Know-it, the all-in-one credit management solution, has announced the appointment of Phil Hobden as its Head of Strategy and Growth.

As an expert in the fintech field and a well-known name within the UK accounting industry, Phil brings over 15 years of experience, strategic vision, and passion for business growth to the team at Know-it. His experience in leadership, empowering accountants and SMBs will accelerate Know-it’s growth opportunities.

The fintech industry, start-ups and the accountech space are familiar to Phil’s leadership experience. He has spent years leading and building sales teams, defining go-to-market strategy and growing business success.

The mission of Know-it is to expand its services globally and assist SMEs worldwide in realizing the importance of automating the credit control process.

CEO and Founder of Know-it, Lynne Darcey Quigley, comments on the announcement: “With a rich background in fintech, Phil holds a strategic role which will guide Know-it’s strategic direction, global ambition and collaborations which will drive growth and impact in the sector” “We are super excited to have Phil join us, working with Accountants and their clients is very important and I believe Phil is the person to drive this relationship”.

Phil Hobden commented: “As a company with a strong existing leadership and ambition, Know-it offered the opportunity for me to work in a booming fintech scene with a great product and the aspiration for it to be the leading light in the industry.”

“Through partnering with accountants, bookkeepers, and advisors, I plan to build on Know-its ground-breaking work so far into the advisor led space, ensuring that we make a lot of noise in the process. Simply put EVERY SME should be using Know-it and whilst there are other software’s in the market there that touches on what we do, no one has yet nailed that end-to-end piece like we have.”

Canada is witnessing an increasing interest in Islamic finance, particularly in areas like housing finance, mortgage finance, and takaful (Islamic insurance) products. Some small level Islamic finance institutions in the Canadian market are offering the financial services that adhere to Sharia principles.

Alhuda Centre of Islamic Banking and Economics (CIBE) – UAE, a leading global Islamic finance consultancy and advisory firm, recently conducted a two-day specialized training workshop on the basic and practical aspects of Islamic banking and finance in Toronto, Canada. Islamic finance is a rapidly growing industry worldwide, and Canada is no exception. While Islamic finance is still in its early stages of development in Canada, it is gaining popularity among both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The growing popularity of Islamic finance in Canada is a positive development for the country’s economy. Islamic finance can help to promote financial inclusion and economic growth. It can also help to strengthen Canada’s ties with other Muslim-majority countries.

Mr. Zubair Mughal, CEO of Alhuda CIBE, spoke at the workshop about the importance of Islamic finance in promoting religious harmony and financial inclusion. He said Islamic finance is a system, not a religion. Muslims have a distinct advantage, as it aligns with their religious principles, but it also offers non-Muslims a unique and ethical way of managing their finances. This is an inclusive system that benefits everyone, regardless of their faith. 

Mr. Zubair Mughal added that the religious harmony in Canada makes it an ideal atmosphere for Islamic finance, and due to the large number of Muslim immigrants, demand of Islamic banking products is increasing in the market. This industry not only caters to the financial needs of Muslims but also resonates with individuals seeking ethical and socially responsible financial solutions. 

The specialized training workshop by Alhuda CIBE aimed to equip participants with a comprehensive understanding of Islamic banking and finance principles and their practical applications to the Canadian Market. It also provided a platform for industry experts to share insights and experiences. Through initiatives like the recent workshop, Alhuda CIBE continues to play a vital role in promoting the principles of ethical and responsible finance in Canada.

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.”

Gartner disclaimer:  

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.”