QuantaVerse, which uses RPA, AI and machine learning to automate financial crime identification and investigations, has signed a renewal agreement with Bci Miami, the U.S. arm of Banco de Credito e Inversiones of Chile. The agreement continues the bank’s use of the QuantaVerse Financial Crime Investigation Platform to support its financial crime compliance efforts. 

This is an extension of a 2018 agreement whereby Bci Miami selected the QuantaVerse Advanced Detection solution and the QuantaVerse Automated Investigations solution to help the bank reduce false positives, mitigate risk, automate investigations, and more efficiently meet AML compliance requirements. During this time, Bci Miami investigators  leveraged QuantaVerse’s Financial Crime Investigation Reports (FCIRs) which present critical information such as transactional relationships, negative news, money laundering typologies, as well as risk scoring. 

In addition to cutting the time investigators spend on each case, QuantaVerse solutions increase the consistency with which cases were cleared.

With QuantaVerse, Bci Miami has:

• Expanded the capabilities of the compliance program 

• Discovered unalerted risky entities

• Automated data-gathering processes

• Made AML case adjudication and reporting more efficient

• Improved the consistency of decision making and reporting

• Created capacity within its existing investigative team even in the face of growth

• Embraced new BSA/AML innovation which regulators are encouraging

“With QuantaVerse, there has been a meaningful improvement in the overall capabilities of our compliance department,” explained Michele Fernandez, Managing SVP Head of Compliance and Regional Compliance Officer at Bci Miami. “Insights into the technology’s capabilities markedly improved and our confidence in leveraging the technology to consistently adjudicate cases is higher today than ever before. We are enthusiastic about our partnership with QuantaVerse and will be examining additional ways to improve through innovation.”

Bci Miami’s use of QuantaVerse FCIRs led the bank to explore the adoption of the QuantaVerse High-Risk Entity Report (HRER) to improve the accuracy and consistency of its high-risk entity review program. The QuantaVerse HRER is an entity-specific FCIR that assists financial institutions in efficiently conducting periodic risk reviews required by regulators. Key information presented in this report includes adverse media, jurisdiction, transactional relationships, typologies that indicate potential money laundering, and more. 

“We are proud to extend our relationship with Bci Miami,” explained David McLaughlin, CEO and Founder of QuantaVerse. “Through the use of the QuantaVerse Financial Crime Investigation Platform, Bci Miami has proven how a smart, innovative AML compliance program can leverage data science to make improvements across the board.”

Bci Miami is the U.S. branch of Banco de Credito e Inversiones, a Chilean Bank operating for over 80 years. Bci Miami was established in 1999 and was the first step of Bci’s strategic plan for internationalization. The Branch’s mission is to serve Chilean and Latin American customers in their international businesses, as well as their globalization process, especially in the U.S. Through customer-centric service and a highly experienced team, the Branch serves and advises personal and corporate clients, mainly from Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and the U.S. Bci Miami offers a wide range of banking products and services, including time deposits and transactional accounts in major currencies, cash management, online banking, credit lines, foreign trade services, factoring, and forfaiting, among others. 

Delta Capita, a global provider of managed services, technology solutions and consulting, announced that it has appointed Francesca Herratt as its new Chief Financial Officer. 

Francesca Herratt joins Delta Capita as Chief Financial Officer. The appointment of a full time Chief Financial Officer is another important milestone on Delta Capita’s growth journey.  Francesca is a seasoned financial leader with significant industry experience. She will support the expansion strategy, manage investor relations, and ensure continued investment for growth.

Francesca brings a wealth of experience to Delta Capita. Prior to joining Delta Capita Francesca was the Chief Financial Officer for the UK’s largest non-standard branch-based lender of unsecured loans. Francesca joined Everyday Loans in May 2019 from its parent company, Non-Standard Finance plc (NSF) where she gained an excellent understanding of the unique nature of the non-standard sector and a listed company. Francesca was appointed by Everyday Loans to ensure that its rapid expansion plans were fully supported by the most robust finance strategy.

Joe Channer, Chief Executive Officer at Delta Capita, said: “Francesca joins at an important phase in our journey, where we continue to grow our business and will help manage Delta Capita through its ambitious phase of rapid expansion. “

Francesca Herratt, Chief Financial Officer at Delta Capita, said: “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with a diverse team of committed and trusted professionals with vast sector experience who are focused on reinventing the value chain in financial services.”

TORA, provider of industry leading trading technology, has today announced that DMA Prime (a division within the DMA Group), a provider of execution and prime brokerage services to institutional asset managers in South Africa, has selected TORA’s OEMS and TORA’s outsourced trading service.

DMA Prime chose TORA’s OEMS, as part of the rapid expansion of their outsourced dealing services in the region and the need for a scalable multi-asset global execution technology solution to help meet that growth.

In addition, the execution desk at DMA Prime has also selected TORA’s outsourced trading desk to supplement their global market reach with TORA traders working in multiple time zones to execute orders.

TORA’s OEMS provides advanced tools for clients trading equities, futures, options, bonds and FX in a unified system. The system delivers pioneering trading functionality including order execution, order allocation management, automated broker order routing, pre-trade risk controls, real-time position management and P&L tracking.

DMA Prime can now access the TORA FIX network to connect to global broker algo offerings, as well as use TORA’s equity pairs algos to improve execution quality and use the TORA TCA reporting suite.

Chris Jenkins, Managing Director at TORA commented “We are very pleased to announce DMA Prime as TORA’s first South African client, which is a milestone for us. We are passionate about being able to provide the latest trading technology that gives clients an added edge. We look forward to a long-term partnership with the team at DMA Prime.”

Justin Sage, Head of Institutional Trading at DMA Prime: “Against the backdrop of a very competitive landscape, TORA’s OEMS was the perfect choice for us. We really needed a global execution system that allows fast single-click trading and the ability to seamlessly connect to our existing in-house proprietary portfolio technology and liquidity providers.”

“What’s more by working with the TORA outsourced trading team, we can scale our trading operations significantly as our client base grows. Institutional investors in South Africa demand market-leading technology and high service levels, and we are comfortable that TORA will keep ahead of the curve with extensive inhouse development capacity and trading expertise to supplement our internal teams.”

South Africa is the continent's largest savings market with an estimated ZAR 7.5 trillion AUM in regulated savings and investments (Collective Investments, Long term Insurance, The Public Investment Corp & Retirement Funds), a growth story that DMA Prime as a participant is very excited by. The South African Rand (ZAR) has been one of the best performing emerging markets currencies this year, a popular carry trade opportunity with attractive yields relative to developed economies and a tail wind from strong commodity prices.

TORA was one of the first in the industry to establish a cloud based OEMS over 16 years ago. The system offers multi-asset, multi-region trading technology that is compliant with MIFID II. TORA’s OEMS offers a wealth of functionality covering execution, allocations, risk control, real time positions-keeping and P&L monitoring. The platform can also provide detailed reports & analytics and has a broker-neutral equity pairs algo suite.

Sense of unease pervades financial markets over potential for stagflation - amid higher prices and Covid resurgence

Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown:

‘’The creeping UK headline inflation rate is likely add to the sense of unease pervading the financial markets about the impact higher prices will have on economies around the world, as concerns about new Covid variants also rise. The FTSE 100 opened lower amid expectations central bank mass stimulus programmes may start to be eased more quickly, even though the recovery remains fragile.

Although, for the moment, central banks are largely keeping their cool, appearing confident the spectre of lingering inflation will disappear, there are increasing signs of nervousness among investors, especially as readings in other countries also show price spikes. Although much of the increases are related to the unusually low level of prices last year due to the pandemic effect, it appears genuine price inflation is also occurring.

Also playing on minds are surging Covid infection rates due to the spread of the delta variant and how these could slow the economic recovery. This raises the unpalatable possibility that stagflation could take hold, where there is a drag on economic growth and knock on higher unemployment, amid the headache of rising prices.

The Nasdaq and S&P 500 fell back from record highs yesterday as data showed prices in the US grew at their fastest pace in 13 years last month. The US producer prices index due out later today will be closely watched as it should give a fresh indication about whether pressures which have been mounting up due to increases in commodities and factory gate prices are being sustained.

Attention will also be drawn to US Congress later today where Fed chair, Jerome Powell, will face questions about monetary policy, particularly given suggestions from other central bank officials that the mass bond buying programme may need to be scaled back sooner rather than later. He’s likely to hold the transitory line on inflation and maintain that the higher prices we have seen are mainly due to the effects being felt from the pandemic bounce back, and so won’t be sustained. Recent Federal Reserve minutes also showed some officials felt uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook was still elevated.

Although there is recognition that financial markets and the wider economy needs to come off the drug of cheap money, there is concern about how smoothly the withdrawal is administered, with fears that any hint of a cold turkey shock could cause significant volatility for more risky assets in particular.’’

Ian McKenna, founder of AdviserSoftware.com and the Financial Technology Research Centre, comments on Praemium’s announcement to divest their international businesses: “The announcement overnight in Australia that Praemium are to divest their international businesses should attract significant attention from potential UK purchases, especially in the platform and asset management space."

“Advice tech businesses are already very much in vogue with private equity firms and over the last decade most of the independent practice management systems have been acquired by platforms or asset managers. This includes Abrdn’s purchase of Focus Solutions in 2010, Invesco‘s purchase of Intelliflo, Schroder acquiring Enable via the purchase of Benchmark Capital, and Transact parents Integrafin buying Time4Advice at the start of this year."

“The Plum system has recently had a major overhaul to upgrade to technology to use Microsoft Dynamics in a very similar way to Time4Advice."

“It is rare for an independent practice management system to become available, especially one that has recently had a major technology upgrade. There are many reasons why this could be a very attractive purchase for several organisations."

Earlier this year, Rosbank completed a merger with Rusfinance Bank, one of the leaders of the Russian car loan market. The reorganization resulted in the establishment of a new branch – Rosbank Auto – providing a full range of auto lending services, leasing products, car trading and long-term car rental together with traditional banking products. Diasoft ensured integration of the new branch with the bank’s head office and other branches and supported exchange of payments, centralized document workflow and balance conversion.

Rusfinance Bank used Diasoft solutions to support its payments and settlements for several years, which became an important criterion in selection of Diasoft as a technology partner in the merger. Diasoft experts transformed payment routing, standardized payment flows and supported exchange of payments in the SWIFT format and Russian Unified Formats of Electronic Bank Messages (UFEBS). All payments of Rosbank Auto are now sent to the Bank of Russia through Rosbank’s centralized settlement center.

Another important task in this project was the conversion of the balance of the former Rusfinance Bank and creation of the balance of Rosbank Auto. The project also included integration of the document workflow of the former Rusfinance bank into Rosbank’s document workflows.

“From the point of view of technologies, while establishing the new branch, we focused on reduction of the time-to-market and enablement of future projects for digitalization of business processes. With Diasoft’s support, we implemented an effective technological platform, which will help us to strengthen our leading position in the auto lending market of Russia”, commented Alexander Taratorin, IT Director, Rosbank.  

“This integration project gave our team a valuable experience. It is a standard task to implement batch data exchange for our customers, but in this project, we had a rare opportunity to create an integration solution to support communication between the SWIFT adapter and the popular IBM MQ. The project team found the best approach to all technological tasks and ensured successful integration of the new branch with the Rosbank group”, says Pavel Pogorelsky, Product Director for Analytical Reporting, Diasoft. 

Cirrus, a provider of cloud-based document management software, has completed an extensive rebranding effort in response to accelerated company growth and an industry need for adaptive software to streamline lending and onboarding processes. Coinciding with the unveiling of the new brand, Cirrus launched an updated website, as well as its Intelligent Application™ enhancement, which enables sophisticated filtering and routing tools for multiple onboarding use cases within a financial institution. In addition, Cirrus announced a major upcoming messaging enhancement within the platform. 

Cirrus’ UI messaging enhancements simplify the communication and collaboration of documents required when onboarding new and existing customers through an inbox-style design. The platform’s UI messaging format includes the functionality of Cirrus’ standard checklists, the ability to share documents seamlessly and tools to request additional information, such as a file request. The updates also allow lenders to store documents for individual contacts, auto-populating necessary documents should a customer choose to open a different account or a new type of loan.

The enhanced platform also includes a product routing tool to streamline online applications using decision tree logic to drive customers to different products through eligibility filtering. Using decision tree logic, the platform gathers information on borrowers, such as intended use of funds, to automatically request relevant documents, allowing lenders to execute the onboarding process based on products that best fit the criteria entered online by the prospective customer.

“The recent enhancements to Cirrus’ platform further streamline the management of deal flow and document chaos effortlessly, so bankers can focus on deals, rather than documents,” said David Brooks, founder and CEO, Cirrus. “Our customizable and secure portal is built to allow teams to easily track loan status, automatically name and package documents, and access online support systems to navigate the lending cycle efficiently. This rebrand solidifies Cirrus’ stance as an industry leader offering lending innovations and an unparalleled customer experience.”

 M1 Finance, the fast-growing Finance Super App offering automated investing, borrowing, and banking products, today announced a $150 million Series E funding round.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 led the round, with participation from existing investors.

M1 Finance has seen record growth, capturing the attention of influential investors who believe in its mission and potential. After raising a Series B, C, and D in just the past twelve months, M1’s total funding is now over $300 million, and its total assets under management is over $4.5 billion.

In addition to its rapid growth, M1 is driving industry-leading innovation through its latest product releases. Last December, M1 launched Smart Transfers, allowing M1 Plus clients to automate financial goals based on pre-set rules. In February of this year, it released Custodial Accounts, giving M1 Plus parents or guardians the ability to invest in portfolios for younger generations. In June, M1 launched Send Check, which allows M1 Plus clients to send physical checks from their M1 Spend Plus checking accounts.

“Each funding round is proof and motivation that people believe in our mission of empowering financial well-being,” said M1 Finance founder and CEO Brian Barnes. “Financial well-being isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. Our platform helps people have more control, more freedom, and more power over their money. We experienced massive growth in the past year, and it’s extremely gratifying to see investors and clients believe in our vision and make it a reality.”

The new capital will allow M1 to focus on delivering an optimal client experience through new products and features, platform innovation, enhanced customer service, and hiring top talent to realize its mission.

“M1 Finance simplifies the complex, time-consuming money management process for individuals,” said Munish Varma, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We believe the company is well-positioned to consolidate users’ financial lives on a one-stop super-app with its Invest, Spend and Borrow products. We look forward to partnering with Brian Barnes and his team to help them scale their business and launch more products.”

To learn more about M1 Finance, visit www.m1finance.com.

OneFamily is investing in its growing customer base with a new digital platform that it says will revolutionise its customers’ experience.

The mutual has engaged iPipeline, a leading digital solutions provider, to overhaul its existing platform which currently serves 2.6 million customers.  The move will see the rollout of a new easy-to-use digital service for OneFamily’s savings, investments and protection businesses.

Graham O’Sullivan, Director of IT and Change at OneFamily said: “We’re making a strategic investment to ensure our customers receive the best possible experience when they engage with us, whether this is through our self-serve digital channels or our award-winning customer contact centre.

“Our partnership with iPipeline will enable us to deliver our service to customers and advisers using the latest digital capabilities, while also supporting those customers who prefer traditional contact channels.”

Ian Teague, UK Group Managing Director at iPipeline said: “OneFamily is embracing change in a rapidly evolving marketplace.  We’re pleased to be able to support the team with our platform as they futureproof their business, whilst keeping their customers’ needs right at the heart of what they’re doing.  Having a long-term partnership will mean we can help OneFamily to succeed for many years to come.”

Attivo Networks, the leader in identity detection and response, today announced a new Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) solution, IDEntitleX, designed to deliver visibility and reduce the attack surface for identities and entitlements in the cloud. IDEntitleX expands the company’s leadership position in providing unprecedented visibility and prevention of identity privilege escalation and lateral movement threat activity. With this new product introduction, Attivo becomes the only solution of its kind to provide end-to-end analysis of identity and entitlement exposures and risks on endpoints, Active Directory (AD), and the cloud. 

Organizations are moving to the public cloud in record-setting numbers, but with this growth comes unanticipated security challenges with user identity management and the explosion of “non-human” identities such as applications, databases, and data stores. Gartner, Inc. estimates that “By 2023, 75% of security failures will result from inadequate management of identities, access, and privileges, up from 50% in 2020”¹. Unfortunately, traditional security tools are ill-equipped to handle this explosion of resource management and, as a result, over-provision access and exasperate security risks. 

The new IDEntitleX solution reduces this risk by providing security teams with a unified view of identities and exposures across the organization to address provisioning management challenges while maintaining operational effectiveness. This includes multi-cloud support for AWS and Azure and provides detailed entitlement visibility for users, applications, virtual machines, containers, serverless functions and other objects which attackers seek to target. 

“As organizations continue to adopt cloud infrastructure at an ever-increasing rate and human and non-human identities expand to match, CISOs must focus on identity-first security solutions that can keep pace with this growth,” said Venu Vissamsetty, VP of Research at Attivo Networks. “This CIEM solution gives security teams the optimal flexibility and visibility they need for continuous monitoring of identities, entitlements, as well as correlation across standard cloud-based services.” 

“In today’s heady atmosphere of accelerated app delivery, security is all too often remaining an afterthought,” said Rik Turner, principal analyst at Omdia. “The rapid enterprise adoption of cloud computing has revealed a latent threat of ‘permission sprawl,’ and this challenge is driving an emerging technology segment that prioritises visibility and reduces the attack surface for identities and entitlements in the cloud. With the introduction of IDEntitleX, Attivo Networks is well-positioned to emerge as a major player in the CPM or CIEM market.” 

The Attivo Networks IDEntitleX solution meets the challenges of identity and entitlement management with the following benefits: 

·        Broadest Range of Cloud Visibility: Understand exposures with identity and entitlement summaries across all platforms.  

·        Platform-Specific Cloud Visibility: Monitor entitlements to key cloud services, such as AWS S3 and Azure Key Vault.  

·        End-to-end Visibility: View endpoint, Active Directory, and cloud exposures from a centralized management console. 

·        Object-specific Risk Assessment: Isolate objects by risk and analyze the details of their entitlements. 

To learn more about IDEntitleX for identity protection, visit https://attivonetworks.com/product/IDEntitleX or read the full solution brief here: https://attivonetworks.com/documentation/Attivo_Networks-IDEntitleX_Solution_Brief.pdf 

Visit https://attivonetworks.com/solutions/identity-security for additional information about the solutions.