WiseAlpha, the UK’s leading digital bond market, is delighted to announce that after 10 weeks of consumer voting, they have once again been nominated for the prestigious British Bank Awards. This year the British Bank Awards, affectionately known as the ‘Oscars of the banking world’, have had a record number of votes cast across a huge variety of entries, making this an exciting achievement for WiseAlpha.  

WiseAlpha has high hopes that their one of a kind offering of Fractional Bonds to private investors will scoop the win in the ‘Best Investments Provider’ for the third time, following success in this category in 2018 and 2019. The company is also amongst four finalists in the ‘Customer Service Champion’ category; an award for which WiseAlpha is honoured to be recommended, seeing as their investment platform has recently been redeveloped to be 100% customer centric. 

This is the 7th time around for the British Bank Awards, which is hosted by financial services hub Smart Money People, the UK’s number one review and insight platform. The awards aim to champion leaders in the financial sector, by honouring both their products and innovative services.                                     

Rezaah Ahmad, the Founder and CEO of WiseAlpha, says: “It is a fantastic honour to be a finalist for the third time at these prestigious awards. This acknowledgement serves as the perfect reminder of the progress WiseAlpha has made in gaining widespread support from the investment community. Our goal of increasing consumer confidence in the world of corporate bonds whilst making them available to a whole new audience is well underway, and hopefully this will be reinforced by the British Bank Awards results for a third time lucky.” 

Today, the Supervisory Board of Commerzbank AG decided to propose four additional new candidates for election to the Supervisory Board to shareholders at the next Annual General Meeting (AGM). The candidates are Daniela Mattheus, Caroline Seifert and Frank Westhoff. With the dispatch of the invitation to the AGM, a fourth candidate will be proposed to the shareholders, who cannot yet be named for formal reasons. The AGM of Commerzbank is expected to take place on 18 May 2021.
 
The changes in the 20-member Supervisory Board of the Bank have become necessary after Andreas Schmitz resigned from his mandate on 24 March. In addition, Tobias Guldimann, Rainer Hillebrand as well as Victoria Ossadnik have resigned from their mandates taking effect with the end of the upcoming AGM. As previously reported, on Sunday the Supervisory Board had decided to propose Helmut Gottschalk for election to the Supervisory Board and subsequently elect him as its Chairman. Gottschalk is to succeed Hans-Jörg Vetter, who resigned from office on 16 March for health reasons.
 
“I am pleased that we were able to recruit such an experienced and competent set of candidates for our Supervisory Board very quickly,” says Uwe Tschäge, Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board. “I thank the entire Supervisory Board as well as all outgoing members for their commitment. I am confident that we will continue to work very well together in the new constellation.”
 
Daniela Mattheus is a lawyer and Managing Partner at the European Center for Board Efficiency (ECBE). The former partner at Ernst & Young is a corporate governance expert and has a lot of experience in advising supervisory and advisory boards.
 
Caroline Seifert is a management consultant for transformation. Prior to her self-employment, the brand & design specialist had worked in leading positions for Deutsche Telekom and the Indian mobile phone company Jio.
 
Frank Westhoff is a former board member of DZ Bank. He was a member of the board of the cooperative central institution as Chief Risk Officer from 2006 to 2017. Before that, he worked for Deutsche Bank, among others, for more than a decade.
 
Due to the ongoing Corona pandemic, Commerzbank’s AGM will once again have to be held as a virtual event without the physical presence of shareholders. The invitation to the AGM will be published in short term.

 SBI Card Pay, a payment feature based on Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology, which allows customers to create virtual version of their physical SBI Credit Card on their mobile phones and then tap their phone at Near-Field-Communication (NFC) enabled Point of Sale terminals (POS) to make payments at merchants, is now available on Mastercard platform.

To avail this service, customers with an Android smartphone (housing Android OS KitKat version 4.4 and above) have to register their SBI Credit Card on the SBI Card mobile application. This creates a virtual card on their mobile phone for their physical credit card. Thereafter, customers can make payments at merchants simply by unlocking their mobile phone screen using fingerprints, the screen lock facility or an MPIN and tapping the phone at a Near-Field-Communication (NFC) POS. This simple ‘tap and pay’ contactless process makes the card payments swifter, hygienic and more seamless for customers.

This is a strategic partnership keeping in mind the increase in digital payments during the pandemic. Mastercard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) will allow payment credentials to be securely tokenized and stored in mobile devices. Mastercard is constantly enabling different form factors for consumers to choose from. SBI Card Pay is powered by Comviva’s HCE Module from its mobiquity® Banking Suite, that leverages Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology and tokenization to deliver swift, seamless, secure and convenient contactless mobile payments to customers. Tokenization converts a customer’s card information into a device-specific digital token. Hence, while executing a transaction, a digital token is shared and the customer’s actual card information is masked, thus securing the transaction. In case the customer’s mobile device is misplaced, details of the card remain secure, as it is stored as digital tokens.

In 2020, SBI Card Pay received many regional and international awards, including PayTech Award, Payments & Cards Award and InnTech Award, for ease-of-use, hygiene and security it offers to customers during the payment at merchants’ POS.

Mr. Rama Mohan Rao Amara, MD & CEO, SBI Card said, “SBI Card Pay has redefined the payment experience for our customers. The ’Tap and Pay’ contactless experience is not just fast, secure and convenient, but also very relevant in Covid era from a safety perspective as customers simply need to tap their mobile phone on NFC enabled POS terminals to make payments. We are happy to extend SBI Card Pay feature on Mastercard platform too. We believe that contactless payments will continue to play a key role in country’s digital payments drive and as the supporting infrastructure increases countrywide, adoption is bound to accelerate significantly.”

Commenting on the launch, Vikas Varma, Chief Operating Officer, South Asia, Mastercard said, “Safety and security combined with quick and convenient payment experience, is at the core of growing India’s digital economy. Mastercard is happy to partner with SBI Card and Comviva to bring the benefits of ‘Tap and Pay’ contactless payments to Indian consumers. These ‘tap and pay’ payments are secure, seamless, and more importantly are safe in time of COVID-19 pandemic. Mastercard is confident that the service will offer a better mobile payment experience for SBI Card cardholders. It will also encourage contactless payments, especially in a time when people prefer touch-free transactions in a safe and secure manner. With this new launch, Mastercard is strengthening the long-standing partnership with India’s largest pure play credit card issuer.”

Srinivas Nidugondi, COO and EVP, Digital Financial Solutions at Comviva said, “Globally HCE and tokenization are making card payments frictionless and secure, and we believe that in India also they will redefine the card payment experience and bring it on par with the developed world.  With the growing NFC POS infrastructure in India and mobile phones becoming de facto wallets for consumers, we expect ‘tap and pay’ services like SBI Card Pay are the future of card payments in India. The inclusion of SBI Cards on Mastercard platform will help to grow the usage of this service in the country.”

Comviva’s mobiquity® Banking suite provides a comprehensive solution to banks and financial institutions, to not only build, manage and control the omni-channel experiences, but also continuously iterate and engage the consumers, through instant configuration capability, marketing automation, personalization, and experimentation engine. This empowers the bank to deliver a hyper-personalized experience, thereby enhancing the customer’s value, and subsequently, profitably transition to the digital age.

Moreover, the product also delivers agile and secure contactless payment experience to the customer, by leveraging HCE and Tokenisation. HCE enables the customer to have a digital version of the credit or debit card in their mobile phone and use it at payWave/payPass certified POS machines. This eliminates the requirement of a physical card. Tokenisation ensures that payments are executed in a secure manner, as details of the card are not shared with the merchant, while the transaction is being processed. mobiquity® is a multi-token service provider (TSP) solution, which is readily integrated and certified for use with Mastercard’s MDES solutions. It provides support for any other TSP as well, using a single proprietary SDK, across devices.

Note: mobiquity® is registered trademark in India only  

GreenBond Meter, an eco-friendly initiative that allows people to save native forests with the purchase of cryptocurrency, is partnering with Sumsub for KYC, KYB, crypto monitoring, and video verification. The companies are combining efforts to deliver easy, people-friendly, and safe customer verification for those who value environmental protection and lowering their carbon footprint.

GreenBond Meter aims to protect our biosphere through purchases of cryptocurrency. By purchasing GreenBond Meter Coin (GBM Coin), investors will be protecting 1m² of jungle and native forests. This project pursues to reach the sum of 100.000 hectares of protected land in ten countries in the five continents. GBM coin is based on real financial support, backed up by the natural capital of the preserved land. Possessing this cryptocurrency allows investors to oversee the preserved land and prevent its exploitation. Additionally, GBM investors will be granted access to a carbon credit (GBM Bond) which further showcases the coin-holder’s carbon footprint reduction.

GreenBond Meter has partnered with Sumsub to make sure that criminals don't take advantage of their environmental efforts. Sumsub’s solution provides easy, accurate, and secure verification of individuals and businesses, ensuring quick onboarding while providing sophisticated fraud defenses. Sumsub has also provided GreenBond Meter with industry-leading video identification technology as well as crypto monitoring for detecting risky buyers. Now, GreenBond Meter has dependable tools for reviewing suspicious cases—all backed up by legitimate reasons for account rejection. Plus, GreenBond Meter can save even more time since Sumsub automatically generates reports to regulators.

“GreenBond Meter Coin is our passion project that brings together the world of virtual currency and the environment. To run the project properly, we needed to make sure that our service is secure and friendly when it comes to user verification before the purchase of our crypto assets. For that, we chose Sumsub and are very happy with their solution. Our initiative has started protecting forests in Argentina, but soon plan to expand to other countries in the five continents to reach our goal of 1.000.000 hectares of protected land and we are feeling more confident doing so with the Sumsub’s support.”—Juan Nuñez, CEO at GreenBond Meter.

“We felt very inspired by GreenBond Meter’s efforts to link fintech and ecology. Dealing with crypto investments, it’s important to verify the purchaser very carefully and in accordance with local regulations to avoid noncompliance and related fines. We are happy to ensure GreenBond Meter’s compliance with worldwide verification guidelines, so that they can focus on protecting native forests and natural biodiversity.”—Jacob Sever, Founder of Sumsub.

About GreenBond Meter

GreenBond Meter is an initiative that helps ecological conservation and carbon offset with the purchase of crypto assets—GreenBond Meter Coins. The project was developed through the strategic alliance of two companies, Heimdall Technologies OÜ (Estonia) and Nideport S.A. (Uruguay). The GreenBond Meter team consists of over 50 experts in technology and finance across the world.

About Sumsub

Sumsub is an identity verification platform that provides an all-in-one technical and legal toolkit to cover KYC/KYB/AML needs. The company focuses on accelerated ID verification, digital fraud detection and compliance for over 200 markets. Sumsub employs top market technologies combined with legal expertise, and assistance with financial requirements (FCA, CySec, MAS, FINMA, BAFIN, etc). Clients include BlaBlaCar, Gett, ESL Gaming, JobToday, Wheely, VK.com, Decta, Exness, Bank Dobrobyt, HRS Group. In 2020, Sumsub entered an A funding round led by MetaQuotes.

Awards: Benzinga Global Fintech Awards 2018, The UK Startups 100 2020, PwC nomination for ‘The best use of tech award’.

Commerzbank is making good progress on its roadmap towards the cost reductions targeted in its strategy 2024. The Bank has reached an agreement with the Central Works Council on a voluntary programme for the necessary headcount reduction. A reduction in Germany totalling around 1,700 full-time equivalents is to be achieved through the programme by the end of 2021.
 
“The voluntary programme is an important step in the necessary headcount reduction,” commented Sabine Schmittroth, Member of the Board responsible for Group Human Resources. “We are quickly providing instruments that will already reduce the cost base in the coming year.”
 
Under the programme, entitled employees are to be offered termination agreements from July 2021. Employees who make use of the voluntary programme will leave the Bank by the end of the year.
 
In the first quarter of 2021, the Bank will book restructuring charges amounting to a total of around €470 million. The majority results from the voluntary programme. Further restructuring expenses are mostly booked for the restructuring abroad and for real estate. The Bank had announced that it is spending a total or around €1.8 billion for restructuring in the context of its strategy 2024. Including the provisions for the voluntary programme, around €1.4 billion have already been booked.

illimity SGR, the illimity Group’s asset management company created to set up and manage alternative investment funds, has completed the first closing of “illimity Credit & Corporate Turnaround” (the “Fund” or “iCCT”)—a contribution fund dedicated to investments in unlikely to pay (“UTP”) loans to SMEs with revival and relaunch prospects.

The initial portfolio consists of loans for a gross total of over 200 million euro made to 33 companies operating in highly diversified sectors. These loans have been sold by seven banks and banking groups (Banca Popolare di Sondrio, Banca Sella, Banco Desio, Bnl Gruppo Bnp Paribas, BPER Gruppo, Gruppo Bancario Cooperativo Iccrea, Gruppo La Cassa di Ravenna), which have then become unit holders in the Fund.

The initial cash facilities – subscribed by institutional investors, including illimity Bank – amount to 25 million euro. These funds will be used to service the acquired loans and support the turnaround of the companies in which the Fund has invested.

More specifically, the illimity Credit & Corporate Turnaround Fund presents a number of highly innovative features (including the possibility of acquiring and managing fully operational short-term credit lines as well as, through a securitisation structure, receivables and leasing agreements in continuity). These features enable banks to fully transfer their financial exposure, regardless of the technical forms used, and to benefit from the restructuring process of the corporates.

The Fund will support a financial restructuring of businesses designed not only to overcome a crisis but also to make the most of their potential and pursue a concrete prospect of recovery.

“The Management Team of our first turnaround fund effectively combines financial and industrial skills that allow us to look beyond the reports to capture the potential of the companies in which the Fund invests,” said illimity SGR’s UTP & Funds unit head Paola Tondelli. “This first turnaround fund, which has very innovative technical features, will soon be followed by other initiatives, always aimed at relaunching the entrepreneurial soul of the country, which will find in illimity SGR a new type of support, not only financial, but also advisory for a strategic vision.”

"The closing of our iCCT fund represents the first, very important step in the SGR's multi-product strategy aimed at bringing innovative funds to the attention of our institutional clients,” added illimity SGR Chairman Massimo Di Carlo. “The new funds will focus both on SMEs and on those sectors where we will be able to operate by leveraging the distinctive skills of the group.”

The illimity Group was assisted by BE Partner for the structuring of the SGR and the Fund, as well as on negotiations regarding the purchase of the loans, by Giovanardi Studio Legale on the legal and regulatory aspects and by Studio Ludovici (which has become Gatti Pavesi Bianchi Ludovici) on fiscal matters.

In addition, PwC assisted illimity SGR on the fairness of the loan valuations and relative valuation models.

The banks were assisted by Studio Gatti Pavesi Bianchi Ludovici for the legal aspects.

The securitisation of loans and leasing contracts was structured by Banca Finint.

UK technology scale-up experts Tech Nation has selected Featurespace™, the leading provider of Enterprise Financial Crime prevention software, for its inaugural Tech Nation International Growth Programme,  which is part of the Digital Trade Network, an initiative commissioned by the UK Government to help innovative tech companies access trade and investment opportunities and forge new partnerships across Asia Pacific.

Thirty companies were selected for the program, which is broken into individual cohorts focusing on Australia, Singapore, and South Korea and Japan. 

Featurespace is one of six companies chosen for the South Korea and Japan cohort.  

"The UK’s tech sector, driven by fast-growing tech scale-ups, is already growing six times faster than the rest of the UK economy combined – the UK tech start-up and scale-up ecosystem is valued at almost $600bn and the UK has produced 80 unicorns," said Gerard Grech, CEO of Tech Nation.

 "Thinking globally is now vital for UK tech and Tech Nation. Eighty percent of our latest Upscale cohort cited international expansion as their number one challenge, so this international programme in Japan is key to the next stage of UK tech growth.”

"The launch of the first Tech Nation International Growth Programme for UK tech scale-ups in Asia Pacific highlights the importance of these relationships for the UK’s future," said Sam Myers, Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for Asia Pacific at the UK Government Department for International Trade. 

"This is an important step in building on the benefits from the UK-Japan FTA signed last year. Collective action with our partners will be vitally important to address global challenges and harness the benefits of the digital age.”

Across APAC, the shift to digital payment behaviours is ubiquitous, simultaneously bringing significant opportunities and revealing critical weaknesses. The fraud detection and prevention technologies currently used by financial institutions aren't optimised to safeguard the proliferation of digital banking and payments activity from the accompanying and increasingly sophisticated fraud attacks and scams.

In response, Featurespace is accelerating the expansion of its presence in the region to ensure financial institutions have access to its industry leading Adaptive Behavioral Analytics and newly launched Automated Deep Behavioral Networks. Both are available through the ARIC^™ Risk Hub, an innovative platform that uses advanced, explainable anomaly detection to enable financial institutions to automatically identify risk, catch new fraud attacks and identify suspicious activity in real time.a

• 01.04.2021 -- 02:10 pm

Enno Weitzel, Surecomp’s SVP of Strategy, Digitization and Business Development highlights the biggest  IT challenges in trade finance and how TFaas can help to overcome them.

Yandex.Lavka, the on-demand e-grocery delivery service launched by Russia’s NASDAQ-listed tech giant Yandex, announces its expansion.

The service, which delivers approximately 2,500 types of essential and non-essential goods in a variety of categories, such as groceries, ready meals, hot drinks and smart Yandex devices within 10-15 minutes of receiving the order, is now available in Kazan, a city of 1.3 million in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan.

Kazan joins Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and the suburbs of Tel Aviv, where Yandex.Lavka already operates via a network for more than 280 local warehouse sites.

Yandex.Lavka prides itself on working with local producers, whose goods represent about a quarter of the entire range, including local dairy and meat delicacies, and a broad range of halal products popular in the predominantly Muslim Republic of Tatarstan. It also sells a variety of products under its private label called Iz Lavki and offers a wide range of locally prepared ready-made meals.

The on-demand delivery service has a high-tech approach to pin-pointing local preferences by operating an ‘experimental shelf’, where hard-to-find products from smaller producers are trialed. The goods that enjoy strong demand are then added to Yandex.Lavka’s permanent local assortment, making it easier for customers to shop local.

Thanks to a special layout and an unusual formula for stalking warehouse shelves, as well as a proprietary algorithm to maximize efficiency when moving around the space, it takes no more than 2-3 minutes to assemble an order at Yandex.Lavka. Couriers deliver orders on bicycles – a green, fast, and safe mode of transportation. There are no service charges for Yandex.Lavka orders, but in times of peak demand, the surge mechanism triggers a minimum order requirement.

Yandex.Lavka currently operates from 7am to 11:30pm in Kazan, with plans to switch to a 24-hour service in the future. Orders can be placed via Yandex.Eats, Yandex.Lavka, Yandex Go, and Yandex.Market apps for iOS and Android.

In addition, the Yandex.Lavka warehouses network in Kazan and in other regions of operation will enable Yandex to strengthen its logistics and fulfilment infrastructure, including by serving as pick-up locations for click-and-collect orders from Yandex.Market, the company’s e-commerce arm.

Vadim Petrov, Director of Operations at Yandex.Lavka, commented:

"We’re pleased to be able to offer our fast, on-demand service to more customers, who were unable to access it in the past. It is great to see Kazan embracing innovation, which underscores Tatarstan’s reputation as a modern place that moves quickly with the times. We hope that our service will benefit the region’s consumers and producers alike, as it does in all other areas where we operate.’’

About Yandex.Lavka:

Yandex Group launched Yandex.Lavka in the summer of 2019 and continues to offer this service as part of the Yandex ecosystem with an audience of ~50 million people.  In a relatively short period of time, Yandex.Lavka became one of the top players in Russia’s e-grocery market, which surged 3.6 times to reach RUB 155 billion in 2020, according to Infoline research. The e-grocery sector is set to expand further to reach as much as RUB 300 billion by the end of 2021, Infoline estimated in its most recent report. Yandex.Lavka has its own app. It is also available via the Yandex.Eats app, Yandex GO super app and the Yandex Browser.   

About Yandex Group:

NASDAQ-listed Yandex is often compared to Google, but it’s more like Amazon, Uber, Google, Deliveroo and Spotify all rolled into one. Today the Yandex ecosystem includes over 90 mobile apps, services and products, including an autonomous delivery robot Yandex. Rover, express grocery delivery Yandex. Lavka, AI-based voice assistant Alisa, restaurant delivery Yandex.Eats, online marketplace Yandex. Market, ride-haling business Yandex.Taxi, Yandex.Cloud, Yandex.Drive car sharing, music streaming, classifieds, personalized news and many others. Yandex also remains the most popular search engine in the Russian speaking world, commanding a 60.5% share of Russia’s total mobile search traffic as of Q4, 2020.