GigaSpaces InsightEdge Smart Operational Data Store (ODS)/Digital Integration Hub (DIH) has been named the Best Data Tool and Platform of 2021 as part of the annual SIIA CODiE Awards.  The CODiE Awards recognize the companies producing the most innovative business technology products across the country, and around the world.

“We are honored to receive this very prestigious award, that is based on a deep dive into our technology’s differentiators and our powerful customer testimonials”, said Eti Gwirtz, VP Product at GigaSpaces.  “With the new focus on the online economy triggered by COVID, companies are competing to see who can be the first to develop and deploy new differentiating online services, and we are proud to provide an award-winning technology that enables our customers to deliver superior user experiences.”

The InsightEdge Smart ODS/DIH in-memory platform provides the required high performance, availability, and elastic scaling enabling enterprises to meet the most challenging data and analytics processing needs.    InsightEdge executes data transactions and analytics 30X faster than NoSQL, and 6X faster than other in-memory platforms and run complex algorithms, as used in risk and fraud, in minutes compared with hours, while saving millions of dollars a year on resource provisioning compared to alternative solutions.

“Congratulations to all of the 2021 Business Technology CODiE Award winners,” said SIIA President Jeff Joseph. “The products honored this year hold a particularly special place in the distinguished history of the CODiEs. Many of these winners literally helped business survive, and even thrive, as the global business community transitioned to remote status due to the pandemic. All those honored today demonstrate the resilience of this dynamic industry. Innovation continued even in the face of an unprecedented challenging year.”  

Acknowledged as the premier awards program for the software and information industries for over 35 years, the SIIA CODiE Awards are produced by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software, education, media and digital content industries.

Details about the winners are listed at https://history.siia.net/codie/2021-Winners.

Singapore: Diginex Limited, recently rebranded as  EQONEX Group (the “Company”), a digital assets financial services company, today announced that total spot and derivative trading volumes on EQONEX, its  cryptocurrency exchange, exceeded US$5 billion over the past 30 days. 

Volumes in June have continued their recent strong upward trajectory, with  average daily volumes in June month-to-date of US$190 million, representing an  increase of 206% and 80% from April and May this year, respectively. Compared to  the first quarter of 2021 and prior to the launch of its native exchange token EQO,  volumes in June month-to-date are up over 12 times. 

30 Day Rolling Average Daily Volumes on EQONEX Exchange (US$m)

Source: www.eqonex.com/markets/ 

The EQONEX exchange has transitioned from an early-stage strategy focused on  building a highly competitive order book with tight spreads and deep liquidity, to  one focused on driving organic revenue growth. Since early April 2021, the EQONEX  exchange has seen a rapid expansion in fee-paying volume, driven in part by the  launch of the EQO exchange token, which began trading on April 8, 2021. 

This strategy has not only contributed to overall volume growth but has also driven fee-paying volume significantly higher, as highlighted in the table below. 

30 Day Rolling Average Daily Fee-Paying Volume (US$m)

Entrust, a leading provider of trusted identities, payments and data protection, today announced that it has become a Visa Ready certified partner, offering their market-leading portfolio of Instant Financial Card Issuance solutions and expert guidance to help financial institutions create a smart, secure and convenient issuance experience for their cardholders across their branch network.

Today’s consumer finance market is highly competitive, and financial institutions and merchants alike are looking for partners that can help them elevate their customer experience. Credit and debit cards have proven a key part of that experience. By deploying the capability to print fully-activated and personalized payment cards in-branch when cardholders need it most, financial institutions differentiate their brand to attract and retain these valuable customers. As a Visa Ready certified partner, Entrust has flexible, secure and inspirational single-source instant issuance solutions that are trusted throughout the global payments ecosystem.

“We are pleased that Visa has recognized our leadership in the instant financial issuance space,” said Tony Ball, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Instant Issuance at Entrust. “Entrust is ready to help banks, credit unions, fintechs and merchants delight their cardholders with a robust range of cards, branding and personalization options, as well as on-premise and cloud deployment solutions across the globe.”

Entrust has also joined the Visa Fintech Partner Connect program. Initially launched in Europe, the program was recently expanded and is now available to customers in the U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia Pacific, Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This program provides Visa fintech customers with curated list of vetted payment and banking technology providers to simplify the discovery and procurement process for digital-first solutions. The program also offers pricing discounts and decreased implementation fees to participating fintech customers.

“In today’s climate, building a competitive financial product requires more technology than ever before. Consumers want seamless interactions across mobile and web, and they want access to a greater suite of digital banking capabilities,” said Terry Angelos, senior vice president and global head of fintech at Visa. “With Entrust participating in the Fintech Partner Connect program, our clients will have access to powerful set of tools for building new digital-first experiences.”

To find Entrust Instant Financial Issuance solutions on the Visa Ready Partner Portal or the Visa Fintech Partner Connect, visit https://partner.visa.com/site/partner-directory/entrust.html. 

To learn more about Entrust Instant Financial Issuance solutions, visit our website: https://www.entrust.com/issuance-systems/instant/financial-card. 

To learn more about what Visa Ready means to instant financial issuance programs, register for our upcoming webinar: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/17380/491082.

NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR), a global enterprise technology provider, today announced that it is recognized as an overall leader in Javelin’s 2021 Small Business Digital Account Opening Scorecard. Additionally, the report recognizes NCR Terafina as the leader in the user experience evaluation category and among the top three vendors evaluated in the customer journey and administrative tools categories.

NCR acquired Terafina earlier this year to expand account opening, sales and servicing capabilities within NCR’s Digital Banking portfolio. With this software, financial institutions can make it simple and easy for customers to open accounts anywhere (in the branch, online or through call centers) and deliver consistent experiences across digital and physical channels.

“Only half of the top 24 U.S. banks offer digital account opening for small businesses, but it should be table stakes,” said Ian Benton, Senior Analyst of Digital Banking. “Banks that force business owners to call a banker or visit a branch not only will fall behind competitors but also popular fintechs that are stealing customers from banks.”

Highlighting NCR Terafina’s focus on the customer journey, Benton writes in the scorecard: “Its account-opening process is a study in attention to detail, featuring several applicant-facing capabilities that none of the other vendors provided.” Benton also calls out the user experience category leadership of NCR Terafina citing, “a well-designed onboarding process for digital services.”

“Financial institutions today need to provide ‘digital everywhere’ experiences for their retail banking and business banking customers, and we are proud to deliver one of the industry’s most complete solutions to accomplish this,” said Ashwin Goyal, vice president and general manager, NCR Terafina. “This recognition is another validation of our strategy to deliver solutions that run self-directed banking for our customers.”

Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ:JKHY) is a leading provider of technology solutions and payment processing services primarily for the financial services industry. Its Jack Henry Banking^® division announced today that $2.5 billion-asset The National Bank of Indianapolis has migrated to the SilverLake System^® core to meet growing commercial and small business demand.

The National Bank of Indianapolis has experienced notable growth, and wanted to add more automation and streamline back-office processes to drive efficiencies. Because the bank found significant value in Jack Henry’s private cloud environment, it decided to keep this model and move to the SilverLake System core, beginning the migration at the pandemic’s onset. The National Bank of Indianapolis became Jack Henry’s first remote core migration in early 2020. 

Mark Bruin, president and CEO of The National Bank of Indianapolis, explained: “Migrations are a major commitment that require dedicated time and effort, which is why it’s so important to have a partner that is transparent about the process and works well with your team. We’ve enjoyed a successful long-standing relationship with Jack Henry due to their commitment to our bank’s needs and our cultural similarities, such as their service and commitment to employees and customers. We put our full trust in the process and people at Jack Henry as well as our own employees, making this remote migration one of our bank’s biggest internal successes to date. We look forward to leveraging the expanded functionalities our core now supports as we continue to grow.”

In addition to the new core, the bank also implemented the Banno Digital Platform™ to provide customers with more self-service options while maintaining personal service and human connections within the digital channel. Through the bank’s core-integrated chat service, Banno Conversations, customers will have a secure and authenticated channel to chat live with a bank representative. 

Bruin added: “We are not a mass-market bank; we are dedicated to making sure each customer has multiple points of contact at the bank to resolve their problems or needs through whichever channel they prefer. With Banno, we are providing modern digital tools that still support our high-touch approach to service. Being able to offer personal support at a customer’s moment of need – whether that happens digitally or in-person – is a key competitive differentiator.”

Stacey Zengel, senior vice president of Jack Henry & Associates and president of Jack Henry Banking, stated: “The National Bank of Indianapolis’ migration was not only a major success for the bank, but it also helped establish a template for how we managed all of the remote core conversions that came after. With its new core, the bank will benefit from added efficiencies and automation that allow it to scale more easily to meet growing business demand. Forward-looking institutions like The National Bank of Indianapolis are finding that offering a strategic mix of modern technology and human connection delivers an improved customer experience while enhancing its competitive position.” 

Commenting on sterling falling as the Bank of England expects inflation in excess of 3%, Olivier Konzeoue, FX Sales Trader at Saxo Markets, said: “The BoE chose to maintain accommodative measures in place, keeping the Benchmark Interest Rate at 0.1% and holding government asset purchases at GBP 875Bln, whilst outgoing chief economist Haldane was the only dissenter voting against keeping the bond-buying program unchanged (8-1 split on the topic).

“The MPC used similar rhetoric to that used by the US Fed of late, describing an expected peak in inflation in excess of 3% (versus 2.47% previously) as likely temporary in nature and flagged the uncertainty around the labor market outlook with close to 1.5 Million people still receiving wages through the furlough scheme. This justifies pushing back a potential 15Bps rate hike to August 2022, instead of June 2022, in order to avoid undermining recovery by a “premature tightening in monetary conditions”.

“GBP fell to session lows around 1.3906 after the announcement and hovers around the 1.3920 mark, whilst UK 10-year yields dropped 3Bps to 0.75% from 0.78%.”

The Independent Sustainability Agency Standard Ethics^[1] confirmed Fineco’s “EE+” rating for the second consecutive year – one of only two credit institutions currently awarded the most solid sustainability score .

Standard Ethics cited Fineco’s flexibility and a swift reactions to market challenges: characteristics which enabled the rapid implementation of ESG strategies in line with the international sustainability guidance from the UN, OECD and EU. Standard Ethics highlighted the development of adequate governance of sustainability tools, starting from FinecoBank's Board of Directors, representing best practice in terms of independence, professional pluralism and gender equality. 

Lorena Pelliciari, Chief Financial Officer and chairman of Fineco Sustainability Management Committee:

“We’re very satisfied about this result as it confirms Fineco’s ability to keep over time the high levels reached in sustainability, while accelerating in its path of growth. Being considered among the excellence of the banking sector not only for our swift answer to market challenges, but also for our governance, strengthens our effort for widening to more and more fields our principles of corporate ethics.”

The “EE+” rating is considered by Standard Ethics Rating a “very strong investment grade", assigned to sustainable companies with a low reputational risk and a strong long-term growth prospects. 

Fineco is a component of the Standard Ethics Italian Index, of the Standard Ethics Italian Banks Index, and is included in the FTSE4Good, in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index and in the Nasdaq CRD Global Sustainability Index.  FinecoBank is also a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Banking – a single framework for a sustainable banking industry developed through an innovative partnership between banks worldwide and United Nations Environment’s Finance Initiative.

As the roll-out of 5G continues, Louise Lunn, Vice President, Global Analytics Delivery at FICO examines the challenge for banks and their partners

The comprehensive roll-out of 5G across the UK and the rest of Europe is due to be completed within the next five years. Many analysts, however, agree there’s already a notable lag behind North America and Asia, so banks in Europe must ensure they are ready to utilise the upgrade the moment it is complete.

5G’s arrival is expected to drive a predicted £495.4 billion in global business opportunities during the next decade. Of this, analysts expect around £159.2 billion worldwide will come directly from analytics and real-time automation, powered by the 5G data explosion. But the big question is whether the massive amounts of data created by 5G will swamp aging, legacy infrastructures of companies that don’t invest or innovate.t

All banks, lenders, financial services providers, telcos and fintechs can directly benefit from 5G’s adoption, as it will enable scaled-up connectivity to their customer base via even more devices. It’s predicted it will also set off an avalanche in the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT), driving a surge in the number of connected devices – from smartphones, wearables and home appliances to sensors on all kinds of objects, be they public infrastructure or even clothes.

It’s also fair to say 5G is likely to have a direct impact on further empowering consumer-centric legislation like PSD2 (The Payments Services Directive 2), which is putting customers in the data driving seat by offering them a clear say in how personal information is shared and used by selected businesses. As a result, it will also become more important than ever for digital businesses to be able to plug into scalable machine learning and adaptable analytics platforms, as the use of third-party application programming interfaces (API) and third-party apps in driving the growing opportunities Open Banking offers consumers.

As connectivity continues to expand at an exponential rate, payment and ID verification technology will surge. As well as driving internet use generally, 5G’s high-speed bandwidth will enable a denser concentration of devices within a geographic area, but it will also be able to seamlessly link them.

Emerging 5G technology will also help to unlock a mass of insight and opportunities for a slew of industries. In banking, analysts predict remote intervention 5G will help support financial services to be even more precise with ongoing fraud analysis, monitoring of suspicious transactions, or sizeable data uploads to inform critical decision-making, thanks to super-fast connected devices.

But the challenge right now is to make sure systems are not only fit for purpose today, but future-proofed for tomorrow.  And there is a priceless opportunity to unleash the power of analytics and AI to drive smarter data-driven business decisions at scale – as long as ageing legacy infrastructure is upgraded as a matter of urgency.