NeoXam are pleased to announce a signed partnership agreement with Kalaxis to address the growing demand for market data cost optimization and monitoring

Kalaxis, a highly experienced consulting company specializing in helping financial institutions reduce their market data costs, and NeoXam, a leading financial software editor serving over 170 financial institutions, will collaborate to combine their knowledge and capabilities to deliver both consultancy and new software modules to support data cost optimization.

The demand from financial institutions for specialist external consulting expertise continues, driven by a combination of factors: the continual need to reduce market data spending, complex data vendor pricing policies, a lack of transparency of operational data flows and usage, and the growing competitiveness of the various data vendors and their offerings.

To address this, Kalaxis and NeoXam will partner to offer the proven rationalization review to identify all potential savings, delivered in a report with supportive and detailed metrics. These findings can then be delivered and managed over the long term, with the non-intrusive implementation of the optimization and monitoring modules.

NeoXam provides versatile, slicing and dicing, monitoring capabilities including alerts, which can track who is consuming what, when, and why. This solution can operate both standalone or as an add-on of the award-winning NeoXam EDM: DataHub.

Jean-Pierre Gottdiener, CEO and Founder of Kalaxis commented. “In the last 12 – 18 months, we have seen a substantial growth in demand from financial institutions of all sizes, buy and sell side, for our services. We are confident the partnership with NeoXam will prove to be very successful, and result in providing our clients are more complete solution to their needs."

Clément Miglietti, Chief Product Officer, NeoXam commented: “NeoXam are delighted with this partnership, when you consider the market demand and the outstanding reputation Jean-Pierre and Kalaxis have, proven as it is, through the delivery of many client projects, delivering multi-million dollars of savings.”

Fabrick, a leading Italian fintech company which operates internationally to promote Open Finance, and Prometeia, a consulting, software and research company that is a market leader in solutions for risk and wealth management, today announce the launch of Global Investment Portfolio, a unique digital wealth management solution that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and open banking. The solution has been created through a new strategic partnership between the two companies that responds to the needs of modern customers and represents an evolution in the world of digital wealth management.

The two companies, respectively leaders in digital wealth management and Open Finance solutions have pooled their assets and skills in the open banking and artificial intelligence fields to develop Global Investment Portfolio, an advanced digital wealth management platform that puts together an investor's overall financial portfolio through the aggregate analysis of the bank accounts held by them across various institutions. The Global Investment Portfolio solution is unique on the market thanks to artificial intelligence algorithms developed by Prometeia which create a holistic overview of the overall financial portfolio of an investor. The artificial intelligence works by inferring and spotting information generated by asset management activities run by other banks without the need for direct access to all of an investor’s separate investment accounts.

Global Investment Portfolio is already integrated into Prometeia's Digital Wealth Management Platform as a cloud service.

Global Investment Portfolio uses Fabrick's PSD2 Gateway, which after receiving the consent of the end customer allows access to their comprehensive bank data through the account aggregation service which provides analysis of all current accounts at different institutions made available by Fabrick. In this way it is possible to facilitate a multi-bank experience that allows customers to view all information from a single touch point.

The solution uses transaction analysis to spot investments signs and cues on bank accounts which is enabled by the categorisation enrichment created through Fabrick’s advanced artificial intelligence techniques, which allow the recognition of investment coupons, dividends, incoming and outgoing transfers related to money-in and money-out across accounts held by other institutions. This guarantees the clients of the Prometeia platform the best user experience and the deepest 360° view on customer wealth management.

The solution has obvious advantages for all the players involved: the investor can monitor all their investments from a single platform which simplifies the experience and provides real-time comparisons of investments and the ability to easily see which are performing and which are not. Banks and financial institutions can then draw out contextual information useful for providing timely and personalised consultancy services.

Global Investment Portfolio is a plug and play solution which complies with data protection regulations and can be easily integrated into the application architectures of other financial intermediaries and can also be potentially adopted by corporate and fintech companies that want to expand their offer.

Matteo Necci, Partner of Prometeia, said: "Global Investment Portfolio is a cutting-edge solution with respect to the main trends in Digital Finance and is proposed as a distinctive element in the automation and digitisation of customer advisory processes. The combination of our know-how in artificial intelligence solutions for wealth management with Fabrick's open banking expertise and ecosystem allows intermediaries to have in-depth knowledge of the investor's financial portfolio, fully developing the potential of PSD2".

Paolo Zaccardi, CEO of Fabrick, adds: “Wealth Management is a sector that is proving to be very active in exploiting the benefits of Open Finance to develop new digital services that meet the needs of the public and end consumers who increasingly have new expectations and ever evolving behaviours. Fabrick is an active part of this process and the partnership with Prometeia demonstrates how access to current account data represents only the tip of the iceberg of the numerous opportunities presented by our ecosystem and the collaborative approach we promote. You just have to look at the Global Investment Portfolio solution to understand the great value that the combination of account aggregation and data categorisation brings to all the players involved, tangibly enabling a new and more complete and personalised offer model.”

Monneo, virtual IBAN and eCommerce bank account provider, today announces the launch of its merchant settlement distribution service to enable acquirers to receive and distribute settlements to their merchants through the Monneo platform. The new service will help make transacting across currencies and borders easier and quicker, proving vital for acquirers operating in various verticals.

The service works by utilising the acquirer’s or Payment Service Provider’s (PSP) account at Monneo, in which they can receive payments from card schemes or other bank accounts they operate; the online merchants they process card transactions for are set up with IBANs on the Monneo platform. When the acquirer receives settlement funds, they can then distribute these settlements to the merchant’s IBAN accounts, in all major currencies. Once received, the merchants can transact via SEPA, SWIFT, Faster Payments, CHAPS, FX payments for their day-to-day operations. The merchant settlement distribution service can be accessed either through API and/or through Monneo’s banking platform allowing acquirers to provide distribution details and obtain historical data for reconciliation.

The launch of the service aims to help ease some of the challenges that acquirers face with their traditional banking partners, who are often limited in terms of their settlement currency options. Depending on the merchant’s vertical, some businesses also fall into specific categories that traditional banks are reluctant to send funds to. By leveraging Monneo’s banking network and platform, acquirers and PSPs have greater flexibility when it comes to which merchants they can support, and how they’re able to distribute settlement funds to them.

Commenting on the launch, Lilia Metodieva, Managing Director at Monneo, explains how the service is yet another example of fintech innovation is helping to solve problems brought about by traditional banks.

“This service was born out of requests from several acquirers and PSPs who are facing ongoing challenges from their traditional banks. Additionally, they also seek a more efficient and responsive solution to handle reconciliations with their merchants. The merchant settlement distribution service will allow acquirers and PSPs greater control and flexibility over how they distribute funds to merchants, removing obstacles and offering greater choice over key elements such as the various eCommerce verticals and settlement currencies.”

Metodieva elaborates that: “This new service demonstrates Monneo’s in-depth understanding of the modern eCommerce payments ecosystem and the challenges it creates for online merchants. In the wake of COVID-19, increased digital adoption has meant that more businesses than ever are looking to scale across borders, and they need partners who can support with this international ambition. Traditional banks are struggling to keep up with the pace of change, and Monneo is helping to deliver solutions that add value, making a difference to both Monneo’s acquiring partners and the mutual merchants we serve.”

Nationwide is partnering with OpenWrks, a UK based provider of open banking applications, to help members facing financial difficulty.

OpenWrks, using Open Banking technology, helps people in financial difficulty quickly pull together information from different accounts and sources to easily built an accurate digital income and expenditure statement.

Their solution uses conversational artificial intelligence and reductive logic, allowing people to easily create accurate and realistic income and expenditure statements online in just minutes, reducing the time advisors spend collating data and increasing the amount of time spent giving valuable advice.

Nationwide members in financial hardship are able to benefit from the technology, which enables them to digitally build a picture of their financial circumstances with ease, prior to having a meaningful conversation with one of Nationwide’s Collections and Recoveries team. This can lead to a reduction in the time it takes for a member to get to the right outcome and reduces the potential worry and stress.

As well as supporting Nationwide’s members, OpenWrks is also working with expert advisors at the Money and Pensions Service to visualise customers’ income and expenditure data – leading to more personalised and relevant advice.

This comes as OpenWrks is part of Nationwide’s Open Banking for Good challenge, a £3 million fund that was designed to challenge fintechs and organisations to work together to help improve the lives of those in financial difficulty using Open Banking technology.

Claire Tracey, Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer: “As a mutual, we believe in the power of partnership and that we can achieve more together than we can alone. Going live is the culmination of nearly 18 months’ collaboration between Nationwide and OpenWrks. Our agile approach and innovative thinking have helped us make a complicated process simple for members in difficult circumstances, all while supporting our colleagues who help them.”

Steve Bradford, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of OpenWrks: “Our partnership with Nationwide extends back to their Open Banking for Good programme where we focused on how to help customers better understand their finances at a time when they are in financial difficulty. Our primary consideration has been to ensure that members interests come first, resulting in a digital customer experience that enables them to work out what they can afford before speaking to an advisor. The combined knowledge and experience of both teams has resulted in a journey that removes some of the stress from the situation and helps members feel more comfortable throughout the process.”

Planixs, the leading provider of real-time, intraday cash, collateral and liquidity management solutions, today announced the launch of the Strategic Reporting Module as part of its Realiti® suite. The new module will open up Realiti’s comprehensive dataset to all customer queries, maximising the value of the strategic treasury data resource that accumulates in Realiti every minute of the day.

The Realiti solution allows financial organisations to consolidate millions of cashflows per hour, in real time, to ensure they have an accurate, up-to-date picture of cash balances across their settlement accounts, comparing projections to actual external balances, and are able to control liquidity requirements and usage in real time. The Strategic Reporting Module will sit alongside the existing rich set of real-time capabilities to enable customers to gain insight and run reports against the entire dataset of Realiti from the lowest level transactions to whole entity level aggregations. This capability will provide customers with the most advanced reporting capability in the market.

The Strategic Reporting Module will provide customers with significant flexibility to support their reporting needs. Customers will be able to combine existing reports provided within the Realiti module suite with user-specific reports built within the Strategic Reporting Module. Alternatively, customers can subscribe to Planixs’ Reporting as a Service (RaaS) capability which will satisfy all customer reporting needs through a subscription model.

Neville Roberts, Planixs CEO said, “Realiti’s real time capabilities are core to our market leading capabilities and provide a very rich set of data across the firm’s range of accounts. Opening up this entire dataset for customers to gather insight and report on will catapult the Realiti proposition into a different league when compared with any other Fintech in the Treasury and Operational/Risk space. Any question can now be asked of the data and the full power of AI and machine learning can be brought to bear by the customer directly or by Planixs acting on this data through a subscription model.”

Realiti continues to be the pioneering intraday cash, collateral and liquidity management solution with live implementations at global scale. Its SaaS or on premise delivery models and high performance and scalable architecture mean that Realiti can be deployed with minimal intrusion to a bank’s infrastructure, rapidly delivering business value.

Planixs was recently awarded the RegTech of the Year accolade in the US FinTech Awards 2021, which recognises the company as a leader in the US RegTech space and Realiti as the most innovative regulatory solution in the US market.

To find out more about our Strategic Reporting Module and how your firm can start benefitting from advanced reporting capabilities, contact us today.

“Top US officials discussing issuing recommendations on stablecoins is part of a growing trend of global financial watchdogs clamping down on the digital assets sector after years of almost unrestrained growth. This trend is directly influencing the stability of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which dropped below $30,000, while Ether and Binance also came under selling pressure. The message to the market is clear - strengthen your infrastructure and risk management processes before it’s too late.

“While institutional involvement in crypto has been limited due to a lack of stable infrastructure, a number of banks including State Street and Citigroup have said they intend to provide more crypto services in the near future. My advice to banks that are interested in getting involved in the digital assets space is to make sure they work with the right provider, one that is regulatory compliant, battle-tested and conforms to Tier 1 regulated firm requirements as well as market best practice. Otherwise, they too could find themselves having to answer to regulators.”

The CISI’s latest annual member survey has shown that 55% of its women members surveyed have suffered from stress, anxiety or depression in the last year.

The CISI survey, undertaken this year from May-June, received almost 5,000 responses from the professional body’s global membership, including from those based in UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man, and Asia but also with respondents from Europe, Africa, South, Central and North America and Australasia. The CISI membership encompasses those working in wealth management, financial planning and capital markets.

Of the men responding to the question: “Have you suffered with stress, anxiety or depression in the last year?” 39% said “Yes” and 55% “No” (graph above).

Those surveyed were also asked how confident they would feel talking to their manager at work if they felt stressed, anxious or depressed (graph in link below). Of the women respondents, 52% said they felt confident, with 59% of men answering “Confident” to the same question. In 2020 the same question showed ‘Confident’ at 54% for women and 57% for men.

CISI members were asked if they would be returning to the office for the same number of working days as before the lockdown (graph in link below). Responding to this question, 57% of women and 50% of men said “No”. For women in 2020 this was 47% and for men 46% said ‘No’.

 Additionally, respondents were asked: “When do you think you will return to working in an office environment?"  When responding to this question, there was little difference in gender as 19% of women vs 18% of men said they were “back into the office for some days a week” with 13% of men vs 11% of women saying they were “back into the office full time.”  The option: “I have worked in the office throughout the pandemic” was chosen by 10% of respondents (graph in link below).

Members were also asked for their views on the state of their sector (graph above) and given several options to select which had most closely applied to their business during the last year. Of those options, 46% of women said they were “working longer hours” (39% for men) and 38% of men said they’d worked their hours more flexibly (40% for women).

 Also, 38% of women vs 30% of men indicated that their business is still recruiting during the pandemic.
 

Simon Culhane, Chartered FCSI, CISI CEO said: “Since the pandemic, many of us have acknowledged the benefits of working from home, particularly in not having to commute. Our survey, though, has shown that women in our profession appear more stressed and more women have worked longer hours than their male counterparts.

“Working from home for women can be a two-edged sword, as many may still be undertaking wider home and, for those with children, added family responsibilities, particularly regarding home schooling for children.  

“Working from home is resulting in blurred work-life boundaries, longer hours and a feeling for some of not being able to take annual leave, which will contribute to an “always on” mentality. These factors could lead to a perfect storm of stressors resulting in burnout and overwork.”

CISI’s mental health portal for those working in finance can be accessed here

Additional graph images for this survey can be accessed here 200721CISImembersurveyGRAPHS 

• Limina expands partnership with Bloomberg Enterprise to offer its investment management client base data spanning 11,500 companies 

Limina, provider of the world’s first and only customizable cloud-native Investment Management Solution (IMS) for mid-sized asset managers, has bolstered its ESG capabilities for clients by integrating Bloomberg Enterprise’s industry-leading ESG datasets.

With the new integration, Limina’s clients will benefit from a comprehensive suite of ESG metrics and data, which spans 11,500 companies in 80+ countries, within a wider suite of sophisticated investment management capabilities, including portfolio forecasting, data automation as well as pre-trade compliance controls. It will ensure investors can track key ESG investment criteria, such as carbon emissions and progress against the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

Supported by Limina’s cloud-native, agile platform, asset managers can automatically integrate the ESG dataset via Bloomberg Enterprise without requiring any additional technology changes or onboarding delays. The integration furthers Limina’s ability to deliver on its commitment to provide future-proof technology to the underserved, mid-sized segment of the asset management market. 

Kristoffer Fürst, COO and co-founder of Limina, said: 

“We collaborate with our clients to shape our best-of-breed, user-centric solution on an ongoing basis, and increasingly have seen clients looking to gain competitive advantage within the fast-growing world of ESG investing. The latest upgrades to the Limina IMS will help our clients to gain a better picture of ESG data in a way that fits smoothly with their existing workflows. 

“The cloud-based, agile nature of our technology means that investors can use Limina’s enhanced ESG data tools in their operations from day one without any disruption to their existing IMS, as well as the benefits of being able to access the platform from anywhere on remote devices.”