With fraudsters becoming increasingly smarter and more collaborative in trying to get round those systems with the weakest links to commit their fraudulent crimes, now more than ever is the time for payments and wider financial services businesses to ensure they have all the right ingredients to stop fraud.

Which is why Kompli-Global, the leading FraudTech specialist, has today announced the launch of The Great Kompli-Global KYB Bake-Off challenge. The aim of the challenge is to put businesses’ standard fraud prevention systems to the test, find out which from a range of sample companies they would onboard and if their current procedures have all the right ingredients to keep pace with today’s fraudsters.

Alongside the Bake-Off challenge, Kompli-Global recently announced the launch of Kompli-Investigate™, a rich research utility, fraud prevention and detection system that allows for deeper investigation of corporate entities and the individuals connected to those organisations. A key component of the Kompli-Investigate™ system is Kompli-Konnect™, the most complete and accurate corporate structure data available that has collated and reconfigured all of Companies House data since 1986. Kompli-Global linked and connected all Directors, owners, companies and addresses to provide the most accurate and current entity resolution available. Furthermore, it updates all new and changed information and re-maps the entire database every night. In-house experts then overlay known fraud characteristics and suspicious Modus Operandi (MO) scenarios to give a totally unique risk prognosis for users, as well as alerting entities to criminal activity that fraudsters want to remain hidden.

With this in-house and technological expertise, Kompli-Investigate™ completes the potentially missing pieces of the fraud prevention puzzle by enabling payments and fintech companies to make connections, before conducting deep due diligence for convictions, allegations of criminality and associations to adverse events and activity. Additionally, if a newly registered company is looking to open an account, Kompli-Investigate™ can flag all connected businesses and individuals to that company. This added investigative tier, adds a unique predictive layer to due diligence and shows Companies that are potentially predicated to commit a crime.

Speaking on the launch of this unique challenge, Martin Pashley, Chief Commercial Officer at Kompli-Global, explains: “Today’s fraudsters know exactly how to work the system but what we have designed significantly enhances payment providers’ fraud prevention efforts by supplying them with the information they need to really question the business they are taking on. Therefore, we feel this is an important challenge to set those businesses either sending, receiving, processing or facilitating payments so they can see how complete their KYC jigsaw is.”

He adds: “By taking part in our simple challenge, we can quickly show companies the information they might be missing and the potential of already available technology on the market. We’re so confident that Kompli-Investigate™ provides the most complete and accurate KYB insight, we challenge all companies to a ‘Bake-Off’.”

The Great Kompli-Global KYB Bake-Off challenge has been designed for companies to test their systems with real life examples, to determine if they would onboard those individuals posed. To find out more about The Great Kompli-Global, KYB Bake-Off challenge, visit: https://www.kompli-global.com/products/investigate/#Bakeoff

To find out more about Kompli-Investigate, visit: https://www.kompli-global.com/products/investigate/

To find out more about Kompli-Global’s suite of customer due diligence technologies, visit: www.kompli-global.com

Glue42, the company that delivers integrated desktop experiences to financial institutions globally, and Deephaven Data Labs, a start-up that provides capital markets participants with a next-generation data platform, are collaborating to reveal actionable insights from massive datasets. Initial use cases include more effective management of pre-trade risk and regulatory compliance for users across trading, risk and compliance desks.

The partnership follows a pilot at a top 10 investment management firm who, with the help of both vendors, is building a unified portfolio management platform for all of its applications. The hedge fund’s primary objective is to help users better manage critical datasets and simplify their trading workflows to reduce operational errors. Next in line is a common look and feel of all applications as well as access to a centralized app store. 

While Deephaven enables front, middle and back-office users across the firm to rapidly build analyses, models, reports and dashboards across huge quantities of real-time, historical and alternative data sources, Glue42 is enabling their user interfaces to communicate with each other as well as other external systems, to create intuitive and simplified user experiences, even within a single screen if desired.  

As a direct result, during the pilot portfolio managers were able to outperform the market. More so, they significantly reduced pre-trade risk as they no longer had to constantly switch between various applications and disparate datasets to complete regulatory and compliance checks.  

“Excelling in high volume and high volatility trading sessions is the difference between outperforming and underperforming funds,” said James Wooster, COO, Glue42. “This partnership equips our client’s portfolio managers to operate at peak performance when it matters most. The combination of deep insight and a responsive user experience creates an industry advantage for our clients that other firms have not been able to match.” 

He continued, “The exciting aspect about our joint capability is its intuitive nature. There is no learning curve or knowledge ramp for traders as the environment instinctively reacts to the way they work.” 

Portfolio management is just the beginning. The partnership applies to any scenario across the financial market that would benefit from new insights and efficiency. 

Enterprises are constrained by data locked away in their legacy systems that could generate more value and profit. Glue42 offers firms the opportunity to unlock the power and value of this data and create user-friendly hubs connecting various technologies. Providers like Deephaven can be part of a bigger infrastructure which services much larger and diverse teams with user experiences that require less mental maintenance and fewer clicks 

In this instance, the partnership between Deephaven and Glue42 also shares a similar vision of making high-value technology widely adopted and easily accessible by their open-source offerings. In addition to the current integration of both vendor’s enterprise editions, Deephaven Community Core, Deephaven’s opensource version, will be making its debut in the near future.  

“We are preparing for open-sourcing the data interrogation piece of our solution in the next six months,” said Pete Goddard, CEO, Deephaven. “Combining this open capability with Glue42’s open-source web integration platform, Glue42 Core, will allow developers to integrate web applications seamlessly. In fact, we will be able to containerize our open-source solutions with Glue42 and it will just work.” 

As the partnership evolves, more use-cases are being developed such as extending order management workflows to include pre-trade analytics that provide traders with the execution insights they require.  

Over 20 new offerings announced including cloud OS upgrade and cloud-native database 

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, today unveiled a new one-stop e-commerce livestreaming solution to help global merchants of all sizes launch live, interactive channels to offer personalised online shopping experience. Livestreaming e-commerce solutions are quickly evolving as a response to the increasing demand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Built upon Alibaba Cloud’s extensive content delivery networks (CDNs) with over 2,800 nodes in more than 70 countries and regions, the new solution leverages the cloud leader’s large-scale and distributed real-time video processing technology to ensure an uninterrupted signal transfer between sellers, buyers and the nearest distribution centre.

Its proprietary cloud transcoding technology, Narrowband HD™, guarantees image quality while reducing bit rates, enabling a high-resolution livestreaming experience with low bandwidth costs. It helps address challenges surrounding the quality of audio and video, high cost of essential software such as real-time video transcoding and low efficiency in traffic management and CDNs. Users can enjoy livestreams with a latency of around two seconds, essential to the experience of flash sales.

Built on Alibaba Cloud’s immersive technology, the solution provides a rich range of essential features with minimal latency for virtual sales sessions, including livestream replays, product video showcases embedded into livestreaming windows and real-time subtitle translation for cross-border livestreams, among others. It also supports end-to-end and device-to-cloud livestreaming, making it easier for smaller merchants to launch their own sales sessions.

Starting from June 1, this year’s Tmall 618 Mid-Year Shopping Festival has seen a majority of merchants and brands using Alibaba Cloud’s livestreaming service. Sales generated from Taobao Live in just the opening hour of the event surpassed that of the entire first day in 2020.

The livestream solution was issued alongside over 20 other products, solutions and updates during today’s virtual Alibaba Cloud Summit 2021 to further help businesses on their digitalisation journeys. Among the offerings, the seventh generation of Alibaba Cloud’s Elastic Compute Service (ECS 7) and an updated cloud-native Data Management Service (DMS) will debut in Asia followed by the rest of the global markets.

Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, commented during the summit: “As one of the leading providers and trusted partners in the global cloud market, technological innovation is at the heart of Alibaba Cloud’s long-term development. Introducing new products and solutions and continuously enhancing product features helps us deliver on our promise to our global customers and partners. The acceleration of the digital transformation agenda and adoption of emerging technologies is particularly encouraging in Asia, motivating us to constantly improve our innovative and R&D capabilities to stay at the forefront of the industry.”

Other new products and updates unveiled during the summit include:

Infrastructure product upgrades

Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 (Alinux3) cloud operating system (OS): an upgrade from Alinux2, the Alinux3 cloud OS, which is now available globally for the first time, delivers a better developer experience with improved security and greater stability and runtime performance. With Alinux3, runtime performance for mainstream end-to-end applications such as Redis, Mysql and Nginx has been improved by up to 40% compared with the previous generation. Alinux3 is compatible with Alibaba Cloud’s self-developed software ecosystem as well as RHEL/ CentOS 8. Starting from the launch, it also provides the developer community with eight consecutive years of free software maintenance and technical support.

ECS 7: introduced as part of Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure upgrades, ECS 7 runs on Alinux3 and simultaneously supports trusted computing and encrypted calculation, a world-leading computing capability that is enhancing the level of security on the cloud. Powered by X-Dragon Architecture and third-generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors (Ice Lake), ECS 7 improves computing power by over 40% compared with its predecessor. Hong Kong and Singapore will be the first markets outside of mainland China to have access to ECS 7, beginning in the second half of 2021.

DMS: the one-stop cloud-native data management platform

Data silos are a challenge for many enterprises when it comes to data security, governance and mining, as core data assets are often stored in a variety of databases and warehouses. The DMS platform supports data management for over 30 data sources on hybrid cloud. This is possible because the gateways between the self-built and cloud databases have been integrated, seamlessly linking all databases and enabling full-cycle data management across production, storage, transmission, processing and computing.

The update will be available initially in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore starting from later this year.

Other commercial releases of Alibaba Cloud database products include major MySQL version coverage for PolarDB, a new elastic mode for AnalyticDB, MyBase, ClickHouse and cloud-native multi-model database Lindorm, among others.

Yapily, the leading Open Banking infrastructure provider, has today announced the launch of its new Open Banking bulk payments service, with Comma, the SME payments platform, already live and benefiting from the service in the UK. 

Working in close partnership with Comma, Yapily has simplified the complex process of bulk payments - under Open Banking - in the UK. The proposition provides customers such as Comma with the API connection they need to create a reliable, secure and scalable bulk payments feature for their accountancy, payroll and bookkeeper clients. 

Until now, bulk payments in the UK have only been available to medium to large scale businesses that have corporate banking accounts. As such, many SMEs have been forced to rely on legacy, inefficient payment processes causing significant headaches and issues when it comes to paying staff, suppliers and customers on time, every time. 

Harnessing Yapily’s bulk payment offering, Comma’s accountant and bookkeeper customers can create and share payment runs with clients; who in turn can bulk pay bills, taxes and salaries on their phone or desktop, in a few clicks from their own bank account. This enables accountants and bookkeepers to offer new payment services to clients - something demanded of them for many years. Operational efficiency is an essential benefit as SMEs look to rebuild post-pandemic. 

Tom Beckenham, CEO and Founder of Comma said, “Comma was developed out of a passion for helping small businesses. Paying anything manually is a tedious process and often affects the small business owner. Working closely and transparently with Yapily, we’re now able to provide our customers with a magical payments experience. It gives them the time back to focus on growing their businesses. We look forward to continuing our collaborative partnership with Yapily.”

Leveraging its direct and deep connections with many of the UK’s largest banks, Yapily is the first Open Banking infrastructure provider to test and release bulk payments functionality for 7 financial institutions’ in the UK. 

The FinTech has worked tirelessly with Comma and UK banks to highlight inconsistencies in behaviour, bugs and cases where API documentation isn’t reflective of what’s in production to launch the most technically robust bulk payments offering to market. The work done by Yapily & Comma reduces the chances of customers being caught out by inconsistencies and ensures the success of bulk payments across the board. 

Stefano Vaccino, CEO of Yapily said, “We’ve seen a real, increasing demand from our customers for bulk payments capabilities. We’re proud to say that after some hard work, we’ve built a reliable bulk payments feature for our customers in the UK. We’ve been lucky to work with pioneering clients like Comma who have supported us in stress-testing the functionality so we can deliver the most robust service possible. 

“What might seem on the surface to be a simple implementation of the required endpoints, has been a huge team effort, and a big learning curve for us as an Open Banking infrastructure provider. We’re already working on rolling this out into Europe and we’re excited to be working with Comma and other customers on developing even further.” 

Yapily’s bulk payment service will be rolled out to customers in Germany in the coming months, and will look to power new bulk payments propositions with more European customers in the future.

 Reach, the global payment localisation provider, has appointed Tyler Barry as Chief Technical Officer to support the business’ continued success throughout 2021 and beyond.

Barry, a twenty-year veteran of the technology industry, has been appointed to develop and execute the company’s strategic technology action plan and position the brand as it demonstrates explosive growth. A vastly experienced and talented leader, Barry has a proven record of success, and brings a wide range of expertise in areas such as scalable systems, distributed transaction settlement, mobile banking, and payment method integration.

Tyler Barry joins Reach after a decade of consulting directly with banks and fintechs in the North American and European markets. Over that period, Tyler led the overall design and work of the technical teams to conduct the first international blockchain-based currency transfer for a Canadian financial institution; delivered the solution design and delivery of numerous mobile payments solutions such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and Interac Etransfer for multiple financial institutions; leveraged open banking standards to deliver forward-looking solutions; and drove the design of software architecture for real-time fraud systems and highly scalable service-based environments.

Tyler will now turn his wealth of experience toward developing the Reach Platform, supporting improvements in transaction performance, dynamic processing, scalability, insight, security, and user experience.

Barry commented: “Reach is at an inflection point. We have an exceptional management team, a phenomenal customer base, and a market leading solution for merchants going global. I am energized to be part of the Reach team and to be able to serve the entire organization in propelling the growth of our services and platform for our customers.”

The Reach platform is designed to allow merchants to take advantage of the benefits of selling locally in a global marketplace, using its innovative service model to deliver higher conversion rates, lower costs, and a better end user experience for customers across the world.

Localised payment processing is a potential gold mine for global merchants, who are often saddled with higher fees and lower approval rates when processing foreign payments. For many businesses outside of the major multinationals, this has previously been unachievable due to requiring an ‘in-country’ business presence. However, by working through Reach’s platform, merchants can utilise Reach’s core connections and corporate structure to process localised payments from any country across the globe.

Thanks to Reach’s innovative platform and corporate relationships, businesses can take advantage of the best wholesale FX rates, along with presenting costs in local rates across more than 100 geographies worldwide, to deliver better service and increased value.

Sam Ranieri, CEO at Reach, said: “After a period of exceptional growth for our business, we’re thrilled to be welcoming Tyler as our new CTO. Tyler brings a wealth of invaluable experience to our senior team, with his track record of success speaking for itself. With his knowledge and support, we are well placed to continue disrupting the global ecommerce space through 2021 and the years ahead.”

“We saw a seismic shift in the commercial landscape in 2020, with the pandemic forcing businesses to rapidly refocus on ecommerce as their essential business model. This move exposed a huge number of businesses to new challenges, including volatile exchange rates and cross-border commerce risks. By adding talented individuals such as Tyler to our team, we’re ensuring that our solution will be ready to support merchants worldwide as they look to take advantage of cross-border ecommerce opportunities.”

Finastra today announced that Arkéa Banking Services, a subsidiary of Crédit Mutuel Arkéa and a major player in the provision of banking and insurance services in France, has selected Finastra’s Fusion Risk solution to help streamline operational processes and reduce operational costs for local banks.

The move sees Arkéa Banking Services providing Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services for banks’ IT and risk management activities with Finastra’s Fusion Risk. The Arkéa service is already in use at one bank in France and has now been taken up by a new retail bank in region. 

The Arkéa Banking Services team will use the Asset Liability Management (ALM), Funds Transfer Pricing (FTP), and Regulatory Compliance including Liquidity Risk Engine and Reporting modules of Finastra’s Fusion Risk to help local banks meet regulatory demands and to provide powerful analytics and insights to optimize business performance. This includes both day-to-day operational oversight and long-term strategic business planning.

“Fusion Risk is a proven solution, and one that Crédit Mutuel Arkéa already uses to support its internal needs, so we are very confident about using it as part of the hosting and outsourcing operations we provide,” said Marc Chereau, Head of IT at Arkéa. “Finastra’s Fusion Risk offers both functional and technical excellence. As well as using the solution to manage risk, margin monitoring, balance sheet optimization and regulatory reporting, Fusion Risk will also support us in managing other banks’ technical operations, ensuring the highest standards of security, resiliency, performance and operating excellence.”

“Local financial institutions will benefit from Arkéa's experience and technical expertise in retail and corporate banking and risk management, supported by the proven capabilities and powerful analytics of Fusion Risk, helping them to transform operations and enhance business performance,” said Arnaud Picut, Global Head of Risk at Finastra. “We’re delighted to work with the Arkéa Banking Services team and to provide technology solutions that support the pivotal role they play in supporting financial institutions, insurers and fintechs in France.”

ING today announced that Stemly, a software as a service platform, is the first initiative to be spun out of ING Labs Singapore. To enable accelerated growth and to pave the way for an independent future for Stemly, venture capital fund Elev8, ING Ventures and EDB New Ventures, the corporate venture building arm of EDB, along with other investors, will invest US$2.5 million into the venture. 

One of the first initiatives to be incubated in ING Labs Singapore in 2018, Stemly was created to address the gap in decision intelligence that exists in supply chain operations and finance. For instance, in demand planning for manufacturing and retail, it may take three weeks or more to respond to market changes in consumer behavior which results in overstocking and loss of sales. 

With an industry average forecasting error of more than 27%1, companies face massive impact on working capital needs. In fact, McKinsey found that at least one company in 20 has suffered a supply-chain disruption costing at least US$100 million due to global disruptions every year in the past several years.2

Powered by autonomous machine learning technology, Stemly can greatly enhance the decision-making capabilities of enterprises by demystifying data science and delivering impactful business outcomes. Its platform automates forecasting and optimisation of a company’s supply chain and finance processes. 

Stemly started within ING Labs Singapore with Giuseppe Manai and Sanjay Saini as founding venture builders, both based in Singapore. Stemly currently comprises a team of 20 spread across Singapore, India, Indonesia, Ireland and Australia. Giuseppe has more than 20 years of experience in the data science field while Sanjay has accumulated more than 25 years of global corporate experience in managing, consulting for and developing software for supply chains. 

Co-founder Sanjay Saini said: “Businesses are challenged by the uncertainty in supply chains, where demand and supply fluctuations have been amplified by the pandemic of late. Stemly empowers managers to make better and faster decisions in demand forecasting, inventory optimisation and cash flow management, ultimately reducing their operating cost and improving their operational efficiency.” 

"We are helping businesses save 10% to 40% of their cost of inventory and working capital - the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars in some cases - by embedding automatic machine learning in their forecasting and optimisation applications. We have already signed on several leading MNCs as clients; with this investment boost, we are confident of growing faster," added co-founder Giuseppe Manai. 

Olivier Guillaumond, global head of Innovation Labs and Fintechs at ING said: “Stemly’s growth from ING Labs Singapore has been another success story of innovation at ING. Insight into demand forecasting, supply chain optimisation, and cash flow forecasting is helping to build resilience in the businesses of our customers. Our aim is to always help our customers be a step ahead, and our efforts in Stemly are testament to that.” 

Following the spin-out, Singapore-based Stemly will be an independent entity and continue to work closely with ING benefiting from its global network and financial services expertise. 

“EDB New Ventures supports corporates in building new businesses from Singapore, by providing access to industry networks, expertise and risk-sharing capital. The Stemly team, incubated by ING, brings AI experience, domain expertise in supply chain and finance, and the ability to scale quickly via networks of ING. We are excited about this latest addition to the corporate venturing ecosystem, with Stemly well-positioned to ride on the growing adoption of data science to support supply chain agility and resiliency for its customers”, said Choo Heng Tong, Executive Vice President, New Ventures and Innovation, EDB. 

Elev8’s founder and managing director Aditya Mathur said: “Global supply chains are undergoing a fundamental shift in capacity and in complexity. Stemly’s autonomous machine learning platform for demand and cash flow forecasting has the potential to meaningfully improve operating efficiencies in enterprises of all sizes. We are excited to support Sanjay and Giuseppe’s vision of an AI-assisted supply chain." 

Frederic Hofmann, managing director of ING Ventures said: “Our investment in Stemly is a natural extension of our innovation strategy where we identify solutions that disrupt existing ways of working and add value to our clients. We see Stemly as a great value-add to customers as it enables them to make well informed business decisions and formulate data-driven strategies along the supply chain. We are glad to see the market appetite in the funding round which is a testimony of the company traction and the size of the problem it is solving.” 

1 This is according to Gartner in its research paper: How Demand Management Disruption Will Power the Future Supply Chain

2 McKinsey published these findings in a note: “Is your supply chain risk blind or risk resilient”. 

Research conducted by Celent on behalf of Icon Solutions and MongoDB has revealed the bank data services that corporates will pay for, and the ones they consider table stakes. Findings show the services that corporate clients would be most willing to pay for are real-time cash balances (84%), enhanced security and fraud prevention (74%) and a single real-time balance dashboard across multiple bank partners (70%). The report also highlights the risk of customer churn as corporates do not expect to pay for services such as virtual accounts and ISO 20022 compliance support and would switch providers to access them.

‘Expectation versus Reality for Payments Data Monetisation’ surveys 217 corporate treasurers and CFOs and 168 senior bank executives globally, providing unique insight into the business challenges facing corporates and their expectations for data-driven services, along with banks’ plans to address emerging customer requirements through payments data monetisation initiatives.

Payments data monetisation is an increasingly key strategic priority for banks, with 38% reporting it as an objective of technology transformation investments. This is being driven by growing margin pressure and competition, evolving customer expectations, and migration to real-time payment infrastructures and ISO 20022.

“Corporate clients are increasingly looking to their bank partners to help them run more efficiently, and this creates a number of opportunities for new revenue-generating services,” explains Kieran Hines, Senior Analyst at Celent. “Greater access to real-time data, including real-time forecasts, are high on the wish lists of clients, alongside enhanced security and analytics-driven tools to support decision making. However this is not the whole story, and there are several services that corporates want to access but are unwilling to pay for – in other words becoming ‘table stakes’. With many corporate clients looking to rationalise their bank relationships, banks should consider investing in new data-led services to both support client retention as much as to drive the top line.”  

Toine van Beusekom, Strategy Director, Payments at Icon, comments: “The implications of this report for banks are clear. Inaction is not an option and investment is urgently needed just to retain existing business and relevancy, let alone generate new revenues. But payments data monetisation is not a one-off product initiative, it is a strategy that must span the entire organisation. This means that technology spend and transformation strategies must be directed towards doing the fundamentals extremely well and lowering the cost of delivering standardised, accurate and complete payments data in real-time. By doing this, banks can build the foundations that deliver the flexibility and agility to respond to the evolving needs of corporate clients.”

Ultimately, the report highlights that payments data monetisation is about more than revenue. The real opportunity is to move the relationship with corporate clients away from banking being about consumption of products, towards acting as true partners for customers. This shift in perception holds the key to long term revenue and margin growth.

To learn more, download the full report here.  

Revelock , a pioneer in behavioural biometric based online fraud prevention, has today announced it is partnering with Sionic, the global financial services consultancy, to help banks and financial services providers around the world take a more proactive approach to detecting and responding to fraud. Sionic will offer Revelock’s ‘Fraud Detection and Response (FDR) Platform’  as part of its extensive portfolio of leading anti-fraud solutions that together protect clients and their customers from constantly evolving and expanding fraud attacks.

Founded in 1994 and comprising more than 300 industry practitioners located across the globe, Sionic specialises in providing independent advice and professional services to banks and other financial services providers. Its Financial Crime & Compliance team focuses on identifying and supporting the implementation of best-in-class solutions to help its clients protect their infrastructures from attack.
Whereas online fraud prevention has traditionally focused on identifying typical bad actors, Revelock’s solution works by leveraging advanced behavioural biometrics and hybrid-AI to create a BionicID for each user. This works like a digital fingerprint, enabling financial institutions to know every user at a granular level and detect anomalies created by any threat vector that may be used to take over accounts. The platform also provides an ‘Active Defense’ through configurable automated responses to fraud. Together, these capabilities enhance organisations’ ability to accurately spot bad actors and proactively protect legitimate users against identity impersonation and manipulation threats, all without adding friction to the customer journey.

“We are constantly reviewing the latest innovations in the fraud prevention space to ensure our clients are in the best possible position to tackle the rising tide of fraud,” said Gareth Evans, Sionic Director and head of the firm's specialist anti-fraud team. “Revelock’s ability to detect and then pre-emptively block and respond to fraud attempts makes it a crucial addition to our fraud prevention portfolio. We’re excited about how this partnership will deliver key benefits to our clients, such as cutting losses incurred by fraud and reducing the workloads of their fraud teams.”

“We’re delighted to partner with Sionic to make our technology more easily accessible to its world-renowned clients,” said Pablo de la Riva Ferrezuelo, CEO at Revelock. “Their expertise – so often gained through time on the frontlines facing the very attacks we are working to block – will be invaluable to us in our efforts to help financial services advance in the fight against online fraud.”

Bolero International, the leading cloud-based trade finance digitisation experts announce the appointment of Vincent Acors as their new Trade Finance director for the Asia-Pacific region.

Based out of Bolero’s Singapore office, Vincent will be responsible for business operations and Bolero’s growth strategy to build on the company’s growing presence in the region.

Vincent joins Bolero from MonetaGo, financial technology solutions provider where he was the Head of Business Development for APAC.

Prior to Bolero, Vincent amassed 27 years of experience in emerging technologies globally, with extensive knowledge of telecoms-based SaaS platforms and significant relationships with Banks, NBFI’s, governments and corporates in the region. His wealth of experience will enable him to fit seamlessly into the team.

Vince said “It’s a great time to join Bolero. The technology is innovative and relevant on a global scale. The last 17 months have proven that digitisation is essential. I’m looking forward to maximising the opportunity whilst maintaining Bolero’s position as No.1 and best practice for banks and corporates in Asia.”

Andrew Raymond, CEO of Bolero said: “It’s great to have Vincent join the Bolero family. His appointment comes at an exciting time for the company as we continue to grow in the region. And with the recent shift towards trade finance digitisation in the region, this creates tremendous opportunity for us.”

Raymond added “ We continue to be a magnet for highly talented individuals and Vincent will ensure we realise the strong potential we see in the region and bring more value to our customers.”

Following the release of Bolero’s innovated trade portal-as-a-service solution Galileo TPaaS for Banks solution earlier this year, the product has generated enormous waves of enquiries across the region from large international banks to multi-lateral organisations and new virtual banks.