Insig AI plc., the data science and machine learning solutions company serving the asset management industry, is delighted to announce that CarVal Investors, L.P. (“CarVal”), a global alternative investment manager, and Insig AI Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, have entered into binding heads of terms (“Heads of Terms”) for Insig AI to combine its ESG tools with CarVal’s proprietary ESG risk scoring methodology and apply this to the future CarVal Clean CLO product line.

The launch will mark the first deployment of Insig AI’s and CarVal’s jointly developed ESG technology. This new technology is understood by Insig AI to be the first of its kind in fixed income, enabling asset managers to develop and execute a high-performing, data-led ESG investing strategy by providing transparent and evidence-based ESG scoring and interrogation whilst also allowing for comparison to relevant benchmarks. 

As announced on 20 July 2021, Insig ESG is also currently being validated by a number of other potential asset manager clients in the UK and internationally. The Company looks forward to updating the market further on these developments in due course.

Steve Cracknell, Chief Executive of Insig AI, said: “We are excited to be working in collaboration with CarVal to support the launch of this ground-breaking tool. When launched, the CarVal Clean CLO platform will underscore the powerful role that our innovative, jointly developed ESG scoring and interrogation tool can play in enabling both investment and asset managers to develop and execute a data-led ESG investing strategy, for which there is rapidly growing demand at present. We look forward to supporting CarVal with any further ESG-focused products they launch.”

This announcement has been approved by Steve Cracknell, CEO, on behalf of the Company.

As the COVID-19 pandemic turned 2020 into a historic year of global upheaval, the financial services industry and the tech companies that support it found themselves caught off guard. As in most other commercial fields, the crisis forced banking sector participants and their ilk into reactive mode.

As a result, many fintech strategies, conceived for a future in which “post-pandemic” would be the stuff of science fiction, were abandoned, shelved, or amended on the fly as the crisis unfolded.

Nevertheless, whether despite the pandemic or because of it, several trends of financial software development survived the social and economic turbulence. Over the last year, they have either continued strengthening steadily or accelerated under the pressure of enforced changes in how financial enterprises and their customers interact.

This article highlights four of those fintech trends and explains why they may be worth your attention during 2021.

1. Tech to Support Financial Literacy

It’s not easy to find any silver lining to the coronavirus cloud. However, if there is a glimmer of light, it might be found in the savings people made by working from home. Those lucky enough to avoid being furloughed and instead shifting to remote working suddenly discovered that commuting expenses were no longer taking a bite out of their salaries.

Even a little extra disposable income is enough to prompt speculation about how to put it to work. On the back of that increased interest in personal investing, service providers started to think about the benefits of raising financial literacy among the customer base.

Consequently, 2020 saw a rise in the launch of apps promoting financial awareness and literacy. Such solutions use gamification tactics and rewards-based courses to help customers understand the benefits of investing in capital markets.

Putting Literacy to Work

Of course, many of these apps include facilities to put users’ new-found knowledge into practice. According to a recent Marketing Dive article, the use of investment apps, many with onboard educational elements and financial management recommendations, grew by 88% in the first half of 2020. That’s a more remarkable uptick than that seen in the casual games category of mobile apps.

Governments worldwide have continued to combat COVID-19 with lockdowns and movement restrictions in the first quarter of 2021. As a result, consumer interest in effective budgeting and  investing (where disposable income is available) is unlikely to wane just yet.  

Traditional and challenger banks and financial services companies are sure to continue rolling out new digital initiatives to increase their customers' financial savvy. The likelihood is that they will do so either in the form of new app products or as add-ons to primary apps.

2. Zero-Contact Biometric Verification

Security is always a hot topic in fintech, so in the realms of identification and verification, fingerprint recognition in particular was a welcome technological development in the industry. While fingerprint verification has been mainstream for some time, though, 2020 was the year in which people began to think more about the risks of any form of physical contact. For example, handling cash is now probably less desirable than it has ever been—a situation that’s driving strong uptake in contactless payment solutions.

Over the course of last year, it wasn’t just physical contact with cash that people sought alternative solutions for, but essentially, any physical contact with items or surfaces. As a result, interest grew in alternatives to fingerprint recognition for verification purposes.

Fingerprint verification for contactless payment cards remains popular today, but expectations are that 2021 will see more decisive moves towards other physiological, and even behavioral, biometric solutions for personal identification.

Contactless Biometric Technology to Watch This Year

Hand-vein capturing and voice recognition are two of the more promising variants of biometric identity verification. Both can work without any requirement for physical contact during the identification process. Another advantage is that face coverings do not diminish their effectiveness. That's a welcome benefit at a time when masks are essential in many countries as a COVID-19 precaution.

Efforts to develop voice and hand-vein recognition will likely step up in 2021 due to the promise they show as non-contact verification techniques. Indeed, in the case of vein recognition, the banking, financial services, and insurance sector is expected to lead technology growth by the end of this decade.

3. Banking in the Cloud

Up until and during 2020, the financial services sector and banking, in particular, were courting cloud technology with a significant degree of caution. Although there was a clear trend in the transition away from legacy systems, many banks and similar service providers were hesitant to trust the cloud.

While their reticence was chiefly due to the perception of cloud computing as a potential source of security weakness, the percentage of banks using cloud solutions is slightly rising.

Fear is a Strong Motivator for the Cloud Agenda

With no sign of a fast letup of the Covid-19 pandemic, the rise of fintech-in-the-cloud may well continue apace. Confidence in cloud solutions has grown as protective measures have gained robustness and sophistication. The belief among knowledgeable observers is that 2021 will be the year in which fears of falling behind in a hyper-competitive, volatile market outweigh those derived from security concerns.  

Only through migration to the cloud can financial institutions achieve the agility necessary to bring products to market at speed and deliver maximum responsiveness.

The coronavirus pandemic has served to apply even greater motivation to make the cloud transition. It’s forcing an agenda of rapid change and continuous adaptation — dynamics that on-premises solutions are limited in their capability to support.

4. AI in the Fintech Environment

AI is another technology trend that was hot in 2020 and looks promising for this year too. As the financial services industry observes how artificial intelligence solves a plethora of business challenges in other verticals, a wider adoption of machine learning and other AI formats is almost inevitable. These technologies are beginning to prove invaluable in many industries, by helping companies to:

• Reduce costs
• Unearth customer insights
• Improve customer experience
• Automate their internal workflows and processes
• Combat fraudulent sales transactions

It would be surprising indeed, then, if enterprises reliant on financial technology don’t turn to AI and machine learning in more significant numbers during 2021. Activities most likely to benefit from artificial intelligence include:

• Process optimization
• Credit scoring
• Security
• Customer support
• Automated self-service investment and trading

2021: Another Exciting Year for Fintech

The four trends highlighted in this article might be some of the most important to watch this year. However, with the pandemic prevailing globally and commerce continuing to weather forces not experienced on such a scale in modern times, it's fair to say that anything can happen.

The one certainty is the potential for digital technology to help financial companies remain agile and competitive and support their customers' needs in these turbulent times. Therefore, it's anybody's guess as to what surprises the fintech landscape might throw up over the next few months.

In any event, this year is undoubtedly one in which anyone with a stake in the industry would be foolhardy to take their eye off developments for long.

 Airwallex’s new online card payments solution provides businesses with a seamless and secureway to collect online Visa and Mastercard payments from customers around the world

• Today’s launch strengthens Airwallex’s end-to-end proposition in Australia, allowing Australian businesses to collect card payments as well as hold, convert and spend their funds in a single multi-currency platform
• Availability in Australia extends Airwallex’s online payments global footprint, further enabling businesses to operate globally

To better support the growing needs of businesses, leading global fintech platform Airwallex today launches its online card payments solution in Australia, strengthening its capability to provide end-to-end financial products and service for businesses looking to grow without borders.

Airwallex’s online card payments solution was first launched in the UK in 2020 and subsequently in Hong Kong earlier this year. Today’s availability in Australia extends the company’s online payments global footprint, further enabling its customers to operate globally.

Through the new solution, businesses now have a seamless and secure way of collecting online Visa and Mastercard payments from customers around the world. Businesses can also select from three different integration methods to enhance their digital payment strategy, based on their industry and specific needs. This includes:

• Get Paid: One-off links that are instantly generated and issued to customers for invoice payments
• Shopping Extensions: A suite of plugins that enables merchants using shopping platforms (such as WooCommerce and Magento) to accept card and WeChat Pay payments from customers
• API: A payments acceptance API that integrates directly into the organization’s website and provides a customizable checkout experience and a variety of payment options

Additionally, when funds are received in multiple currencies through Airwallex’s online payments solution, businesses can settle in more than eight currencies with zero conversion fees, hold their multi-currency funds in their Airwallex accounts, and spend directly through means such as Airwallex’s debit cards in Australia. This entire end-to-end management of business finances is made simpler, more efficient and much more cost-effective on the Airwallex platform, all while ensuring the margins and fees are fully transparent.

Craig Rees, VP, Global Head of Platform at Airwallex said: “We are so excited to launch our online card payments solutions in Australia as we continuously look to strengthen our end-to-end offering. Payments are a core part of any business and a highly-requested feature from our customers in Australia. And as we look to continue to empower businesses to grow and operate globally, we are focused on helping businesses manage their international payments more efficiently.”

“Our new online payments solution therefore aims to meet their demands, and is designed to enable secure, transparent and cost-effective payment transactions in multiple currencies, while eliminating the need for separate tools and solutions,” added Rees.

Airwallex’s new online card payments capabilities adds onto its existing payment solutions in Australia, including its WeChat Pay solution that was launched in Australia last year. To accelerate its focus on research and development on more new products, Airwallex also recently announced a new Sydney engineering hub alongside its existing Melbourne hub, and aims to double its 50-strong Australian engineering team by the end of the year. Outside of Australia, Airwallex has engineering hubs in San Francisco, Shanghai and Amsterdam.

Profile Software, an international financial solutions provider, announced today the new release of Axia Custody the advanced automated custody platform that delivers streamlined operations, globally. The platform has been significantly upgraded to advance the Custody process offering competitive features to users, through automation.

In particular, Axia Custody supports post-trade processing for Global Custodian, Sub-Custodian, Agents and Mutual Fund Custodian delivering fully (STP) automated, 4-way matching and settlements ensuring improved communication among Market, Local Brokers, International Brokers, International Broker Agents, Sub-Custodians, and Clients. It is worth noting that the system has a 2-Way SWIFT (SMPG standards) messaging whilst covering SWIFT-based automated corporate actions with more than 70 CA events and making available automatic initiation through custodian incoming SWIFT thus avoiding user intervention. 

Capitalising on international know-how, Axia Custody accelerates the communication by also supporting 2-Way Allegement functionality. In addition, flexible billing and fee policies are available while utilising the solution’s new characteristics, where the users can streamline their processes and automate the matching and settlement regardless of the country of operations, as it supports local and cross border markets and covers holding break ups for multi-depositories, multi-currency, and multi entity accounts.

Axia Custody delivers complete digital, web-based capabilities as well as configurable workflows, customisable dashboards and reports (scheduled and ad-hoc), for a competitive omni-channel experience. Clients can easily access and navigate the themeable and easy to customise portal, that adheres to the organisation’s branding, delivering a unique experience. 

Furthermore, the firm’s clients can modify and access their account’s positions directly, get reports and place settlement instructions through an intuitive user interface that offers numerous widgets, multiple input options (SWIFT, Excel/File, etc.), secure messaging and easy to navigate screens. The Solution integrates with market data providers’ platforms (Bloomberg, Refinitiv, etc.) and with any core banking platform via its open architecture and standard APIs.

Axia Custody is being enriched to offer advanced functionality for multi-custodian operations across borders for a competitive multi-channel international level client experience.

21Shares AG, the Swiss pioneering issuer of crypto Exchange Traded Products (ETPs), announced a strategic key appointment to its management team, Isabell Moessler as Head of Distribution for the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa). Since its founding in 2018, 21Shares has in less than 3 years rapidly grown to become Europe's largest crypto issuer with $1.2bn in AuM and 15 listed crypto ETPs. 21Shares has made a number of key appointments in the last 3 weeks and recruited Maria Cannizzo (VP Product), Garrison Gibbons (VP People), Elizabeth McCracken (VP Finance) and Craig Searle (VP Strategy). The total number of staff now stands at 52 employees, an increase of 50% from a year ago. 

Moessler who has a long track record with over 16 years of ETF experience in leadership and management positions at a number of companies in the financial sector - including Blackrock iShares and ETF Securities and most recently at the European exchange group Euronext, acknowledges her new role will be to act as a leading liaison executive bridging the company and institutional clients to raise awareness of its listings and range of products. "We want to offer both new and existing customers insight and access to the world's broadest portfolio of crypto ETPs in the crypto asset class," Moessler said. "And not only in the established markets such as Switzerland and German region, but also in the rest of Europe and the Middle East - regions where I can contribute to consistent growth with our now 8-person sales team. I’m honoured to have this opportunity to work with such high-calibre industry experts to help drive a flourishing crypto ETP ecosystem in Europe."

21Shares CEO Hany Rashwan emphasised Moessler's recruitment by stating the importance of comprehensive customer education and support: "Especially in the institutional crypto asset class, it is essential to educate conventional customers on the nature and specifics of complex products and their underlying technologies. With Isabell’s key expertise and focus, 21Shares gains an accomplished expert in the ETF space who can impart that very knowledge to a growing number of conventional investors across EMEA. We are delighted to have Isabell joining our management team."

Isabell Moessler graduated with a degree in Business Studies from the City University of London and a MBA from the University of Cambridge and has been involved in several voluntary organisations for equality, including as a board member of Young Women's Trust. Before her time at ETF Securities she completed a two-year stint as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and two further professional years as a team leader at Thomson Reuters in Frankfurt in addition to her recent positions with the French stock exchange Euronext and Blackrock iShares.

Recently, KingHash upgraded its intelligent one-stop mining platform. At present, it has covered the most popular mining projects (ETH mining, Filecoin mining and Chia mining). KingHash understands that each currency has different attributes and different conditions for mining. KingHash gives solutions to the problem of staking coin needed for Filecoin mining, so as to fully meet the different needs of investors and let investors experience the fun of mining without threshold.

KingHash's three main advantages:

• Open one-click mining, convenient mining

From the very beginning, KingHash has made it its core product goal to lower the mining threshold for ordinary investors. It focuses on the concept of "convenient mining" and takes on the complexities of professional miner screening, deployment, maintenance, and technical services to provide investors with maximum convenience to achieve one-stop mining.

• The platform carefully conducts research and strict screening to provide users with high-quality and stable Filecoin nodes.

KingHash relies on rich miners and diversified business resources to help the whole industry form an ecological closed loop. It connects the upstream and downstream of the industry to provide maximum convenience for investors. From the screening of Filecoin nodes to the withdrawal of earnings, it closely tracks the whole process to maximize the safety of investors' investment.

• Reduce the threshold of mining access

KingHash has direct access to the source of supply and the most cost effective graphics cards and loan channels, thanks to cooperation and investment partners. KingHash provides investors with 16T hard drive and 12T effective computing power. Compared to other platforms'96T and 128T, it greatly lowers the entry threshold for mining, making it easy for C-end users to participate in order to share the benefits of mining.

KingHash not only provides computing power for ordinary C-end investors, but also actively deploys its own mining pool to meet the needs of large capital investors, strictly selects technical teams, and guarantees users' investment by combining high-quality mining machines with solid technical strength.

KingHash has its self-built mining pool, the single mining machine uses AMD CPU and high-quality mining machine, and the 7320 single machine computing power is up to 2T. As the storage capacity of Filecoin continues to increase, the importance of operations and maintenance has been increasing significantly in the industry. KingHash's core technical team operates and maintains more than 100,000 mining machines, and has rich experience in operation and maintenance. Its customers include leading Internet companies such as Ali, Douyin, iQiyi, and Wangsu Technology.

KingHash's team is a contributor to the early code of IPFS. In 2018, it received official commendation, and its team members came from 360, Ubuntu, Red Hat and other well-known companies. The mining machine mode of computing cluster+storage cluster is adopted as a whole, and the computing cluster adopts highly cost-effective AMD+Intel heterogeneous models . All machines are purchased at the lowest price in the supply chain market, which can flexibly adjust the number of machines and hard disks and balance the load. At the same time, using 10 Gigabit network link, the mining machine network structure can support an increase of 5P computing power per day for single miner, and the monitoring of mining machine cluster has achieved visualization and automation of daily maintenance. Professional operation and maintenance system effectively solves the problem of efficiency maximization and safety and reliability, ensuring that some failures will not affect the normal operation of the whole system.

In addition to professional operation and maintenance services, KingHash provides investors with the best solutions for the special characteristics of ETH mining. KingHash promises to provide investors with the most competitive electricity costs, support for multi-currency payment of electricity bills or benefit credits, support for fee-free withdrawal of currency, and fast exchange, making it easy for investors to cash out and securely capture the bull market.

Deployment of InvestCloud solutions will accelerate onboarding of high-net-worth clients, further improve ongoing client engagement and management
InvestCloud, an award-winning global FinTech firm that designs and creates financial software for some of the most prestigious banks, wealth managers and asset managers in the world has been selected by BNP Paribas Wealth Management to provide Client Relationship Management (CRM) and Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) services for onboarding and nurturing high-net-worth (HNWI) client relationships. 
The partnership marks another significant accomplishment for InvestCloud, which continues to expand its global partnerships with a growing client base comprising leading global and regional firms such as BNP Paribas Wealth Management. 
BNP Paribas Wealth Management selected InvestCloud’s solution based on InvestCloud’s leading automation technology to bring operational efficiency to onboarding of HNWIs, the ease of integration with existing systems using InvestCloud’s modular architecture, as well as enabling BNP Paribas Relationship Managers (RMs) to provide (U)HNW clients with a more responsive and proactive level of client service, for better client retention and client growth.

Leading technology and solutions provider is designated as one of the best credit card processing companies for a third consecutive year

Stax by Fattmerchant, the industry’s only complete all-in-one solution for managing everything in the payments ecosystem, today announces its rank of first place on U.S. News & World Report’s list of Best Credit Card Processing Companies of 2021.

Stax earned a 360 overall rating of 4.2 out of 5 on the list, achieving the highest score given and beating out Stripe and Square, Inc. U.S. News’ online guide features in-depth information on choosing a credit card processing company and covers a range of topics including transaction fees and a number of auxiliary features. In total, U.S. News and World Report reviewed 11 credit card processing companies for this year’s list.

“Receiving recognition from U.S. News and World Report as one of the best credit card processing companies is a testament to our commitment to push the boundaries and provide our clients with the best possible payments experience,” said Sal Rehmetullah, president and founder of Stax. “It’s also an indication of what the future holds for Stax. As a leading technology and solutions provider, we’re positioned to experience tremendous growth as we continue to expand our offerings for businesses of all sizes, including the SaaS companies who serve them.”

U.S. News evaluated credit card processing companies based on everything from mobile app availability to third party integration capabilities. U.S. News’ 360 Reviews team applied an unbiased methodology that includes professional ratings and reviews, consumer ratings and reviews and research comparing various features of credit card processors.

“Stax remains dedicated to empowering every business by enabling them to use payments as a vehicle for growth,” said Suneera Madhani, CEO of Stax. “Now, more than ever, businesses need access to technology that provides greater visibility into the financial health of their business. We are proud of this recognition as Stax continues to deliver on those needs through our scalable solutions and industry leading all-in-one platform.”

Stax simplifies accepting and managing payments through its all-in-one platform, eliminating the need to work with multiple vendors while maintaining complete visibility into the health of the business. Through Stax, businesses have the ability to accept every type of payment and easily manage invoices through customizable digital invoicing, email and text payments, future and recurring payment scheduling and automatic payment reminders. Businesses can also access powerful tools including payment and sales analytics, financial reporting and business integrations.

For more information on Stax, please visit staxpayments.com.

Cloud Identity Security Leader Sees 41% Year-Over-Year Sales Growth and Almost 400 New Customer Acquisitions Following Corporate Merger

ThycoticCentrify, a leading provider of cloud identity security solutions formed by the merger of the privileged access management (PAM) leaders Thycotic and Centrify, today announced that the company has wrapped Q2 with a 41% increase in year-over-year sales, a 136% increase in year-over-year cloud sales, and the addition of 388 new customers during the quarter.

With merger integration ongoing, ThycoticCentrify continues to capture significant industry market share while also delivering differentiated new solutions to meet the evolving needs of its unified customer base. In addition, Thycotic and Centrify were both separately recognized again as Leaders in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for PAM, concluding an evaluation process begun prior to the announced merger that focused on ability to execute and completeness of vision.

“Our merger has not slowed us down and ThycoticCentrify continues to deliver for our customers. The remarkable growth in Q2 demonstrates our customer focus and delivery against the strong demand for ThycoticCentrify’s privileged access management and identity security solutions,” said Art Gilliland, CEO, ThycoticCentrify. “In particular, a 136% increase in year-over-year cloud sales validates our position that PAM solutions should be built in the cloud, for the cloud to meet modern business needs.”

“As increasing cyberattacks continue to plague businesses and U.S. critical infrastructure, our mission has never been clearer. We will continue to bring the best-in-class, cloud-ready PAM products to market to help current and future customers scale their data security capabilities, monitor and control network access, and deter the dangers of insider threats and ransomware attacks,” Gilliland continued.

Key company highlights:

• Announced ThycoticCentrify with successful integration momentum throughout the quarter
• Recorded YoY quarterly sales growth of 41%
• Added 388 new customers
• Increased YoY cloud business sales by 136%
• Successfully completed SOC 2 Type ll Compliance Recertification
• Published new free eBook, "Definitive Guide to Securing Privileged Access," in conjunction with CyberEdge Group
• Launched a new certification program for Thycotic Privilege Manager to improve endpoint security
• Partnered with the Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA) and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) to launch the first-ever Identity Management Day

Notable product innovation:

• Debuted a new cloud solution at RSA Conference 2021 to govern and manage privileged access to cloud platforms
• Released new versions of DevOps Secrets Vault to strengthen security and compliance in DevOps with advanced reporting capabilities
• Announced new security capabilities and enhancements to Thycotic Privilege Manager
• Released enhancements to Secret Server, strengthening management of enterprise secrets

Prestigious industry recognition:

• Thycotic was named Gold Winner of the ‘Hot Company of the Year - Cloud/SaaS’ category in the 16th Annual IT World Awards^®. The company was also named a Bronze Winner of the ‘Cloud Security’ category

●      Centrify was named a winner of the Global InfoSec Awards at RSA Conference 2021

• ThycoticCentrify channel leaders Katie McCroskey and Kara Trovato were named to CRN’s 2021 Women of the Channel List

●      Thycotic won a third consecutive NorthFace ScoreBoard Award́ for Excellence in Customer Service