A new Nordic collaboration is on the rise as one of Denmark's largest IT providers in the financial sector, Bankdata, has enabled open banking from Nordic API Gateway to its 9 member banks with more than 1.7 million customers.

With Bankdata’s vision, to be the leading digital partner for the banking sector in Denmark, they are now fulfilling the potential of open banking by adding full access to account aggregation and payment initiation to more than a fourth of the Danish population from Nordic API Gateway.

The partnership ties into the tectonic shift happening in the financial sector with open banking being on the agenda for a wide range of Nordic banks in 2021. Nordic API Gateway research from 2020 showed that 82% of financial institutions see PSD2 as an opportunity for their business and more than 53% already invested in new technology as a result of the EU directive.

In detail, the collaboration will grant all banks using Bankdata the opportunity to take full advantage of PSD2 to deliver actionable open banking solutions. This will speed up new open banking features for both businesses and consumers who will be able to add and pay with accounts from other banks, as well as getting a full overview of their finances regardless of    the number of banks the customer might have.

A milestone for both companies

The collaboration also indicates a new dimension to Bankdata as it is becoming more of an integrator for its member banks. In the past, the IT provider would have developed most products in-house, but the rapid change in consumer demands, technology and compliance, sets new demands for the ability to integrate with external collaborators.

The collaboration is also an important step for Nordic API Gateway in acting as the preferred open banking partner for the vast majority of Nordic banks. The open banking firm is set to fully expand across Europe and push heavily into the vast addressable European payments market in 2021.

Commenting on the partnership, Claus Hjort Bjerre, Development Director at Bankdata, said: “We must be an active player in an open ecosystem if we want to be among the best to support our customers' needs for IT development. With this specific collaboration we’re able to keep delivering on our promise to create, implement and run high-quality IT solutions for our member banks and use the best technology in the field to increase competition and growth with the consumer in mind.”

Rune Mai, CEO & Founder of Nordic API Gateway, also commented on the partnership saying: “We’re happy to collaborate with Bankdata and enable all its member banks to take full advantage of PSD2 to build even greater offerings giving businesses and consumers the instruments to make smarter financial decisions. The partnership fits well into our dual focus strategy of being the leading open banking provider for banks and financial institutions across Europe in 2021 and the preferred payment infrastructure for instant payments.”

And adds:

“By partnering with an additional 9 financial institutions, we’re now fully cementing our position as leaders and advisors in the Nordic ecosystem with the empowerment of more banks and financial institutions than any other aggregator in the Nordic countries.”

Today, Bankdata consists of the following banks: Jyske Bank, Alm Brand Bank, Djursland Bank, Kreditbanken, Nordfyns Bank, Ringkjøbing Landbobank, Skjern Bank, Sparekassen Sjælland-Fyn, and Sydbank.

With the partnership Nordic API Gateway is now empowering the vast majority of banks with high quality open banking infrastructure in the Nordics and expects to collaborate with more than 50 banks within 2021.

Today Finch Capital announced the first close of its EUR150M fund, Europe III, which will invest in European technology companies that shape the future of finance by using technology such as artificial intelligence. Europe III saw a near 90% follow on investment from previous funds. Since its inception in 2013, the firm has made a total of 40 investments across Europe and Asia and its assets now total USD 400M.

Finch's Fund II invested in both SE Asian and European startups. Both Fund I (EUR40m, 2014 Vintage) and Fund II (EUR110m, 2017 Vintage) are generating top quartile returns. The current portfolio includes a range of successful companies spanning Fintech, Regtech and Insurtech, and includes Trussle, Fourthline, Goodlord (which acquired Vouch), Grab, Hiber, BUX, Twisto, and Zopa; exits include Salviol and Cermati, with two exits in process.

With the new larger European fund, Finch Capital will invest EUR 2-10M at Series A and B stages, acquiring significant minority stakes in scale up companies with EUR 2-5M in revenues: a segment currently underserved by the European VC and Growth market that is facing a funding gap. As with its previous funds, Finch plans to back 15-20 European startups, targeting liquidity 3-5 years post investment, over the fund’s three year initial investment lifespan.

Radboud Vlaar, MD Finch Capital, said: “We have always been bullish on investing in Financial Technology. Moving forward, we are doubling down on Financial software, especially those companies that leverage AI to this end. We have seen the industry mature, giving rise now to a rich but fragmented landscape of robust businesses with EUR 2-5 million in revenues. These are the companies we are focused on working with now. With the right support and management they have great risk/return outcomes and they are ready to build leading positions and consolidate the European market.”

The team’s hands-on, pragmatic approach supports portfolio companies with its deep networks and sector expertise across, for example: regional partnerships and M&A in Europe; a large network of Corporates and Financial Institutions to which portfolio companies can sell products; as well as hands-on experience in expanding internationally, especially in Asia. As active investors, Finch seeks 20-49% ownership in its portfolio companies.

Rounding out its AI expertise, in early 2020, Finch Capital added venture partner Google and DeepMind alum Steve Crossan. He comments: “Europe is ready to compete in the global enterprise tech arena, with more capital being deployed in AI/deeptech than any other industry - $20B last year alone. In the wake of general performance pressure, we see acceleration of the Finance sector in their tech understanding and adoption creating pressure for additional innovation in these areas.”

In 2020 the firm launched Flowrence, its proprietary Machine Learning AI tool, to support its deal flow and high quality deal sourcing. Over the last 6 months,  20% of the firm’s shortlisted deals were sourced by Flowrence, especially helpful during a period of limited travel and in person meet ups.

In addition to the launch of Europe III, in 2020, the firm also launched a USD 50M Finch Capital SEA II for investments in SE Asia. Finch Capital SEA II will hold its first close in the coming months, having announced investment partnerships with Arise (Part of MDI) and a leading South East Asian Bank. 

Stringent regulations and complexities arising from new communication modalities and remote, distributed workforces are widening compliance gaps, placing financial and energy trading firms at further risk for fines and reputational damage. 

To address these challenges, NICE (NASDAQ: NICE), a leading provider of communication compliance solutions, has introduced NTR-X, a fully-integrated, cloud-ready omnichannel compliance recording and assurance solution. Building on NICE Trading Recording, the most widely deployed trading compliance recording platform in the financial services industry, NTR-X captures all modalities of regulated employee communications – traditional, unified and mobile – in a single platform. 

Offering a consolidated, centralized approach to managing recording estates and footprints, NICE’s NTR-X can be deployed globally while still enabling firms to adhere to local capture and storage requirements. Offering financial services firms the benefit of a central vantage point into all global regulated users and communications, NICE’s NTR-X reduces regulatory risk, removing maintenance hurdles and reducing the need for costly, dedicated, local IT resources. Two top 10 global investment financial institutions that have already selected NICE’s NTR-X, cited its higher performance, lower total cost of ownership (TCO), smaller footprint, and its ability to simplify and centralize management of their global recording requirements.  

"Although the rest of the world has changed, trade-related recording obligations have not. Firms are adjusting to monitor their workforces which are now often remote. Now more than ever, firms are demanding a lot from their communications recording solutions, especially in terms of the channels they are able to cover, the flexibility of deployment options, and the option to roll out improvements and new services easily across their user base," noted Anna Griem, Senior Analyst, Opimas, LLC, a leading capital markets consulting firm.   

Chris Wooten, Executive Vice President, NICE, said: “As the environments in which financial services and energy trading firms operate become inherently more risky, costly and complex, NICE’s passion for innovation has led us to create a one-of-a-kind compliance recording and assurance solution, offering simplified compliance for a complex world. Regardless of the communication modalities regulated employees use or where they work from, firms can cost-effectively manage their entire global recording footprint to increase compliance with key regulations. NTR-X also provides a seamless upgrade path for current NICE Trading Recording (NTR) customers and a proven cloud-ready platform that speeds future migration.”  

NICE NTR-X’s capabilities also include:  

• Automated compliance assurance and complete lifecycle management of data: NTR-X’s built-in compliance assurance capabilities help firms reduce compliance risk and improve responsiveness to regulators by automating the complete lifecycle management of data. NTR-X automates recording checks and provisioning of users (moves, adds and changes); transcription (offered as a cloud-based service); bulk call extraction; system management and administration; compliance assurance reporting; tracking and managing legal holds; and the requirement to provide evidence of compliance to regulators. 
• Cloud-ready, microservice architecture: NTR-X can be deployed as an on-premise, hybrid cloud, private cloud, or pure cloud solution for added versatility and lower total cost of ownership. 
• Open, modern design to enable firms to take control of data: NTR-X’s open standards design gives firms the highest degree of flexibility for storing, securing and managing data. Open APIs also make data more accessible and enable integration with upstream and downstream applications for real-time alerting and actionable intelligence.  

To learn more about NICE NTR-X, please click on the website here.  

HPS and The MCB Group Ltd. signed, on February 08, 2021, a definitive acquisition agreement whereby HPS will acquire all outstanding shares from MCB.

ICPS was founded in 2008 as a subsidiary of MCB Group (80% of the shares) in partnership with HPS (20% of the shares). Based in Mauritius, ICPS has a rich portfolio of more than 30 clients in 22 countries in Africa and Asia including MCB. ICPS provides payment processing services for banks and other financial institutions as well as telecom operators. ICPS activity covers hosting of more than 6 million cards, driving of more than 600 ATMs and 11,000 point of sale terminals, and processes more than 10 million transactions per month. Thanks to its human capital of 106 employees, ICPS supports its clients along all the payment value chain, including the implementation and maintenance of business processes, payment data security standards (PCI DSS), as well as training and consultancy on the best practices in the industry.

ICPS offering is based on HPS PowerCARD technology. Therefore, the line of activities of ICPS will seamlessly integrate the overall HPS Processing offering.

With the aim of positioning HPS as a major payment player in Africa, this acquisition will consolidate HPS’s processing offer on the continent, where the combined presence of the 2 companies will extend to more than 30 countries. Our customers will also benefit from the combined expertise of HPS and ICPS teams. This union will also have a definite impact on operational costs, which, thanks to this synergy, could result in significant economies of scale.

This acquisition is in line with the external growth strategy of HPS group, which began with the acquisition of the company acpqualife in France back in 2010, the taking over of the switching activity in Morocco in 2016, and continued through to the acquisition of the company IPRC finalised in January 2021.

The ICPS acquisition contract remains subject to the completion of usual suspensive clauses and the approval of the concerned authorities. Following the lifting of these, HPS duly will inform the market.

Plenitude, the Financial Crime, Risk and Compliance specialists offering advisory, transformation services and innovative RegTech subscription products, today launched Plenitude RegSight, a cloud-based Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) obligations management solution.

In a world of increasing regulation and heightened regulatory scrutiny, the requirement for organisations to meet legal and regulatory obligations has never been more important. This has become even more complex and time-consuming due to constantly evolving laws and regulations, set against a backdrop of increased enforcement actions resulting in costly fines, potential reputational damage and loss of investor confidence. 

Despite this exposure, many financial institutions either do not have in place a comprehensive Obligations Register or are maintaining a solution that adds complexity and unnecessary costs, and all too-often does not provide compliance teams with the assurance they need.  

Confident that the industry needed a more efficient and effective approach to managing FCC obligations, Plenitude developed RegSight working first-hand with leading global financial institutions. 

Plenitude RegSight provides a cloud-based technology platform to identify and manage FCC obligations, improve operational efficiency and ultimately drive more effective financial crime risk management. RegSight enables the immediate identification of specific legal and regulatory obligations across a multitude of sources, jurisdictions and FCC domains along with corresponding regulatory and industry guidance, including the latest UK laws and regulations post Brexit. Compliance teams are able to use RegSight’s proactive horizon scanning to anticipate changes in relevant laws and regulations ahead of time and also quickly identify any potential gaps in their Policy Framework through the self assessment tool. 

Commenting on the launch of RegSight, Alan Paterson, Plenitude Managing Director, said: "We are delighted to announce the launch of RegSight today. Financial Crime Compliance obligations management is a critical enabler to address the regulatory and social imperatives for more effective financial crime risk management. Historically obligations management has been complex and costly due to the lack of bespoke technology solutions resulting in firms conducting the work inhouse or accepting sub-optimal solutions.”  

Paterson continued: "To address these challenges we embarked on the development of an innovative and comprehensive cloud-based solution with input on the design from experienced FCC industry practitioners. We believe RegSight is unique in terms of the combined FCC obligations content, product features and functionality that is expected of a leading RegTech subscription product." 

Commenting on the launch of RegSight, Asad Choudhary, Partner at Plenitude, said: "RegSight is the culmination of a three-year development effort.  Most importantly, it is cost effective and less resource intensive when compared to the cost of managing an Obligations Register internally, with cost savings typically in the region of 50-70%.  As a result, we are already seeing a strong demand for the product from our existing client base and looking forward to deploying the product across the financial services industry." 

A new survey conducted by Juniper Research has found that more than 50% of US consumers wanting to change banks would consider a digital-only bank, with the same finding reflected in a similar UK survey. However, the findings showed that banks need to be more than technologically competent; users’ top priorities include sign-up benefits and good rates, which are often more important than digital features.

For more insights, download the free whitepaper, mCommerce & mBanking ~ What Consumers Expect Whitepaper Download

Banking Basics Still Important in a Digital World

The new report, Digital Commerce Survey: Consumer Attitudes to Mobile Banking, mCommerce & Contactless Report, notes that there are marked differences between US and UK consumers around reasons to switch banks. The most common driver in the US is for sign-up benefits, but UK switchers prefer better overall rates.

Digital integrations are less important to consumers, with 26% of US switchers reporting integration with other services as important. In the UK, where Open Banking integrations are available, only 13% of switchers consider this a reason to switch. The survey found that almost half of UK mobile banking users were unsure if they had used Open Banking services; pointing to an awareness gap that needs closing for Open Banking to be successful.

Card Usage Shifts the Contactless Payments Battle

The survey found that COVID-19 has greatly increased contactless payments use, with 60% of US contactless users stating COVID-19 safety as a reason to use contactless payments.

Despite the head start OEM Pay had in the US, 89% of American contactless payments users now use contactless cards, and 35% of current non-users are expecting to start using cards in future. However, use of OEM Pay solutions remains strong, with 85% of US contactless users using at least one OEM Pay solution.

‘Contactless cards have become a key feature for the US payment landscape, in large part because of COVID-19,’ research author James Moar remarked. ‘With strong OEM Pay usage, situational use of the different contactless payment solutions will emerge; potentially leading to specialised solutions in future.’

Download the whitepaper:https://www.juniperresearch.com/document-library/white-papers/mcommerce-banking-what-consumers-expect.

Find out more about our Digital Commerce Survey market research: https://www.juniperresearch.com/researchstore/fintech-payments/commerce-survey-uk-us-research-report.

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, today announced that Tink, one of Europe’s leading open banking platform providers, has joined Temenos MarketPlace.

Tink’s platform provides connections to more than 3,400 banks, reaching over 250 million bank customers across 13 European markets. Tink’s market-leading open banking and personal finance management solutions will enable Temenos clients to empower their banking customers with consolidated, enriched views of their accounts and transactions and to deliver enhanced, streamlined and seamless data-driven financial services.

Temenos customers will be able to access Tink’s technology through Temenos’ Infinity digital front-office platform, which enables banks to deliver outstanding customer experiences with a rapid time-to-market. The addition of Tink to the Temenos MarketPlace will further enhance banks’ ability to gain actionable insights and offer targeted, multi-banking services for their clients.

Daniel Kjellén, Co-founder and CEO of Tink, said: “The Temenos MarketPlace has a strong retail banking hub across Europe that we are excited to become a part of. By adding our open banking platform with deep bank connectivity, we can help banks in the Temenos community seamlessly access real-time, enriched financial data, enabling them to get a better understanding of their customers’ finances, and to build new digital services that help people better manage their money."

Joaquin De Valenzuela Muley, Senior Vice President and Business Line Director for Temenos Infinity, added: “Tink provides a wealth of personal financial management and open banking solutions and expertise. We are excited to offer Tink’s solutions on Temenos MarketPlace so that our customers can benefit from their innovative products to ultimately add value to their own client experiences and enable a broader open banking strategy.”

Temenos MarketPlace allows banks to leverage the cutting-edge fintech solutions that complement Temenos software. Solutions are curated and pre-integrated for rapid implementation and time-to-value. Today, the MarketPlace comprises over 50 fintech solutions, enabling Temenos clients to easily pursue their journey of differentiation and innovation.

Trade Ledger, the global technology provider to the commercial banking and financial services industry, has raised a total of £13.5 million to complete its Series A funding round.

The equity round was led by Point72 Ventures, with strong participation from Foundation Capital, who led the debt tranche closed previously, Court Lorenzini, founder of DocuSign, Hambro Perks, and other existing investors.

Trade Ledger exists to enable lenders to provide credit to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), by showing them at a glance the information they need to make good decisions. Its platform puts the customer experience at the heart of the process and expands credit distribution without increasing risk, unlocking a £1.2 trillion un-served segment of the £7 trillion global SME credit market. Trade Ledger brings together all the data that lenders need throughout the customer lifecycle, analyses that data, and automates key processes. Lenders can act faster with less risk and serve more businesses at greater profit. They can also move into new services such as embedded finance, including offering loans as part of the payment journey on websites selling to businesses. In the four years since it was founded, Trade Ledger has won global and regional banks and alt finance providers as customers. Revenues grew twelve-fold during 2020.

With the new funding, Trade Ledger will grow out its sales, marketing and customer delivery teams. Martin McCann, CEO of Trade Ledger, said: “This new investment will enable us to triple our customer base during 2021. Adoption of our technology is critical for the post-pandemic recapitalisation of the economy and we are driving growth as fast as our capital allows, to be able to support this critical economic need, particularly for SMEs. New digital solutions based on real-time business data are the only way to address it.”

Alex Tarhini, Operating Partner at Point72 Ventures, said: “We view Trade Ledger as part of an important wave of companies that are disrupting legacy financial technology and, in doing so, are moving the financial services industry forward. Trade Ledger’s data-driven lending capabilities coupled with their embeddable, flexible platform are bringing significant new opportunities to the business lending market, particularly the small and medium enterprises that are the engine of the global economy. Its customers already include the top global credit providers, and we believe it will continue to grow rapidly.”

George Davies, Partner at Hambro Perks, said: “We are delighted to continue to back Martin, Matthias, and the entire Trade Ledger team in their mission to build the leading technology to enable lenders across the world to provide funding to SMEs. Since our initial investment in 2019 the team has signed global blue-chip clients, built an outstanding team, and developed a market leading product. We are excited to continue to support Trade Ledger.”

Mr Tarhini will join the Trade Ledger board. He joins Court Lorenzini, founder of DocuSign, who joined as a non-executive director in 2020; George Davies, who joined as a non-executive director in 2019; and Trade Ledger founders Martin McCann and Matt Born. Angus Davis, partner at Foundation Capital, continues as a board observer.

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of data scientists in financial services firms say their organisation is not currently able to combine data and analytics in a single environment. This was among the key findings of new research in the UK, US, and Asia, for Alveo, leading solutions provider of managed data services for data mastering and analytics.

The survey also found that nearly four out of ten respondents (38%) saw ‘the need to integrate structured and unstructured data’ as one of the main challenges their organisation faces in ‘bringing analytics to data and using the combination to drive effective decision-making’.

For financial services firms, closing the gap between data mastering and analytics capabilities is key in deriving insights from an increasingly broad range of data sources. In a financial context, structured data adheres to a pre-defined data model and includes everything from financial instrument terms and conditions to pricing feeds, while unstructured or semi-structured data does not conform to a pre-set data model and might incorporate earnings call transcripts and social media activity. It can also help gauge scores against ESG indicators.

Another key challenge highlighted by the research was the issue of ever-expanding data volumes. 39% of data scientists surveyed claim ‘it is difficult for us to manage large data files and scale our infrastructure to the volumes we face’ as the main challenge in bringing analytics to the data.

Mark Hepsworth, CEO, Alveo, said: “Financial services firms struggle with growing data volumes that are often siloed in data stores and legacy systems, making access difficult. This causes a bottleneck when firms look to get a broader range of data to data scientists and decision makers, creating a range of challenges as a result including lack of integration of meaningful data and analytics.”

In line with this, the research shows that many financial services firms across the UK, US and Asia still struggle with significant issues in integrating different types of data and being able to scale infrastructure to cope with ever increasing data volumes.

Firms’ efforts in bringing analytics and data together are also hampered by inadequate data lineage and poor data quality. Nearly a third of firms (32%) don’t have full transparency of data lineage across their organisation and the wider operational ecosystem, while just under a quarter (22%) list ‘lack of contextual information such as data lineage that helps us trust the data’ among their main data management challenges. This can lead to a lack of trust and redundant data sourcing and verification.

In the search for data quality, lack of a data catalogue leading to time-consuming data searches or double sourcing’ is the top issue, referenced by 28%, followed by the fact that ‘a proactive focus on data quality is hampered by need for ad hoc incident resolution’, identified by 23%.

According to Hepsworth: “There are tools now available that can help firms identify data quality issues and proactively address them. More specifically, –increasingly there are solutions that enable businesses to explain the value and origin of data, trace data back to its external sources and ensure data lineage.”

“And thanks to the latest advances in cloud, data processing and analytics, it is now possible to combine analytical and data management capabilities and use the results to maximise market data ROI and enable data scientists and other business users.”