Torsion Care (Derby) Devco Ltd is set to complete a new development of 64 retirement apartments, with a £12.5m development finance solution provided by Shawbrook Bank.

Founded in 2015 by Dan Spencer, Torsion Developments operates across a range of property sectors, including student and residential. Martin Hutson joined with Dan in 2018 to establish Torsion Care, with a focus on the growing demand for stylish and practical retirement housing for the over 55s market.

Last year, Torsion Care secured land at Manor Kingsway, Derby to create a new Burghley Retirement Living development with 64 individual apartments, communal lounges, a gym, a library, 2x guest suites and Serviced office accommodation. Burghley operated developments encompass high quality, low maintenance sustainable homes which facilitate independent and carefree living for the over 55s and cater for extra care facilities in later life.

Torsion Developments was already working with Shawbrook on a 361 bed student accommodation project in Lincoln when Torsion Care approached the bank to discuss funding for the retirement development in Derby.

Supported by the bank’s specialist Healthcare Finance Team, the Development Finance Team at Shawbrook undertook a detailed assessment of the project and decided to extend its facilities to provide property development loans for the retirement and care home sector. The bank structured a £12.5m development finance loan for Torsion to progress the development.

Martin Hutson, Director of Torsion Care, said: “Over the last few years, we have seen an increased need for homes that are designed to suit the independent living style of the over 55s yet have the longevity and cater for extra care facilities for later life. 

“With this in mind, we introduced Burghley Retirement Living and then identified the opportunity to build a new retirement complex at Manor Kingsway. We then wanted to work with a funding specialist that grasped the overall aim of the development and could support us throughout the life of the project.”

“The Development Finance team at Shawbrook have extensive knowledge of the property industry and, bringing their healthcare finance team onboard where required, they quickly understood requirements relating to the retirement and care home element of the project and arranged the funding to make this happen.”

Alastair Partridge, Senior Relationship Director for development finance at Shawbrook Bank, said: “We’ve known Torsion for a few years now and are already working with them on an existing project, so recognise their development expertise and ability to deliver a high quality product.

“The scheme at Manor Kingsway was an interesting challenge as we were entering a new sector for the Development Finance Team and needed to consider the retirement and extra-care elements of the project. Fortunately, our in-house Healthcare Finance Team have extensive knowledge of this sector and with their assistance, we could move swiftly to support Torsion Care with this development.”

Wealth8, the new digital wealth management platform with a full-service mobile app, is providing access to global investment funds and diversified funds from the largest global asset manager, BlackRock Asset Management. Their service is aimed primarily at the black & multi-ethnic community being largely the African diaspora in the UK.  The mobile app will also be made available to Africans living in major economies on the continent such as Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya, by next year. Traditional wealth and investment managers have largely overlooked this demographic.  

Wealth8 is the first black-owned digital investment platform that provides access to diversified portfolios of investment products managed by BlackRock, the largest international asset manager.  It is opening up access to wealth creation opportunities by de-mystifying the language of investing, by providing an easy and affordable way to invest in globally managed funds. 

Wealth8 has launched an iOS and Android mobile app, which is now available for early access.  

Black African households typically have ten times less wealth or savings than their white British counterparts[1]. Indeed, many UK savers – if they have savings - just use cash savings accounts or cash ISAs that currently pay minimal rates of interest, which, with the inflation rate beginning to rise substantially, means that they’re losing money in real terms. Wealth8 will be bridging this wealth gap by providing the tools and knowledge needed to save and invest for their future.  

Wealth8 differentiates itself by bringing together a community of like-minded individuals serious about growing their wealth, learning the language of investments and engaging on lifestyle and money issues that resonate with the black and multi-ethnic communities. 

Bimpe Nkontchou and David Fisayo, co-founders of Wealth8, have identified that the African and multi-ethnic communities in the UK and on the African continent are lagging behind in successful wealth creation due to their lack of sufficient financial education to support financial planning, savings and investment in a strategic and coherent fashion. Since 2014. Bimpe Nkontchou has been managing a UK-based wealth advisory and asset management business, providing advisory and investment services to High-Net-Worth African families and entrepreneurs. She remains passionate about democratising wealth management services beyond the very wealthy and sees community building and financial education as the most effective means of doing this.     

Bimpe Nkontchou said: “Investments and savings are becoming ever more crucial and while equities entail more risk than deposit accounts, the returns, whether in the form of dividends, capital appreciation or both, are likely to be considerably higher over the long term. While investors attitude to risk, investment timescale and life stage should guide their investment strategy, investing in the markets is a responsible way to grow their assets and plan for their long-term financial wellbeing. Wealth8 is a proactive proponent for increased financial awareness amongst the UK’s black and multi-ethnic community. We have specifically designed our digital platform and mobile app to make it easy to invest for them to invest their money by first assessing their fund options, so that their investments are based on their personal circumstances and requirements.”    

Wealth8 encourages investors to start building wealth with as little as £8. The goal is to provide easy access at a low entry point for its investors.  

Wealth8 are celebrating black history month with a “#Mywealthis” campaign aimed to document the black wealth experience with unscripted reflections on what wealth means within their community. The idea is to take the opportunity to put a positive light on wealth creation within the black community.  

David Fisayo adds: “As a millennial, I recognise that my generation are the gatekeepers of the future and need to be financially equipped to create a more dynamic and equitable society. Weath8 is changing the narrative of wealth for future generations within our community.  Financial literacy is particularly important in today's society, where from a young age, we are all exposed to consumerism and how to spend money. The Covid-19 pandemic has seen a drive to earn and make money with recent events like the Gamestop frenzy shedding light on this. We’re determined to support more people on their wealth management journey using community building, financial education and investing as tools for building long-term wealth.”  

Wealth8 offers an iOS and Android mobile app. Visit www.wealth-8.com to download the app for early access now. When investing, the value of your investment may rise or fall and there are no guarantees you will get back all the capital you have invested. Tax treatment depends on the individual circumstances of each client and may be subject to change in the future.  

·       The regulatory environment has made it increasingly challenging for providers to offer personalised financial support and guidance in a way that goes far enough to help a customer to make their own decisions with greater confidence. Personalised guidance, to help people narrow their options without giving a personal recommendation, would be a great step forward.  

·       Financial advice would also be more accessible to more people if regulation allowed access to more varied forms of advice and guidance services. Many clients are willing to pay an upfront fee for more personalised services or one-off advice, with 48% willing to pay £250 and 27% comfortable with spending £500.  

·       Under the current proposals from TISA and the industry, financial service providers would like to see the regulatory obstacles removed to allow firms to offer personalised guidance and simplified advice to consumers, to fill the gap between advice and information.  

EY Seren research commissioned by The Investing and Saving Alliance (TISA) found that millions of potential savers and individual investors are struggling with the ‘financial advice gap’, with many willing to commit to saving but unable to access the support they need. The sheer demand was highlighted by the number of those who would access personalised online support tools from financial services providers if they were available (73%).  

Many of those surveyed referred to the amount of information online and the challenges of identifying sound sources. The volume of opinion led to feelings of being overwhelmed, and therefore paralysis and inertia, with savings kept in cash.  

However, the research also found significant numbers willing to save or invest and even pay for support if it made saving and investment decisions easier for them. EY Seren asked if potential clients would be willing to pay a fee for such services, with a significant 48% willing to pay an upfront fee of £250 and 27% comfortable with spending £500. Additionally, an average of 63% were interested in the six propositions for personalised guidance or information tested in the research.  

According to the findings, customers see high-quality, full financial advice as expensive but valuable. A common perception was that paid-for financial support was 'not for someone like me', but for those with significant sums or with a significant decision to make such as buying their first property. One respondent noted: "I’ve always thought in 10 years when my salary is higher, then I would speak to someone, it would cost money, but you’d recoup the money." 

There is a vast pool of potential new savers and investors willing to pay for support services, but the industry needs to respond by creating different propositions at different stages of the customer journey. EY Seren’s research supports the thesis that personalised guidance and support would bring more consumers with small portfolios into the market, who would then access fully fledged advice when they accrued more capital.  

The end-goal of TISA’s collaboration with the FCA and providers would be to see amendments made to the regulations around Advice, to allow firms to offer access to various forms of support and guidance services, from fully-fledged, high-quality advice to personalised guidance to more helpful information. The industry could then help individuals understand which support service would be most valuable to them at various points in their life: information, personalised guidance or advice. 

The full research is available here [link].  

Relevant survey results here:  

Prakash Chandramohan, Strategic Policy Director at TISA, [or other TISA representative] said: “The FCA, Government and Industry need to build a sustainable framework and create a future where consumers have access to a wider range of support initiatives to make saving & investment decisions - from fully-fledged, high-quality advice to personalised guidance to more helpful information.   

“This would help millions more consumers get the type of support they need. It would bring a substantial new customer base to financial services providers, including advisers. Personalised support and guidance would give people greater confidence and mean better outcomes for the many. In turn, it would help highlight to people when they need advice. The industry, the FCA and TISA are working hard to create a framework which will benefit consumers, advisers and providers, and I would like to invite further views from the community as the consultation continues.” 

Julie Green, Innovation and Digital Director at Aviva said: “This study presents an opportunity to our industry and the financial advice community. We know that millions of customers who would benefit from advice or guidance are not getting the support they need to make financial decisions around savings and investment. This is a growing concern and will impact future outcomes for many households.  

“Full financial advice is and will always remain the gold standard when it comes to supporting customers making complex decisions about investments and retirement, but we believe there is an opportunity to increase the accessibility of support to a wider group of customers by providing a range of options including Personalised Guidance and Simplified Advice, improving the financial well-being of many people. This research provides the customer insight to support that view, and we look forward to working with TISA, the industry, and the FCA to explore these options and better serve our customers.” 

Supernovae Labs, the first fintech accelerator in Italy dedicated to banks and financial institutions, joined forces with Salt Edge, open banking pioneer, to provide Italian financial institutions and third-party providers a much more secure and reliable way of aggregating bank data and initiating payments powered by PSD2.

Most Italian consumers and businesses are multi-banked, the concept of “being married to a bank for life” being long forgotten. As a 2020 report revealed, Italy’s end-users are mostly interested in saving time (57%) and ease of use (45%) when it comes to using digital banking. These figures can be easily extended to the 60% of the respondents in another survey who have stated to physically visit the bank a maximum of 2 times per year. The relationship between consumers and financial institutions is substantially changed, by putting the customer back at the center and allowing them to choose the services that fit their needs best.

Understanding the rapidly evolving paradigm, Salt Edge and Supernovae Labs are offering an open banking platform, ensuring connectivity to thousands of banks from over 50 countries worldwide. The collaboration between these two companies will help financial institutions leverage open banking opportunities and provide their clients with even more customer-oriented services, including getting an aggregated view of account data from the EU and other parts of the world, alongside the interpretation of it into financial insights, and initiate payments from banks across Europe.

We’re delighted to partner with Salt Edge who has proved to be a leader in providing open banking solutions. We, at Supernovae Labs, are committed to helping businesses accelerate their development by integrating high-end solutions, and Salt Edge’s Open Banking Gateway is bringing to the table exactly what the Italian market needs. We are looking forward to building a strong relationship and a successful partnership.

Carlo Giugovaz, founder and CEO at Supernovae Labs

Salt Edge’s Open Banking Gateway is providing connections to over 5.000 banks worldwide for account aggregation and enables payment initiation from more than 2.500 FIs in Europe. There are so many use cases emerging from these possibilities, from retail banks, lenders, credit bureaus to accounting companies, eCommerce, and others.

Open banking is redesigning the European payments’ market and drawing a clear line between how things used to be done and how they can be done now.  Joining forces with Supernovae Labs is directly supporting startups and is boosting innovation and contributes to creating a new competitive landscape with new rules of the game, allowing new players to participate – and all this with the main focus on the end-user.

Andrei Scutari, Country Manager Italy at Salt Edge

• UK launch is first phase of European expansion

• Mobile wallet to consign barriers to entry to the past and accelerates mass adoption of decentralized services

• State of the art staking vaults make truly non-custodial earning a reality

'Crypto Made Easy’ pioneer Divi, has taken a major step towards its goal to create a fully decentralized, private payment solution that drives crypto’s mass adoption, with the UK launch of its user-friendly mobile wallet. The UK is the first in a multi-region rollout that will see it expand the reach of its services across Europe.

Developed by Divi Labs, Divi’s fintech innovation centre, the ‘Smart Wallet’ includes a suite of innovative features that solve the issues of usability and accessibility that have frustrated mainstream use, while delivering on the company’s promise of individual custodianship and financial sovereignty. They include: 

• Readable addresses that take the risk out of sending/receiving cryptocurrency 

• The company’s proprietary 1-click masternode technology, which enables users to deploy a node and earn DIVI at the press of a button

• Staking vaults that ensure anyone who owns DIVI can earn no matter how much they hold or the technology/bandwidth at their disposal 

Launching with four cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and DIVI, Divi intends to quickly expand the digital and local currencies available as well as adding on-ramps, to enable users to easily convert their crypto into fiat currency and vice-versa.

Nick Saponaro, co-founder and CIO, Divi said: “There are already 2 million crypto holders in the UK and we’re excited to help onboard many more. Most non-custodial wallets require a long and confusing onboarding process that’s unfamiliar to the majority of people. By  pushing complexity to the background and creating a familiar and intuitive user experience, we’ve ensured that anyone can use our wallet, without compromising on security or ownership of their keys and coins.”

In addition to eliminating barriers to entry, Divi’s proprietary1-Click Masternodes and Staking Vaults deliver ground-breaking advancements in cryptocurrency earnings technology. Its mobile MOCCI (mMOCCI) enables users to set up a masternode from their mobile phone with little to no technical expertise and earn additional income from their DIVI coins. 

Unlike other forms of staking, Divi’s staking vaults do not require an always-on internet connection to run after set-up, no technical expertise is needed to install them, and by removing the need for a third-party custodian or pool manager, they put the user in full control of how their coins are staked.

The Divi Project was established in 2017 to accelerate crypto’s mainstream adoption. Through Divi Labs, the company’s fintech innovation center, the company is developing world-class decentralized solutions that make cryptocurrency faster, more secure, and accessible to people at all levels of technical expertise.

Divi’s wallet is available today in Apple’s app store and Google’s Play store.

Qumulo, the breakthrough leader in radically simplifying enterprise file data management across hybrid cloud environments, today announced its position as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage for the fourth consecutive year. Gartner, Inc. positioned Qumulo® in the Leaders Quadrant based on its Ability to Execute and its Completeness of Vision.

“Unstructured data is powering our progress as a society. Organizations that create everything from the cars we drive, to the programs we watch on TV, to the healthcare we receive are tackling data challenges in ways we’ve never seen before,” said Bill Richter, CEO of Qumulo. “Qumulo has led a customer movement to harness their data with simplicity and scale anywhere, from the data center to all three major public clouds. We believe our recognition as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant reflects the power of our product to transform customers and their data towards a better future for us all.”

Qumulo has a high user adoption rate spanning industries. Customers in healthcare and life sciences, higher education, media & entertainment (M&E), financial services and more choose Qumulo to help them massively simplify the process for storing, managing and building with unstructured file data at scale. Close to 70% of Qumulo customers each manage 1PB or more in Qumulo. Qumulo provides a software-defined solution designed to be operated at the edge, in the data center and natively on public cloud infrastructure in any geographic region, thus giving customers unrivaled freedom, control and real-time visibility.

Qumulo is playing a key role in enabling organizations to migrate, build and scale file-based workflows to the cloud while offering more options for the storage of data than the traditional NAS environment. 

Fortune 500 companies, major film and animation studios and some of the world’s largest research facilities rely on Qumulo to manage billions of files. Qumulo ranks among the highest Net Promoter Scores (NPS), consistently over 85, and is recognized by users for its dedication to customer satisfaction.

Qumulo has an Overall Rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars in the Gartner Peer Insights’ Distributed File Systems and Object Storage market as of September 2021, based on 97 reviews.

Download a complimentary copy of Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage.”

Planixs, the leading provider of real-time, intraday cash, collateral and liquidity management solutions, has announced today  that its Realiti® software suite has been selected by Nord/LB as the bank embarks on a digital transformation project to  overhaul its treasury operations.  

NORD/LB Norddeutsche Landesbank is one of the leading German commercial banks. The core business segments include business  with corporate customers, private and commercial customers including private banking, as well as special finance in the energy and  infrastructure sector, aircraft finance and commercial real estate finance. The bank is headquartered in Hanover, Brunswick and  Magdeburg and has branches in Bremen, Oldenburg, Hamburg, Schwerin, Düsseldorf and Munich. Outside Germany NORD/LB is  represented by a Pfandbrief Bank (NORD/LB Covered Bond Bank) in Luxembourg and branches in London, New York and Singapore. 

As part of a large-scale banking transformation project, Nord/LB was looking for a software solution that would provide the bank  with advanced treasury capabilities, in particular the ability to automate treasury processes and gain a full holistic view across all data and customer accounts. The firm was also specifically seeking a solution that would allow it to improve cash and liquidity  management, meet BCBS 248 regulatory requirements, aid intraday stress testing and, ultimately, benefit from cost savings due to  optimising liquidity buffers. 

Following a rigorous RFP process assessing a number of solutions in the market, Planixs’ real-time treasury software, Realiti®, was  selected as the preferred solution. Impressed by the benefits that Realiti offers and hearing how other banking firms in the DACH  region are using the technology to improve their treasury processes, Nord/LB signed a contract for Realiti, opting for the full suite of  modules to ensure regulatory compliance and operational insight across liquidity and inventory. 

Kornelie-Reiner Steinbach, Director Norddeutsche Landesbank, Treasury Head of Liquidity Management comments: “We are  delighted to have selected Planixs’ Realiti Suite to improve our regulatory reporting capabilities and to manage our cash and  liquidity in real-time. We assessed the full solution market and selected Realiti as the best solution to meet our global needs. We are  looking forward to working with the Planixs team and building a long and successful relationship whilst experiencing all the benefits  that Realiti offers.” 

Neville Roberts, CEO at Planixs adds: “Planixs has seen significant growth in the DACH region in the last two years and we are  delighted to add Nord/LB to our growing customer-base in Germany. As more and more banking firms are realising the need for real time insight across their treasury operations, we are seeing a demand for our software suite to transform treasury processes,  improve efficiencies and reduce costs. We are excited to implement our full Realiti software suite at Nord/LB as part of their banking  transformation project.” 

Planixs’ Realiti software suite continues to be the pioneering real-time cash, collateral and liquidity management solution - with  customers including Santander, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), Allied Irish Bank (AIB), SIX Group, Banque Internationale  à Luxembourg (BIL), Lloyds Banking Group, Scotiabank, Deutsche Bank, Ghana International Bank (GHIB) and Zenith Bank – amongst others. The solution is the only platform in the market that provides financial institutions with a true, real-time, 360-degree  view of their data - allowing them to fully control and enhance their operations - resulting in improved efficiencies, automated  processes and cost-savings.  

ADVFN's cryptocurrency platform (https://www.advfn.com/cryptocurrency) has received further endorsement in awards celebrating excellence within the personal finance space.

The MoneyAge judges praised the breadth and depth of ADVFN's cryptocurrency coverage – noting the additional 3000 crypto assets that have been added in the last year – and commended the platform's market-leading suite of crypto analysis tools. ADVFN's cryptocurrency channel now includes charts, price data, fundamentals and news for over 10,000 cryptos (mineable/non mineable, listed/non-listed coins and tokens); all available for free.

One of the key developments on ADVFN's cryptocurrency section in the past 12 months has been the addition of its DeFi list (https://www.advfn.com/cryptocurrency/defi). This includes more than 1000 tokens that are utilised within decentralized applications. These assets can be filtered according to numerous variables such as market cap, volume, change in price and platform (for example Ethereum or Binance Chain) and includes data such as circulating supply, maximum supply, algorithm, genesis date, ranking and other fundamentals. As part of the developments within the decentralised finance ecosystem, the year has also seen the platform adding Uniswap V2 and V3 data feeds.

Key features:

• Full suite of cutting-edge analysis tools - Users can filter crypto and DeFi assets according to a large array of criteria
• Connects to all of the top global cryptocurrency exchanges for trading data
• Toplists featuring percentage gainers/losers, volume and trades etc
• Alerts for new coins and tokens entering the market - https://uk.advfn.com/cryptocurrency/new
• Real-time, streaming market data on listed cryptocurrencies most of which with Level 2 data
• Cryptocurrency converter for all cryptos and tokens on the platform  
• Crypto assets can be viewed alongside all other assets within the ADVFN ecosystem
• Educational resources 

"ADVFN is seeing a surge of interest in cryptocurrencies and increasingly DeFi assets, so we're constantly developing and expanding our offering to cater for this demand," said Clem Chambers, CEO of ADVFN. "Our cryptocurrency section is extremely popular with investors and traders and receiving this award cements our position as a market leader for crypto data and analysis tools."

All MoneyAge winners can be viewed here: https://moneyage.co.uk/awards/winners21.php

Proposed order would require nation’s largest reverse-mortgage lender to pay $1.1 million penalty for deceptive acts aimed at older homeowners

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today filed a complaint and proposed consent order alleging that American Advisors Group (AAG) used inflated and deceptive home estimates to lure consumers into taking out reverse mortgages. The CFPB also alleges that AAG’s deceptive conduct violated a 2016 administrative consent order that addressed AAG’s deceptive advertising of reverse mortgages. If entered by the court, the proposed consent order would prohibit AAG from future unlawful conduct and require AAG to pay $173,400 in consumer redress and a $1.1 million civil money penalty.

“American Advisors Group violated consumers’ trust by advertising reverse mortgages with inflated and deceptive home-value estimates,” said Acting CFPB Director David Uejio. “The CFPB will act decisively when we uncover consumer harm or practices that seek to take advantage of vulnerable populations.”

American Advisors Group, based in Irvine, Calif., is one of the nation’s leading providers of reverse mortgages. A reverse mortgage is a special type of home loan that allows homeowners who are 62 or older to access the equity they have built up in their homes and defer payment of the loan until they pass away, sell, or move out. The loan proceeds are generally provided to the borrowers as lump-sum payments, monthly payments, or as lines of credit. Homeowners remain responsible for paying taxes, insurance, and home maintenance, among other obligations. 

Falsely enticing consumers into reverse mortgage negotiations

The CFPB alleges that AAG violated the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010’s (CFPA’s) prohibition on deceptive acts and practices. Specifically, the CFPB alleges that AAG:

• Deceptively inflated home values: In marketing their reverse-mortgage products, AAG provided consumers with inflated estimates of home values to entice them to enter into negotiations to open a reverse mortgage. AAG’s actions were deceptive because they would lead a reasonable consumer to believe that the consumer could reap more proceeds from the reverse mortgage than were actually available.
• Made deceptive representations about the accuracy of home estimates: AAG’s marketing materials to consumers stated that it “makes every attempt to ensure the home value information provided is reliable.” In fact, AAG made no real attempt to do this. AAG’s misrepresentations induced consumers to rely on AAG’s inflated estimates and to enter into negotiations with the company.
• Violated 2016 administrative consent order: In December 2016, the CFPB filed an administrative consent order against AAG for a variety of deceptive statements made in marketing materials that violated the CFPA. The order prohibited AAG from violating the CFPA for five years, or until December 2021. The deceptive acts and practices committed by AAG as described in this complaint violate the 2016 consent order.

Enforcement Action

Under the CFPA, the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions and persons that violate federal consumer financial laws. The proposed settlement, if entered by the court, would require AAG to:

• Cease illegal practices: AAG would be prohibited from engaging in deceptive practices and must cease misrepresenting estimated home values to consumers. AAG must also refer its customers and prospective customers to specific CFPB materials about reverse mortgages.
• Provide monetary relief to consumers: AAG would pay $173,400 in redress to address harm to consumers who were enticed by the deceptive home values, paid for and received appraisals, and decided not to proceed in obtaining a reverse mortgage.
• Pay a $1 million civil penalty: AAG would pay a $1.1 million penalty to the CFPB, which would be deposited into the CFPB’s Civil Penalty Fund.

The proposed consent order against AAG has been filed with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and would be effective only if entered by the court.

Read the complaint filed with the court.

Read the proposed order filed with the court.

Read the 2016 press release announcing the previous enforcement action against AAG.