Glia, the customer interaction leader unifying Digital Customer Service (DCS), phone and automation on a single platform, is offering new generative AI tools to help financial institutions drive efficiency and improve the customer experience in a safe, secure way.

“Financial institutions want to embrace generative AI but have been hesitant because of potential risks surrounding data leakage, data integrity, privacy and, perhaps most notably, the impact to the customer,” said Justin DiPietro, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Glia. “Glia’s new generative AI tools help earn trust from customers while providing an open, flexible framework for financial institutions. It’s a win-win-win situation, bringing significant time savings for the service team, enhanced satisfaction for the customer and increased efficiency for the financial institution.”

Generative AI can help customer support teams become more productive and strategic while optimizing the value AI delivers today. Powered by large language models (LLMs), Glia features automate routine, repetitive tasks and act as a co-pilot for staff, helping them serve customers with greater speed and ease.

Glia’s generative AI tools are now part of the company’s existing AI Management Platform, which includes pre-built virtual assistants for banks and credit unions. The platform allows institutions to launch, manage and measure AI tools and resources into digital properties as well as the call center.

New features include:

• Universal AI Management framework enables financial institutions to create, manage and integrate AI and generative AI powered bots from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce and others into both customer and agent workflows. The tool allows institutions to orchestrate multiple specialized bots within the same conversation. 
  • The universal AI Management framework allows agents to utilize their own Gen AI models to seamlessly solve customer issues by leveraging AI-generated suggestions and guidance to respond more quickly, with proper context. 
  • Unified AI Reporting provides a single, consolidated view of all AI and Generative AI assistants deployed within Glia, helping AI managers understand what’s working, where value is being delivered and what needs to be improved.
• Banking Benchmarks provide an executive-level view for financial institutions to compare performance against similar-sized organizations, identify areas of improvement, make more informed decisions about their interaction strategy and monitor progress over time.

“This next wave of AI is significantly increasing the efficiency and productivity of customer service teams,” said Jay Choi, Chief Product Officer of Glia. “Many organizations are looking for how to incorporate it into their workflows. Our innovative generative AI features enhance employee skills while optimizing—not replacing—the power of human touch. We help organizations integrate generative AI into their existing processes and tools.”

Glia Virtual Assistant adopted by 100+ banks and credit unions; available in all major interaction channels (digital, phone and SMS)

In addition, Glia announced that its pre-packaged Glia Virtual Assistant (‘GVA’) is now adopted by over 100 banks and credit unions, making it the most widely adopted conversational AI solution in financial services. This comes hot on the heels of Glia’s announcement in spring that it had extended the GVA into the traditional dial-up phone channel, the primary service channel for many institutions. Today Glia is excited to share that GVAs are now also available in SMS and other major messaging apps. GVAs deliver real, meaningful value at scale today.

In the last year GVAs have saved financial institutions over 22 years of agent time. With this latest announcement, they now deliver this same proven experience and value available across all major interaction channels – digital, dial-up phone and SMS.

Scality, a global leader in reliable, secure and sustainable data storage software, announced today that it has been named by Gartner® as a Leader in the 2023 Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage, marking the eighth year in a row the company has received this recognition.

Scality has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant every year that Gartner has issued a Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage. The company believes that for customers, this is a testament to Scality’s Ability to Execute and the Completeness of the Vision.

Jérôme Lecat, CEO, Scality, said: “We believe our position in the 2023 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage validates our ongoing commitment to empowering our customers with storage deployments that address the fundamental business challenges of today — cyber resilience, agility, and cost control. In the three quarters of 2023 thus far, we’ve achieved more than a 350% increase in revenue for Scality ARTESCA, deployed Scality RING in demanding cloud settings, and expanded sales from our worldwide channel network. As we head into 2024, we will continue to invest and innovate to solve real-world data problems for customers.”

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GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. 

Provenir, a global leader in AI-powered risk decisioning software, today announced that it has been named a finalist in the “Credit Risk Solution” category for the 2023 Credit & Collections Technology Awards.

Winners will be unveiled Nov. 23 during an awards ceremony at The Midland Hotel in Manchester, England.

The Credit & Collections Technology Awards provide a focus on technology at a time when credit and collections companies face business pressure in the form of continued regulatory scrutiny. The awards examine different types of technology solutions which are helping companies enhance business strategy.

“A unified decisioning platform, covering everything from credit, fraud, compliance and product decisions, is key to long-term success, growth, and profitability,” said Frode Berg, Provenir’s Managing Director for EMEA. “Provenir provides AI-powered decisioning complete with case management, data, and insights, delivering the foundation for more accurate, automated risk decisions across the entire customer lifecycle. We’re pleased to be recognized for excellence in credit risk decisioning supporting a superior customer experience that maximizes the customer lifetime value.” 

Provenir’s AI-Powered Risk Decisioning Platform is a single, comprehensive cloud-based solution –not a selection of vendor products tied together. The platform unifies all of a financial services provider’s risk decisioning, data, AI and case management through a centralized user interface. It’s a unified solution that works together seamlessly and enables organizations to shorten the development lifecycle and get products to market faster.

Accelex, a leading provider of AI automation for private markets data acquisition, reporting and analytics, announced today it has closed a $15 million Series A funding round led by FactSet, a global financial digital platform and enterprise solutions provider, with participation from existing investors Illuminate Financial, AlbionVC, SixThirty Ventures and Expon Capital.

The capital infusion comes at a time of rapid growth for Accelex, allowing the firm to further expand operations, enhance product capabilities, and deliver exceptional client success. This transaction strengthens the relationship between the two firms, with Accelex's technology already a key enabler in FactSet's private markets growth strategy.

Transparency is vital for investors. However, unlike traditional assets, investments in private markets are plagued by unstructured content, often requiring expensive and error-prone manual processing. Accelex is transforming the way investors tackle these challenges by leveraging market-leading data science to automate the end-to-end workflows from document acquisition and data extraction to reporting and analytics. FactSet and Accelex are bringing innovation to the alternative assets industry, ultimately providing clients with solutions to better understand the drivers of investment performance.

"Data-driven decision-making is critical for our clients, particularly as their portfolios increase in exposure to private capital, where the acquisition, aggregation, and analysis of investment data has been a challenge," said Rob Robie, Executive Vice President, Head of Institutional Buyside at FactSet.  "We are thrilled to partner with Accelex on this journey to bring innovative solutions to private markets, united by our shared commitment to empowering the alternative investment community with superior data and analytics, enabling better investment outcomes."

"This partnership will solidify our position as a leader in the alternative investment data management and analytics space," added Michael Aldridge, President at Accelex. "Today we serve some of the world's largest and most sophisticated investors, and their service providers, delivering better data, faster while reducing their operational burden."

"We are delighted with the completion of this latest financing round with FactSet and the continued support from our financial partners," remarked Franck Vialaron, Chief Executive at Accelex. "This further validates the Accelex team, our approach to innovation, and the unique value proposition we offer our private markets clients."

This funding comes at an exciting time for Accelex. During the past 24 months the firm has embarked on a phenomenal growth trajectory, adding a large number of top-tier asset owners and allocators along with asset servicers and service providers as clients. These firms now represent a combined asset base of over $1.5 trillion, invested in more than 13,000 private market funds across 4,000 asset managers.

Zelig Capital Partners acted as financial advisor and Goodwin Procter LLP acted as legal advisor to Accelex. Mills & Reeve LLP acted as legal advisor to FactSet.

Funding Societies, the largest unified digital finance platform in Southeast Asia, today announced that it has raised US$7.5 million in debt from Norfund, a Development Financial Institution (DFI), which operates an investment fund owned by the Norwegian government for developing countries. This is the first debt transaction by Norfund with a FinTech SME lender in Southeast Asia.

Impact investments made by DFIs in Southeast Asia have seen a steady investment of about US$ 2 billion annually between 2017 and 2022 (amounting to over US$12 billion). Over half of these investments were channeled into the financial services sector, with the majority of the capital deployed through debt instruments. DFIs have the capacity and capabilities to support SMEs where commercial lenders and governments cannot – due to their strong financial position.

This is where Norfund comes in where one of its core areas of investments is to increase financial inclusion where it has contributed about US$4.54 billion in lending to 7.5 million clients to date. Funding Societies, in its mission to empower SMEs and provide them with greater access to credit, has achieved over US$3.2 billion in business financing serving about 100,000 SMEs across the region. Through this debt fundraise, the FinTech lender will be able to channel the funds via its range of tailored financing solutions to the SME segments across all the five markets it operates in.

Co-founder and Group CEO of Funding Societies, Kelvin Teo, said, “We’re honoured to partner with Norfund, backed by the Norwegian government. This milestone is not only a testament to our credit track record through COVID-19 and macro uncertainties, but also a timely opportunity to satisfy the growth capital needs of more underserved SMEs in Southeast Asia. We appreciate Norfund’s support in our mission and commitment to giving a fair opportunity for SMEs.”

Businesses categorised as micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) account for 99.9% of total establishments in the ASEAN region – contributing to 44.8% to the region’s GDP (gross domestic product). This debt transaction will serve as a bridge, via Funding Societies, for the funds Norfund manages between the public and private sectors in mobilising the reach of its investments further into Southeast Asia.

Fay Chetnakarnkul, Norfund’s Regional Director (Asia), said, “We have been impressed with how Funding Societies has been able to serve Southeast Asia’s underserved businesses with its broad range of financing solutions and solving cash management challenges faced by these SMEs. We are pleased to be able to support Funding Societies as the company expands its reach and increases financial inclusion further, enabling more businesses to grow and create much-needed jobs in the region.”

Payments Canada, the organization responsible for Canada's payment clearing and settlement infrastructure, has selected Nexi to further enhance the resilience of Lynx, Canada’s high-value payment system. Based on the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) model, wire payments cleared and settled using Lynx are fast, irrevocable, and made with real-time settlement finality.

Payments Canada is now using Nexi’s RTGS Extreme Contingency Solution (RECS), specifically designed to ensure the reliability and resilience of the Lynx system. The technology will help the organization continue to operate in the event of a disruption or sudden disaster.

The Nexi RECS technology provides the organization with an additional site that can be activated in the event of an emergency, such as malicious attack, network failure, natural or accidental disaster. If such an event were to occur, the technology would allow the organization to continue to provide a core service that underpins the Canadian economy until normal business is restored. 

“The safety and soundness of Canada's payment systems is Payments Canada’s top priority,” said Shawn Van Raay, Chief Information Officer at Payments Canada. “This work, completed in partnership with our Lynx participants, the Bank of Canada and our technology partners IBM and Nexi, provides a supplementary layer of resilience to support the continuity of our operations in a safe and secure manner.”

Renato Martini, Digital Banking Solutions Director at Nexi added: “This deployment in North America provides critical resilience to the national payment infrastructure of one of the world’s largest economies. Nexi RECS delivers a highly-efficient service that plays an incredibly important role in protecting and securing RTGS for central banks and payment system operators. At a time of global turmoil, we’re proud to have delivered another major deployment that will keep payments moving, no matter what.”

Pay with Bank transfer, powered by American Express, announces it has selected Nuvei Corporation, the Canadian fintech company, as its first acquirer authorised to promote and sell PwBt’s Open Banking-enabled payment method.

The innovative payment method enables consumers to complete transactions seamlessly from their bank accounts, without having to enter card details or complete additional authentication checks. For merchants, PwBt delivers a frictionless payment where funds are reconciled instantly, with attractive processing fees. Nuvei will be promoting PwBt to both existing and prospective UK merchants, supporting them with the integration of the Open Banking payment method into their ecommerce platforms.

In the UK, more than seven million consumers are making payments directly from their bank accounts that are powered by Open Banking. Companies in the travel and utility sectors have been early adopters, with the security benefits of PwBt making it an attractive option for high value, one off payments, such as holidays, and seamless and instant bill payments.

Nuvei customers will be able to integrate PwBt directly into their online checkout through their existing connection to Nuvei technology. Nuvei’s agile and customizable full stack payments solution enables online businesses to optimize their checkouts and back-end payments flow through one connection, streamlining relationships and giving a single view of all payments data from all customer transactions.

Philip Fayer, Nuvei Chair and CEO, commented: “We’re proud to be offering Pay with Bank transfer to our merchant partners to help them meet growing customer demand for efficient, secure payment options. 

“Our mission is to enable our customers to get closer to their customers through payments, wherever they are and however they want to pay. Powered by American Express, but available to anyone with a UK bank account, we know Pay with Bank transfer goes above and beyond to ensure a secure, yet frictionless, service that is available to everyone, and we’re delighted to be working together to bring these benefits to a new customer base.”

Holly Coventry, Vice President, International Open Banking Payments, said: “In today’s digital-first world, consumers are looking for simple and secure ways to make payments. Merchants that recognise this are seeing stronger conversion numbers and reduced cart abandonment. “The partnership with Nuvei will help us bring PwBt to more merchants, addressing these pain points and offering them a host of other benefits such as instant reconciliation and attractive processing fees. 

“This will help ramp up more widespread consumer adoption as the more frequently they’re given the option to use Open Banking payments, the more they will begin to trust and understand the benefits.”

All Nuvei partners that sell to consumers in the UK can now instantly integrate PwBt. The technology is powered by American Express but open to everyone with a UK bank account, meaning that customers can benefit from the frictionless payment method and enjoy American Express’ bank-level security.

Diving deeper into exploring what needs to happen to fully realise the potential of Open Banking payments from entering the mainstream, Nuvei and American Express are publishing a co-authored whitepaper: Reaching the tipping point: What needs to happen to realise the potential of Open Banking payments. The whitepaper examines consumer attitudes, awareness and understanding of Open Banking payments, and explores the factors which could be influencing or inhibiting merchant adoption.

Dundee based financial services firm Embark Group (Embark) today launches a brand new training facility in the city which promises to create a pipeline of high-value technology roles and inject fresh investment into the local economy. This facility is the latest part of a wider initiative, started in 2020, which aims to create 150 new jobs in Dundee. 

The Dundee Tech School is situated within Embark’s West Marketgait office and has initially recruited 12 graduates and career changers into junior software developer roles. Recruitment to the specialist positions is supported by an intensive eight-week training and development programme, in association with leading tech training organisation QA and Embark fintech specialists.  

The Tech School will be led by Engineering Community Lead, Rose Ulldemolins, who brings first-rate expertise and experience; having been on an almost identical career trajectory as the participants. Rose will work alongside the Embark Engineering Team to design, develop, and implement the internal training programme.   

The school, which is also being supported by Scottish Enterprise, will play a leading role in solving the acute skills and recruitment challenge for technology businesses nationwide. With its people-first approach, this initiative will frontload essential learning, empowering students to develop their confidence, and commercial productivity within six months. 1 in 10 new job openings in the UK are now technology related and Embark’s tech school will help fill the gap in training for graduates and new starters interested in a career in technology in Dundee.   

The programme provides participants with a permanent role and a highly competitive salary from the very start of their employment. It is designed to plug participants into the Embark business in Dundee for the long term, rapidly providing them with the skills necessary to excel in a career in technology.  

Embark has a deep commitment to Dundee and is focused on helping to create a financial hub outside Scotland’s central belt. Since becoming part of Lloyds Banking Group in 2022, Embark has continued to increase its investment in the local area, growing its customer service team and making Dundee its largest office in the UK with around 200 colleagues. Founding The Dundee Tech school is the latest example of Lloyds Banking Group’s ongoing purpose of Helping Britain Prosper.  

Jackie Leiper, CEO of Embark Group, commented: “Dundee is world renowned as a centre of excellence for digital skills and innovation, so it makes perfect sense for us to nurture future talent right here in the city. 

“I’m really excited about launching Embark’s first school dedicated to bringing more young people into fintech roles, which will increase the digital skills base in the local economy. For companies like ours to grow and provide customers with first class digital services it’s essential we have a pipeline of talented and skilled software developers, so I’m looking forward to inducting our first intake of students in a few weeks’ time.” 

Mark Newlands, Interim Director of Global Investment at Scottish Enterprise, said: “We’re very happy to continue our long-standing support for Embark with the establishment of its Dundee Tech School. The facility will help ensure future employees have the right skills for the role, by providing them with the latest expertise and knowledge to support Scotland’s dynamic and growing fintech sector. This project is also an example of partnership at its best, with business and the public sector working together to support high value employment in the local area.”