Google Cloud and PayPal today announced they are deepening their relationship to further accelerate PayPal’s digital transformation and evolving customer needs. Under this expanded relationship, Google Cloud will provide both infrastructure and analytics capabilities to support PayPal’s growth, helping the company process transactional data at a massive scale.

Following exponential growth since it became an independent company in 2015, PayPal set out to scale its infrastructure globally, while also creating new products and services for customers. As a major step forward in its hybrid cloud strategy, PayPal is moving more of its core infrastructure and workloads to Google Cloud. One key reason for this shift is the surge in digital commerce and user traffic triggered by the global pandemic, which led to a 24% spike in PayPal’s total active customer accounts, now totalling 392 million active users as of the end of Q1 2021. 

With Google Cloud’s infrastructure solutions, PayPal was able to add capacity to their infrastructure in just hours, a process that would have otherwise taken months to complete. In addition, with the bulk of its online transactional data residing in its SAP S/4HANA database, PayPal was able to leverage SAP’s Financial Products Subledger, delivered at a massive scale on Google Cloud, to quickly process transactions at high volume, as well as to analyze purchasing trends at volume with low latency. 

During peak traffic times, such as heightened online shopping periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, PayPal was able to process 1,000 payments per second, a 22% increase from 2019. Google Cloud’s ability to stagger workloads, and to scale computing resources up or down during peak and off-peak times, ensured PayPal could deliver exceptional customer experiences during these high-traffic events.

“We can only develop fast, build fast, and deploy fast if we have infrastructure that’s as nimble as we are. By leveraging the power of the cloud, our teams can focus on providing the best products, capabilities and services to our customers,” said Wes Hummel, vice president, Site Reliability and Cloud Engineering, PayPal. “As a part of our strategic partnership, we’re working side-by-side with Google Cloud to scale and secure our infrastructure for the future.”  

“E-commerce has spiked during the pandemic, with people using less cash. As a result, payments providers have been in high demand,” said Derek White, vice president of Global Financial Services, Google Cloud. “We're working with PayPal to leverage the power of the cloud to make shopping and e-commerce easier, faster, and more secure. And that's a win for businesses and consumers.”

Google also recently introduced PayPal as a payment method for Google Ads and Google Workspace. By adding PayPal, Google is able to better serve PayPal’s ecosystem of consumers and merchants. This payment option, currently available in the United States and select European countries, builds on the existing payment integration with Google Play and Buy on Google, where consumers and businesses can use PayPal at checkout.

Don’t miss conversation with PayPal at the Google Cloud Financial Services Summit on May 27, around How PayPal Manages Surges in Financial Transactions. Register here.

Today Cytora announces that Karen Green has joined the company’s advisory board, where she will play a key role in driving Cytora’s growth as part of its mission to digitise commercial insurance risk.

Green was previously CEO of Aspen UK and served on the Aspen Group Executive Committee for 12 years. She is currently a Non-Executive Director at Phoenix Group Holdings Plc, Admiral Insurance Group Plc and Asta Managing Agency Ltd. She is also a Council member of Lloyd’s of London and is Vice President of the Insurance Institute of London.

The hire marks the latest addition to Cytora’s growing advisory board following the recent appointments of Kelly Lyles, former CEO, Client and Country Management at AXA XL, andThomas Huerlimann, ex-CEO, Global Corporate, at Zurich Insurance.

Green says: “I’ve watched Cytora evolve from a disruptive new market entrant into a leading player in digital risk processing. Pressure to keep pace with shifting customer expectations whilst reducing costs is driving insurers to rethink the way they prioritise and digitise risks. I’m very excited to work with such a talented, entrepreneurial team.”  

Richard Hartley, CEO at Cytora, says: “Karen’s breadth of experience in the insurance sector will be invaluable to Cytora and accelerate our mission to digitise risk processing across the commercial insurance industry. This will free up underwriting capacity, eliminate the gap between underwriting strategy and frontline execution and drive profitable growth. We’re delighted to have her as part of the team, supporting us on our journey to transform commercial insurance.”

For more information on Cytora and its existing advisory board, visit the website here. 

Stephen Kelso, Head of Markets at ITI Capital comments:

“Elon Musk has had a significant impact on bitcoin once again, but this time by causing its price valuation to plummet. This will inevitably lead to some short term cold feet from the retail investors who were influenced to adopt bitcoin at the behest of Elon Musk’s initial appraisal of the cryptocurrency in the first place.  However institutional investors better understand the relevance of timeframes when looking at the correlations and covariances within multi-asset portfolios.  The recent resurgence of inflation fears and rising rates is hitting equities across the board but ITI expects that sooner rather than later, Bitcoin’s role as protection from the debasement of savings will re-emerge as it has done after knee-jerk ‘1-correlation’ moves over the last several years.

“In the time since Elon Musk first announced that Tesla would accept Bitcoin as payment, a lot has happened, and the world’s attention towards cryptocurrency has legitimised bitcoin as an investment vehicle - bitcoin has already won in becoming the ‘digital gold’ of the post-Covid climate, and will remain the ultimate hedge against the resulting debasement of fiat currencies.

“However, bitcoin is also a manifestation of the value of the internet, and hence it stands to reason that social media and the cult of celebrity has, and will continue to have, an effect on driving demand and causing short term valuation crashes. Tesla is not the first and nor will it be the last Big Tech superpower to introduce cryptocurrency payment plans, it will also not be the last to back track on such plans with a resulting short term impact on crypto markets, for better or for worse.”

FinecoBank, one of Europe’s leading fintech banks, reported record volumes from its UK client base this quarter. Fineco’s current accounts increased by around 50% in April 2021 compared to the end of 2020.

The bank’s strategy to attract quality customers has translated successfully in the UK, as strong customer retention and loyalty has helped to drive the bank’s continued growth. Fineco’s targeting of  experienced traders looking for a quality has boosted the bank’s retention rate, and now more than 70% of Fineco’s clients hold active current accounts on brokerage.

 Highlights:

●     Fineco recorded net profit of €94.7 million for Q1 (+2.7% y/y) and gross operating profit of €144.5 million (+7.2% YoY)

●     Record breaking UK growth with new UK current accounts in the first four months of 2021 – surpassing annual 2020 total

●     UK growth momentum follows successful ISA launch in April

●     UK investing platform continues to expand with the introduction of funds from NinetyOne, Invesco, Candriam and AXA announced this year

FinecoBank entered the UK market three years ago with a unique offering combining brokerage, banking and investment services.

Paolo Di Grazia, Vice General Manager of FinecoBank commented: “Fineco entered the UK market as we saw the need for a provider that could offer a number of financial services through a single digital platform. Our accelerating growth shows that our one stop solution works, and more and more Britons are finding the effectiveness of our approach. Our promise is to continue to build on our platform. With the recent addition of the Fineco ISA and more investment options, we’re able to provide our growing number of customers a stronger integrated offering.”

FinecoBank

FinecoBank is one of the most important FinTech banks in Europe. Listed on the FTSE MIB, Fineco offers a business model that is unique in Europe, combining the best platforms with a large network of financial advisors. It offers a single account with banking, trading and investment services, on transactional and advisory platforms developed with proprietary technologies. Fineco is a leading bank in brokerage in Europe, and one of the most important players in Private Banking in Italy, offering advanced and tailor-made advisory services. Since 2017, FinecoBank has also been in the UK with an offer focused on brokerage, banking and investment services. Fineco Asset Management was founded in Dublin in 2018, with a mission to develop investment solutions in partnership with top international asset managers.

Five Degrees is delighted to announce Swishfund as its first customer on °neo, its new cloud native core banking platform. Fintech Swishfund was founded in 2016 and provides direct lending products to SME businesses in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Swishfund will migrate its existing customer base onto °neo, as it focusses on further expanding its business. 
°neo enables Swishfund to increase its capabilities significantly by providing a range of highly automated and flexible financial products. In its first five years Swishfund has become a highly successful label in the SME lending market with stellar growth figures. By adopting the technology of Five Degrees it will significantly leverage its offering to scale rapidly in different markets with its business loans. 
Jeroen Sonsma, CEO at Swishfund, comments: ‘At Swishfund, our goal is to provide business lending products in an extremely easy, fast and convenient way. We aim to be the most attractive alternative lender in short and mid-term financing for entrepreneurs and their SME businesses. Where the traditional banks are withdrawing more and more in this important market, we are stepping forward to help. By adopting °neo, we will reach a next step in efficiency, which opens new possibilities to deliver a seamless lending experience that will bring us more customers and will retain recurring existing customers. At the same time, we can focus more on what we are good at, which is offering fast, flexible and suitable credit.  For us this migration is a big step towards further professionalisation and scalability of our organisation. We can offer our customers an even smoother application and approval process via our websites www.swishfund.nl and www.swishfund.co.uk. ‘ 
Sonsma continues: ‘We assessed multiple cloud native platforms and for us Five Degrees came out on top through a combination of in-depth knowledge of the financial sector and the way they apply cloud native technology. In addition, they were a perfect cultural fit with our own company: forward thinking, informal and fast. It is incredible to see how effortlessly the °neo platform works, and how it enables us to focus on our core business where we can provide a truly great lending experience. On top of that, being the launching partner for Five Degrees we've experienced them as being very open and listening to our and our customer's needs in further developing the platform.'
Martijn Hohmann, CEO and founder of Five Degrees: ‘We are extremely excited to work with Swishfund as our launching customer for °neo. After a decade of providing innovative core banking technology for an amazing group of clients in Europe and North America, we created °neo from a clean sheet of paper. We have combined the latest cloud native technology with our experience from the past 10 years. I am very proud to see Swishfund embrace °neo to fuel their growth.'
 

Eventus Systems, Inc., a leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance and market risk solutions, announced today that Sydney-based Morrison Securities, a major Australian stock brokerage firm, will deploy its Validus platform for trade surveillance in equities, equity options and warrants. Morrison is the number one broker in the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) equity derivatives market by volume and value and a leading provider of execution and clearing services to Australia Financial Services Licence (AFSL) holders.

This is the first Australia-based client for Eventus, which has earned 15 global awards and honors in the past few years and steadily grown its presence around the world, including in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

Eventus CEO Travis Schwab said: “We are thrilled to welcome Morrison as our first client based in Australia and excited to partner with this market leader as our firm continues to grow and evolve. We’ve continued to make strong inroads into APAC and expect that we’ll see significant growth in Australia and other parts of the region in the coming year. Increasingly, firms that have been using legacy surveillance platforms are turning to us for the efficiencies and flexibility that Validus provides.”

Morrison will go live on Validus in July for trade surveillance of the firm’s activity on the ASX, Chi-X Australia (CXA) and the National Stock Exchange of Australia (NSX). The brokerage will deploy the cloud-based version of Validus, hosted in real time.

William Slack, Managing Director, Morrison Securities, said: “We see a lot of similarities between our two organizations and share a common philosophy with Eventus of putting clients first. Its reputation for client service is outstanding, and we’ve had a really good engagement all the way through, from our sales representative to senior leaders. We view Eventus as a true partner, where we can work closely together to develop what we need and efficiently scale our trade surveillance capabilities as we expand onto new exchanges and delve more deeply into the markets we’re trading.

“We believe the functionality of Validus – particularly the artificial intelligence overlay when it comes to alerts – will allow us to be more efficient and precise with how we manage the alerts that come through. Under our current platform, our compliance staff has so much data to sift through each day that it is extremely time consuming to determine which alerts are valid and worth pursuing. By introducing machine learning over time in the system, we’ll cut out the noise and reduce the scope of those alerts significantly, which means we’ll save a lot of time and really be able to focus on what we need to.”

Validus uses machine learning and robotic process automation to enable users to cast a wide net for detecting relevant market behavior and escalate the most actionable alerts for immediate attention. The unique approach enables compliance and risk officers to dig more deeply into potential issues and take resolution action faster, while accounting for all behavior that might easily get overlooked by legacy surveillance methods. Validus also provides a complete audit trail of all automations for use in supervisory reviews and regulatory inquiries.

Following rapid expansion spurred on by a global e-commerce boom, PPRO is announcing the appointment of newly created roles to its executive and leadership teams. Chief Commercial Officer, Claire Gates, and Senior Vice President of Banking and Payments Strategy, Tony Glasby, have joined PPRO just weeks after a second major investment announcement headlined by new investors JPMorgan Chase & Co. In addition to the newly created executive and leadership roles, PPRO will also be welcoming Jean Christian Mies to the executive team as the General Manager for Latin America.

All three roles will be crucial in supporting the company’s market position as the most trusted provider of local payments infrastructure.

As the former CEO of Paysafe Pay Later and the ‘Most Influential Women in Payments in 2019’, Claire brings unique payments expertise to PPRO. She has over 25 years of experience driving strategy for both large financial institutions and start-up disruptors. In her new role as Chief Commercial Officer for PPRO, Claire will lead the sales and marketing teams, push forward new commercial initiatives, and support building partnerships that further PPRO’s growth.

In response to the rising global need for localised payments, PPRO has already expanded its team by 60% in 2020, with major hires including Chief People Officer, Christine von der Hardt, and Chief Information Security Officer, Katherine Garrod. As the latest woman to join PPRO’s executive team and a celebrated “Fintech Role Model,” Claire’s appointment also advances the company's mission to drive greater diversity amongst its leadership.

Joining PPRO as Senior Vice President of Banking and Payments Strategy, Tony Glasby will help the company determine future banking and payments requirements, drawing out a blueprint for continued competitive differentiation within the market. Tony spent over a decade as Group Treasurer for eBay and PayPal, and brings a wealth of banking, licensing, risk management, finance, and compliance know-how to PPRO.

Jean Christian Mies, General Manager for Latin America, joins Claire and Tony as newcomers to PPRO’s leadership. Backed by over a decade of experience scaling international, cross-functional operations, Jean will manage PPRO’s strategy for the entire Latin American region.

Claire Gates, Chief Commercial Officer at PPRO, comments, “I’m thrilled to be joining PPRO at such a breath-taking time in its growth trajectory. Local payments are becoming increasingly critical to the success of global companies. And as one of the leading providers of local payments expertise and high-quality payments integrations, we have an incredibly exciting opportunity to shape the future of borderless e-commerce.”

Tony Glasby, Senior Vice President of Banking & Payments Strategy at PPRO, adds, “The costs and complexities of navigating the global payments landscape can be overwhelming for even the most sophisticated companies. I’m proud to add my technology, e-commerce, regulated markets, and digital payments experience to PPRO, a company filling such a big gap in the payments ecosystem.”

Jean Christian Mies, General Manager for Latin America, continues, “PPRO’s unique focus on markets at the local level and operations at the global level makes it an important partner for its customers, and an interesting challenge for all its new joiners. I’m delighted to join such a fast-growing team.”

Brexiteers may be celebrating the fact that EU imports to the UK were overtaken by non-EU imports for the first time, but that doesn’t mean Brexit is working, says ParcelHero. It just means non-EU imports have declined less alarmingly than EU imports.

As new Government trade figures showed UK imports from outside the European Union (EU) outstripped EU imports for the first time on record, Chancellor Rishi Sunak claimed a victory yesterday. He told the BBC that the Government had invested ‘hundreds of millions of pounds to help businesses adjust to those new trading arrangements and support them in the process’.

However, the international delivery specialist ParcelHero says these figures do not prove that UK importers are now discovering new products and trading partners in markets beyond the EU. Instead, they simply reveal that non-EU imports into the UK declined less alarmingly than EU imports.

ParcelHero’s Head of Consumer Research, David Jinks M.I.L.T., says: ‘New Government trade figures released yesterday show that imports from the EU fell by £14bn to £50.6bn in the first quarter (January-March 2021) compared to the final quarter of last year (October-December 2020), before Brexit trading rules were imposed. Imports from non-EU countries also declined, but “only” by £0.5bn, to £53.2bn.

‘This means that – for the first time since Government records began in January 1997 – imports from beyond Europe were worth more than those from the EU. Brexiteers may try to claim this as a success, showing Britain is finding new trading partners and products from a wider range of countries; but this fails to see the full picture. EU sellers have simply turned their backs on the UK market. Just because non-EU imports declined less significantly than those from the EU does not mean consumers and businesses are benefiting from Brexit. Two negatives do not make a positive.

‘As if the latest import figures were not dispiriting enough, British exports also declined significantly in the first quarter. The value of Britain’s exports to the EU fell a whopping £7.1bn to £32.2bn, compared to the last quarter of 2020.

‘Why are these numbers so woeful? Last week, ParcelHero revealed that Brexit regulations are having a significant impact on British businesses. Over 39% of UK importers are struggling with new customs duties and 38.6% are battling increased transport costs. Exporters report similar challenges.

‘It’s all because the hastily cobbled-together UK-EU free trade agreement is simply not fit for purpose. Under the deal, goods flowing between the UK and the EU that are sourced and manufactured in the UK or Europe don’t have to pay tariffs. However, how many products are entirely sourced and made in a single area in today’s world of global supply chains? The answer is very few. Electronics, for example, incorporate components from across the globe, while clothing can include materials from many continents.

‘Any products unable to prove all their sourcing meets the new regulations are likely to be slapped with new duties. This has resulted in higher fees for UK importers as well as EU-based customers of UK exporters. In addition, transport costs are rising due to mounting delays and returns.

‘However, there were some small, green shoots in the latest trade figures. Exports and imports both crept up by £2.3bn between February and March this year. Businesses and consumers alike will be hoping this could signal the beginning of a welcome increase in profits for exporters and more choice for shoppers.

‘For more details on the increasing problems facing UK importers, see ParcelHero’s new EU-UK e-commerce report at:  https://www.parcelhero.com/research/brexit-study

GoldenSource, the leading independent provider of Enterprise Data Management (EDM) and Master Data Management (MDM) solutions, has unveiled GoldenSource ESG Impact providing unrivalled ESG data coverage, comparison, quality checks and portfolio screening.

Through a large network of ESG data provider partners and content specialists, the solution offers full depth and breadth of ESG data coverage. Going further, GoldenSource inbound APIs enable on-boarding of current and future structured and unstructured ESG content from new data sources.

GoldenSource ESG Impact supports all standard and data vendor-proprietary materiality maps, enabling buy and sell-side firms to compare what the different data providers consider useful information, regarding specific ESG criterion in a given industry sector. Users can pull together scores, ratings and ranks from the broad range of sources and then drill down into the relevant underlying data points, thus providing market participants with insights most relevant to their business or investment strategy. Crucially, it enables data quality checks, validating metrics against data standards while also checking completeness, staleness and plausibility, making firms less susceptible to greenwashing.

Because of the underlying GoldenSource platform, the solution enables portfolio screening, meaning that users can leverage a leading data model to seamlessly look through portfolios to instruments and their issuing legal entities to related ESG content. This will become a critical capability across the industry as ESG regulations and competitive ESG investment strategies evolve. Significantly, historical data is held to ensure that any changes in ESG status over time are visible and can be acted upon.

Volker Lainer, VP of Product Management and Regulatory Affairs at GoldenSource said: “As ESG has grown market participants have had to sift through an overwhelming amount of information from multiple sources, each with its particular content strengths and refined methodology to provide valuable insights. Our solution means that not only will users be able to discover and compare more useful ESG metrics and granular data across multiple sources, but also check the ESG metrics through a data quality framework. This will help navigate the changing regulatory environment and the challenges with discerning what is truly considered a ‘sustainable’ investment and what conforms to a published ESG strategy.”

In addition to clients having their own version integrated into their technology stack, GoldenSource ESG Impact will also be available in a low-footprint managed service version, where GoldenSource manages the solution and the integration via an API. Clients will then simply submit any number of portfolios for screening, and the relevant ESG data that the client has subscribed to will automatically be returned. With new data sources added on an ongoing basis, users will have the ability to assess and alter decision making, adapting to the new information made available to them.

John Eley, CEO of GoldenSource added: “This is a breakthrough as the growing volumes and increasing need for ESG data makes the investment landscape more complex. The solution is built on a foundation of market leading data management capabilities, but also GoldenSource’s experience in modelling ESG attributes, which makes it mature for this area of the financial markets. As part of our wider offering, GoldenSource ESG Impact slots in to create a bridge from the portfolio to the ESG content that otherwise portfolio managers would need to do themselves, making investment decision making more efficient.”

Dynabook Europe GmbH reveals the results of its new research report, ‘The Hybrid Shift: Managing an increasingly remote workforce’, which shows that 65% of European IT decision makers have access to increased IT budgets this year both to accommodate more widespread remote and hybrid working, as well as to support business continuity.

The research, commissioned by Dynabook in partnership with Walnut Unlimited, surveyed more than 1,000 senior IT decision makers at medium to large enterprises across a range of industry sectors within the UK, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands to reveal IT spending, new working patterns and device priorities for the next 12 months.

While all regions surveyed indicated an increase in IT spend, Spain noted the most change, with 71% of organisations demonstrating a rise in technology investments in the next year, closely followed by 70% of businesses in the Netherlands. Over three quarters (76%) of financial services organisations revealed increased budgets, while 73% of manufacturing businesses said the same. Enterprises operating in the retail sector were the least likely to up IT budgets, although over half (54%) still indicated increased IT expenditure.

Remote working here to stay

Changing work patterns and locations are a clear driver for this growth in IT spend. The study found that over two thirds (67%) of employees are expected to either work from home or from no fixed location following the pandemic, which has increased from 53% before COVID-19.

When asked about ensuring the productivity of their growing remote workforce, over half (51%) of organisations surveyed indicated they will prioritise providing remote support/assistance for staff. When compared to similar research conducted by Dynabook in 2018, this has increased from 29%. Secure communication and collaboration tools were also regarded as important for employee productivity – 41% of IT decision makers noted both as key for supporting good employee performance, while 37% indicated IT training as an important factor here.

Shifting business priorities

The research also found that European businesses are continuing to accelerate digital transformation and equip themselves with a robust IT infrastructure to support a new remote and hybrid workforce. Cloud solutions and remote IT assistance were highlighted as top priorities for organisations across all markets and sectors, as 50% of respondents ranked both technologies top respectively. UK businesses were found to be prioritising remote IT support the most, with nearly two thirds (63%) naming this as a key focus.

Cybersecurity infrastructure (48%) is also expected to be a key technology investment priority in the next year, followed by IT training for staff (40%) and equipping employees with devices coming in fifth (37%).

When comparing the importance placed on these technologies to pre-pandemic times, 77% of organisations now regarded security software as more important, while 73% said collaboration tools are now more significant. At the same time, 70% indicated cloud platforms as more valuable, and 62% regard device accessories with heightened importance going into the new normal.

Devices in demand

The research also highlighted an increased value placed on laptops – the unsung heroes of the pandemic – as nearly three quarters (74%) of businesses now regard purchasing decisions around such devices as more important than before COVID-19. The UK saw the highest disparity between laptops and desktops usage, with 90% of UK companies using laptops and only a third (33%) using desktops for remote working. Desktops popularity remains higher in other parts of Europe – Spain (52%), France (47%), Netherlands (46%).

What’s more, two thirds (66%) of organisations are now planning to integrate more laptops into their remote working infrastructure over the next 12 months, demonstrating that the reliance on notebooks will remain strong for the rest of 2021.

When it comes to key device features, European businesses appear to be taking heed of warnings of increased cyber-attacks, with 81% of businesses considering security to be an important feature when purchasing a laptop. Other key priority features include connectivity (80%), performance (76%), battery life (72%) and portability (70%). That said, 28% consider performance to be the most important feature, compared to 20% for security.

“The last year has seen unprecedented change in the way we work, and it’s clear from our research that European businesses are still racing to ensure their IT infrastructure meets the demands of an increased remote and hybrid workforce,” said Damian Jaume, President,  Dynabook Europe GmbH. “Armed with increased budgets, it’s evident that the role of the device has grown in importance as organisations realise the vital role hardware plays – alongside the right software – in keeping employees secure, connected and productive in this new world.”

To download the full report, please visit: https://uk.dynabook.com/secure/generic/toshibytes-researchreport1-the-hybrid-shift/