEBA Bank and I am excited to demonstrate our industry-leading innovation in delivering our clients the cutting-edge technology that they need to stay apace with the rapidly evolving digital assets industry.”

Powering enterprises’ digital transformations across Asia

Colt Technology Services, a leading global provider of agile, high bandwidth connectivity solutions, has today announced the availability of its new 400GE Wave and Private Wave services, making it the first telco to offer the technology in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Based on Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) coherent optical technology, the 400GE service builds upon Colt’s high bandwidth optical portfolio delivered on the IQ Network, which includes Wave, Spectrum, and Private Wave, to deliver the next generation of services with unparalleled end user experience over a fully programmable network.

Since the launch of its IQ Network in 2016, Colt has continued to drive innovation in optical networking via an extensive program of investment, testing and deployment of leading-edge technologies. In Asia, the Colt IQ Network connects to more than 95 data centres and 6,800 on net buildings, along with more than 900 data centres and over 29,000 enterprise buildings globally.

Colt will use Ciena’s Waveserver 5 platform, powered by WL5e 800G technology, to enable efficient 400GE between locations on the IQ Network to meet the highest levels of bandwidth demands from customers.

This follows Colt’s announcement from March 2021, which shared its successful provisioning of 600G wavelengths in a long-haul live network in Japan in close collaboration with Ciena – making Colt the first and only provider with long distance 600G capability in the country.

Masato Hoshino, Colt President and Head of Asia, said: “Being the first to deliver 400GE commercially in our metro networks across the Asia Pacific region reflects Colt’s position as an industry pioneer. This is a milestone for connectivity in Asia and reflects our commitment to delivering next-generation agile connectivity solutions to the region. Customers in Asia are demanding increasingly high bandwidth services, and we’re continuing to innovate and help transform the way they do business.”

Kazuyasu Takahashi, Vice President and General Manager, Ciena Japan, said: “To keep up with evolving digital lifestyles and the networks that support them, leading providers like Colt understand how critical it is to have a network that can adapt and respond seamlessly and efficiently. Ciena’s WaveLogic technology address this need by adding more scalability, programmability and intelligence to Colt’s network.”

Providing service with comprehensive detection and threat analysis on vehicle data and cloud infrastructure threat data starting January 2022

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global cybersecurity leader, and Fujitsu Limited agreed to collaborate with automotive-related manufacturers to strengthen connected car security measures.

With this collaboration, Fujitsu will provide a security countermeasure solution for connected cars, the V-SOC (Vehicle-Security Operation Center) service, and Trend Micro Cloud One will protect the backend cloud infrastructure. These solutions will work in tandem to detect vehicle abnormalities such as gas pedal and brake malfunctions, and add detection capabilities for unauthorized communications and attempts to tamper with telematics servers, as well as security data on the cloud infrastructure. All these elements are detected and analyzed in an integrated manner.

The two companies aim to provide new security services to be verified globally, including in Japan, Europe, the United States, and the APAC region starting in January 2022. The new services will make it possible to visualize the overall picture of potential cyberattacks by detecting threats originating from cloud infrastructure, representing an easy target for the attackers, and linking these detection capabilities with alerts in the vehicle. The new services will additionally make it possible to identify the location of the threat and the extent of the impact of cyberattacks and take measures at appropriate points that need to be dealt with, offering robust support for security measures for connected cars from automotive-related manufacturers.

From 2022, the two companies will work to strengthen security measures for vehicles themselves in addition to cloud infrastructure.

Currently, cybersecurity regulations in the automotive industry are based on the regulations defined by one of the subcommittees of the World Forum for Harmonization of Automotive Standards (WP.29) (1). The WP.29 regulations are required to be applied to CSMS (Cyber Security Management Systems). These regulations describe the need for a system to collect, monitor, and analyze threat information both inside and outside the vehicle to realize autonomous driving. Automotive manufacturers around the world are taking countermeasures based on this guidance.

By linking Fujitsu's V-SOC and Trend Micro Cloud One, it is possible to get insights into cloud infrastructure security logs in addition to vehicle data, enabling more threat information to be detected and collected. By correlating the collected data with SIEM (2), when an incident occurs, users can promptly determine the origin of the attack and the extent of its impact and provide the customer with information for a prompt response. This solution is a one-stop service that strongly supports customers' security measures for connected cars.

The new security solution developed through this collaboration will be rolled out globally, including in Japan, Europe, the United States, and the APAC region to automotive manufacturers, automotive suppliers, automotive leasing, and car rental companies developing businesses in fields such as connected cars, electric vehicles, and autonomous driving.
In the future, Fujitsu will promote efforts toward realizing smart cities with mobility as a point of departure, leveraging a variety of vehicular and traffic data collected in areas such as autonomous driving and logistics. Trend Micro will continue to provide security solutions for the new society of connected cars and mobility.

Exberry provides scalable infrastructure at the heart of ProMEX’ groundbreaking trading platform 

Exberry, the exchange technology pioneer, is providing its “Marketplace as a Service” technology at the heart of ProMEX, the digital marketplace for physical commodities.  The new technology partnership will enable ProMEX to create new products and markets at speed, and securely offer trading in a wide variety of commodities in new ways.

ProMEX delivers an end to end digital experience in physical commodity trading. The platform provides direct, real-time trading without intermediaries or clearing houses and eliminates settlement risk for its users. This shortened settlement cycle also reduces counterparty risk.  Exberry’s matching engine is central to this process.

The way most commodities are currently traded is rather traditional - a bilateral negotiations process which is opaque and inefficient. At the same time, many small and medium size commodity firms and investors are not familiar with risks associated with commodity futures markets. ProMEX brings simplicity and efficiency to trading such commodities, all from an intuitive mobile application.  

ProMEX’s new marketplace is now live with its first commodity Moutai, the national wine of China.  Users can buy, hold, sell, make or take delivery in Moutai, without having to  organize logistics or set up a storage facility.  Users can simply download the app  from their preferred app store to join the platform. ProMEX will develop other physical commodities including “green” products to promote sustainability among the relevant industry users.

The flexible modular structure of Exberry enables clients to rollout marketplaces at speed and global operations to be run from a single location. Exberry’s easy to integrate “Marketplace-as-a-Service'' with its matching engine at the heart, allows ProMEX and their users to reap the full benefits of the exchange-grade trading solution, rolling out new services and markets at speed.

Mark Ho, Co-Founder & CEO of ProMEX, said: “Exberry has allowed us to go from idea to working platform in a matter of weeks. The marketplace as a service concept is so well executed that we had a conversation in the morning, and a developer was working on the system that afternoon.”

Commenting on the announcement, Magnus Almqvist, Head of Exchange Development, said: “Collaboration and innovation are fundamental to Exberry, and our native SaaS solution helps bring innovation to the market. We are very excited to work with a visionary firm like ProMEX to create  a new peer-to-peer marketplace with enhanced price discovery solutions.  As ProMEX continues to add new commodities for trading to the platform, Exberry can help them deliver new customer experiences and easily scale as they grow.”

• New partners include PensionBee, Glint Pay, Upside, Homebox, So-Sure, Anorak, and Uinsure.

• mmob’s growing network of partners enables banks and large fintechs to embed and offer compelling, complementary services from a range of industries using one line of code.

• Fintech partnerships that once took weeks or months can now be achieved in days.

Open finance partnership platform, mmob, has today announced the addition of a wave of new partners to its open finance network. Including prominent brands such as PensionBee, Upside, and Glint Pay, the latest signings enable banks and large fintechs to quickly and easily embed a plethora of services to their online ecosystems from a range of industries including pensions, alternative payment offerings, money transfers, multiple types of insurance, cashback, and household services. 

The new additions to its open finance partnership platform see mmob making strides to becoming the UK’s first SuperApp-as-a-Service (SAaaS) provider. The growth of mmob’s network ensures banks looking to offer compelling, complementary products can do so with a single line of code and directly compete with digital challengers like Starling and Monzo. In addition, consent-driven user data will deliver unrivalled insights partners can use to determine what customers want and pinpoint additional services worthy of their investment.

“In this digital era, consumers expect their bank to be at the forefront of innovative new ways to manage their money. Yet the pensions industry still lags behind, with many pension providers continuing to use slow paper-intensive processes,” said Jasper Martens, Chief Marketing Officer, PensionBee. “Our partnership with mmob furthers our commitment to bringing pensions into the 21st century so all consumers - not just customers of neo banks or new money apps - can plan and save for a happy retirement.”

mmob’s open finance platform has been engineered to eliminate the complexity, time, and resources financial service providers need to select and deploy partner-driven services. Through its API, financial institutions can quickly and easily connect to mmob’s network of third-party partners (TPPs) and embed new services that drive customer engagement and retention. In return, mmob’s TPPs gain rapid access to new verticals. 

“The current economic uncertainty, rising inflation, and increased taxation is a triple threat to people’s savings and retirement funds,” said Jason Cozens, CEO, Glint Pay. “Alternative savings vehicles and stores of wealth are needed to protect consumers. Our partnership with mmob will ensure banks can offer these alternatives while helping us to access more consumer markets and accelerate our commercial pipeline.”

The full list of new partners includes online pension provider: PensionBee, online money transfer service: Glint Pay, frictionless cashback provider: Upside, household services platform: Homebox, mobile insurance provider: So-Sure, the insurance companion: Anorak, and insurtech provider: Uinsure.

“Research from McKinsey Digital suggests that people are increasingly seeking simple, holistic, embedded offerings and are flocking to multiproduct customer experiences,” said Irfan Khan, CEO, mmob. “As the financial services landscape becomes more decentralised and fragmented, it is essential that financial institutions can find ways to retain customers by keeping them engaged.” 

“We’ve seen the success that super-apps such as WeChat have achieved and wanted to find a simple way for the banking and fintech sectors to quickly and easily add services to their digital platforms. I’m extremely proud of how quickly our offering is growing and look forward to launching our second cohort of connected partners within the coming months.”   

• The Visa Ready Program helps enable partners to build and launch payment solutions that meet Visa’s global standards

• The partnership will enable Paynetics to accelerate the expansion of its innovative banking-as-a-service solution

• By collaborating with Visa, Paynetics is continuing its mission to “make payments simple everywhere”

Paynetics, a regulated e-money services provider, today announced it has secured Visa Ready certification, which enables partners to build and launch payment solutions that meet Visa’s global standards. Securing this status marks a significant moment in Paynetics’ mission to make payments simple everywhere.

The pandemic has increased consumer demand for easy, efficient, and secure mobile payment solutions, particularly in the UK and Europe where there is an active gig economy. Through its extended collaboration with Visa, a world leader in digital payments, Paynetics is expanding its banking-as-a-service solution to the gig marketplace, enabling traders and temporary workers to gain access to their wages instantly and more easily.  

Paynetics enables traditional players to digitise their offer and powers corporates, the public sector and fintechs to meet growing customer expectations and needs. Achieving Visa Ready certifications means that more businesses can take advantage of Paynetics’ modular digital payments platform to design, build, and operate financial products that meet the needs of their customers. Ultimately, the extended partnership will help increase the number of instant payment services across Europe, providing more products that gig workers can rely on for easy and fast access to their wages.

Mike Peplow, CEO at Paynetics UK said: “We are thrilled to be in the company of other innovative fintechs certified by Visa. Businesses and consumers are increasingly demanding better banking solutions and services, and financial institutions need to be equipped with the tools to service these needs. We are a digital first enabler for brands in Europe and being Visa Ready certified will further accelerate our global growth ambitions allowing us to support customers in markets around the world.”

Jill Docherty, Head of Business Development, UK&I at Visa comments: “We’re delighted to be extending our partnership with Paynetics and proud they have achieved Visa Ready certification. Demand for digital payments has grown exponentially as a result of the pandemic. By working with partners like Paynetics, we’re able to provide people with the help they need to participate and take advantage of the digital economy.”

Read more about Paynetics’ services here, or achieving Visa Ready Certification here.

●        Vested Finance launches Vested Direct – An innovative fund transfer solution    

●        Seamless, easier & faster way to transfer funds to your U.S. investing account

Vested Finance, an online investment platform that enables Indian investors to invest in the US stock market in a smooth and hassle free manner, today announced its partnership with SBM Bank India, to enable an easier, faster & seamless experience to deposit funds into Vested accounts.

As per the partnership, Vested Finance and SBM Bank India have launched a first-of-its-kind online cross border fund transfer solution in India, called Vested Direct. Traditionally, Indian investors looking to invest in US funds like Apple, Amazon, Facebook & Microsoft, had to use their existing bank accounts to transfer funds. This involved multiple steps and investors had to incur high foreign exchange markups and fixed transfer charges. The transfer would take up to 5 days. With Vested Direct, the process is a significantly better experience with simple steps to initiate a transfer, lower charges, and a faster deposit timeline.

Speaking on the partnership, Viram Shah, Co-Founder & CEO, Vested Finance, said, “We have seen rapidly increasing interest, amongst Indian investors, to diversify their portfolios internationally. So far, the biggest bottleneck has been the deposit journey due to high charges and the tedious process. At Vested, our aim is to make diversification easy. Our partnership with SBM Bank will help investors start building their international portfolios in a way that’s never been possible before. Vested Direct is a solution that has been launched for the first time in India and will enable seamless, safe, and transparent fund transfers that are 100% online and charge low fees. We’re excited!”

With Vested Direct, investors open a free of cost, no-minimum-balance savings account with SBM Bank funds. Investors can load funds in INR that can be converted to USD to eventually transfer into their Vested account. 

Speaking on the partnership, Neeraj Sinha, Head- Retail & Consumer Banking, SBM Bank India, said, “We believe banking is meant to solve problems and collaboration is the key to sustained solutions. Partnering with Vested Finance is in line with both our beliefs –making the challenge of overseas investing seamless for end users while empowering Vested to create a credible and accessible global investing platform. This partnership with Vested Finance will enable Indian investors to geographically diversify their portfolios in a smarter manner.”

Metatrader 4 is a platform that facilitates consumer brokerage services to customers involved in Forex Trading. It is an online trading platform that enables and empower its users with all their trading related solutions. Meta 4 is a software that is unique in its kind that has a user friendly interface equally convenient for PCs and mobile devices.

Description tag: The MetaTrader 4 platform is the most reliable and popular Forex solution for brokers. The salient features of MetaTrader 4 Platform are: 

1. MetaTrader 4 overview: a dive into functionality

Per latest statistics almost 32.4 % of the forex traders use MetaTrader 4 platform for forex trading. Reason behind the 32.4% market share is that MT4 has the ability to provide the most updated Forex Trading Information that a broker needs to pitch its customers. MT4 also not only provides updated information but it also provides information on any News and development that may affect the trading business.

2. The platform interface and key features

MT4 has been in the forex market since 2005. Ever since its inception it has been bringing innovations and improvement in its services that has made MT4 platform standout among its competitors in terms of services and user friendly interface and features.  This user friendly interface and features has made MT4 platform a powerful trading system compatible with different strategies and knowledge levels. The MT4 platform is equally effective for both beginner and professional level traders.

The platform’s interface is quite straightforward, including the following features:

• “File” unites setting commands and enables users to manage their profiles.

• “View” allows traders to manage windows, toolbars, and programming languages.

• “Insert” opens a set of indicators, lines, and other instruments to apply on a chart.

• “Charts” contains setting and control commands for charts and indicators.

• “Service” enables users to create new orders, control the platform settings, etc.

• “Window” manages chart windows.

• “Reference” contains additional commands and a technical analysis section.

MT4 is a set of interactive charts, 9 timeframes, 23 analytical instruments, 30 technical indicators to get maximum benefits from the trading process.

H2: Types of orders supported by MetaTrader 4

The MT4 trading platform supports market orders (buy/sell) and pending orders (buy/sell stop, buy/sell limit).

Market orders allow users to buy or sell assets by the current market prices, while pending orders enable traders to buy or sell assets in the future by the indicated price. The platform offers two ways of order execution: instant and market.

Furthermore, users may leverage stop loss, take profit, and trailing stop options to control their trading process.

MetaTrader 4 supports a number of orders, but brokers may decide which types to suggest for their clients.

H2: New horizons for brokers

The convenience for traders is obvious, but what about brokers? Can broker companies get some pros from the MT4 Forex solution?

1. Integration with the CRM system. Manage traders’ statistics to make the most beneficial offers to your clients.

2. Connect multiple plugins to extend the platform’s functionality for obtaining reports, integrating innovative payment solutions, etc.

3. Broadcast quotes and financial news from Reuters, Bloomberg, and other channels, enabling your traders to get timely updates.

When it comes to the financial part, brokers always need to get a cost-effective solution. The license for MT4 costs more than $100 000, but B2Broker, a leading company known for its innovative course, offers the best Forex White Label solutions; this is why a broker company may cut expenses several times.