Cuckoo, the UK’s most loved national broadband provider, has announced a string of senior hires joining from some of the UK’s leading tech companies including Just Eat, Monzo and Bulb. Following growth of over 250% so far this year, the broadband challenger has doubled its headcount in just 12 months. 

Sarah Ahern has joined as Head of Strategy and Operations from Just Eat, where she led on strategy and projects. A member of Founders of the Future, an invite-only community launched by Founders Forum at 10 Downing Street, Sarah will lead on Cuckoo’s strategic relationships, including wholesale agreements and industry partnerships, as well as Cuckoo’s wider business and commercial strategy

Other senior-level appointments include Daniel Malik, who will be heading the service team as Cuckoo’s Operations Lead following three years as a Quality Assurance Analyst at Monzo. Ben Bentley, Cuckoo’s Finance Lead, also joins from Schroders Personal Wealth. 

Cuckoo are shaking up the broadband sector as the market's only challenger and have their sights set on the 23.4 million UK households currently signed up to one of the big four incumbents. Building the team required to meet these ambitious growth targets will be new Talent Manager, Rosie McInerney, who joins from smart insurance startup Hiro.

As the business continues to scale to demand and launch new product offerings, including the upcoming launch of Cuckoo’s own full-fibre broadband tariff, Cuckoo are onboarding two former Bulb employees with Matthew Garner joining as Product Manager and Mike Francis as Senior Frontend Developer, bringing their experience of growing and scaling a challenger brand to Cuckoo. 

These recent developments are a direct result of April’s successful $6 million investment round, led by RTP Global with JamJar Investments. RTP were early backers of Yandex, Delivery Hero and Datadog while JamJar backed Bulb, Deliveroo, Tails and Oatly. Other individual investors in the round include marketing veterans from Monzo, an early Stripe employee and Verizon’s former EMEA director.

Alex Fitzgerald, Founder and CEO at Cuckoo, said:

“Our mission from the very beginning has been to disrupt the broken broadband market, dominated by a large few who rip off their customers. At Cuckoo we will always put our customers first. I’m thrilled to welcome our new team members from some of the UK’s best tech businesses. Their experience will help supercharge our mission as we help households up and down the country delivering fast, flexible and reliable broadband.”

• Specialist insurance firm Inigo Ltd is the best funded start-up of 2020-21, with $800,000,000 raised since launching in 2020
• Also within the top 10 is Genesis Digital Assets, a bitcoin mining operator
• Seven London-based businesses dominate the top 10

Specialist insurance firm Inigo Limited is the best-funded start-up of 2020-21, a new study reveals.

Conducted by cloud accounting company Ember, the research analysed Crunchbase data to discover companies founded on and after 1^st January 2020 and identify those with the highest total funding since their inception.

Topping the list with funding of £800m raised since their founding in 2020, Inigo Limited offers specialist insurances in several regions including property, energy and terrorism and political violence.

In second and labelled as “the first fully digital and algorithmically-driven Lloyd’s syndicate” is London-based insurance firm Ki Insurance. Originally announced in March 2020, the organisation offers subscription-based, algorithmic underwriting for a variety of risks. Since its inception, the company has gained $500m in total funding.

The third highest-funded start-up of 2020-21 is the industrial-scale bitcoin mining operator Genesis Digital Assets – also based in London. Launched in May of this year and with funding of $125,000,000 since inception, the firm recently released its Q2 reports, highlighting what it referred to as the “emerging role” of Ethereum and Decentralized finance (DeFi) in the industry.

London-based companies dominate the top 10 list of the best funded start-ups – seven of the ten firms included are registered to operate within the country’s capital.

The list also reveals considerable variety in the types of businesses that are generating high levels funding. There are five companies focusing on finance and insurance, alongside those operating in industries as diverse as food delivery and nanotechnology.

Commenting on the findings, a spokesperson of Ember stated: “It is thrilling to see that, even in spite of the recent pandemic, start-ups within various sectors are receiving substantial funding in order to conduct their business. The top ten businesses have generated more than $1.8 billion in funding, so it’s clear that the British start-up scene is in rude health.”

The news follows research by Ember which revealed that retail is the UK’s best industry in which to start a business. It came out on top of the overall industry rankings thanks to one of the highest survival rates, and a healthy ratio of companies being started compared to businesses failing

The study was conducted by Ember, the cloud accounting company which automates accounting and tax to help make business admin simpler and more cost effective for freelancers, contractors, start-ups and small businesses.

- Open Banking Initiative Canada (OBIC), which is a not-for-profit advocacy organization gathering great minds in finance, technology, and regulation, to advance Open Banking as an innovative and inclusive force for good, has partnered with Open Banking Expo, a global community of Open Banking and Open Finance executives responsible for digital transformation across the financial services sector, to boost the growth of Open Banking and Open Finance across Canada.   

Though efforts have already been made to adopt Open Banking in Canada, which will allow consumers to consent to the secured sharing of data with all service providers including banks, credit unions, wealth management firms, and Fintechs, the Open Banking initiative is still in its nascence in the country.  

Commenting on the partnership, OBIC Board Member Michelle Beyo said: “We are pleased to partner with Open Banking Expo to help leverage our expertise, relations and experience in the sector to continue to advance Open Banking in Canada and around the world.

“At OBIC, our mission is to be a single voice for the financial services industry that represents the viewpoints of its key participants: consumers, Fintechs, payment services, banks, and industry experts.” 

Over the past two years, OBIC has been working with industry participants and players to establish and assess technologies and standards best suited for Canada’s financial system and economy, and to establish a framework of trust between Fintechs, banks and other financial institutions, technology providers, and regulatory bodies to ultimately benefit Canadian consumers. 

Just recently, the Canadian Advisory Committee on Open Banking published its Final Report with recommendations on establishing the path forward for Open Banking in Canada, enthusing the ecosystem and its participants.  

Adam Cox, Co-Founder and CEO of Open Banking Expo, said: “It’s hugely important to have a strong community in Canada to bring the industry together to finally see Open Banking take root in the country, and we look forward to playing our part in this. 

“Our Advisory Board includes industry innovators, disruptors and visionaries who help us ensure what we bring to market is relevant, incisive and drives the adoption of Open Banking and Open Finance across the globe.” 

GBT Technologies Inc. (OTC PINK: GTCH) ("GBT” or the “Company”), is now testing - Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS) Antenna Technology for its Infinia long range communication. The NVIS technology is targeted to assist with dead zone coverage. Typical HF radio waves reach very long distances but there is the challenge of covering the skip zones. NVIS (Vertical Incidence Skywave propagation) is a type of ionospheric radio transmission that can be used to fill the gaps between line of sight and longer distance skip zones that are used at HF bands; especially, with rough terrain and geographical obstacles.

The use of NVIS propagation requires efficient antenna and frequency selection. Particular antenna styles are necessary in order to ensure efficient coverage at all terrain types. This type of antenna and transmission technology is an effective solution in topographical areas where the radio signal is masked or shadowed (for example mountainous or hill areas). NVIS enables having a radio signal with a high angle of elevation that is not shielded by the terrain and therefore can cover HF dead zones as a compliment to the long-range HF communication. This type of antenna and transmission technology can potentially fit to a long-range HF radio communications application; especially, for remote rough geographical regions where essential communication may be needed. GBT will be using advanced antennas to radiate most of the power at a high angle, near to the vertical.

“Using NVIS propagation may enable the transmission of most power at a high angle, near to the vertical, which can provide efficient coverage for the dead zones of a long-range HF communication system. This type of technology requires the use of unique antennas that are designed specifically for this type of communication. Typical HF radio antennas provide a much lower angle of radiation and therefore a specifically designed antenna will be used. These antennas provide a high angle of transmission that is necessary for NVIS propagation. We will use horizontally polarized, horizontal dipoles and loop antennas for the system’s testing. The main challenge of an HF communication system is to provide coverage for the dead zones. NVIS utilizes the difference in elevation pattern responses approaching or reaching 90 degrees. Using this type of antenna technology with an appropriate frequency selection will potentially establish reliable communication to cover HF dead zones. Utilizing AI algorithms, we aim to implement smart, self-tuning antenna along with frequency selection to achieve automatic, optimal performance and complete coverage. In areas where no modern communication infrastructure exists, NVIS radio wave propagation may provide a contact to the outside world enabling remote location emergency response, telemedicine and modern world communication, including the internet,” said Danny Rittman, GBT’s CTO.

There is no guarantee that the Company will be successful in researching, developing or implementing this test system. In order to successfully implement this concept, the Company will need to raise adequate capital to support its research and, if successfully researched, developed and granted regulatory approval (as needed), the Company would need to enter into a strategic relationship with a third party that has experience in manufacturing, selling and distributing this product. There is no guarantee that the Company will be successful in any or all of these critical steps.

Seaglass Cloud Technology, , an end-to-end, software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider to the energy sector, has developed a scalable and future-proof, full-service customer management system for Omni Energy, helping it to provide a responsive and highly-efficient service to domestic pay-as-you-go (PAYG) energy customers.

Omni Energy specialises in the PAYG market, where consumers top up energy via Omni’s app, online portal or physical card or key – a market it believes is under-served within the energy supply industry.

“These customers are perceived as too complex, and do not get offered forward-thinking products or account management,” says Gary Bartlett, CEO at Omni Energy. “Our sole purpose is to make pre-payment better.” 

Seaglass’ end-to-end, cloud-based solution includes automated SaaS systems that streamline customer risk calculations, data migration, onboarding, supplier switching, customer communications and billing.

As a cloud-native business, the Seaglass system is innately configurable and includes system updates resulting from regulatory changes as part of its standard offering. It is helping Omni Energy, for example, in offering its customers faster and more reliable switching in line with Ofgem’s Switching Programme.

Charlie Hewson, Omni’s Operations Director,  says the Seaglass system allows them to more efficiently serve customers: “When a customer calls us, all of their details are at our fingertips – their meter readings, when they last topped up, how much energy they used, etc. That enables us to deliver the correct action for our customers – at the right time.

“For all honest consumers it provides the ‘wow’ factor in customer service, and for anyone trying to game the system – our access to live data makes it much more difficult.”

Omni Energy opted for the Seaglass system following a demonstration of its capabilities: “It was clear that it was in a league of its own,” adds Gary. “Because it is scalable and future-proof in its nature, it will grow as we grow – enabling us to easily add new services for more customers. Whereas other systems have just a three-year lifecycle before the need to upgrade to accommodate industry changes such as the coming mandatory half hourly settlement, with Seaglass the functionality is already built in.”

Gary concludes that the system ticks the required boxes: “Its forecasting and risk management capabilities also set it apart, enabling us to intelligently predict energy usage and interact with the market.

Alex Troth, Commercial Director at Seaglass Cloud Technology, says the business builds systems in partnership with its customers: “Ultimately it has been built to help Omni Energy deliver the same or better service to PAYG customers that other energy consumers enjoy. At the same time being easy to implement, reducing the cost to serve and enabling Omni to take on more customers while managing the risk of doing so.”

Survey of 50,000 U.S. Employees, Including 30,000 Women, Places Software Platform Company, FICO, on Prestigious List

Highlights

• FICO included on Forbes' annual list of America’s Best Employers for Women
• The recognition is based on employee satisfaction through anonymized surveys
• FICO was previously recognized by Forbes as America’s number one mid-sized employer in February

Leading digital decision platform company, FICO, today announced that it has been named among America's Best Employers for Women by Forbes Magazine in the Software & Services category. The annual ranking uses anonymous employee feedback to evaluate companies with more than 1,000 workers across 24 industries based on four different criteria: general working conditions, working conditions for women in particular, reputation for diversity among competitors, and diversity among top competitors.

“We are honored that Forbes has named FICO one of America’s Best Employers for Women,” said Richard Deal, executive vice president and chief HR officer at FICO. “FICO has long focused on supporting the well-being of our employees, with generous parental leave, family support, investment in professional development, and commitment to pay equity. Employees enjoy the same flexible work and career support practices that led to FICO being named America’s Best Midsize Employer earlier this year.”

FICO is a digital decision platform company that specializes in helping businesses apply analytics to company data and optimize their operations and interactions with consumers based on the insights.

Forbes partnered with research company Statista for its list of America’s Best Employers for Women. Statista surveyed approximately 50,000 Americans, including more than 30,000 women, working full- or part-time for businesses with at least 1,000 employees across 24 industries. The surveys were anonymous, allowing participants to openly share opinions of their employer and competitors on an 11-point Likert scale. The results were based on information gathered across four categories:

• Direct recommendations (work topics in general): Atmosphere and development, company image, working conditions, salary and wages, workplaces, and employer diversity.
• Direct recommendations (topics relevant for women in particular): Women were asked to rate their employers’ parental leave, family support, flexibility, discrimination, representation and career, and pay equity practices.
• Indirect recommendations: Participants were given the chance to evaluate diversity-related practices of competing employers in their respective industries which stand out either positively or negatively. Only the recommendations of women were considered.
• Diversity among top executives/board: An index based on extensive research was built calculating the share of women in executive management or board positions. Statista compiled this data for each business considered using publicly available company information filed between December 2020 and June 2021.

Each company’s final score was based on recommendations from women. A perception correction factor (based on the comparison between recommendations from women and men) was also calculated, with the scaled difference between men’s and women’s votes (=perception correction factor) added to women’s recommendations.

- PwC Switzerland, PwC UK and CUBE launch a new offering to transform managing regulatory compliance

- KYR or “Know Your Regulations” is a rapid, technology-enabled assessment service that works twice as fast as current practices

Compliance in financial services is set to be transformed by technology-based assessments drawing on regulatory data from 180 jurisdictions as part of a collaboration between PwC and RegTech company CUBE.

PwC Switzerland, PwC UK and London-based CUBE have revealed a collaboration which will see the organisations work together to transform the world of financial compliance by combining PwC’s expertise in regulatory compliance with a leading RegTech platform.

The first move of this new collaboration is the launch of KYR, a service designed to shake up the compliance space. KYR, or ‘Know Your Regulations’, transforms how companies demonstrate compliance.

This rapid, technology-based assessment, which draws on regulatory data from across 180 jurisdictions in 60 languages, accelerates the process of understanding applicable regulations and identifying how the organisations is complying with them.

This provides huge time-savings compared to current manual practices. It allows financial institutions to understand their regulatory obligations, and deliver compliance effectively and efficiently. KYR is the first and only service of its kind in the market and has produced accurate and efficient results in the six months of beta testing.

Due to the complexity of regulatory compliance, financial institutions often struggle to clearly identify the regulations that apply to them, especially if they operate in multiple jurisdictions and offer a broad range of products and services. Banks with a global presence need to understand a multitude of changing regulations that impact different business areas, which is currently a laborious and time-consuming process.

This complexity and lack of regulatory traceability has led financial institutions to implementing overly complex and costly operating environments that often don’t demonstrate compliance. KYR is designed to transform this.

KYR provides:

- a rapid scoping of applicable regulations using CUBE’s proprietary technology

- a detailed view of what obligations the institution needs to comply with

- a gap analysis of where institutions are currently falling short

The KYR service addresses the issue of regulatory traceability and provides an opportunity for financial institutions to identify quickly and effectively the exact regulations that affect them, then map it out to processes, controls and policy areas in order to demonstrate watertight compliance.

“Our collaboration is accelerating how we support clients to define their regulatory obligations and demonstrate compliance,” said George Stylianides, Global FS Risk lead, PwC UK. “Having a continuously updated golden source of regulations, with exceptional language translation capability, and the ability to align regulations to client specific or pre-defined operational taxonomies is a game-changer.”

“We are delighted to be partnering with PwC, an industry-leader in the financial services and regulatory sector,” said Ben Richmond, Founder and CEO of CUBE. “This collaboration will enable us to deliver further value to our customers combining CUBE's leading regulatory intelligence RegPlatform and PwC's domain expertise. We look forward to working together to deliver transformative regulatory compliance solutions to the world's leading financial institutions.”

“We are impressed with CUBE’s capability to curate and segment regulatory documents down to the individual obligation,” said Matthias Leybold, Data & Analytics Leader at PWC Switzerland. “Thanks to this, regulatory themes can easily be viewed across different regulations and it is now possible to link individual obligations to specific client controls.”

The British Business Bank today announces a further £62.4m of financing to Shire Leasing under its ENABLE Funding programme, which aims to improve the supply of finance solutions to smaller UK businesses for business–critical assets.

The transaction follows on from a first round of funding of £37.4m in 2017 - bringing the overall amount of money under the ENABLE Funding programme awarded to £99.8m. 

Alongside £6.6m of mezzanine funding provided in 2017 by British Business Investments, a commercial subsidiary of the Bank, it brings the total support provided to Shire to £106.4m.

The financing will aid Shire Leasing in delivering in excess of £150m to help smaller businesses with cash flow, recovery, growth, and investment plans.

Launched in 2014, the ENABLE Funding programme supports the Bank’s objective to diversify finance markets for smaller UK businesses. Providers of finance to SMEs often lack the scale required to access capital markets – a key source of funding for lending institutions – in a cost-efficient manner. The ENABLE Funding programme warehouses newly-originated finance receivables from different originators, bringing them together into a new structure. Once the structure has sufficient scale, it will refinance a portion of its funding on the capital markets, helping small finance providers to tap into institutional investors’ funds.

Helen Lumb, Chief Financial Officer of Shire Leasing, said: “Our partnership with British Business Bank allows us to grow and diversify our funding base. Our journey to achieve this increased facility shows, even during times of calamity, that Shire are continuously working with our strategic partners to make alternative lines of finance more readily available for businesses.

“This latest credit line under the ENABLE Funding programme comes at a vital time for our economy, enhancing our ability to support UK SMEs across all business sectors in accessing the finance required to recover, thrive, and grow affordably.”

By utilising the ENABLE Funding, Shire has been able to expand into new markets and deliver finance solutions through non-conventional methods. In 2020, Shire Leasing was appointed as a funder on the UK’s first Clean Air Zone (CAZ) Financial Assistance Scheme, providing businesses impacted by the Bath and North East Somerset Council CAZ with direct financial support in the form of grants and/or interest-free financing to accelerate investment in low/no emission vehicles. Since funding the first vehicle on the scheme in January 2021, Shire continues to place CAZ agreements on its own book, with the majority of these secured by the ENABLE Funding programme.  

Reinald de Monchy, Managing Director, Guarantee and Wholesale Solutions of the British Business Bank, said: “Smaller businesses in the UK are affected by a funding gap as many traditional providers provide cost efficient financing to only a relatively small percentage of firms. By partnering with alternative and non-bank lenders, like Shire Leasing, we can give smaller UK businesses access to the asset and lease finance they need. The Bank remains committed to its objective to create a more diverse finance market, and we look forward to continuing to work with Shire Leasing and other non-banks to help provide even more funding options to smaller businesses across the UK.”

Report from FintechOS explores the SME banking landscape and challenges of becoming digital-first

FintechOS, the global technology provider for banks, insurers and other financial services companies, has launched a report, in association with Efma, a non-profit organisation created by leading banks and insurance companies. The report reveals that 40% of SME bankers say the average time spent on approving an SME loan takes more than one week. The finding is part of FintechOS’s latest report, Digital-first SME Banking, which explores the SME banking landscape and the challenges of becoming digital first.

To understand the current SME banking landscape, FintechOS commissioned an independent survey of 40 SME banking executives from around the globe to gain a better understanding of the challenges they are facing and what is working best. The study features contributions from leading banks including Nordea, ABN AMRO, OTP Bank and HSBC.

Key findings include:

Payments pose the greatest competition in the SME market
According to 60% of SME bankers, payments is the area in which they see the most competition from fintechs. Other areas of competition from fintechs include loan products and overdrafts (13%).

Loans hold the biggest opportunity for growth for SME banks

Despite competition from fintechs, there is still opportunity for growth with 63% of respondents stating loans as the biggest growth area for SME banks. Deposits and cash management products (17%) was another area identified.

Lack of appropriate IT tools are a huge barrier
Whilst loans represent a major growth opportunity, 41% of SME bankers reported they lack the relevant IT tools, such as credit scoring models, to service customers in a personalised way. 75% said the reason behind this lack of tools is down to the high cost of technology implementation. Bank’s hierarchical organisational structure (18%) was reportedly the next biggest obstacle.

The standardisation of SME products
Due to these barriers most SMEs are offered standardised products with 51% of SME bankers stating this is the case. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the two biggest areas in which bankers said they could use support from technology companies was in providing end-to-end digital customer journeys (25%) and facilitating access to third party data from the SME ecosystem (21%).

“Specialists are targeting specific segments like the SME market and financial services are becoming increasingly embedded into other products through partnerships and APIs. This results in banks becoming one step further removed from their customer base,” says Teodor Blidarus, CEO and Co-Founder, at FintechOS.

“To compete on the same level as fintechs, they need to leverage a partner that can support them to deliver personalised products, fully digital customer journeys and platforms that can support their ideas around innovation. Only then can SME banks confidently walk a clear and controlled path to a digital future, where they can bring new products and services to market that are more customer-centric, data-driven and faster to deploy.”