CHL Mortgages has partnered with Twenty7Tec to offer intermediaries wider access to      its product range following its return to the specialist buy-to-let market.

CHL’s newly launched BTL product range which includes two five-year fixed rate products which are available at a rate of 3.25% up to 75% LTV and 3.10% up to 65% LTV. Rental income for these products must be at least 125% of the monthly mortgage payment calculated at payrate and they are applicable for purchase or re-mortgage purposes. Each BTL product has a minimum loan size of £25,001 and a maximum loan size of £1m.

SOURCE - powered by CloudTwenty7 - is a sophisticated search engine for mortgage, BTL, equity release, secured and bridging loan products.

Ross Turrell, Commercial Director, CHL Mortgages commented:

“We have assembled our new proposition with a strong emphasis on cutting-edge technology and working with market-leading innovators such as Twenty7Tec is a natural step in gaining wider visibility for our offering now, and in the future.

“Intermediaries need to be able to generate the right solutions for their clients and SOURCE analyses product, criteria and lender affordability in order to determine the most appropriate product recommendation. Sourcing technology continues to evolve, at pace, to meet shifting client demands and we believe Twenty7Tec is at the forefront of this evolution.”

Nathan Reilly, Head of Lender Relationships at Twenty7Tec, noted:

“We’re delighted to have CHL Mortgages available on our CloudTwenty7 platform following their recent return to the BTL lending market as they look to support brokers and customers with their exciting lending proposition.  Our data shows the market remains busy, which is why new partnerships and technology remain vital in driving efficiency for advisers."

Digital information and document security specialists, Locklizard, have announced their latest document DRM solutions. These have been designed to prevent users from sharing documents and also allow access to documents to be disabled so that they can't be opened or accessed from unauthorised devices or locations.

At a time when remote working is increasingly dominating the way we all work, Locklizard’s latest security update delivers a necessary security step for an increasingly unpredictable digital world.

The flagship product, Safeguard Enterprise PDF DRM, enables document owners to lock document use to specific locations. It can do this by automatically picking up the user’s IP and country location, or locations can be entered manually. This is achieved by binding location to encrypted licensing controls with transparent and secure key exchange. Unlike PDF password protection, there are no passwords for users to enter, so the system can't be cracked with password recovery tools and the authorized user is not able to share document keys or override the controls.

As well as being able to lock documents to locations, Safeguard Enterprise PDF DRM helps stop document sharing through the prevention of screenshots. There is also a remote file destruction feature that allows document owners to self-destruct their documents after a given date of their choice, or a number of views or days following the initial opening of a document by an authorized user.

Thanks to Locklizard's all-encompassing security-focused DRM solution, document owners can also instantly revoke access to documents if they contain errors or any information that should not have been shared. And documents can be tracked and logged to see when and where they are being used and by whom.

Steve Mathews, CEO of Locklizard, said: “Locklizard continues to innovate in the document DRM field, ensuring documents are always under control regardless of their location – even offline.”

Locklizard has been helping to protect intellectual property for document Publishers and confidential and sensitive documents for corporations since 2004. Their clientele spans a wide range of sectors, including government, publishing, finance, auditing and analytics.

For over 17 years, Locklizard has provided solutions to over 6,000,000 users across the document DRM and PDF security industries. They provide some of the most technologically advanced document security solutions on the market and their latest document DRM controls further establish them as a leading digital security company protecting IPR and stopping revenue loss. The new systems are set to be just as innovative and effective as their other solutions offered to clients over the decades. Pricing starts from $500 per month with fully hosted or on-premise systems available. Visit www.locklizard.com for more information.

Commenting on the Fed’s more hawkish view with two rate increases by end-2023, Jesús Cabra Guisasola, Associate at Validus Risk Management, said: “As most investors anticipated, the Fed left its monetary policy unchanged, with rates near zero and continued buying of bonds at the current $120bn monthly pace. However, all eyes were on the median dot which displays policy makers’ projections of the target interest rate which is now showing more hawkish view with two rate increases by end-2023.

“This announcement was highly anticipated as recent US economy data has been mixed with CPI well above market consensus, but the labour market recovering at a slower pace compared to what most investors were forecasting. Moreover, May retail sales released on Tuesday surprised to the downside with a -1.3% contraction (vs -0.8% expected), signalling a clear shift from goods to services as the economy continues opening and Americans engage on other activities.

“Nevertheless, this data has been supportive for Powell and most of the Fed policy makers to continue with its dovish tone and bond purchases programme until “substantial further progress” has been made. Questions will be around how much the Fed will let prices to continue increasing before considering the economy is overheating and what time frame policy makers will be looking at to achieve the average 2% inflation rate.

“We could expect some downward pressure in the dollar in the coming months as global economic recovery continues, with the Fed committed to be the last central bank to start tapering.”

The Supervisory Board of Commerzbank made important decisions to further strengthen the Bank’s Board of Managing Directors and ensure long-term continuity and stability on the Board for the profound transformation launched with “Strategy 2024”.
 
Bettina Orlopp will become Deputy Chairwoman of the Board with effect from 17 June 2021. In this context, the Supervisory Board extended her appointment to the Board of Managing Directors by five years until June 2026 ahead of terms. This underscores the significant importance of Commerzbank’s consistent orientation toward the goal of regaining sustained profitability. The Board appointment of Chief Operating Officer Jörg Hessenmüller was also extended for a further five years until the end of 2026. His responsibilities include key enablers for the transformation, above all the ongoing process of digitalisation at Commerzbank.
 
In addition, Sabine Schmittroth will focus perspectively on her role as Labour Director. The human resources challenges presented by the restructuring already underway at Commerzbank make the Human Resources department more important than ever. Sabine Schmittroth will pass on responsibility for the Private and Small-Business Customers segment, which she additionally assumed in autumn 2020. A process to fill this position on the Board of Managing Directors, which is important to the Bank’s ongoing success, has been initiated.
 
Helmut Gottschalk, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, said: “The top priority for all of us is the consistent implementation of our strategy and hence the success of the transformation we have launched at Commerzbank. Continuity, stability, and the unwavering focus of the Board’s activities on the common goal are essential here. To ensure this, we are securing the commitment of top executives to Commerzbank for a longer term and are going to further strengthen the Board team who enjoys the full confidence of the Supervisory Board.”
 
Manfred Knof, Chief Executive Officer of Commerzbank, said: “Commerzbank’s Board of Managing Directors is a very strong team, one that we are now making even more cohesive and effective. We are determined to work together in the years ahead to shape a Commerzbank that is customer-centric, digitalised, sustainable, and profitable. That is both our team commitment and my own personal commitment.”

WSO2, the leader in digital transformation technology, today announced that it has acquired Platformer, innovator of an enterprise-grade cloud-native application platform that empowers enterprise developers and DevOps to deploy and manage their containerised workloads securely, and reliably at scale on Kubernetes. As part of WSO2, Platformer, which has operations in Australia and Sri Lanka, will play a central role in extending the Kubernetes capabilities of the data plane of Choreo, the new WSO2 integration platform as a service (iPaaS) announced today. 

Thousands of organisations, including hundreds of the world’s largest corporations, top universities, and governments, rely on WSO2’s open-source, cloud-native solutions to drive their digital transformation—executing more than 18 trillion transactions annually. Using WSO2 for API management, integration, and customer identity and access management (CIAM), these organisations are harnessing the full power of their APIs to securely deliver their digital services and applications.

The Choreo iPaaS, now in public beta, builds on WSO2’s industry-leading technology by enabling developers to engineer in low-code and pro-code simultaneously; build, test and deploy in Kubernetes; manage APIs; share them in a marketplace; and observe performance—all within hours not weeks.

The Platformer Console complements Choreo by enhancing its Kubernetes-based deployment capabilities to support multiple regions, multiple cloud providers, and even private clouds. The Platformer technology will allow Choreo to expand beyond the open-source Ballerina programming language to support the DevOps management of any containerised workload. It provides capabilities for centrally managing the development, deployment, and monitoring of cloud-native applications; accelerating the development cycle; and building apps for vendor-neutral Kubernetes in a cloud-agnostic way.

“Kubernetes is the de facto standard for developing and deploying cloud-native applications,” said Dr Sanjiva Weerawarana, WSO2 founder and CEO. “In adding Platformer’s state-of-the-art technology to our Choreo iPaaS, we are extending our commitment to supporting native Kubernetes for cloud-native engineering. We’re now well-positioned to fully capitalise on Kubernetes for cloud orchestration and let customers focus on creating, connecting, and protecting their cloud-native apps and APIs.”

With the acquisition, Kanchana Wickremasinghe, Platformer co-founder and former CEO joins WSO2 as vice president and product manager, Choreo Data Plane. 

“WSO2’s software for API management, integration and CIAM is powering the digital services of some of the world’s largest organisations, and with Choreo, the company is driving a new level of innovation and agility powered by Kubernetes,” said Kanchana Wickremasinghe, WSO2 vice president and product manager, Choreo Data Plane. “In joining WSO2, we have an opportunity to pursue our shared vision of empowering enterprises to leverage cloud-native engineering in scaling their digital businesses while fostering greater developer collaboration, speeding release cycles, and maximising the cost efficiency of their cloud-native applications.”

Further details of the agreement between the two privately held companies were not disclosed.

The Lending Standards Board (LSB) has today published its latest report detailing findings regarding the implementation of a provision of the Contingent Reimbursement Model (CRM) Code for Authorised Push Payment (APP) scams, which looks at signatory firms’ approach to the reimbursement of customers.

The Code, launched in May 2019, sets out consumer protection standards to detect, prevent and respond to APP scams. Signatory firms make a commitment to reimburse customers who lose money in cases where they were not to blame for the success of a scam.

The follow up and accompanying report, published today, assessed firms’ progress on required actions from the previous thematic review, finding that progress has not been as the regulator expected, as well as identifying further areas of concern.

The initial thematic review included all firms signed up to the Code at the point of its inception. In April 2020, the LSB, governing body of the Code, published the review report highlighting some areas of good practice, but also four key areas of improvement which were detailed in individual firm reports containing required actions. These related to consistency around reimbursement processes, identification of vulnerability, effective warnings, and record keeping.

In addition to these key themes not being fully addressed since that review, further areas of concern have been identified. These include claim investigations exceeding the time requirements outlined in the Code, inconsistency in information given to victims of scams, and disproportionate responsibility being put on customers who make a claim.

As well as issues with individual firms’ application of the Code, the LSB has stated that systemic failings are present, and that work must be undertaken by signatory firms without delay to ensure the best outcomes for customers.

To ensure the actions raised from the review are given the highest priority within firms, Emma Lovell, Chief Executive of the LSB, has written to the Chief Executive of each signatory firm, reinforcing the importance of acting swiftly to remediate the findings.

Speaking about the review, Lovell said: “Firms must act immediately to implement the recommendations that were issued to them in the original review and those now raised in the follow up. Timebound action plans are in place and firms are clear on our expectations as governor of the Code."

“Together with our full review published earlier this year, we have evidence that when the Code is applied correctly, it provides much needed protection for customers. We will continue to collaborate with the industry to increase the number of firms signed up to the Code and we would urge firms who are not already signed up, to consider the contents of this report and review their arrangements for dealing with APP scam cases.”

This follow up review forms part of a range of activity that the LSB is undertaking following its full review of the Code earlier this year. Further information about this is set out in thisroadmap.

The founding team of Modularbank, the next-generation core banking platform, have today announced that they have sold off their first venture, financial software development firm, Icefire, to Checkout.com, the largest unicorn in EMEA and fourth largest fintech in the world. 

Icefire has been providing financial services solutions to both the public and private sectors for two decades. It has helped digitally transform several Nordic banks and played a key role in digitalising the Estonian financial services landscape and making it one of the most advanced in Europe. Customers include Skype, Swedbank, OP Financial Services, LHV, Bigbank and the Estonian Tax and Customs Board. Most recently, the company supported the development of the Estonian COVID-19 application, HOIA. Having built up the company and acquired expertise in the banking and financial services sector, the owners of Icefire (Vilve Vene, Rivo Uibo, Ove Kreison, Jan Lakspere and Jüri Kirme) went on to set up Modularbank, a next-generation core banking platform enabling banks, fintechs and any other type of company to rapidly roll out tailored financial services.

The acquisition of Icefire and its 110 technology engineers will help Checkout.com achieve its goal of creating a ‘one-stop shop’ for all things related to payments. Icefire was chosen for its outstanding track record in building complex modular financial systems over the past 18 years and its proven expertise in the sector. 

Vilve Vene, Co-founder and CEO at Modularbank and former co-founder at Icefire said: We are excited for the opportunity this acquisition offers the team at Icefire to start a new chapter with one of the world’s most promising fintechs. Having gained a huge amount of experience of developing banking technology at Icefire, our aim now, as founders of Modularbank, is to apply this learning and dedicate our efforts to creating the next generation of financial services that has the power to shape the global understanding of the role of financial services in society. ”

Clearco, the world's largest e-commerce investor and the company revolutionizing the way founders grow their businesses, today announced ambitious international expansion plans supported by two key executive hires. After launching in the UK last October and the Netherlands last month, Clearco is also planning on rapidly expanding its European footprint and operations. In addition, it plans to start its expansion into Asian Pacific markets by the end of 2021. The announcement comes on the heels of the company's Series C capital raise at an almost US$2 Billion valuation, and rebranding from Clearbanc to Clearco.

To accelerate its ambitious international expansion plans, Clearco has identified several potentially high-growth markets and added two seasoned executives to its leadership team. 

Longtime Clearco advisor and investor Ruma Bose, serial entrepreneur, former president of Chobani Ventures and the Chobani Foundation, and international best-selling author has joined as Chief Growth Officer. Bose is a seasoned business executive with a track record of helping operationalize the international expansion plans of US brands. Bose is also a global leader in helping companies achieve business goals while having a positive impact on society.

"Clearco continues to lead the world in the growth capital space with our unique pay-as-you-grow model," said Michele Romanow, co-founder and president. "We are excited to welcome Ruma as we know she has the experience to drive our ambitious international expansion plans and the passion and commitment to lead a mission-driven organization that has real impact and is truly changing the world."

 At Clearco, Bose will be responsible for ensuring the company has the right strategy to win outside of North America, and enter multiple markets across Europe and key markets in Asia Pacific this year. Bose said. "I am inspired by the way Clearco is democratizing access to capital and the real impact that it has had in changing the face of entrepreneurship by funding more female business founders and entrepreneurs of color *. This company is doing industry-changing work with its technology and products, while defining a new category for itself and its competitors. With global markets preparing for a recovery in 2021, this is a critical time to support the businesses that can create jobs and fuel growth."

Sarah Clark, who led Paypal's growth across EMEA and has held senior roles at Barclays Bank, Virgin Group, Sainsbury's, and British Airways, has joined as UK Head and Clearco's first international country manager. At Clearco UK, Clark will bolster and expand Clearco's presence in the United Kingdom, building a stronger brand presence and more meaningful relationships with UK-based founders.  Clark commented: "Since entering the UK market beginning in October 2020, we've invested £70M into more than 250 UK companies, including Druids Golf, Safiyaa, and Piglet. I believe every founder building a business in the UK should be working with Clearco and I'm excited to help make that possible."

"As we look to expand across the globe, we know there are almost 600 million entrepreneurs in the world, who will be fueling the future of the global economy," said co-founder and CEO Andrew D'Souza."We believe ultimately that whoever and wherever you are, if you're a founder building a business, you should be working with Clearco."

*Clearco is having an undeniable impact on the world of business as it literally "changes the face" of investing. With proprietary algorithms that are gender-, race-, and region-agnostic, Clearco is unique in the world for its commitment and ability to fuel entrepreneurship outside of traditional networks and regions. While global VC funding for female founders dropped by 27% in 2020, according to Crunchbase, Clearco funded eight times as many companies headed by female founders as traditional VC firms. In that same timeframe, 13% of Clearco's funding went to companies headed by founders of color, compared to 2.6% for traditional VC firms; in total a third of Clearco funding went to founders of color. 

In addition, Clearco's algorithms "spread the wealth" geographically. At Clearco UK, 70% of businesses that have been funded are located outside of London. In the US market, Clearco has funded businesses in all states, but well over half of the company's funding goes to businesses outside of the 4 major states that are traditional funding hot spots.

TrueFX, a purpose-built OTC market designed for the buy-side, today announced that Straits Financial Services Pte Ltd (“Straits Financial”), a Capital Markets Services License company based in Singapore, has joined TrueFX as a clearing member to enhance their clients’ access to forex liquidity. 

As a TrueFX Clearing Member (TCM), Straits Financial will provide FX brokers and buy-side firms of all sizes with direct market access to liquidity on TrueFX. Users benefit from access to all market makers on the venue, who in turn can provide them with customized pricing. 

Raymond Mok, Straits Financial Global Head of FX said: “As a leading financial institution in Asia, we want to provide our institutional clients with fair, transparent, and efficient access to the market. TrueFX aligns with these values, and we are pleased to join the network as a clearing member and demonstrate our commitment to this exciting initiative."

“The size and scale of our growing clearing network allows us to offer significant cost savings to even more clients, brought around by the venue’s integrated liquidity, clearing and technology”, said Harpal Sandhu, CEO of Integral and technology provider for TrueFX. “We are thrilled that Straits Financial has joined as a clearing member and their participation will greatly enhance the offering available to clients.”

The TCM network allows institutions of all sizes to directly access liquidity on TrueFX from leading market makers without an intermediary. Users also have the option to clear through Jefferies FXPB, the central credit counterparty for TrueFX. 

Launched last year, TrueFX has already achieved Best New Product in the 2020 Markets Choice Awards in recognition of the significant cost savings and operational efficiencies delivered by the venue. Market participants can find out more and register interest at truefx.com.