Wealthtech provider’s digital-first offering makes SIPPs more accessible and affordable for fintechs and their customers

• New API functionality will allow firms to offer digital SIPPs flexibly and affordably

• Flexible model caters to both digital and paper-based transfer needs

• Penny, the pension-tech company that consolidates savers’ pensions into one place, is one of the first customers to integrate the new offering 

WealthKernel, a wealthtech provider for digital investment services, today announces the launch of its new digital SIPP (self-invested pension plan) offering. The new functionality will enable WealthKernel’s clients to offer digital SIPPs to their customers, using WealthKernel’s new API product wrapper.

The new digital SIPP offering, which is integrated over API, will enable WealthKernel’s clients to future-proof their business with a regulated, digital-first proposition that meets the needs of modern customers, whilst still offering the option of paper-based pension transfers where required.

WealthKernel’s digital offering arrives at a time when younger, digitally native consumers are engaging more actively with their finances and demanding increased accessibility to financial products. With most SIPPs on the market still relying on paper-based transactions, WealthKernel’s digital SIPP now provides an innovative, digital-first alternative to those wanting to be more proactive with their pension savings.

Penny, a pension-tech firm that uses automation technology to help users find and transfer all their pensions savings into one place, is one of the first businesses to integrate WealthKernel’s digital SIPP. Penny will use the product to offer its users additional retirement saving capabilities alongside their traditional pension pots. 

Karan Shanmugarajah, CEO of WealthKernel, says:

“SIPPs are an incredibly valuable savings vehicle that allow people to have more say over how their pensions are invested, and we’re thrilled to be helping bring them to a wider audience. Thanks to seamless integration with our APIs, fintechs large and small will be able to support their customers with greater flexibility for their retirement savings.  We look forward to working with the likes of Penny and many other forward-thinking businesses to help improve access to wealth management services.”

Josh Stott, CEO of Penny, says:

“This partnership with WealthKernel is an exciting step towards serving our customers even better by giving them more control over their pensions. When we founded Penny, we set out to make finding, viewing and managing pensions easier and we’re thrilled that WealthKernel is powering us further along that journey with its simple, affordable technology. We hope this unlocks a new mindset for our customers, who will now be able to view all of their old workplace pensions in one SIPP product, empowering them to make pension investment decisions that work for them and their ideals.” 

Recognized by Gartner as a Leading Vendor in the innovative Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) risk management category, Radiflow’s ROI-driven OT risk assessment and management platform offers multi-site prioritization based on attack simulations, keeping teams better protected and within budget.

Radiflow, a trusted provider of Cyber-Security Solutions for critical business operations, announces a revolutionary new enterprise-level risk management system for OT facilities that allows CISOs to view all their sites on one dashboard. This latest release also offers a first-of-its-kind, non-intrusive breach attack simulator that takes into account the business importance of each site so the CISO can find the most vulnerable points on their industrial automation networks across all their sires, allowing them to practice the most effective mitigation tools.

OT facilities and production sites don’t have the capability to temporarily shut down operations for CISOs to run simulated attacks since it may take days to stop and then restart operations entirely. The latest release of CIARA (Cyber Industrial Automated Risk Analysis Platform) allows for a digital twin of multiple facilities to be created on the same UI in order for security and risk teams to execute OT-BAS (Breach & Attack Simulations) in a global enterprise view. This takes the guesswork out of OT by letting teams anticipate the impact of potential threats via simulations of known attacks from a continuously updated global database. They can then simulate WHAT-IF scenarios of mitigations to decide which course of action would be most suitable in light of the changes in the threat landscape.

While this has been a common practice to prepare for attacks in the IT world through twin-network simulations, it is the first time that an OT environment can benefit from this proven strategy. “CIARA is now a central environment where CISOs can evaluate proven security techniques against the latest threats without tampering with their existing network”, said Ilan Barda, Founder & CEO of Radiflow. “Utilizing the revolutionary all-in-one dashboard to keep an eye on all global operations is a critical step to preventing any cyber attack on vital OT facilities.” 

Radiflow’s newest CIARA software release was recognized as a vendor in the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) risk management category, which is in the Innovation Trigger of the Gartner® report titled, “Hype Cycle™ for Cyber and IT Risk Management”, 2021. Since its release, CIARA has earned acclaim for its capabilities in providing a data-driven approach to OT Security, especially following multiple major OT attacks, such as on the Colonial Pipeline and JBS. 

The ability to configure business importance for each site and benchmark top sites in a central dashboard while allowing site managers to view their individual risk posture and optimize their security roadmap, is a major step in securing potential vulnerabilities across multiple facilities. Allowing CISOs to continuously monitor and simulate vulnerabilities, based on recent attacks that have been attempted in their industry or location, has a significant impact on the quality of OT monitoring, without slowing down or stopping critical infrastructure.

New collaboration delivers impressive scalability, unmatched file density and increased cost savings in radically simple file system 

Qumulo, the breakthrough leader in radically simplifying enterprise file data management across hybrid cloud environments, today announced its collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to debut the highest file density node on the market for hyperactive data workloads, a compact 1U form

factor HPE ProLiant DL325 Gen10 Plus 291TB All-NVMe Node purpose-built for

Qumulo. Whether aggregating autonomous vehicle data, video surveillance and security data or capturing images while performing cutting-edge research, enterprises can now store the highest amount of data in the industry’s smallest all-flash data center footprint, while dramatically increasing scalability and cost savings simultaneously. 

Combining Qumulo’s award-winning software with HPE innovation, using the latest AMD and NVMe technologies, the new 291TB offering delivers 23% higher density than competitive solutions. This new configuration greatly reduces management overhead with more data stored in a smaller, compact hardware footprint, scaling from 675TB to over 22PBs in a single file system with radical simplicity. As a result, enterprises such as hospitals with high-density images like 3D X-rays that produce petabytes of file data, and put increased demands on their organization’s file storage system, can now easily manage that data at a lower TCO.

“As the world’s most important organizations create and store more data than ever before, Qumulo is focused on providing customers radically simple solutions to store and manage that growing set of data. Together with HPE, we can do exactly that,” said Ben Gitenstein, Vice President of Product at Qumulo. “Having the ability to store more data than ever before in a space that is smaller than ever before gives customers the ability to consolidate complex storage systems, choose radical simplicity over legacy complexity, all while lowering TCO.” 

The new 291TB offering makes it easier to combat operational costs and data center sprawl. Healthcare enterprises, for instance, can easily store and manage the equivalent of 25 billion genetic sequencing images or roughly 450 billion medical picture archiving and communication system (PACS) images in a single rack, to deliver patient care faster and more cost-efficiently than ever before. 

“Storage is critical to our business, which is basically a massive fire hose of data. We could not do our work without a high-performance, high density, scalable storage solution of some kind,” said Nathan Conwell, Senior Platform Engineer at Vexcel Imaging, the world leader in developing and manufacturing high-end cameras for large-format digital aerial photography.

“Qumulo on the 291TB All-NVMe Node from HPE is playing a crucial role in simplifying the data management for demanding petabyte scale workloads – such as video surveillance, autonomous vehicle data, or post-production visual effects for Hollywood’s biggest film studios – in the data center by reducing the physical storage equipment and resource consumption. Data center space costs are rising, and oftentimes, more space isn’t available at any reasonable price. The 291TB offering solves this problem,” said Patrick Osborne, Vice President and General Manager, Collaborative Products and Big

Data, HPE StorageVice.

To learn more about this collaboration, please visit this link. 

1. Background

Financial inclusion is the next step in the evolution of financial systems and has played a key role in the development of China's finance. Before 1978, China's macro economy was primarily regulated through fiscal policies, first establishing a modern banking system in 1985 with the creation of the People's Bank of China — China's central bank — along with commercial banks. Later, in 1991, the Shanghai Stock Exchange marked the emergence of capital markets in China. And more recently, China has been progressing towards financial inclusion; in 2007, the country established its first micro-loan company pilots, and in 2009, the ChiNext stock market (for growth enterprises) in the A-shares market (RMB-denominated equity shares of China-based companies and trade on either the Shanghai Stock Exchange or Shenzhen Stock Exchange).

On December 31, 2015, the State Council issued the Plan for Promoting the Development of Financial Inclusion (2016–2020), signaling the strategic importance of financial inclusion for China. Within this context, digital financial inclusion — a recent trend and business model in financial inclusion — has also been flourishing in China. Bei Duoguang and Li Yan (2017) define digital financial inclusion as a model of financial inclusion enabled by digital technologies. In China, it has already gone through four development stages, namely start-up, slow development, explosive growth, and then transformation and regulation. Throughout its development, digital financial inclusion has adhered to the G20 High-Level Principles for Digital Financial Inclusion, which were adopted and published at the Summit in Hangzhou in 2016 and aim to optimize inclusive finance services and increase people's well-being.

 2. Practices

There are four main drivers of digital financial inclusion in China: advanced FinTech, optimized infrastructure, stable and inclusive regulation, as well as innovation in business models and products.

Implied in its name is the dependence of digital financial inclusion on digital technologies, such as cloud storage, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain. These reshape the traditional concept of financial inclusion services, dramatically enhancing digital capabilities and reducing costs. Specifically, the Internet facilitates data transmission, cloud storage and big data technologies expand data storage, while cloud computing and AI improve data processing and usage. Typically, financial inclusion is unsustainable as a business model, lacking a positive cost-benefit ratio. However, these technologies enable digital financial inclusion by reducing overall costs, transmitting data faster, collecting more types of data, and enriching the economics of micro-finance. This happens both online and offline, so financial institutions continue to see return on investment.

At the same time, the Chinese government is strategically focused on extensive planning for digital technology, which is speeding up updates and transformations in digital inclusive finance. For one, the industry's development depends on comprehensive infrastructure. To this end, China has established a nationwide payment system that incorporates a variety of stakeholders. This includes licensed financial institutions (such as banks, payment and market infrastructure operators, as well as non-bank payment institutions), outsourced service providers that assist in business expansion or provide technical support, manufacturers of payment instruments or hardware equipment, as well as innovative FinTech companies. Together, they drive financial inclusion.

One of the key digital technologies in this entire process is mobile payment. Today, anywhere you go — rural or urban — in China, you will be able to pay using quick response (QR) codes. A large proportion of this market is dominated by Ant Financial, a digital financial inclusion service provider based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Its services enable users to complete daily transactions, take out loans, and much more, using only a QR code. In 2020, China recorded 123.22 billion mobile payment transactions amounting to CNY432.16 trillion, a year-on-year growth of 21.48% and 24.50%, respectively. Through integrating databases and credit information at different levels and domains, China has basically built up another major infrastructure — the Individual and Corporate Credit System, which hosts the world's largest number of individual and institutional users, thus driving financial inclusion from the administrative and market perspectives.

In general, China has a steady regulatory climate, thus smoothly shifting from centralized regulation and services early on to the co-existence of the People's Bank of China, China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), and China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). Furthermore, China's regulatory authorities have long encouraged financial research and innovation conducive to inclusive finance. More importantly, the Central Government actively promotes inclusive finance in an effort to reduce financial exclusion. An example of this is the agricultural financial policies issued annually since 2004 in the No. 1 document. These aim to establish a diversified system of rural financial services with lower access thresholds, encourage rural financial institutions to provide more support to farmers, and ultimately reform the rural finance system.

In addition to reshaping financial inclusion, digital technologies also encourage numerous business model innovations, which in turn facilitate financial inclusion. One typical example of innovation is customization. In fact, the biggest difference between digital and traditional finance lies in the transformation of financial services from single static products to dynamic tailored solutions. Essentially, this means that providers design bespoke financial services and products based on customers' individual requirements.

Download the Huawei Inclusive Finance Journal to get the latest trends and insights: https://bit.ly/3CYAqDl 

3. Outlook

"The only constant in life is change", said Heraclitus. Looking ahead, there are three clear trends in China's digital financial inclusion.

First, focusing on customer needs is key to digital financial inclusion. Ensuring that everyone has access to financial services requires tailoring services to a diverse group with complex requirements. A single service or product cannot suffice for everyone. To ensure that low-income customers have access, financial products and services need to address their unique needs and requirements.

Second, financial services need to be customizable. Digital financial inclusion emphasizes access to financial services for all and financial institutions are not required to provide full-scale services. Instead, it is more appropriate to determine the specific customer needs and offer tailored professional services. Therefore, the market needs to create space for customized digital financial services.

Third, digital financial inclusion will be closely integrated with other types of services. One example is bike-sharing, which has grown rapidly thanks to and in turn has encouraged the growth of mobile payments. Today, mobile payment has already become popular in transportation and shopping, and will likely penetrate other aspects of daily life very soon. 

4. Implications

The discussed practices and trends signal four implications for other countries.

First, focus on developing and applying science and technology at the national strategic level; particularly, there should be a focus on FinTech and digital technologies. These will reduce the cost of digital financial services, enhance service efficiency, improve customer experience, and satisfy emerging customer needs.

Second, it is important to address long-term infrastructure in education, healthcare, transportation, utilities, energy, and communications. These will facilitate financial service outlets, payment services, and credit systems, driving digital inclusive finance.

Third, there needs to exist an inclusive and stable regulatory climate. China's financial regulators have long required financial institutions to promote financial services and support major economic activities. Although most financial services have targeted large economic activities after 1978, there are still many policy documents encouraging financial institutions to provide services to small and micro enterprises as well as individuals.

Fourth, it is key to continue encouraging business model innovation in financial inclusion. The integration of technology and finance has already given light to many new business models, which create feasible solutions for sustainable digital financial inclusion. Apart from being guided by the government, financial institutions should also pursue this type of innovation in terms of finance systems and governance. 

5. Conclusion

Facing the continuous growth of technologies and innovation, we need to constantly consider the significance of financial inclusion. First of all, financial inclusion is the result of adjustments in the financial system, offering low-income groups access to financial services. Financial inclusion also signals macro economy re-balancing. Inclusive development urges financial institutions to serve the real economy and speed up technological innovation to achieve sustainable macroeconomic development. Last but not least, finance leads to a positive society. The call for financial inclusion is actually an aspiration for growth and development in the financial field amid social transformation. Beyond commercial values, financial inclusion also brings us long-term social benefits and human-centric development. 

For more industry leaders’ and experts’ view, we highly recommend you to download Huawei Inclusive Finance Journal. The leading financial transformation solutions and practices are all here: https://bit.ly/3CYAqDl

 

[1]This article is based on a publication by the Chinese Academy of Financial Inclusion (CAFI). The content draws on said publication along with Professor Bei Duogaung's speech during his visit to Huawei, and CAFI's reports such as China's Experience in Digital Financial Inclusion, Development Report of Digital Financial Inclusion in China, and The Role of Financial Inclusion in the Belt and Road Initiative.
 

Bowdon RUFC, a popular grassroots rugby union club in Greater Manchester, is the first sports club in the world to introduce a new membership scheme based on members’ unique finger vein patterns. As the club looks to bounce back post-COVID and safely reopen for members, it has given the final whistle to traditional memberships cards, asking members to scan their fingers to pay and prove identity going forward.

The club has rolled out a biometric system called FinGo, a unique finger vein mapping technology that enables payment and ID checks through a single scan of the finger. To use, members register their vein pattern once, connecting it securely to personal details and a digital wallet. Bowdon members can then scan their finger at the till to pay for food and drink in the clubhouse; and take advantage of discounts when paying with their finger.

As well as payments, the technology makes life easier for members by providing secure access to buildings and authenticating age, therefore removing the need to carry physical ID and devices. FinGo was given the go ahead to be used for age verification by Manchester City Council in July 2020, making it the first city in the world to introduce the technology for this purpose.

Tom Fleming, Chairman, Bowdon RUFC, said: “The club is really excited to roll out an innovative new scheme like this, and offer our members something different to the usual plastic cards. FinGo has made lives a little easier for members and staff too, as they’re able to come straight off the pitch and grab a drink without having to go fetch their cards. Already, we are seeing a steady shift away from traditional card payments or cash as members switch to FinGo.” 

“It’s also been an easy way for members to support us financially. Having been shut down for near enough a full year we’ve obviously felt the impact. We hoped that by giving people the option to pay with a Bowdon digital wallet and get a members’ discount, we can both support our cash flow and encourage the important social aspect to the club

FinGo partnered with Counter Solutions to introduce a pre-paid digital wallet for members to load in order to pay through their vein scan, through the Bowdon Rugby Way2Pay app.

Simon Binns, Chief Commercial Officer, FinGo, commented: “We’re thrilled to support Bowdon with this landmark launch. We heard about plans to introduce a plastic card-based scheme, and wanted to offer a better alternative. This also builds on the work we’ve been doing in Greater Manchester over the last two years.

“Vein mapping isn’t a far-off, futuristic technology. It’s here now, and can help make transactions of all kinds simpler and more secure. We also hope it can play a real part in the all-important COVID recovery, for clubs and businesses at any level and in every sector. FinGo has already been able to help bars roll-out test and trace collection systems, introduce COVID test verification in care homes, and now it’s supporting grass roots sports clubs to rebuild revenues, as is the case with Bowdon.”

Despite Bitcoin recently experiencing volatility, the asset is attempting to mount another resurgence towards a new record price. Crypto hedge funds are therefore increasingly projecting the asset to hit a new level towards the end of the year.

Data presented by cryptocurrency trading simulator Crypto Parrot indicates that 65% of 55 crypto hedge funds who participated in a survey remain bullish, predicting that Bitcoin will trade between $50,000 and $100,000 by the end of 2021. Another 21% believe the asset will hit the $100,000 to $150,000 price mark by December 31, 2021.

About 9% of the hedge funds also project a positive outlook stating that Bitcoin will trade at between $150,000 and $200,000 while 4% put the price target at $200,000. However, only 1% of the hedge funds project Bitcoin to trade below $50,000.

Elsewhere, the hedge funds at 63% also predicted the cryptocurrency market capitalization would hit a value of between $2 trillion and $5 trillion. About 21% projected the market cap to range between $1 trillion and $2 trillion by the end of the year.

Another 11% put the market cap at between $5 trillion to $10 trillion, while 2% put the projections upwards of $10 trillion. However, 3% believe the market cap will be below $2 trillion by the end of the year.

Institutional investment to potentially drive Bitcoin’s price 

With a majority of the hedge funds presenting a bullish outlook for Bitcoin, the report highlights some of the potential drivers. According to the research report:

"A possible influx of institutional capital will also propel Bitcoin's market capitalization to new levels. The asset's market cap has previously caught the financial world's attention by surpassing the valuation of traditional financial institutions like leading banks. Such developments have led Bitcoin to remain resilient mainly due to existing and potential investors becoming numb to negative news around the cryptocurrency."

However, the price projection might be hampered by the unclear regulatory outlook in most jurisdictions. Historically, negative regulatory news around the asset has resulted in the price dropping.

Read the full story with statistics here: https://cryptoparrot.com/article/65-of-crypto-hedge-funds-predict-btc-will-trade-between-50-100k-by-the-end-of-2021 

Wholesale and retail lenders leverage 6 Solutions data within Total Expert to improve broker and loan officer recruitment and engagement strategies

Total Expert, the customer experience platform purpose-built for banks and lenders, today announced the integration of mortgage market data and analytics platform 6 Solutions, a housing and banking data startup transforming how banks and lenders make strategic growth decisions. The integration empowers lenders with the data and engagement tools needed to find, attract, and retain mortgage brokers and loan officers.

“Attracting top talent is critical for growth across lending channels,” said Josh Lehr, director of technology alliances at Total Expert. “By partnering with 6 Solutions, one of the most robust business intelligence platforms in the mortgage industry, we’re able to close the data knowledge gap and arm recruiters with powerful marketing automation technology to grow their workforce and overall loan volume.”

The Total Expert and 6 Solutions integration brings data into Total Expert by leveraging more than 60 different data sources within the 6 Solutions platform, delivering a single source of truth for lenders. Through the patent pending process that filters and sequences the data to ensure its accuracy, lenders can research and create targeted lists of broker and loan officer contacts, and seamlessly export those leads into Total Expert for a central data source for recruitment activities. As a result, lenders can focus their loan officer and broker recruitment efforts based on their specific type of originations (FHA, VA, jumbo, etc.) so they can fill the right gaps in their workforce. Lenders can automate outreach, nurture leads, and manage workflows across their teams at scale.

“This partnership is a game-changer for wholesale and retail recruiters looking to expand their pipeline and deliver a consistent and repeatable strategy from the time they source a candidate to onboarding,” said Jeff Walton, CEO at 6 Solutions. “We’re beyond excited to partner with Total Expert to enable the most powerful marketing intelligence platform in the mortgage industry.”

Additionally, for wholesale lenders, the integration provides visibility into their share of originations with each broker to determine if there is room for growth and better understand their broker relationships across the market.

The 6 Solutions integration is available today for all Total Expert customers, providing a key component in managing recruiting efforts within the leading CRM and customer engagement platform to create a better experience for lenders and loan officers. In particular, it elevates the functionality within Total Expert for Wholesale by enabling wholesalers to build better relationships with brokers.