Iliad Solutions, a global leader in payments testing, has expanded its leadership group and today announces that Alexi Karalis has joined its executive team as Chief Technology Officer.

Karalis has 26 years of experience bringing deep technical knowledge to the role. With a background in software testing tools, infrastructure and software architecture he will be charged with propelling Iliad into its next phase of growth.

Commenting on his appointment, Karalis said: “I am delighted to join Iliad Solutions in the role of Chief Technology Officer. With a passion for technology and innovation I look forward to leading the team in delivering the ongoing, progressive payment testing solutions that Iliad has become renowned for in the global banking world.”

Karalis continues: “Never before has it been more important for financial institutions to integrate effective, end to end payment testing systems that can accommodate the rapidly changing IT infrastructure seen in modern banking. I look forward to outlining increasingly sophisticated, easy to integrate payment testing solutions from Iliad as we continue to support the banking community.”

Karalis has been involved in the development of a number of progressive tech businesses stemming back to 1999 when he founded his own company creating bill payment, self-service, management solutions to more recently, building SAAS based solutions focused on testing payment technologies.

Iliad Solutions CEO Anthony Walton commented, "We are delighted to welcome Alexi to the executive team. His visionary mind set and technical expertise combined with our existing platform of innovative payment solutions and investment in technology will further strengthen our ability to deliver market leading, cloud and SAAS payment testing.”

For more information, please visit: www.iliad-solutions.com

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in private cloud, hybrid and multicloud computing, today announced that it has been named by Gartner, Inc. as a 2021 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage. Nutanix believes that this recognition showcases the strength of the company’s unstructured storage offerings, Nutanix Files and Nutanix Objects, which provide customers with an easy-to-use, scale out storage fabric across their different cloud environments, simplifying data management and enabling effective cost optimisation.

“As companies continue along their journey to a hybrid and multicloud future, they’re looking for a cloud platform that is flexible, resilient and scalable, and unified storage that works across multiple environments is a critical part of that journey,” said David Sangster, Chief Operating Officer at Nutanix. “To us, being recognised as a Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage shows the strengths of our solutions and the value they provide to customers.”

This Customers’ Choice recognition is based on detailed feedback from 56 customer ratings collected in the past year across multiple vendors in the distributed file systems and object storage space. Nutanix Files and Nutanix Objects hold an average score of 4.8 out of 5.*

The Nutanix cloud platform, built on its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software, delivers unstructured storage solutions to provide unified storage for any workload across multiple deployments, including public and private cloud, remote and edge sites. This enables customers to manage the storage environment from a single pane of glass as well as automate common deployment and maintenance tasks to simplify operations and provide control to data owners. Integrated analytics and robust security features, including recently released strengthened ransomware protection for Files and Objects, give greater visibility into data and how it is being used to better protect it from internal and external threats. Additionally, successful hybrid and multicloud deployments include simple and flexible storage pools to store data over its life. Nutanix unified storage solutions provide these storage services in a simple, flexible, and secure manner.

Customers frequently highlight simplicity as a key benefit to enable easier day-to-day management, faster deployment, and reduced maintenance activity. Data visibility and security are also frequently mentioned, along with flexibility, including the ability to support for a wide range of deployments一from a single node cluster for remote and edge sites to very large multi-petabyte clusters of up to 32 nodes. Finally, customers identify a robust feature set to rival any enterprise storage system, including space reduction and efficiency technologies, integrated resilience features, and data lifecycle management capabilities. 

Nutanix customers said: 

Nutanix Files - Great Performance With Easy Setup And Management

"Nutanix Files has been a very good product for us. It has done exactly what we wanted it to do. It provided the required performance, it has been straightforward to increase the capacity and the Data Protection was seamless to setup & [they] actually run. The product has improved as we have used it over the last few years. The software updates have been timely, easy to deploy and have provided some significant improvement especially around management of the product which was lacking when we first deployed it."

-        Infrastructure Engineer in the financial services industry

Excellent Product And Company

“The software-defined horizontal expansion architecture and the pay-as-you-go model meet the needs of large-scale and high-growth file storage at the optimal cost. The deployment of Nutanix Files is very simple, one-click deployment. Utilising the native disaster recovery function of the hyper-converged architecture, under the multi-data center deployment architecture, it is very easy to realise the backup and disaster recovery of unstructured data. We have deployed Files in the headquarters and multiple branches, and easily synchronise files across data centers. Nutanix Files not only provides file services, but also provides rich file analysis functions. Administrators can use these functions to monitor and warn abnormal user behavior, or view audit records or file permission change history.”

-        IT Professional in the manufacturing industry

Nutanix Files: File Storage System Of This Era

"It is easy to automate business operations by viewing [data analytics], who is using it and then driving automated control."

-        IT Administrator in the services industry

Nutanix’s relentless focus on customers is evident in the company’s average net promoter score of 90 over the past seven years. In April 2020, the company was also named by Gartner, Inc. as a 2020 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Hyperconverged Infrastructure. This recognition also comes on the heels of a strong quarter for Nutanix as the company focuses on delivering a cloud platform to help customers on their hybrid and multicloud journeys, along with expanding adoption of portfolio products like Files and Objects.

More customer reviews on Nutanix Files and Objects are available here.

Equifax UK, the business and consumer insights expert, has signed an exclusive agreement with UK consumer fintech and payment card app Curve to deliver comprehensive verification and ID solutions to its new personal finance product, Curve Credit. Powered by Open Banking, Curve Credit allows consumers to ‘Go Back in Time’ and pay later via instalments on transactions made with their Curve card.

Rich bureau datasets, as well as leading know your customer (KYC) identity and income verification technology from Equifax, enables robust credit assessments to be carried out while supporting regulatory compliance. The agreement provides Curve Credit with market-specific scores that assess a customer’s credit risk and affordability, helping to make accurate credit decisions at the point of application and allowing new customers to be onboarded quickly.

The partnership gives Curve Credit customers a secure platform, enabling responsible lending and borrowing decisions to be made efficiently, ensuring a seamless user experience.

Gary Brown, Sales Director at Equifax UK, said: “Curve Credit’s unique solution offers customers greater autonomy and flexibility over their personal finance decisions, which is extremely important in the current climate. We’re delighted to be partnering with Curve, providing insightful data and best-in-class technology, to support responsible credit decisions that put consumers in control.”

Paul Harrald, Head of Curve Credit, said: “Curve Credit is focused on empowering consumers to make better financial decisions. Equifax’s world-class data service and technical expertise, combined with their challenger mindset and clear commitment to the Open Banking experience, makes them the best possible partner in this mission.”

This collaboration with Curve sees Equifax which is already a CRA partner to many of the UK’s leading financial services organisations further increase the adoption of its credit services solutions among the UK’s leading fintechs and expands its presence in the online consumer payments space.

For more information about the partnership read our case study here.

Finastra today announced the integration of its Fusion Trade Innovation and Enigio’s trace:original to create a solution for managing and handling digital original documents using distributed ledger technology. The resulting app removes the need for a central registry or document repository. Recent analysis undertaken by the two companies suggests that this integration could potentially offer an 82% reduction in tasks requiring manual intervention, saving up to an estimated 91% in processing and management costs. It can also cut processing time for a single document from 14 days to a few hours.

“The open integration of Enigio’s trace:original with Fusion Trade Innovation makes it incredibly easy for banks to generate traceable documents, with the significant benefits that this brings – including increased efficiency, reduced costs and increased fraud protection,” said Iain MacLennan, VP Trade and Supply Chain Finance at Finastra. “We look forward to welcoming customers into the era of digital trade, helping to make paperless trade finance a reality.”

Combined with the need to secure important documents physically, legacy processes are onerous and costly for banks and require complex controls to be put in place to mitigate risk. The integration of Enigio trace:original and Fusion Trade Innovation, through Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud open developer platform, unlocks all the benefits of digitalization, from straight-through processing and machine readability to faster turnaround times and shorter servicing lead times.

Enigio trace:original uses distributed ledger technology (DLT) to create an authoritative digital original document whose legal rights are held by its owner. Unlike in most DLT applications, the digital data asset is represented by a file, with a cryptographic audit trail rather than business data stored in the blockchain. Because it has attributes similar to paper, a trace:original document is designed to be a legal equivalent to paper documents for many physical negotiable instruments and documents of title, for example: trade guarantees, promissory notes and bills of exchange. A trace:original document is uniquely identifiable, can be distinguished from copies and has a digitally verifiable owner. As an enhanced PDF document, it is easy to handle and also easy to transfer across different digital systems. Documents are freely verifiable, immutable and have a secure audit trail provided by a digital public notary service. 

“Finastra is a valued partner and we’re thrilled that our trace:original documents are now available to banks using Finastra’s Fusion Trade Innovation solution through Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud platform,” said Göran Almgren, CEO at Enigio. “The integration gives customers the ability to reduce costs and inefficiencies in their processes while minimizing risk and complying with legislation. As a result, banks can focus their time on delivering added value to clients as well as on other more strategic matters.”

trace:original eliminates the risks associated with paper documents and provides powerful fraud security. Furthermore, by removing the need to manage ‘double data’ – a paper original and its digital copy – it further reduces operational risks. Digital documents are easily accessible for review, verification and compliance scanning. Moreover, it has a much wider application than trade. The Service Provider Interface (SPI) has been designed so that the solution can be integrated with other Finastra and corporate banking solutions in future.

Find the app on the FusionStore here.

 GeoComply Solutions Inc, a geolocation security company that helps detect and prevent fraud, has appointed Tim White as General Manager of its fintech and OTT streaming business. With a proven track record in scaling high-growth businesses, Tim will drive the worldwide expansion of GeoComply’s award-winning suite of geolocation and fraud prevention solutions. Tim will also manage the roll-out of the company’s international partner program to support growth in its targeted markets.

GeoComply operates at the center of a new generation of cybersecurity companies, leveraging advanced geolocation data to make better risk-based decisions. Working as a critical piece of the infrastructure for some of the world’s largest tech companies, GeoComply has become a global market leader for compliance-grade geolocation data, which provides an important piece of the risk industries’ decision-making engine.

Tim joins GeoComply after five years at Emailage, a global fraud prevention provider where he served as Chief Partnership Officer. Under Tim’s leadership, channel revenue was consistently the company’s fastest-growing revenue stream. As part of Tim’s responsibilities, he cultivated the company’s strategic relationships, including with LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a RELX company, which subsequently acquired Emailage in 2020 for an estimated $500M.

“Tim’s experience in the fraud detection space and his ability to build and manage a world-class partner channel are second to none,” says David Briggs, Founder and CEO of GeoComply.  “With our recent investment and as a pre-IPO business with strong growth ambitions across many vertical sectors, we are delighted to have Tim on board to help us navigate the next phase of our journey.”

“It’s a great time to be joining GeoComply and I’m very excited for the opportunity to accelerate the growth of the business,” says Tim White, General Manager, OTT Streaming and Fintech Business, GeoComply. “With fraud increasing worldwide, GeoComply’s geolocation technology has an extremely important role to play in empowering the future of digital trust, whether that’s to protect a content rightsholder from geo-piracy or to stop a cybercriminal from committing financial crimes. It’s no exaggeration to say that GeoComply’s technology can be a part of every online transaction, to help detect fraud and stop bad actors in their tracks.”

Today, it is easy for streaming pirates and cybercriminals to hide their online location through the use of VPNs, DNS proxies and other spoofing apps. For rightsholders such as studios, broadcasters and sports leagues who rely on an exclusive territorial licensing model for their revenue, geo-piracy is a huge problem that impacts their ability to operate and fund future productions. GeoComply’s solution is used by streaming broadcasters globally including the BBC, ITV and Amazon Prime, and is integrated on world leading CDNs such as Akamai and AWS. 

For fintech, financial services and payments, cyber criminals will always try to hide their true location. By integrating GeoComply’s solutions into their anti-fraud processes and risk engines, organizations can detect fraudsters at the point of onboarding or before a financial transaction happens. In the case of cryptocurrency platforms, who must abide by strict KYC/AML and sanctions rules, the use of advanced location tools to control who accesses their platform by excluding traders from restricted jurisdictions will significantly reduce their regulatory risk.

GeoComply recently announced a definitive agreement for minority investments led by funds managed by Blackstone Growth and from Atairos. The partnership – which represents the first commitment of institutional capital to the company – aims to support GeoComply’s continued growth in its core markets and help accelerate expansion into new verticals.

FinecoBank announces today that funds from global investment manager, Ninety One are now available on its investing platform. Fineco’s growing customer base in the United Kingdom can now access a selection of Ninety One’s distinctive active investment strategies including the sustainability focused Global Environment Fund which invests in companies that are driving decarbonisation.

The announcement marks Fineco’s first fund partnership for 2021. Ninety One joins existing fund managers on the platform, including Carmignac, Robeco, JP Morgan Asset Management, Fidelity Investments, Aberdeen Standard Investments, M&G Investments, and Columbia Threadneedle Investments.

Paolo Di Grazia, Deputy General Manager, Fineco: “We understand that high quality ESG integration and sustainable investing are becoming increasingly important to our customers. Through our partnership with Ninety One, we are pleased to demonstrate our continued commitment to meeting the evolving needs of our customers, by providing them access to a firm that integrates ESG across all of their investment strategies and offer a distinct range of sustainability focused funds, together with the added benefit of Fineco’s competitive and transparent prices.”

Nigel Smith, Managing Director, UK Client Group at Ninety One: “Our purpose as a firm is investing for a better tomorrow and our vision is to be trusted and respected as active and responsible investors. We are excited to bring our ‘Sustainability with Substance’ approach to our partnership with Fineco. This includes our holistic integration approach to understand, price and address sustainability risks in each of our funds, as well as offering a growing range of sustainability-focused products. We look forward to welcoming Fineco’s customers to Ninety One, offering them a range of active and resilient solutions to help them achieve their savings goals.”

The Ninety One funds now available on the FinecoBank platform are Ninety One UK Alpha; Ninety One Diversified Income; Ninety One UK Equity Income; Ninety One Global Environment and Ninety One Global Gold.

Despite its new obligations for financial intermediaries taking effect in September 2020, the European Commission’s updated Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II) is still very much in the early stages of a full and seamless adoption across European regulated markets, according to a new report by global Fintech leader Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR).

Today Broadridge launches its latest industry whitepaper on SRD II. The report extracts learnings from over 350 SRD II client implementations, which should serve as a valuable resource for firms that have yet to implement their SRD II solution, as well as those who met the deadline but continue to refine their processes.

“The implementation of SRD II compliance procedures has created a number of challenges on affected intermediaries, especially those providing voting-related services for the first time,” said Demi Derem, General Manager, International Bank Broker-Dealer Communication Solutions at Broadridge. “Having worked with clients based within and outside of Europe, including both retail- and institutional-focused firms, spanning multiple tier-one banks, brokers and wealth managers, this report will serve as a useful reference and navigation guide”.

SRD II is a key part of the Capital Markets Union agenda and, as such, it remains a high-profile, mandatory requirement subject to deep scrutiny over the coming years, including a formal review of the directive’s effectiveness by the European Commission.

“The risks and penalties are wide-ranging and can be severe for firms, which are yet to be fully compliant,” Derem added. “Firms seeking external support should consider their options carefully. They should pay particular attention to companies that can offer the requisite knowledge and experience of navigating the shareholder communications landscape, and can provide the necessary economies of scale, digital data security and complete market coverage”.

Meniga (www.meniga.com), a leading provider of digital banking solutions for some of the world’s largest financial institutions, has closed a €10m strategic investment round led by institutional investors, Velocity Capital Fintech Ventures, and Frumtak Ventures. Other participants in the round include Industrifonden, the UK Government’s Future Fund, and existing customers UniCredit, Swedbank, Groupe BPCE, and Íslandsbanki.

The funding will be used for continued investment in Meniga’s R&D activities, and in particular  the development of innovative green banking products. In addition, the new injection of investment will help strengthen Meniga’s sales and service teams to meet growing demand and changing dynamics in the global digital banking market.

Meniga’s solutions are designed to help banks leverage data to offer more personalised and engaging services, and increase revenue through their digital channels. Its product offering includes data aggregation technologies, personal and business finance management solutions, cashback rewards and transaction-based carbon insights.

With the widespread acceleration of digital banking adoption brought about by Covid-19, and the growing need for banks to focus on their digital channels, Meniga has experienced a significant increase in the demand for its products and services over the past year.

One particular innovation that is currently garnering significant attention from banks and other key players in the industry is Meniga’s new green banking solution ‘Carbon Insight’ - which is allowing banks to empower their customers to fight climate change. The solution leverages personal finance data to help mobile banking app users track and reduce their carbon footprint, whilst enabling banks to create new dimensions of customer engagement and a more robust environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy. Last month, Íslandsbanki became the first Nordic bank to implement Meniga’s Carbon Insight solution into its own digital banking offering.

Responding to these increasing market needs, in 2020, Meniga signed several new partnerships with key financial players and launched a total of 18 digital banking solutions across 17 countries. Meniga’s physical presences include London - where the company is headquartered - Reykjavik, Stockholm, Warsaw, Barcelona, Singapore and New York. 

Georg Ludviksson, CEO & co-founder of Meniga comments: “We are extremely pleased with the continued backing from our investors and strategic customers. The new capital will be instrumental in helping us accelerate our expansion into sustainable finance management. We are already working with banks across the world helping them accelerate their green-banking strategies with our Carbon Insight solution. Our Carbon Insight solution is going live with banks in 4 different countries during 1H 2021 and the demand is accelerating.”

Willem Willemstein, General Partner & Founder at Velocity Capital Fintech Ventures comments: “Meniga has established itself as a trusted strategic partner to top-tier banks around the world for Personal Finance Management (PFM) and Business Finance Management (BFM) tools, which are built on top of its market-leading data consolidation and enrichment technologies. We’re extremely excited about the growing demand for the personalised banking experiences that Meniga delivers, such as its new product, Carbon Insights, which uses transaction data to measure a bank customer’s carbon footprint.”

Finja Carolin Kütz, Group Chief Transformation Officer & Deputy COO at UniCredit, comments: “At UniCredit, sustainability is part of our DNA and we are extremely pleased to continue our successful partnership with Meniga also by supporting their use of innovation and technology for new green banking solutions. This is an area of increasing focus for our Group in line with the growing interest and appetite that we see from our clients, both corporate and retail, for green and sustainable financial products. Last year was a big push for the whole financial sector to accelerate on digitalisation and sustainability, and this is a great example of the two coming together through innovation to capture current market trends and deliver value to customers.”

ClauseMatch has become one of the five innovative tech pioneers to successfully complete LawTech Sandbox, the new programme by TechNation UK. ClauseMatch is an award-winning global compliance technology company (RegTech) that automates policy management and regulatory change management at financial institutions and other regulated organisations. The first cohort of LawTech launched back in November 2020.

By working with financial institutions in helping them digitise their policies and procedures as well as addressing regulatory change management, ClauseMatch looks at the potential of making all of this content digitally native. Creating documents that are machine-readable, machine-executable, and digitally native by design would enable the organisations to work smarter with documents.

ClauseMatch joined the LawTech Sandbox Pilot to work closely with legal professionals in order to understand how technology can facilitate a better way of communicating and publishing regulations and how the regulated firms can easily adapt and implement those regulations across the structure of the firms in order to be compliant and bridge the gap between them enabling an automated smarter way of complying with regulatory rules.

Anastasia Dokuchaeva, Head of Product at ClauseMatch, said: “The programme was highly instrumental for us for working with the ecosystem, understanding the challenges and the problems that both sides – regulators and the regulated – face. What was the most unique about it is that it provided us with a great opportunity to work with multiple regulators and have them come together at the round table all ‘in one room’, at one time simultaneously, something that we were not able to do before. As part of the Sandbox, we were looking at several use cases such as an anti-money laundering and KYC, ESG, privacy, onshoring post-Brexit. Meeting experts allowed us to tap into this wealth of experience and deep-dive more into the issues that the industry is looking at."   

TechNation LawTech built the needed environment for the pioneering collaboration between disruptive tech companies and regulators, uniting several regulators in the expert group called the regulatory response unit. It included mentors from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), IPReg, Bar Standards Board, CILEx regulation, Solicitors Regulators Authority (SRA), and many others.

Jenifer Swallow, Director of LawTech UK, commented: "Moving from analogue to digital compliance is an immediate and compelling opportunity for businesses and regulators alike. Increasing complexity and responsibility means the old approach to consuming and implementing regulation is fast becoming untenable and with capabilities like ClauseMatch, also unnecessary. It was fantastic to see the penny drop on this with so many collaborators during the Sandbox Pilot in very practical ways, and to see the group work producing a dataset to enable the tool to be deployed across different types of regulation and compliance use cases."

To recall, the first LawTech Sandbox Pilot by TechNation UK started back in November 2020. Among the selected companies of the cohort are Amplfi, Clause, ClauseMatch, Deep Tech Dispute Resolution Lab, Legal Utopia.