BrandShield Limited ("BrandShield"), a leading provider of cyber solutions from brand protection to online threat hunting, has today confirmed its intention to list on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The listing will be via the reverse takeover of Two Shields Investments plc ("Two Shields") which is a 20 per cent shareholder in BrandShield.  Two Shields has made an announcement this morning here. The proposed change of name from Two Shields to BrandShield Systems Plc will reflect the business of the new Company. Admission will become effective, and dealings will commence on AIM on or around 1 December 2020.

BrandShield has raised £3.2 million in new funding to support the growth strategy of the experienced Board led by CEO, Yoav Keren. Mr Keren was one of the founders of BrandShield in 2013, and, among his previous roles, he was head of the Technology branch of the Israeli military's Information Security Department. The funding has been provided from a range of institutional and private investors, including Dame Ann Gloag, the co-founder of Stagecoach Group.

The new funding will help BrandShield capitalise on the increasing number of new business opportunities it sees. BrandShield provides digital brand protection and online threat hunting services to protect brands and companies from the financial cost and reputational damage caused by criminal activities. Activities such as phishing and fraud, executive impersonation or the sale of counterfeit goods online. BrandShield's suite of proprietary AI-powered technology works by detecting potential threats, analysing them, prioritising them and then taking them down.   The technology uses big data and algorithms to find networks of fraudulent online activity and clusters of counterfeiters. BrandShield has established its own in-house online hunting and enforcement team consisting mostly of qualified lawyers, with experience in IP law.

The global cyber threat intelligence market is growing rapidly, and according to MarketsandMarkets, is estimated to grow to US$12.9 billion by 2023, at a compound annual growth rate of almost 20%. Over the last two and a half years, BrandShield has increased its Annual Recurring Revenue ("ARR") by five-times.  During 2020, there has been an acceleration in interest in BrandShield due to the increase in online criminal activity caused by Covid-19. As an example, earlier this year, BrandShield announced it had neutralised over 150 phishing websites targeting the Levi Strauss & Co's brand. BrandShield’s ARR from new business signed in the first six months of 2020 was almost equivalent to that in the whole of 2019.

Headquartered in Israel, BrandShield already works with many global brands and customers that operate in a variety of sectors including financial services, pharmaceuticals, fashion, technology, sports and entertainment. Around two-thirds of BrandShield's sales are in the US, where, along with Europe and Asia, its products and services are increasingly in demand. 

At the completion of the listing process, BrandShield will be the first Israeli company since 2018 to list on the LSE, and the first listing of a cybersecurity company also since 2018. There are 22 companies of Israeli origin on the London markets with a combined market cap of $8.4 billion.

Yoav Keren, BrandShield CEO, said: "The coronavirus crisis has been a coming of age for online scammers and con artists. Cybercriminals across the world have sought to capitalise from fake medicines to phishing scams. They have targeted changing consumer and work habits such as the increase in online shopping and greater use of video conferencing.  More and more companies are waking up to the dangers to their businesses, customers and staff from online scams and threats.

"This means the demand for BrandShield's market-leading services, which can remove the online threats that cause companies significant financial and reputational damage, is only going to grow. Our listing will provide us with the investment to capitalise on this opportunity and deliver long-term value to our shareholders."

The Financial Data Exchange has released Version 4.2 of the FDX API which now includes the most comprehensive tax information fields of any API in the United States.

In addition to continuing to provide the financial industry with a common, interoperable and royalty-free standard for all user-permissioned financial data sharing, the FDX API now encompasses 51 different IRS forms and statements. The FDX API paves the way for transition from current disparate tax formats, Open Financial Exchange (OFX) and Tax Exchange Format (TXF), as well as other often used proprietary formats like PDF and CSV. These changes to the FDX API make tax preparation and reporting more efficient and secure than ever before. Other updates contained in FDX API 4.2 include the separation of the banking and tax specification for easier readability and the addition of annuity accounts to the API.

“FDX API 4.2 represents another high-water mark for our organization and continues to deliver on FDX’s promise to give the financial industry a secure, best-in-class open standard for all different types of user-permissioned data sharing,” stated FDX Managing Director Don Cardinal.

The announcement of FDX API 4.2 puts in place a single standard data structure for exporting and importing almost all tax accounting data in the U.S that does not require the sharing of login credentials. Before the advent of FDX 4.2, tax information has been split between a patchwork of different standards like OFX, TXF, PDF, and CSV. FDX API 4.2 will enable a secure data sharing standard for interactions between tax software applications and companies that operate tax form data servers, such as payroll companies, banks, and brokerage firms. Further, all FDX data structures are readily generated and consumed using the ubiquitous JSON data serialization technology.

“The FDX Tax Task Force’s work on the FDX API 4.2 specification will provide a huge upgrade in security for tax information reporting data,” said Clyde Cutting, Systems Architect at Wells Fargo, and member of the FDX Tax Task Force that worked to deliver the updated standard.

In addition to the FDX API standard’s existing support for an array of tax forms and statements, the new version of the FDX API now fully supports all types of business, royalty, farm, and rental income tax information.

FDX 4.2 will also provide U.S. tax reporting data in a human-readable text format for the first time so that it can be used for file importing and exporting with tax return preparation software. In addition, this same format allows QR codes to be added to annual tax documents so that smart phone apps using open QR code technology can be used by all tax filers.

“The release of version 4.2 of the FDX API specification, and the unification of all annual tax form and statement data under one standard, will allow the tax software industry to simplify and streamline the income tax return preparation process for taxpayers and accountants alike,” said Bruce Wilcox, President of Internet Tax Information Processing Services (iTips), and member of the FDX Tax Task Force.

FDX recommends that the tax software industry begin replacing support for the older TXF data files with data files using the FDX API 4.2. To facilitate implementation of the new FDX API 4.2 standard for tax information, developers and implementers can visit this technical page for further information about the standard and assistance with migration from TXF and OFX to FDX data structure. Tax Data Exchange is an independent production of members of FDX’s API & Data Structures working group who specialize in tax data exchange.

Finzly, a fintech provider of modern banking applications for foreign exchange, trade finance, payments and digital account opening, has again been awarded “Best of Show” for the company’s low-code, adaptable workflow engine, Finzly Flow, and its contactless digital account opening (DAO) solution at the FinovateWest 2020 digital conference. Following their recognition as “Best Enterprise Payments Solution” and “Best of Show” at FinovateFall, these recognitions further validate Finzly’s modern offerings that empower financial institutions to innovate at speed and go to market faster.

During the conference, Finzly debuted its low-code workflow engine, Finzly Flow, and its ability to power the DAO solution. Finzly Flow enables FIs to create engaging user experiences that evolve with changing customer and regulatory needs. FIs often rely on software developers and core providers to update the products and services they need, which can lead to long implementations timelines and limited development options. However, Finzly Flow allows FI workflows to be adapted and optimized to best serve customers, including any interactions where institutions and their customers need to exchange information. FIs can also access other Finzly apps and easily integrate third parties of choice, creating solutions that not only support the opening of accounts, but ensure accounts are valuable to FIs and their customers. With Finzly Flow, FIs can subscribe, try and launch the products and services they choose to offer to their customers in the onboarding process. 

“Being recognized as ‘Best of Show’ by the Finovate audience is a highly coveted title awarded to companies delivering exciting and innovative fintech solutions,” said Greg Palmer, VP, Finovate. “We had a number of award-worthy demos this year, but Finzly stood out as a conference favorite for its DAO solution, Finzly Flow, and its ability to advance the ways and the speed at which FIs innovate by extending their development options.”

Finzly also showcased its contactless digital account opening (DAO) solution within BankOS. With DAO, community FIs can deliver convenient, modern banking experiences to account holders while eliminating manual processing and driving operational savings. The DAO solution provides a seamless customer experience, reducing abandonment rates among new account applications and equipping FIs with greater flexibility and faster integration. Using core agnostic open APIs, Finzly ensures that FIs have access to the best, most up-to-date offerings in place to combat the latest fraud threats while establishing profitable relationships with their consumer and business customers.

“Our team was pleased to return to the Finovate stage and share our two new solutions that work with BankOS,” said Terry Howell, CTO, Finzly. “Finzly Flow and the DAO solution enables banks and credit unions to innovate faster, without core limitations, while leveraging Finzly APIs and pre-integrated partners, as well as Finzly’s natively developed apps. It’s an honor to take part in a conference like Finovate that creates visibility for new solutions, and even more so to bring home our second ‘Best of Show’ recognition this year.”

The title of “Best of Show” is determined by popular vote. At the end of the show, attendees are invited to vote for their five favorite companies based on the demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.

Masthaven Bank is pleased to announce that it has strengthened its Leadership Team and Board with a number of new appointments as well as promotions to support its plans for 2021 and beyond.

Among the senior appointments, Mark Record has been appointed to the newly created role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) leading the Bank’s Technology, Change and Business Information functions. Mark joins from Capita’s financial services arm and has previously held a range of CIO roles at Barclays, the Co-op Bank and RBS, as well as serving as an industry consultant.

Simon Furnell, Chief Operating Officer, and David Kennedy, Operations Director, have also taken on new responsibilities at Masthaven. Simon Furnell will now be responsible for Marketing, Distribution and Products, as well as continuing to lead the Bank’s Savings function and internal operations. David Kennedy is being promoted to a newly created role of Chief Lending Officer where he will look after all lending activities across short-term (bridging) and long-term (mortgages).

The Bank is also pleased to announce that Simon Glass has joined the Masthaven Board as a new Independent Non-Executive Director. Simon has considerable experience in the financial services sector having held a number of senior roles, and further strengthens the Board following the appointment of Malcolm McCaig earlier in the year. 

Leigh Bartlett, Chief Executive Officer at Masthaven, said: “Masthaven traded robustly through the challenges of the pandemic this year and remains open for business. All our colleagues have worked incredibly hard to make sure our customers, and the intermediaries we work with, have access to the right financial solutions and support. As the economic impact of COVID-19 continues to affect the UK, the specialist financial services sector will be called upon to provide the products and the credit people needed in order to see them through the other side of the crisis and on the road to recovery. These appointments, together with the recruitment of 36 new colleagues since the first national lockdown positions Masthaven well to deal with any uncertainty as we prepare to move into the new year.”

ACA Compliance Group (ACA), a leading provider of governance, risk, and compliance advisory services and technology solutions for financial services firms, announced today that it has been selected as a RegTech100 company for 2021 by RegTech Analyst, a specialist research firm.

The RegTech100 recognizes the world’s most innovative technology solution providers that address the challenges of dealing with regulatory issues within financial services. The companies named to the 2021 list were selected by a panel of analysts and industry experts from a list of over 1,000 companies produced by RegTech Analyst. The full RegTech100 for 2021 is available here.

Mariyan Dimitrov, Director of Research at RegTech Analyst, said in RegTech Analyst’s press release announcing the RegTech 100: “Banks and other financial institutions need to be aware of the latest RegTech innovation in the market in order to avoid new compliance risks and stay competitive despite new regulations around customer onboarding and remote communication post COVID-19. The RegTech100 list helps senior management filter through all the vendors in the market by highlighting the leading companies in sectors such as identity verification, risk management, communications monitoring, information security and reporting.”

Patrick Conroy, Managing Director of Regulatory Technology at ACA, said: “We are honored to be selected for the RegTech100 for 2021. We appreciate that RegTech Analyst recognizes ACA as an industry leader in building innovative risk and compliance management solutions for financial services firms. Our ComplianceAlpha^® RegTech platform helps over 800 clients worldwide build progressive compliance programs that decrease risk, increase efficiency, reduce costs, and build operational resilience across their firms. We thank our ACA colleagues across regulatory compliance, technology, and cybersecurity for contributing their deep industry expertise in developing ComplianceAlpha, and we thank our clients for their continued support.”

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in private cloud, hybrid and multicloud computing, today announced new hybrid cloud capabilities for its unstructured data storage offerings, Objects and Files. With these advanced features, Nutanix customers can now deploy an easy-to-use, scale out storage fabric across their different cloud environments to simplify data management and effectively manage costs - moving IT teams ever closer to a true hybrid cloud operating model. 

These storage-focused enhancements build on the recent launch of Nutanix Clusters, which supports Nutanix’s hyperconverged infrastructure software running in AWS and, in the future, Microsoft Azure. The company continues to enable its technology to run in any cloud, while embracing a common operating model to streamline IT management and provide organisations the flexibility to run every application in the cloud of their choice.

“IT teams around the world are quickly moving to hybrid environments and they’re looking for technology solutions to help them facilitate this transition, to help them manage disparate technologies and simplify operations,” said Rajiv Mirani, Chief Technology Officer at Nutanix. “We recently extended our hyperconverged infrastructure software to public cloud with the launch of Nutanix Clusters to help companies do just that. Now the focus is on strengthening the overall platform, including delivering an easy-to-use, scale out storage fabric across their different cloud environments.”

Specifically, the new features offer customers the following:

• Cloud Tiering for Objects Storage: Nutanix Objects can now deliver tiering of object data to an S3-compatible object store, including cloud storage such as AWS S3. This helps enable customers to lower the cost of long-term storage and archival by taking advantage of public cloud infrastructure. This new intelligent tiering capability will also significantly improve data lifecycle management across different clouds, while still maintaining visibility and control, as metadata is retained on-premises for easier search and retrieval. Customers can use any S3-compatible target as a tier to Nutanix Objects. 
• Hybrid Cloud File Storage: Nutanix Files is now generally available to run in public clouds through Nutanix Clusters. A true hybrid cloud file storage solution, Nutanix Files now delivers a unified experience, along with simplified single-pane management, across cloud deployment modes, spanning the edge, remote offices, and core data centers, and public cloud. This provides customers with the flexibility to choose the right cloud, offer easy scalability, and deliver more control over hybrid cloud file storage.
• Simplified Disaster Recovery: Nutanix Objects and Files now deliver improved recovery point objective (RPO) ensuring data is always available across datacenters and clouds in the event of a disaster. Objects now provide streaming replication, with an RPO of just a few seconds, particularly helpful for containerised workloads that can use S3 endpoints for primary storage. This allows enterprises to containerise their mission-critical stateful applications, and ensure business continuity even in the most strenuous of circumstances. Additionally, Nutanix Files now provides support for RPO of up to one minute, compared to one hour previously, which is particularly useful when running enterprise applications using NFS & SMB endpoints.

"As organisations grapple with digital transformation and the move to a true hybrid cloud, they are looking for solutions to help them on this journey. The key capabilities needed to address their challenges are simplicity and uniformity across all deployment locations and across multiple clouds,” said Eric Burgener, Research Vice President, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies Group, IDC. “A solution that can provide a single unified experience for data access wherever it lives, like what Nutanix now delivers with Files and Objects, will be the right choice for many organisations."

In addition to simplifying data storage across clouds, Nutanix delivered increased performance, scale and choice across its storage products. All features are currently available to customers. More information on the new features in Nutanix Files and Objects are available here.

Today Asset Control announces it has rebranded as Alveo to reflect the significant change that has happened within the business since moving to new ownership over two years ago. During this time the company has focused on new product innovation, upgrading its core software to be cloud native, moved to a managed services deployment model and leveraged cloud technologies to accelerate implementation timelines.

Mark Hepsworth, CEO, said: “By changing our name we want to signal how much the company has changed in recent years. As well as the move to cloud, one of the main trends we address is business user self-service and this has been central to our product roadmap. Business users want to move away from relying on IT teams to acquire and manipulate data and need to be self-sufficient. Data is a huge and increasing part of their job and users require data accessibility, insight and control to improve productivity. We have also focused on closing the gap between data management to prepare high-quality data and creating analytics. To bridge these two capabilities we provide out of the box analytics and an open-source based processing environment that facilitates users creating their own analytics.”

Alveo’s integrated managed service solution for data mastering and data analytics has recently been implemented by a range of new customers including asset managers, banks and global clearing and trading platforms.

Hepsworth adds: “Nowadays our solutions are used by clients across the financial services industry including asset managers, insurance companies, banks and different types of market infrastructure firms. Common themes we address include business user self-service, ensuring high quality data and data cost optimization. Our deep domain experience within the company combined with our focus on using new technologies and delivery models, will, I believe, enable Alveo to continue to grow as a market leader in financial data management and analytics.”

Guardicore, the segmentation company disrupting the legacy firewall market, today announced additional integrations with Citrix and its flagship Centra segmentation platform that will help enterprises migrate to hybrid or cloud environments safely by securing endpoints, critical data, and business-critical applications.

Research from Dynatrace shows that 89% of CIOs say digital transformation has accelerated in the last 12 months, and 58% predict it will continue to speed up. The immediate shift to remote work has inspired many businesses to work with Citrix to adopt hybrid, multi-cloud environments to deliver a consistent employee experience and seamless access to the applications and data they need to perform optimally. During this transition, however, businesses must protect vulnerable workers and sensitive information during digital transformation initiatives.

“Cybercriminals often prey on organisations when their infrastructure is in transition,” said Guardicore VP of Business Development Sharon Besser. “Our architecture allows us to support Citrix customers’ everywhere and especially in hybrid multi-clouds to protect critical applications, endpoints, protect East-West traffic, and reduce risk while modernising their infrastructure. Businesses that integrate segmentation into their digital transformation not only improve their security posture, they can also complete their project faster.”

Citrix recently selected Microsoft Azure as their preferred cloud platform to move existing on-premises customers. With Guardicore, these businesses can implement a  strategy that provides enhanced visibility and process-level security controls down to the workload for both data centre and cloud assets. This gives security leaders the ability to protect endpoints, including those running Windows 10, and IT infrastructure while seamlessly moving data and business apps to the cloud.

“At the start of the remote work shift, we helped thousands of enterprises accelerate their digital transformation initiatives to support their employees in working from home,” said John Panagulias, Director, Developer and Partner Programs, Citrix. “Guardicore offers our customers not only security, but speed as its segmentation platform allows businesses to protect vital data and applications without disrupting the employee experience.”

Guardicore is a Citrix Ready Partner and has the following compatibilities:

• Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops™
• Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard for Azure

To learn more about Guardicore Centra platform, please visit the Citrix Ready Marketplace and Guardicore.

FinTech Connect, the trade show that connects the global fintech ecosystem, today launched the findings of a survey of 100+ fintech professionals, which reveal the industry’s predictions for 2021.

When asked which sub-sectors of fintech would experience the most growth over the next 12 months, payments was selected by 61% of respondents, followed by digital ID and RegTech (49%) and lending (39%). The lowest ranking sub-sectors were trading, which was selected only by 2% of respondents, as well as FX and remittance (8%) and insurance (10%).

The same survey found that almost one in three (31%) fintech professionals believe Covid-19 will have the biggest impact on the fintech industry in 2021. This was closely followed by the adoption of Open Banking (28%) and Brexit (21%).

In answer to the same question, only 7% of fintech professionals selected the ‘prevalence of embedded finance’ as having the biggest impact in the next 12 months. But when asked what the future of finance would look like in ten years, a significant proportion (42%) said ‘banking and fintech would become ‘invisible’ as non-financial businesses incorporate financial services’.

“2020 has been both a tumultuous and a landmark year for the industry,” said Laurence Coldicott, Content Director, FinTech Connect. “Against this backdrop of uncertainty, it has never been more important to reassemble and take stock, which we invited our delegates to do at this year’s virtual event. The pandemic, Brexit and Open Banking will remain key catalysts for change in 2021 but, born from crisis, fintech is well-poised to navigate these macroeconomic and will continue to thrive, with payments, lending and digital ID and RegTech at the front of the pack.”

Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s leading savings and investment platform, has appointed Currencies Direct as an exclusive provider of FX and international payment services to its 1.3m clients.

The Hargreaves Lansdown Currency Service will be powered by Currencies Direct’s industry leading technology platform and payment rails. This allows clients to benefit from expert support, transparent and highly competitive exchange rates, and the best in class digital offering with real time payment tracking.

As one of the UK’s longest established ‘fintechs’, Currencies Direct has been serving clients across the world since 1996, differentiating from the major banks by offering a highly personalised service combined with best in class technology.

Clients can hold and exchange currencies, make international payments online, through an app or by telephone, with experts always available to provide market insight and support to ensure that transactions are fast, simple and seamless.

“We’re thrilled to be working alongside an industry-leader in Hargreaves Lansdown,” said Keith Hatton, CEO at Currencies Direct.

“Currencies Direct is trusted by thousands of partners who deeply value our ability to offer their clients the best possible service. We’re excited to be able to offer these benefits to users of the Hargreaves Lansdown Currency Service.”

“As a lifelong financial partner, we are highly focussed on listening to our clients and continually improving our services. Currencies Direct’s focus on quality of service resonates closely with our own ethos,” explains Danny Cox, Head of External Relations at Hargreaves Lansdown. “The HL Currency Service, provided by Currencies Direct, is straightforward, transparent and provides great value to our currency clients.”