Salerio, the post-execution trade processing solution from corfinancial, has been selected by Man Group, the global active investment management firm, to assist in their migration from the OASYS™ US securities trade processing flows to the DTCC’s Institutional Trade Processing (ITP) CTM™ (Central Trade Manager) platform.

Last year, DTCC announced that it would decommission OASYS™ on 31 October 2021.

Man Group has been automating key post-trade processes, including trade confirmation and settlement for international securities, for many years using Salerio. It was, therefore, the natural solution to manage the migrating US trade confirmation workflow.

Salerio provides seamless connectivity to DTCC’s CTM platform and Man Group was able to manage the transition of US equity trades processing via OASYS to the CTM utility without the need for vendor support.

Antonio Dos Santos, Head of London Investment Operations at Man Group, said: “We wanted to ensure the continuity of our centralised post-trade processing in light of the changes soon being introduced by the DTCC. With Salerio’s rich workflow capabilities, the transition was a simple one and we moved most of our US equity traffic over to the Salerio CTM module with ease.”

David Veal, Senior Executive – Client Solutions at corfinancial, said: “Our post-trade processing solution is intuitive, making it easy for clients like Man Group to manage their operations with confidence. During 2020, we enhanced Salerio to ensure that it fully encompasses the changes being introduced by the DTCC that allows the processing of both US and international post-trade securities through the CTM service.”

Commenting on the Federation of Small Businesses warning that SMEs face a funding gap as COVID-19 restrictions continue and financial support ends, Douglas Grant, Director of Conister, part of AIM listed Manx Financial Group, said: “As the lifeblood of the UK economy, we must continue to do all we can to protect agile and resilient SMEs who are working hard to adapt to the post-pandemic economy. However, we must remember that the UK’s SME debt burden is ballooning, and we are in serious danger of seeing a relentless flow of weak zombie-like companies falling off a loan default cliff. It is imperative that we avoid compounding this cycle by focussing solely on supporting sectors and businesses that are strong and nimble enough to adapt to the new economy and therefore continue contributing to its growth.

“At Conister we have worked tirelessly to provide access to much needed funding for SMEs and have continually fought for provisions to be guaranteed for the sector. We believe the introduction of the recovery loan scheme (RLS) will certainly help and we are pleased to see the Government look beyond the initial triage phase and instead identify, prioritise and protect our most resilient business sectors that can meaningfully contribute to the new economy.”

Slovenská sporiteľňa, the largest commercial bank in Slovakia, has chosen FICO^® Decision Optimizer to increase profitability and improve portfolio management for its cash loan portfolio. Using FICO’s advanced AI-powered optimization, the bank will develop data-driven lending strategies to systematically improve results. Slovenská sporiteľňa is part of the Erste Group, one of the largest financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe, which serves more than 16 million customers in seven countries.

More information: https://www.fico.com/en/products/fico-decision-optimizer 

“As a digital banking leader in Slovakia we are looking forward to this cooperation,” said Zdeněk Románek, member of the Board of Directors of Slovenská sporiteľňa responsible for retail banking. “We value not only the power of the FICO optimization algorithms and software but the way they will enable our data scientists and our portfolio management team to collaborate on designing, executing and managing new strategies for the business.”

“Slovenská sporiteľňa, as the lending leader in Slovakia, is advancing the use of mathematical optimization to transform lending,” added Steve Hadaway, EMEA general manager for FICO. “This is the application of advanced data science to navigate a universe of possible strategies and identify the most successful, based on multiple constraints and objectives. For a complex lending market like the one today, optimization has become an essential tool.”

FICO^® Decision Optimizer, part of the FICO^® Platform, supports the entire lifecycle of designing, developing, executing and deploying decision optimization technology. Its advanced decision impact modelling, simulation and optimization techniques allow lenders to discover better decision strategies that balance trade-offs between cost, risk and reward, while also factoring in economic and market conditions.

Beeline telecommunications operator uses AI-based ID scanning technology Smart ID Engine to boost SIM cards sales in retail stores, on-site all over Russia. The integration of the software, developed by science-driven company Smart Engines, was conducted by Digital Economy League. Today, as part of the project, Beeline was supplied with about 12 million recognitions.

When purchasing a SIM card, the client’s registration process is quite simple: the office staff only needs to take a photo or scan the customer’s ID. Smart ID Engine SDK recognizes ID data in just a second and automatically fills in the necessary fields of the subscriber’s account form in the information system. Then, the staff has to confirm this data before entering it into the customer accounting system. 

The proprietary Smart Engines AI technology GreenOCR® provides high speed and unrivalled quality of automatic data extraction by Smart ID Engine. The highest performance is achieved due to the scientific achievements of Smart Engines researchers in the field of building new compact and energy-efficient deep neural networks. Smart ID Engine based solution works on the client premises and ensures a high security level of personal data processing, as no data of Beeline customers’ IDs is transferred to third-party sources for manual processing.

“Fast in-branch client registration does not only mean greater comfort for our customers but also increases the level of health safety during the pandemic. Integrating Smart Engines solution allows us to reduce queues onsite and provide our clients with remote sales channels service. Automatic ID scanning has minimized the time spent in half while selling a SIM card to a new subscriber,” states Igor Gerasimov, Director of Retail Management at Beeline.

“We are glad to develop the partnership with Beeline and are sure that the usage of our state-of-the-art solutions will be further expanded in the client service and support systems of the mobile operator,” says Nikita Arlazarov, Chief Financial Officer at Smart Engines.

“Automatic document scanning is a modern standard for client service. We are pleased to participate in this project for such an important customer. From now on, many Beeline clients will be able to use the enhanced service. Our company is actively working in this section, implementing the best solutions on the market,” comments Oleg Pashinin, ESM Managing Director at  Digital Economy League.

Paysend announces that the latest White Paper entitled Digital Money in a Post-covid world has been published and is available now.

Head of Branding, Alberto Macciani, digs deep into the prolific expansion of digital money over the last 12 months and demonstrates just how we will see the landscape of financial technology shift, revolutionising the way we manage our money on a daily basis.

Paysend is proud to be at forefront of this revolution and one of the leaders in financial technology and the digitisation of money movement. The team is constantly working to develop expert, key and simple money solutions that provide our 3.8+ million customer base with the ability to save time, save money and be served at best all over the world.

As one of the first Fintech to introduce global card to card transfers and connect 12 billion cards across Mastercard, Visa, China UnionPay and Alipay, the Paysend team have been reviewing what has been learnt over this year of a global pandemic? What changes need to be made in our everyday lifestyle? How Paysend can improve upon experience for our users?

The Paysend goal is to harness its resources to provide digital money solutions that make life that much easier for customers and remove any unrequited hassle. Within the White Paper, Paysend discusses how our recent experience of lockdowns, social distancing and travel bans has caused the digital world to evolve and develop new ways of working, problem-solving using financial technology to navigate our surrounding restrictions. It shows examples of the way customer behaviour has changed; everyday practices being adjusted when entering back out into the world. The care for our health and well-being of the up-most importance whilst also ensuring our finances are secure in the midst of so much uncertainty.

Forecasting for the future and Paysend’s role to play:

Since March of 2020, the Covid pandemic has sparked one of the biggest upheavals in consumer habits and forced us all to adapt. It is recognised that businesses have been put under immense pressure this year, budget cuts and furlough/employment retention schemes becoming a necessary evil to keep afloat. That is why 17,000+ small and medium businesses put their trust in Paysend to provide them with over 40 fast and hassle-free payment solutions, offering them reduced rates.

LPA Group, the capital market technology and innovation leader, today announced the expansion of its French office with two new senior hires: Michael Lemke as Head of Client Delivery Solutions and Vincent Stefanović as Client Director Sales for the Buy-Side.

Based in Paris, Michael and Vincent will join Thomas Geist, Senior Sales Account Manager, in promoting LPA Group’s innovative technology solutions for financial services and supporting the firm’s growth in France, Benelux and Italy.

Michael has over 25 years of experience in supporting financial institutions and corporate treasurers with digital transformation programmes on all operational and functional aspects. He spent several years as an independent adviser and previously worked for Calypso Technology and Murex in project management roles.

Vincent has more than 20 years of business development experience and a proven track record in opening new markets and launching new products for the buy-side, synthesizing complex data, risk and compliance monitoring and reporting market needs for global tier 1 financial institutions. Prior to LPA, He held senior sales roles at DST, Finantix and State Street where he held senior sales roles.

Commenting on his appointment, Michael Lemke said: “LPA delivers state-of-the-art technology for financial institutions. I believe my expertise and network will spearhead the firm’s growth in France and beyond.”

Vincent Stefanović said: “LPA has a fresh take on technology, capable of bringing together the best banking and capital markets expertise and outstanding software development. It’s an exciting time for the firm and I am looking forward to helping expand its buy-side business in Europe.”

Stefan Lucht, Founder and Managing Partner at LPA commented: “The financial services industry has evolved at an incredible rate in recent years, underpinned by rapid advances in technology. The Covid-19 pandemic has served as a stress test for investments made over the last decade and it has shown that innovative players were much better positioned to weather the storm. This has also resulted in a surge in demand for our products and services across the continent. We would like to welcome Michael and Vincent to the team, whose experience and skillsets give us confidence to help us drive continued growth against this backdrop of opportunity for the business.”

Fourthline, the digital identity and verification specialist, has released findings from its Digital Identity Fraud Analysis Tool, which looked specifically at the different ways fraudsters have attempted to create digital wallet accounts in the UK over the last six months. The UK Digital Wallet ID Fraud Pulse, analysed data over the period January 2021 to June 2021, to reveal criminals most commonly used counterfeit driving licences when attempting to open a new digital wallet account.

Digital or mobile wallet payments have skyrocketed in the UK -  used for just under a third of all online transactions in 2020, according to payment processor Worldpay. This explosion in usage presents an opportunity for fraudsters to use counterfeit or tampered ID to create illegal digital wallet accounts.  As the real identity behind these fraudulent accounts is unknown, the accounts can be used to launder money; for bribery purposes, wider scams and tax evasion; as well as making purchases and transferring money.

Fourthline analysed anonymised data from digital wallet account openings in the UK over the last six months. Its UK Digital Wallet ID Fraud Pulse reveals that:

1. Driving licences most commonly frauded ID document

• Driving licenses are the most common counterfeited identity document used to open a fraudulent digital wallet in the UK (55.2% of all fraud attempts)
• This is followed by a passport and non-UK national ID cards (both 18.4%) and residence permit (7.8%)

2. London is counterfeit ID hotspot for digital wallets

• Greater London is the counterfeit ID hotspot for digital wallet opening attempts in the UK: 33.6% of all fraud attempts were recorded in Greater London, followed by 20.6% in Yorkshire and Humber.
• The West Midlands experienced the next highest amount of fraudulent digital wallet openings (15.5%), followed by the North West (14.6%) and East Midlands (6.9%).
• Meanwhile Scotland (2.5%), Wales, the South East and South West (all 1.7%) and North East (0.8%) have the lowest amount of fraudulent digital wallet opening attempts.

3. Characteristics of a digital wallet fraudster: Mid to late 20’s male most common profile

• Nine in ten fraudulent digital wallet opens have a male profile (89.1%)
• The most common age profile of a fake digital wallet account opening is aged between 26 - 30 years old (27.7%) followed by age 22- 25 years old (18.5%);
  • According to UK Finance, nearly 40 per cent of 25-34-year-olds and close to 30 per cent of 16-24-year-olds were registered to use mobile wallets.  
• Criminals tend not to create older fake profiles – the least common age profile for a fake digital wallet account opening is aged between 56 - 60 years old (0%) followed by 61- 65 years old and 51-55 years old (both 1.8%).
  • According to UK Finance, the proportion of people in the 65+ age group registered for mobile payments is lowest with just under 5%.

Krik Gunning, Co-founder and CEO of Fourthline comments: “The shift to storing our identity in digital wallets brings greater convenience and control of our sensitive personal data. Yet fraudsters are pushing to exploit the freedoms digital wallets provide. Providing the highest levels of security and compliance at account sign up is crucial to pinpointing digital wallet fraud and preventing fraudulent account openings.”

METHODOLOGY

The figures are based on an analysis of Fourthline’s data of over 20,000 digital wallet account openings in the UK.  The data consists of applicants with a residence address in the UK over the period January 2021 to June 2021. UK regions are derived from postal codes.

Definition of Document fraud: the use of inauthentic government-issued IDs. These can either be counterfeit, where the entire document is fake, or tampered documents, where only certain details of legitimate ID documents have been altered. This can include the substitution of photos, printed and cut copies of genuine documents, altered information on genuine documents (i.e. expiration dates or birth dates) and entirely forged documents made from scratch.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), leading global IT services, consulting, and business solutions organization, announced that Commercial Bank of Kuwait (CBK), one of the largest financial institutions in Kuwait, has selected TCS BaNCS™ for Treasury to manage risk better, enhance asset class coverage, and drive future growth. 

CBK was looking for a modern, integrated treasury solution to help transform its treasury operations and offer new generation asset classes, enhance risk management, and ensure regulatory compliance. TCS BaNCS for Treasury will help CBK offer a wider range of cash and derivative treasury products, integrate various trading and messaging platforms, manage cash and positions in real time, and offer extensive accounting and reporting capabilities. This front-to-back, cross-asset solution will enable the bank to lay a firm foundation for digitization and expand its customer base.

The integrated solution offers comprehensive straight-through processing, and fully automated confirmation, settlement, clearing, collateral management and dispute resolution along with integrated accounting. It rests on a digital core and comes with standardized and well-documented APIs that can seamlessly integrate with the existing IT landscape of CBK.  

Hussain Al Aryan, General Manager, Treasury & Investment Division, Commercial Bank of Kuwait, said, “We have been a premier provider of banking services in the region and the treasury business in a critical part of our bank’s overall revenue stream. We selected TCS BaNCS for its breadth and depth of functionality and successful track record of treasury programs deployed at leading financial institutions in the region. With TCS BaNCS, we look forward to transforming our treasury operations, making our bank future ready, enhancing customer experience, easing regulatory compliance, and bringing in exotic asset classes to our product mix. We believe that our partnership with TCS will help us meet the challenges of the future.”

Venkateshwaran Srinivasan, Global Head, TCS Financial Solutions, said, “We are delighted to partner with the Commercial Bank of Kuwait in their treasury transformation initiative. TCS BaNCS’ comprehensive treasury solution offers much higher levels of straight-through-processing, enhances risk management and compliance and enables superior customer experience. This partnership further underscores our strong commitment to the Middle East market and is a testimony to our deep contextual understanding of the industry and local market practices.” 

TCS BaNCS for Treasury is a cross-asset-class solution that is intelligent, agile, and automated. It is a multi-entity, multi-currency solution for front-, middle-, and back-office operations in treasury and trading. The solution supports a range of asset classes such as cash products on the foreign exchange, money markets, fixed income, and equity. It also covers OTC and exchange traded derivative on FOREX, rates, equity, credit, commodities and alongside OTC hybrid structures. 

Its powerful and comprehensive functionality, with rich risk analytics, enables institutions to move from country- and asset-class-wise systems to a single platform aimed at proactively managing and monitoring organizational risk exposures. It further helps organizations identify the source of risk through innovative desk-book folders and risk transfer mechanisms. Architected on a robust, state-of-the-art Java EE and SOA-enabled architecture, it facilitates rapid enterprise integration. Following TCS BaNCS’ Digital First, Cloud First philosophy, the solution is platform-agnostic and has the facility to house multiple treasury units under one installation. 

Splitit, the company empowering consumers to use their existing credit to spread payments over time, announced a partnership with tabby, the leading Middle East Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) provider. tabby will integrate Splitit’s instalment payment platform through a white-label solution to allow tabby’s merchants to offer instalments on credit cards. The integration of Splitit will also allow tabby to expand its offering to new merchant categories and those with higher average order values.
tabby will integrate Splitit’s technology into the tabby BNPL platform to seamlessly provide shoppers with an additional option to pay in instalments over time using their credit card. The integration to tabby’s BNPL platform is expected to be completed by the end of Q3 2021.
tabby is the leading BNPL provider serving the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, supporting more than 2,000 merchants, including Ikea, SHEIN, Marks and Spencer, adidas and Toys R Us. In 2020, the eCommerce market was valued at US$11 billion in Saudi Arabia and US$7 billion in the UAE and is expected to double in size in the next five years.1  tabby offers a consumer financing option for shoppers to pay for items in four equal instalments and has a high-profile brand in the region. tabby integrates directly into merchant checkouts or POS systems and does not charge shoppers interest.
“This is a great partnership for us at tabby as it allows us to broaden our product offering to existing merchants as well as enter new verticals across the markets we serve,” said tabby founder and CEO Hosam Arab. “Splitit has an elegant solution that will fit nicely within our product and complement our financing options for higher-value purchases.”
“We are delighted to be partnering with tabby to expand their market-leading offering. We’ve always seen our solution as complementary to other BNPL providers, which this new exciting partnership with tabby highlights perfectly. Our global payments platform is the only solution leveraging credit card payment networks, with the flexibility to scale internationally without the need for major on-the-ground support,” said Splitit CEO Brad Paterson.
“Having expanded our platform capability, we can now also offer white-label solutions as a way to enter new regions such as the Middle East by partnering with established players that already have a strong market presence. While we remain focused on further penetration of Splitit’s branded product in the US, APAC and Europe, this provides a new low-cost, high-margin revenue stream which we can easily emulate in other markets,” added Mr. Paterson.
To learn more about Splitit or to partner with Splitit, visit: https://www.splitit.com/partners/

• 85% of respondents at global financial institutions believe Banking as a Service (BaaS) will make an impact over the next year; 40% believe the impact will be significant
• More than 9 in 10 respondents agree that Open Banking is important to their organization; 97% of those that already use Open Banking recognize that it has provided benefits to their business

Finastra research reveals that Banking as a Service (BaaS) and embedded banking services are set to have a notable impact on the industry in the next 12 months. Whilst all markets broadly anticipate this trend - 85% of respondents at global financial institutions - Hong Kong (92%), the UAE (90%) and Singapore (87%) expect the impact to be greatest.

The ‘Financial Services: State of the Nation Survey 2021’, also finds that most organizations are now deriving the benefits of Open Banking and Open Finance, with the latter considered the natural evolution for the sector. Globally, 94% of those surveyed agree that Open Banking is important to their organization, with 63% reporting that it’s enabled them to improve customer experience and 59% stating that it’s helped attract new types of customers.

The research was conducted amongst 785 professionals at financial institutions and banks in March 2021 across the US, UK, Singapore, France, Germany, Hong Kong and the UAE. It explores the Open Banking and Finance landscape, the technology and initiatives set to make an impact in financial services over the next year, and how COVID-19 has impacted the sector.

Other insights include:

• Alongside BaaS, mobile banking and artificial intelligence are identified as the other top technologies which will be improved or deployed in the next 12 months. 95% of organizations are forecasting that they will look to improve or develop technology in this period. The UAE (44%) and Hong Kong (42%) lead the way when it comes to interest in mobile banking, compared to an average of 36% across all seven markets.
• Collaboration remains important to 94% of financial services institutions, though there remain several existing and new barriers surrounding regulation, security, and technology. Complex regulations have been identified as a significant barrier, with 40% of global respondents agreeing. France (47%), Singapore (45%) and Germany (44%) picked this as their number one barrier. An increase in security risk was identified as the top barrier by banks in the US, Hong Kong and the UAE (all 40%), while legacy systems and IT was cited as the top barrier to collaboration in the UK (48%).
• COVID-19 has acted as an accelerator for businesses to adapt and invest in new technology and innovation, according to 8 in 10 global organizations. Respondents in Singapore (87%), the UK (82%) and the UAE (82%) are most likely to agree.
• Financial services organizations are increasingly looking at their organizational purpose. 86% agree that ‘financial services and banking is about more than just finance, and we have a duty to support the communities we are serving’. At Finastra, we call this redefining finance for good.

“Our findings show how financial institutions are already benefiting from Open Banking and, new this year, a growing role for BaaS. We believe that these initiatives have already started paving the way to true Open Finance, helping financial services institutions to develop and enhance the services they provide to their customers,” said Eli Rosner, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Finastra. “For BaaS specifically, 81% of global respondents see it as a means to grow business, enhance their distribution channels, shorten time to market and streamline operations. Valuable insight from so many financial institutions sets the tone for the evolution of financial services as banks and their customers adapt beyond the pandemic and, together with the industry support they provide, serve their communities better.”

Access the full report and findings here.