Volt, the leading open payments gateway, today unveiled new cash management functionality providing merchants and payment service providers (PSPs) with complete visibility of open banking payments made through the UK's Faster Payments Service and the European SEPA Credit Transfer and SEPA Instant Credit Transfer schemes.

Available in the UK now and across Europe by the end of May 2021, Volt Connect puts merchants in greater control of their cash by enabling them to track multi-currency PSD2 payments from the point of initiation to the moment of arrival in their accounts. Automatic reconciliation and reporting provide recipients with instant notification of settlement, allowing them to credit the correct customer account faster.

Tom Greenwood, CEO at Volt, comments: “Although account-to-account payments can land in recipients' accounts within seconds of initiation, they follow a complex, multi-step process, and there is no guarantee of settlement until the money arrives. This challenge is exacerbated where banks aren't connected to instant payment schemes.”

“With Volt Connect, we’ve made it possible to make losses from failed transactions a thing of the past by providing total visibility and control throughout the payment journey, regardless of the route taken. Merchants can dispatch goods or credit customer accounts faster and with the certainty of knowing where funds are at all times, minimising the risk of being left out of pocket by reversed charges or payment failure.”

Volt Connect adds to the market-leading functionality available in Volt's open payments gateway, which provides seamless connectivity to open banking by standardising the PSD2 payment initiation API to a simple, single point of access. Volt offers multiple paths for payments between accounts at more than 4,500 banks in the UK and Europe, removing single point of failure and improving conversion by optimising payment routing with machine learning.

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has been named a Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) leader in The Forrester Wave™: Function-As-A-Service Platforms, Q1 2021 report. According to the report, FaaS platforms give developers a quick way to build cloud-native microservices by abstracting away the complexities of managing and scaling clusters of containers or virtual machines. 

Alibaba Cloud is named one of three leaders among nine global vendors evaluated in Forrester’s evaluation. Across the three key categories used for evaluation - Current Offering, Strategy and Market Presence - Alibaba Cloud’s FaaS product Function Compute received the highest score (4.56 out of 5) in the Current Offering category among the nine global vendors included in the report. The named product provides a platform for customers to code applications without having to manage the underlying infrastructure.

Function Compute also received the second highest score in the Strategy category (4.5 out of 5). Looking at the sub-criteria, Function Compute received the highest scores possible in 29 criteria, including programming model, support for specialised workloads, FaaS vision, execution roadmap, practitioner engagement strategy, pricing strategy, geographic distribution and customers. It also received among the top scores in the security features and runtime execution environment criteria. 

“We now view Alibaba Function Compute as a leader in the FaaS market, especially for clients looking to process video-heavy workloads or take advantage of the function concurrency their container-centric model supports,” said Forrester in the report.

“We believe Function Compute’s recognition as a leader in Forrester’s evaluation underscores our ongoing commitment to growing our FaaS offering and empowering our clients,” said Jeff Zhang, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “Over the past year, we have expanded our platform to support open-source functions and standards as well as content-centric workloads, particularly those which are video-heavy. These efforts have received recognition from our customers alongside global consulting firms such as Forrester, which is very encouraging.” 

The Forrester Wave noted customers’ feedback on Function Compute, stating “customers were pleased that they could scale to tens of thousands of instances in minutes.” The report commented that while the product is currently best suited for companies in its local markets of Hong Kong and mainland China, its “international coverage is expanding and now stands at 10 regions with 21 availability zones.”

Alibaba Cloud’s Function Compute was released in 2017 and has since integrated 30 cloud services that help developers build stable, auto-scaling online applications and mini programs quickly, supporting multiple coding languages.

In November last year, Alibaba Cloud was also ranked as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Public Cloud Development and Infrastructure Platform in China, Q4 2020 report.

To view the Forrester report, please click on this link.

With Paris-aligned investing becoming the actual state amongst conscious investors, Europe’s largest asset manager, Amundi, licensed the Solactive iCPR Climate Credit PAB Index for the latest expansion of its Paris-aligned ETF solutions. The release of the Amundi iCPR Euro Corp Climate Paris Aligned PAB – UCITS ETF DR rounds out its formerly equity-based line-up with a fixed income variant, giving investors an effective tool to both diversify and decarbonize their portfolio. The ETF was listed on Xetra on April 27^th, 2021.

The Paris agreement is recognized as one of the world’s most significant conventions. Its main goal is to keep the increase of global average temperature below a critical threshold of 2°C. While the Paris agreement puts the responsibility to meet the desired targets into politician’s hands, investors seek to make a difference with their investment decisions, too. Amundi’s new Amundi iCPR Euro Corp Climate Paris Aligned PAB – UCITS ETF DR tracking the Solactive iCPR Climate Credit PAB Index allows investors to take climate change into their own hands.

The Solactive iCPR Climate Credit PAB Index was designed in collaboration with Amundi’s thematic expert subsidiary CPR Asset Management. The index gives investors exposure to investment-grade euro corporate bonds aligned with the Paris Agreement, providing a portfolio that, based on climate analysis by CDP, is in line with a 1.5°C scenario through 2050. To achieve its desired 1.5°C scenario, the index reduces the average carbon emissions against its benchmark by 50% and on an annual basis and, thereby, features additional year-on-year self-decarbonization of -7%.

In addition to its environmental tilt, the index incorporates a broad ESG screening based on normative and sector criteria. More precisely, companies that do not comply with the UN Global Compact filter, as well as companies deriving a respective revenue from coal, oil, and natural gases, are excluded from the index.

Matthieu Guignard, Global Head of Product Development and Capital Markets – Amundi ETF, Indexing & Smart Beta, says: “As pioneers in climate index solutions, we are delighted to build on our partnership with Solactive for the launch of this innovative index strategy.  Amundi created the first climate index in 2014. Now, with the addition of a fixed income climate PAB ETF, we offer investors a full suite of tools to align their portfolios with the decarbonization objectives of the Paris Agreement.”

Timo Pfeiffer, Chief Markets Officer at Solactive, comments: ”Solactive’s longstanding innovative strengths in ESG indices roots from our commitment to provide our clients with the most seamless and fitting ESG solution. We are happy that Amundi has again chosen us as their index provider of trust, and we are pleased that with our indices, investors have the chance to make the world a greener place.”

Gilles Cutaya, Deputy CEO of CPR Asset Management, says: “We are proud to have contributed to the design of the Solactive iCPR Climate Credit PAB Index by leveraging our special partnership with CDP, as well as our track-record as an active climate-focused fund manager and our expertise in portfolio decarbonization. CPR AM is determined to expand its capacities in Paris-aligned investing through the construction of innovative investment solutions.”

Analysis from global consultancy partnership Kearney has found that the performance of retail banks is likely to return to pre-pandemic levels within three to five years, although profitability will remain under pressure in the next two years.

Now in its 12^th year, Kearney’s European Retail Banking Radar is an annual analysis of the pan-European retail banking market, tracking 89 retail banks in 22 European markets, comprised of 51 banks in Western Europe and 38 banks in Eastern Europe. This year’s instalment looks at how retail banks have fared against the disruptions caused by COVID-19 and looks forward to how the sector’s recovery may be shaped.

The report emphasises that risk mitigations such as Government support and proactive risk management successfully softened the anticipated blow. Nevertheless, one in 10 banks reported losses, and average profit per customer declined 30%. Overall, 70% of banks generated average profit per customer of under €100, compared with the 40% of banks the year before.

Further, 19 of the 22 countries analysed reported an income decrease compared to 2019 levels, with UK banks reporting the highest decline of 10%.

The past five years have also seen banks take action to reduce operational costs. On average, headcount has been reduced by 9% and branch networks by 19%. The top 20% of European banks have reduced their employees by 16%, branches by 26%, and have seen their cost-income ratio improve from 65% to 60%. That said, the bottom 20% of banks have seen their cost-income ratio increase to 68% from 53% – a significant underperformance.

Simon Kent, Partner and Global Head of Financial Services at Kearney, comments:

“There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 crisis has had a significant impact on retail banks, but the fallout has been less severe than last year’s prediction. This is largely due to the interventions that were put in place, with many lessons learned from the global financial crisis. We predict that European banks will return to pre-COVID performance within 3 to 5 years but increasing profitability will require cost reductions of €35-45 billion during this time.

The trajectory of European retail banking has certainly changed, but as we adapt to the ‘new-normal’, European economies will recover, and banks will have the opportunity to become the engine of the recovery. Unlike with the financial crisis, retail banks have regained clients’ trust by providing financial support through successive lockdowns. As such, we anticipate that the European banking sector will be in the position to drive recovery and emerge stronger and better in the wake of COVID-19.”

illimity Bank S.p.A. (“illimity” or the “Bank”) presents its first Voluntary  Consolidated Non-Financial Statement (NFS) pursuant to the Italian Legislative Decree no. 254/2016  and announces that it already achieved carbon neutrality at a Group level in 2020. 

Since starting activities in 2019, the Bank has always placed specific emphasis on environmental,  social and governance (“ESG”) issues, and taking a native approach has embarked on a path of  building these into the Group’s strategies, processes and governance. This commitment is also  reflected in the Group’s decision to prepare its first voluntary NFS, continuing the reporting and  transparency process started last year with the publication of its Sustainability Profile. 

With its first Non-Financial Statement, illimity provides a wide range of information on its ESG  performance to all its stakeholders. The report – based on the figures as of 31 December 2020 – has  been prepared in compliance with the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards (“GRI Standards”)  – “Core” option, to which voluntary qualitative and quantitative indicators have been added. The  preparation of this report, in the name of the digital innovation that has always set the Bank apart,  involved all the main corporate functions and divisions using an ESG Digital Governance 

collaborative platform. 

Rosalba Casiraghi, illimity’s Chairperson, stated: “The illimity Group’s first Sustainability Report  represents an important moment for sharing the responsibilities that guide us in helping people,  families and businesses to unleash and enhance their potential with all of our stakeholders. I am  especially proud of also chairing the Sustainability Committee, testifying our strong commitment to  ESG issues, an involvement that unites us all, from the Bank’s top management to its single functions  and areas”. 

Corrado Passera, illimity’s CEO, commented: “We are continuing our commitment to ensuring solid  profits for people who have invested in illimity, the innovative project which at the same time is aiming  to be useful to society as a whole and able to provide a boost towards achieving sustained and  sustainable growth in our country. Italy can and must reactivate its economic and social potential this  year. And we in illimity intend to play our part in that process”

Brand new partnership will enable financial services to be embedded into Talenom’s emerging SME solution ‘Accounting Alex’ to modernise banking for SMEs

 PPS, formerly PrePay Solutions and an Edenred company, today announces new partnership with leading Finnish accounting company, Talenom.

Listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange since 2015, Talenom provides commercial accounting and bookkeeping solutions across the Finnish and Swedish markets. Its traditional customer base is weighted towards medium size companies, but a strategic focus to increase Talenom’s reach into the SME marketplace has seen the company develop a self-service solution, named ‘Accounting Alex’, which combines accounting software with banking services. The move to supporting smaller businesses highlights Talenom’s commitment to the SME business sector which forms an important part of the European economic landscape.

With the support of PPS, Talenom is filling a gap in the market for alternative business financial services. Through the partnership, Talenom will now be able to integrate financial services into Accounting Alex including both physical and virtual Mastercard payment cards, a Finnish IBAN provided by PPS for all accounts, SEPA payments, and electronic bank account statements.

With the strengthened services to the Talenom platform, users can perform bookkeeping and banking services within the same application, a service that other companies in this space have been unable to do before. As a result of working with PPS, small businesses will be able to set up an account in minutes and enable savings on fees by more than 50 percent. This joint solution truly expands and adds value to SME businesses across Finland’s commercial landscape.

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO of Talenom, commented: “Legacy banks in Finland are unchallenged, so we are motivated to offer entrepreneurs and SMEs more flexible and affordable financial services. Given PPS’ commitment to modernise the infrastructures in place for SMEs we knew they would be a great fintech partner for us to work with to achieve our goals. After just one phone call, we knew they believed in our vision, and together with Talenom’s enhanced product portfolio, the future looks very promising.”

Ray Brash, CEO of PPS, added: “We’re delighted to support this next phase of Talenom’s journey by providing SMEs with embedded financial services – this is something very close to our heart. Through the partnership we have bolstered our IBAN offering, and very much support Talenom in its future expansion into other geographies.” 

To find out more about PPS visit: https://www.pps.edenred.com/

To find out more about Talenom visit: https://www.talenom.fi/en/ 

Linedata, a global provider of credit and asset management technology, data and services, today announced First Bank unlocked new efficiencies in its business lending division by fully adopting Linedata’s cloud-based capabilities and streamlined business procedures through Linedata Capitalstream.

Since the initial integration of Linedata Capitalstream in 2016, the partnership between Linedata and First Bank has supported the bank’s business lending segment in implementing automation, digitizing processes and offering a greater level of support to clients.

For more than 100 years, First Bank has operated as a family-owned bank, committed to remaining connected to clients and their long- and short-term financial goals. Linedata Capitalstream’s Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) capabilities allow First Bank to deliver the latest innovations and comprehensive solutions, without traditional upgrades. New features and enhancements will be delivered regularly, ensuring a modern user experience for First Bank’s business lending team.

“Our mission, vision, and purpose are solid and propel us to make investments in technology that serve our clients better,” says Eric Hallgren, Chief Credit Officer at First Bank. “We’re looking forward to keep rolling out digital-first initiatives, and continuing to partner with companies like Linedata, who keep us at the forefront of forward-thinking solutions.”

The full adoption of Linedata Capitalstream has allowed for highly efficient, frictionless processes that focus on client engagement. For every step in the loan approval process that Linedata Capitalstream allows First Bank to simplify, First Bank adds value to their clients.

“Since we started working together, I’ve admired First Bank’s willingness to adapt and evolve ahead of industry standards,” says Louanne Gemin, SVP Linedata Lending and Leasing North America. “As digital client interactions and remote working became the norm in 2020, First Bank is well-positioned to optimize performance of business lending.”

First Bank can now offer small businesses the opportunity to apply for a loan online and receive a decision instantly. Compared to the norm of waiting days or weeks for a decision, this loan application experience will reduce stress for business borrowers. Using Linedata Capitalstream’s automation, First Bank will be able to offer this helpful service without incurring unacceptable credit risk.

“Integrating tools such as Linedata Capitalstream means we get to spend more time connecting with our clients, offering our expertise as they face new challenges and opportunities in their communities,” Hallgren adds.

For more information on Linedata Capitalstream, please visit Linedata.com/lending-leasing/linedata-capitalstream.

Equifax UK, the business and consumer insights expert, is partnering with Canopy, a fintech platform focused on the financial wellbeing of tenants, to include rental payment data in its credit assessments.

The collaboration is positive news for millions of tenants in the UK market who can now boost their credit score by reporting their rental payments data to Equifax through the Canopy RentTracking platform. Tenants will also have access to Canopy’s free Open Banking-based rental budgeting app, designed to help them reduce their household bills.

Historically, rental payments haven’t been recorded in consumer credit files which can restrict a tenant’s access to affordable financial products, especially for those with little credit history. The ongoing pandemic has worsened the situation for thousands of tenants, with their financial resilience pushed to the limit. Canopy’s RentTracking feature promotes a more inclusive financial society by allowing potential lenders to get a more informed and up-to-date view of an individual renter’s affordability.

Janice Rudd, Data Director at Equifax UK, said: “We’re very pleased to partner with the Canopy team given their commitment to financially empower millions of rental households. The inclusion of rental data in credit assessments is a welcome and progressive move. Just like individuals with a mortgage, renters who make full and timely monthly payments should also see a noticeable benefit in proving their ability to repay a financial commitment.”

Tahir Farooqui, CEO and Founder at Canopy, commented: “The Canopy team is focused on enhancing tenants’ access to affordable financial products and accelerating a path to homeownership. Our partnership with Equifax is a significant milestone, enabling millions of renters in the UK market to use their monthly rental payments to improve their credit score - completely for free. There is no charge involved for tracking or reporting rental payments to the credit bureaus. This is especially pertinent with the pandemic bringing financial upheaval and uncertainty to huge numbers of households and renters.”

Finastra has announced BANK OF AFRICA, a pan-African financial group, has selected Conpend’s TRADE AI app from its open innovation platform, FusionFabric.cloud. The app extends the functionality of Finastra’s Fusion Trade Innovation technology and enables users to reduce document and compliance checking time. It digitizes trade finance processes, using optical character recognition (OCR), natural language processing (NLP) and progressive machine learning to reduce the risk and cost of trade finance operations.

“The solution will improve our trade finance operations by speeding up the approval of trade finance documents. We expect it will digitize manual, paper-based processes, reduce processing time by 30 per cent, and reduce trade finance risk levels by up to 80 per cent. Having access to third-party apps was a clear differentiator when looking at trade finance solutions,” said Leila Bahoum, Board member in charge of Trade Finance Operations from OGS Subsidiary of BANK OF AFRICA.

Conpend TRADE AI extracts unstructured data from scanned paper documents and can also process already digitized data. The data is then screened and analyzed, using rules and advanced analytics, to empower business users to make informed business decisions quickly and accurately. It is fully compliant with all major global regulations and automatically performs all necessary compliance checks for a trade transaction. This includes money laundering screening and handling alerts during the screening process, which dramatically reduces false positives and time spent on decision-making. The solution also enables vessel checking and voyage tracking to support goods in transit.

Marc Smith, Founder and Director, Conpend said, “We’re so pleased that BANK OF AFRICA has chosen to plug our innovative technology into its systems. This is one of the big benefits of us making our app available on Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud. We’ve been able to build our solution out quickly on the platform and make it available to banks around the world in support of Finastra’s vision of openness and collaboration.”

Anastasia McAlpine, Principal Product Manager, Trade and Supply Chain Finance at Finastra said, “This is another great example of banks and fintechs collaborating to bring innovative technology to market fast. We are confident BANK OF AFRICA will realize great results with the Conpend Trade AI app and look forward to other banks tapping into this opportunity to further enhance the functionality of our Fusion Trade Innovation.”

For more information about Conpend’s TRADE AI app on FusionFabric.cloud visit: https://store.fusionfabric.cloud/details/tradeai/