ClauseMatch, the global regulatory technology (RegTech) company automating policy management and regulatory compliance at financial institutions and other regulated organisations, today officially announced the launch of its Policy Portal for employees. After the first day of the soft launch of the ClauseMatch portal, the company saw the immediate adoption of the tool across all of the clients with the users of the portal growing from zero to almost 170,000. The number of users is forecasted to reach 250,000 by the end of the first quarter.

The number of active users currently working on the ClauseMatch Policy Portal has reached hundreds of thousands within several weeks. The launch of the Portal has skyrocketed the popularity of the ClauseMatch platform among new and existing clients across various industries. The number of users is expected to reach 250,000 by the end of the quarter and to witness more exponential growth of up to 1000,000 (1mln) users by the end of the year 2021.

Speaking about Policy Portal, Michael Rasmussen, GRC analyst from the US, says: “In today's dynamic and distributed work environment it is absolutely essential that organizations have a single portal for employees to access and interact with all of the organization’s policies. This portal needs to be highly intuitive and engaging to the employee and presents policies in their particular context in the organization."

Anastasia Dokuchaeva, Head of Product, commented: "The current crisis has shown that consistency and a single view into policies is absolutely essential for any organisation operating at any level. Across the world, new rules and regulations are constantly being introduced by financial regulators, and it has become even more complicated to stay on top of all of the changes communicating them to employees in a timely manner. Business continuity plans, disaster recovery policies are being updated almost weekly. Policies scattered in different templates, portals, are confusing and can be misunderstood. This may lead to a lack of awareness and compliance exposure. We're absolutely happy to be of help to our clients introducing this product module as it provides a consolidated and comprehensive repository enabling a proactive approach to managing regulatory compliance. We'll be enhancing the Portal functionality throughout this year. Stay tuned for updates."

Policy Portal is designed to be a single real-time up-to-date repository of all disseminated policies and procedures across an organisation. It allows employees to access the policies from across the entire organisation at any time. Policy Portal lets you quickly communicate your latest updates, train staff more effectively, and easily track compliance. Moreover, it also allows you to compare updated documents to older versions, assess and audit compliance, and report the findings.

With a number of practical features such as attestation, reports, the ability to filter content on themes, powerful search, ability to provide feedback and viewing activity, the Policy Portal delivers an accessible, streamlined and interactive experience. It works on any device, it is user-friendly and visually appealing.

Using Policy Portal, it is possible to create attestations with strict deadlines to enforce compliance, achieve greater visibility of compliance via the insights user actions (view, download, attested), make sure your documents are properly understood via Questions; store all your released documents in one place, compare old and new versions of released documents so you can easily identify what has changed.

Mark Korshakov, Portal Product Owner at ClauseMatch, commented: "It is a perfect momentum to launch Policy Portal. During 2020 many established communication channels were broken and hundreds of organizations faced problems with distributing information. Compliance was also hit hard. Launching our product, we establish a new way to communicate within the organization: we build one point of truth, we help to deliver messages across the company, we give the opportunity for employees to provide feedback, we track the usage of policies and work on whole compliance engagement. Every miscommunication could cause a serious compliance breach and that's why every properly undelivered message or policy counts. And I believe that with Policy Portal we provide compliance managers with a powerful tool to cover their needs. We have also introduced a Mobile version so end-users can digest policy information on the run!"

Nixu renews its operating model and management system to be the go-to partner for cybersecurity services for digitalization and the best place to work for cybersecurity professionals, in line with its strategy. The new operating model aims to increase client intimacy and focus, strengthen the competence development of cybersecurity experts, and improve profitability through more efficient service delivery. In the future, all Nixu operations are international, and clients are served and competences developed company-wide.

As of March 1, 2021, Nixu consists of five profit centers:

Client Experience
The Client Experience business area drives strong business growth and ensures a unified client experience of Nixu as a trusted cybersecurity partner. Additionally, the business area develops industry specific client understanding. This business is led by Valtteri Peltomäki, who previously led Nixu Finland Market Area operations.

Expert Services
The business area is responsible for providing cybersecurity professional services and developing the expertise of cybersecurity professionals in specialized teams focusing in different areas of cybersecurity. This unit is led by Björn-Erik Karlsson, who previously led Nixu Sweden Market Area operations.

Managed Services
The Managed Services is responsible for delivering and developing Nixu’s technology-based managed cybersecurity services and accountable for partner management. In 2020, the managed services accounted for about 20% of Nixu’s revenue, and Nixu’s strategic objective is to increase this share strongly. Currently, the recruitment process is ongoing for the leader role. In the meantime, Nixu CEO Petri Kairinen holds this position in addition to his CEO responsibilities.

Market Expansion
Nixu’s strategy includes also inorganic growth through acquisitions while also consolidating the market. The Market Expansion is responsible for finding new Nixu family members, company acquisitions and managing those during integrations. The business is led by Mats Lindgren, who was previously responsible for Nixu’s M&A operations.

Labs
The goal of the business area is to develop new and innovative solutions to clients' cybersecurity challenges. One of the main initiatives of this business area is an IIoT startup that focuses on ensuring Industrial IoT solution security. The Labs business area is led by Pietari Sarjakivi, who previously led Nixu Cyber Defense Center business.

Nixu Corporate Leadership Team as of March 1, 2021:

• Petri Kairinen, Chief Executive Officer
• Valtteri Peltomäki, SVP Client Experience
• Björn-Erik Karlsson, SVP Expert Services
• Mats Lindgren, SVP Market Expansion
• Pietari Sarjakivi, SVP Labs
• Janne Kärkkäinen, Chief Financial Officer
• Katja Müller, Chief People Officer

“With the coronavirus pandemic, remote work and remote deliveries have become the new normal. Nixu has now an excellent opportunity to take this crucial step in line with our One Nixu strategy and strengthen our international market presence by creating a strong unified service portfolio and cross-border cybersecurity specialist teams to support local client teams of trusted advisors and sales. I believe our newly formed, more client-centric operating model will help us strengthen our competitiveness as a cybersecurity partner for international enterprises. In addition, the operating model will help us utilize the future growth opportunities created by digitalization and the evolving cybersecurity needs of our clients,” says Nixu CEO, Petri Kairinen.

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.