FNA, a deep technology firm specializing in advanced network analytics and simulations, today announces it has won the G20 TechSprint in the ‘Dynamic Information sharing for Supervisors and Regulators in Response to Crises’ category.
 
The G20 is a collaboration between leaders of the largest economies to discuss financial and socioeconomic issues. The G20 TechSprint is a joint initiative between the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub (BISIH) and the G20 Saudi Presidency - designed to showcase the potential for new technologies to resolve operational problems in the areas of regulatory compliance (Regtech) and supervision (Suptech). The hackathon-style competition is also supported by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the FSB, API Exchange (APIX), and the RegTech for Regulators Accelerator (R2A).
 
On March 6, 2020 the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors issued a statement on COVID-19 stating that they will work closely with the relevant international organizations with a view to sharing information, among other key areas of collaboration. The G20 TechSprint aspires to contribute to the information sharing element, with the view to supporting effective collaboration amongst financial supervisors and regulators across borders given the global reach of the pandemic.
 
The judges for the awards comprised a panel of high-profile central banks, universities and financial authorities. The inaugural challenge attracted submissions from over 35 countries.
 
FNA won the Dynamic Information Sharing category with its new G20 Monitor, a solution launching this week that allows financial authorities and institutions to better understand interconnectedness and emerging risk within the global financial system and economy.
 
Dr. Kimmo Soramäki, Founder and CEO, FNA, states: “We are proud to win this prestigious award, and are grateful for the collaboration with the panel of regulators from both emerging and developed markets that supported us during the solution development stage. We believe that the solution will facilitate stronger coordination amongst financial authorities and institutions – as it will support them in formulating and implementing global responses to critical risks. This is especially needed at the time of unprecedented disruptions from the COVID-19 crisis.”

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.  (NYSE:BR), a global Fintech leader, today announced that it selected 7 Chord, an independent predictive pricing and analytics provider, as the source for intraday corporate bond prices on its new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, digital corporate bond trading platform, LTX®.  Advanced analytics sit at the core of LTX, and the integration with BondDroid®, 7 Chord’s award-winning predictive pricing engine for bonds, provides buy-side firms and dealers with an independent assessment of current market value to inform critical investment decisions.

BondDroid’s AI-generated prices are integrated directly into LTX’s pre-trade analytical tools, giving dealers and institutional investors a complete view into actual market liquidity before they trade, while controlling information leakage and at no additional cost to LTX users.

“The LTX platform empowers dealers and institutional investors to better connect and trade corporate bonds digitally using AI that offers greater insights into pre-trade price transparency and liquidity,” said Vijay Mayadas, President, Capital Markets at Broadridge. “BondDroid’s AI provides our clients with a more reliable baseline to measure the quality of execution they achieved through our digital trading protocol, RFX®.”

LTX works by combining powerful AI to connect natural counterparties with a new digital  trading protocol, RFX, that enables dealers to efficiently aggregate liquidity across multiple counterparties in seconds.  Identifying the natural counterparties for a trade depends on a realistic understanding of fair market value. Built on streaming data and optimized for live trading, BondDroid uses AI to quickly adapt its behavior in real-time to variations in pricing.

“BondDroid is a next-generation pricing solution built for a modern institutional fixed income trader,” said Kristina Fan, CEO and Founder, 7 Chord. “2020 provided us with the ultimate test, and BondDroid passed with flying colors. While many traditional vendors struggled to produce accurate prices in March in a timely manner, BondDroid had no issues handling elevated transaction volume, wildcard events and unprecedented volatility.”

The LTX platform uses its patent-pending AI (LTX AISM) to create liquidity, digitize workflows and increase efficiency in the corporate bond market and is being embraced by leading broker-dealers and asset managers.

Onfido, the global identity verification and authentication company, today announced a strategic partnership with leading online food delivery company, Deliveroo, expanding the roll-out of Onfido’s AI-powered identity verification technology to support the food delivery giant’s global expansion. 
 
The partnership expansion comes at a critical time when there has been an increase in demand for food delivery services as consumers face restricted access. The new partnership will make it easier and quicker for Deliveroo riders to onboard securely. This will ensure that Deliveroo is able to scale and engage riders efficiently to meet the surge in demand to support its restaurant partners. 
 
Onfido’s award-winning AI-powered technology completes document verification and checks that the ID matches the user’s face using facial biometrics. This ensures the person presenting the identity is the legitimate owner and is physically present with a fast and user-friendly approach. 
 
Onfido automates verifications on over 4,500 ID document types across 195 countries while using human experts to verify outliers. The modern workflow means that there is no requirement for new riders to provide additional documentation and saves Deliveroo time and money on manual reviews, as more people seek the flexible work that Deliveroo offers. 
 
“We’re pleased to be partnering and expanding with Deliveroo who share our commitment to providing user-friendly and accessible services for everyone, wherever they might be,” said Husayn Kassai, CEO and Co-Founder of Onfido. “The ability for Deliveroo to meet the demand of its restaurant partners will play a critical role in the sustainability of many restaurants on our high streets over the coming months. We’re delighted to partner with Deliveroo to meet these demands across the world, providing a secure, user-friendly service that helps them quickly onboard new riders.”

Africa is on the verge of realising its economic potential, as IT investment explodes across the continent and with South Africa alone, seeing IT infrastructure spending passing the $26-billion mark in 2020. The massive continental capital development is driving the continent’s digital revolution as it looks to fulfil its economic potential. Taking place at this year’s AfricaTech, Data Centres Africa will explore the enormous opportunity Africa represents for Big Data – locally on the continent, and the world at large.

Capitalising on this interest, Microsoft recently opened two data centres in Africa, while Oracle is set to launch additional facilities during 2020. These data centres are part of a technological movement that is fuelling economic growth across the continent, as Africa is taking advantage of the opportunity to leapfrog outdated technology to stay closer to the cutting edge of digital innovation.

While this digital infrastructure is essential for growing local economies, it also offers the potential for Africa to outsource services to the rest of the world, with a number of giant global corporations maintaining storage centres in Africa.

Aside from the technological opportunities opened-up by these centres, they also offer lower operational costs, time monitoring benefits, precise management of resources.  They also provided a platform for global corporations to route workloads through the continent in order to decrease latency, improve overall performance and reduce costs.

“When you look at the immense investments in data centres across the continent, centred around key IT hubs such as Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Tunisia, you start to develop of picture of a continent bursting with opportunities,” says James Williams, Portfolio Manager – Connecting Africa, Informa Tech. “These data centres have the power to interact and to service parts of the continent that are relatively undeveloped, and this is giving Africa the opportunity to stand and fall by the power of its ingenuity.”

Discussions happening on 9 November at Data Centres Africa at the virtual Africa Tech Festival include:

·         The critical role of data centres for telcos and financial services – a discussion about the role played by data centres in Africa’s FinTech revolution, including the ways in which data centres can help enterprises to address the increased challenges of regulatory compliance, shifting customer demands, data privacy and security?

·         Remote monitoring and managing is revolutionising African data centres – a presentation that profiles the effect of increasingly sophisticated remote monitoring in terms of improving efficiency and cost management, including the operational changes that the COVID-19 outbreak has effected within African data centres.

·         Edge, Cloud & Beyond: Exploring value in an African context – a panel discussion aimed at unpacking the key drivers behind the edge boom: 5G, AI & IoT adoption by enterprise, as well as data demands and cost management. The panel will also look at ‘cloud-readiness’ across African nations in terms of current infrastructure and the need for fast, reliable broadband connectivity.

·         What has the COVID crisis taught us about the role of data centres in Africa? A presentation that examines how the industry in Africa has stepped up in the COVID-19 battle, with a particular focus on how the shift to remote working has impacted on data centres across the continent?

·         Environmental aspects of data centre management – this panel discussion will focus on the potential for environmentally focussed technological advances to manage and reduce data centre carbon emissions, as well as examining renewable energy (microgrids), virtualisation of power and efficiency.

·         Exploring the tech advances revolutionising the data centre industry – a presentation on the rapid changes that technology has brought to data centres across the continent.

Speakers participating in the Africa Tech Festival will include:

• Moustapha Cisse, Research Scientist and head of AI (Accra), Google
• Juliet Mhango, Chief Human Capital Development & Transformation Officer, Cell C
• Peter Ndegwa, Chief Executive Officer, Safaricom
• Abdoulaye Yéro Baldé, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Republic of Guinea
• Daniel Adaramola, Chief Information Security Officer, Unity Bank
• Kuseni Dlamini, Chairman, Massmart
• Rapelang Rabana, Founder, Rekindle Digital & Rekindle Learning
• Chris Bertish, Mavericks Big Wave Champion, SUP Trans-Atlantic Paddler, Adventurer
• Dr Tashmia Ismail-Saville, CEO, Youth Employment Service
• Desere Orill, Chairman, Ole!Connect & Director, Bold Network
• Yumna Tayob, Head of Learning & Development, FNB Bank
• Adeleke Pitan, Head of Talent & Reward Management, ARM HoldCo
• Herman Singh, CEO, Future Advisory
• Razvan Ungureanu, Chief Technology Officer, Airtel Africa
• Dorothy Tembo, Executive Director, The International Trade Centre
• Ammin Youssouf, CEO, Afrobytes
• Aubrey Hruby, Senior Fellow, Africa Center, co-founder, Africa Expert Network
• Dion Jerling, Managing Director, Connecting Earth
• Jan Vermeulen, Editor At Large, MyBroadband
• Abe Wakama, CEO, IT News Africa

Data Centres Africa at the Virtual Africa Tech Festival offers a unique opportunity to explore the revolutionary changes that technology has brought to the dynamic world of data centres and cloud services and the impact this will have across the African continent.

Taking place online this year, the Africa Tech Festival incorporating AfricaCom and AfricaTech will provide ample opportunity for insight, business operational adjustment and an eye as to the opportunities presented by the digital shift. 

To register for a FREE delegate pass – click HERE

For further information please visit the 2020 website

Media accreditation is now open: https://registration.gesevent.com/survey/06t0kg4kkf2ei

For other media enquiries, interviews and/or images please contact:  Kaz Henderson kaz@networxpr.co.za or call on +27 (0) 82 339 1199.  Please note that media registration will open next week. 

Wealth managers must urgently increase their use of technology in offering private market investments or they risk being left behind by their competitors in less than five years.

The latest research report, ‘Digitising Private Markets’, from leading fintech firm Delio, shows that financial institutions’ adoption of digital tools across their operations has increased substantially as a result of Covid-19 this year. But many firms have been slow to accelerate their use of technology to deliver private markets services, despite recognising the improvements it could make to back-office organisation and regulatory compliance, not to mention enhancing client services. Delaying adoption of a digital strategy could leave firms trailing behind competitors within five years, according to Delio CEO and co-founder Gareth Lewis.

Gareth Lewis said: “Any firm that is serious about providing a complete wealth management service to their clients needs to deliver a holistic private markets solution. Technology will be fundamental to the delivery of these services and needs to be implemented across the board sooner rather than later. Firms that fail to act quickly face losing ground and potential new clients to more tech-savvy competitors.

“While I understand that client relationships are still vital in this area, companies can’t become complacent. We live in a more instantly-connected world and customers – especially new clients who are more likely to have been entrepreneurial as they generated their wealth – want more digital access to their finances than ever before. It’s time to take an omnichannel approach that combines the best elements of technology and personal advice; this will deliver a market-leading approach.”

Providing clients with access to private markets has been a challenge for many financial institutions, due to the difficulties in scaling a part of their business that is operationally complex to deliver, requires strict regulatory governance and has traditionally been driven by personal relationships between client and adviser. It is one of the reasons many institutions only started to develop a private markets solution in the last 12-18 months.

However, better use of technology can help firms to deal with each of these hurdles more efficiently, providing access to a market that has consistently outperformed publicly listed investments over the last decade. McKinsey’s most recent Private Markets Review highlighted that the value of private assets under management had grown by $4tn or 170% in the last ten years, compared to 100% growth in global public assets over the same period. 

The difficulties presented by the international lockdowns associated with Covid-19 has meant that 86% of firms report that they have accelerated their digital adoption this year, with 70% making quicker decisions on technology projects specifically.

Yet, a significant minority of organisations believe that digitisation will not necessarily play a prominent role as we begin to adapt to the ‘next normal’. More than a third of firms (35%) believe that they will still rely on traditional client engagement strategies in the short to medium term.

Having developed private markets solutions for more than 70 international institutions over the last five years, Deliofirmly believes that technology can add significant value at both an organisational and client level.

Gareth Lewis added: “Client relationships will still be at the forefront of any wealth management proposition, there is no question about that. However, I also believe that technology can enhance how advisers build relationships with their clients. If I had an investment opportunity that I wanted to pitch to 50 clients, why wouldn’t I want to share that information digitally beforehand to gauge their appetite? Failing to accept that busy clients want to be able to access data at any time, no matter where they are, is a potentially damaging mistake that could cost slow-moving companies dearly.”

BNP Paribas Securities Services, in partnership with Curv, a cloud-based digital asset security infrastructure for financial institutions, announces the successful completion of a proof of concept to transfer security tokens securely between market participants.

As part of this engagement, BNP Paribas Securities Services and Curv transferred a security token using Curv’s multi-party computation solution to ensure the security of the private keys. Curv’s solution enables transactions to be signed securely in a mathematically-proven and distributed way. 

This successful proof of concept helped to demonstrate that tokenised securities can be transferred quickly, safely and transparently on the blockchain.

As a leading global custodian, BNP Paribas Securities Services continually seeks to anticipate its clients’ needs and is carefully preparing for the development of custody solutions for regulated digital assets.

Itay Malinger, Co-founder and CEO of Curv, said: “Global financial players like BNP Paribas have the opportunity to play a vital role in the digital economy. To do so they require a secure and scalable infrastructure to deliver competitive custody products to their customer base. Adopted by leading financial institutions worldwide, Curv's infrastructure is able to meet these needs and support the acceleration of innovative programmes like the one BNP Paribas is spearheading with its technology and cryptographic expertise. We are excited to have been selected to partner with BNP Paribas on this pivotal engagement.”

Bruno Campenon, Global Head of Financial Intermediaries and Corporates Client Line at BNP Paribas Securities Services, said: “This proof of concept with Curv represents a significant step forward in our strategy to deliver an integrated custody solution that combines both traditional and regulated digital assets. We are now well positioned to deliver an exciting new service to our clients once regulations on digital assets are in place.”

To carry out this transaction, BNP Paribas Securities Services and Curv used the ERC1400 token standard.

Ebury announces that it has once again been ranked among the most accurate forecasters for the key EUR/USD pair.

Ebury was named as the second most accurate forecaster on Bloomberg for EUR/USD for Q3 2020. This achievement follows on from our number one and number two EUR/USD rankings in Q4 2018 and Q2 2019 respectively.

It also marks the sixth occasion in the last nine quarters that we have been named among the top ten forecasters for the highly competitive EUR/USD cross. We finished above 61 other eligible forecasters last quarter, including all of the world’s major commercial and investment banks.

Enrique Diaz-Alvarez, Chief Risk Officer at Ebury, says: “Being ranked as the number two forecaster for the most important exchange rate in the world, euro vs US dollar, is a significant achievement.

“Bloomberg gathers and ranks the currency forecasts of over 60 institutions, including all of the major investment banks and strategy services worldwide. As such it is a significant achievement for Ebury´s strategy department.”

FX forecasters are ranked based on three rigorous criteria:

– Margin of error

– Timing (for identical forecasts, earlier ones receive more credit)

– Directional accuracy (movements with the currency’s overall direction).

As banks around the world continue fighting fraud, scams and false positives, Featurespace™, the leading provider of Enterprise Financial Crime prevention software for fraud and Anti-Money Laundering, has announced that NatWest is protecting its customers with the ARIC™ Risk Hub through enterprise-wide transaction monitoring and payments fraud detection – including threats posed by Authorised Push Payments (APP) and scams.

After selecting Featurespace in late 2019, NatWest completed an enterprise-wide deployment of ARIC Risk Hub earlier this year to detect anomalies and protect customers in real time by collating account-level data across all touch points. Within 24 hours of deploying ARIC Risk Hub, NatWest saw an increase in the value of fraud and scams detected and an immediate decrease in false positive rates (genuine customer activity declined), while strengthening the customer experience.

"As we facilitate greater control over the access and movement of money for customers, our systems must be able to instantly determine if activity is genuine so that the high level of convenience is matched by uncompromising security standards," said Alasdair MacFarlane, Head of Fraud Prevention & Response at NatWest. "In our continued efforts to optimise our fraud and risk strategies, ARIC Risk Hub's ability allows us to adapt to and detect new fraud and suspicious activity in real time."

Powered by unique Adaptive Behavioural Analytics, ARIC Risk Hub is an award-winning enterprise financial crime prevention platform using fully adaptive machine learning models to protect customers. Individual behavioural activity is monitored in real time, allowing financial institutions to catch more fraud and prioritise alerts of suspicious activity with greater accuracy, while reducing the number of genuine transactions declined.

"NatWest demonstrates an unwavering commitment to overcoming fraud and financial crime across its business. We respect their ambition and we commend them for their determination. We are excited to be their partner and to continue our journey together," said Martina King, CEO of Featurespace.

PPS, formerly PrePay Solutions, and subsidiary of Edenred, the everyday companion for people at work, has today announced its partnership with Vybe, the fintech dedicated to young people.

Launched in September 2020, Vybe offers a free payment card for youth aged 13 to 18 years old, and an application to help manage their spending. Each user has a French IBAN and can make purchases with their mobile phone. Alleviating any parental fears around their teenagers’ spending, a secure mirror homepage enables parents to keep tabs on spending and make instant transfers. Vybe’s e-wallet capabilities allow customers to spend, utilising full debit BIN capabilities.

With only 10% of teenagers being bank authorised, France counts five million young people aged 13 to 18 years old with no access to financial services. Created by Generation Z for Generation Z, the demographic presents a new breed of customers for financial organisations, as the first generation to be born and raised with social media platforms.

By utilising PPS’ e-money licenses and technology infrastructure, all Vybe accounts come with a PPS-powered Mastercard virtual card as standard, which can be added to customers’ digital wallets within minutes of applying and used for contactless and online spending. Going forward later this year, customers will be able to choose to order a physical, contactless, PPS-powered Mastercard card, which can be used for POS payments and ATM withdrawals anywhere that accepts Mastercard.

Ray Brash, CEO of PPS, commented on the partnership: “Unlike Millennials who witnessed the rise of the digital age, Gen Z has never known a world without smartphones, social media and instant access to information. This trend setting company has huge growth plans following the initial launch in France, and we’re excited to continue supporting with an ever-evolving product roadmap to meet the demands on this demographic who are changing the face of fintech.”

Vincent Jouanne, CEO and Co-founder of Vybe, added: “Together, with the hard-working PPS team, we have created something truly special that is redefining financial services for a generation that has historically been facing difficulties in accessing such programs. As one of the first in the space committed to teenagers, we hope to receive back the same loyalty we have provided, expanding further across Europe and into the UK, and achieving 300,000 sign ups by next year.”

To find out more about PPS visit: https://www.pps.edenred.com/.

To find out more about Vybe visit: https://vybecard.com/.

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM^®) solutions provider, today announces SmartStream Air version 2, the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology to transform data quality and reconciliation processes that would usually be measured in weeks and months, to just seconds. In addition, with cloud-based technology accessed via a new user interface it manages large volumes of data, in any format, to achieve even higher match rates.

SmartStream Air version 2 has been launched to enable organisations with a unique solution to instantly compare all types of data sets, regardless of format and complexity. The latest version features inbuilt observational learning capabilities with a new AI technology called ‘Affinity’ – which automatically learns how records correlate to one another and can mimic and learn from actions made by a user. In just a few clicks, the AI establishes its own understanding of how records correlate and Affinity will assist the user to significantly reduce the time it takes for carrying out the matching of complex data sets. Ultra-fast matching results are delivered to the end-user with high-quality results.

This is the next-generation AI solution to be developed in the SmartStream Innovation Lab, and it delivers data quality and verification processes in an elastic cloud-based deployment model, using the latest technologies and digital friendly services. Customers are up and running straight-away and the solution can transform traditional data verification processes within seconds. Introducing Affinity as part of version two ensures any manually changed data matching activities get learnt and adopted for the algorithm’s future use.

SmartStream Air version 2 carries the PCI-DSS label, which is the most recognised data security standard, and has been certified at the highest level of security standards when hosting digital payments data. SmartStream’s solutions are also certified with SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, attestation, and ISO 27001 and ISO 27002 standard. This ensures robust security controls across the whole organisation, including physical security, personnel security, fraud control mechanisms, IT & data security and data privacy. 

Andreas Burner, Chief Innovations Officer, SmartStream, states: “We have 13 years of experience with cloud technologies and fully understand how these platforms need to behave. Also, this combined with our data scientists’ work and our powerful SmartStream Innovation Lab, we have the right level of experience to trustfully bring AI cloud technologies to the market, unlike any other vendor in the market today. With our new version of SmartStream Air and the encompassing AI technology, Affinity, both these capabilities know what needs to be done and the results are a lot faster than before. I’m very proud of our achievements, most notably with the user experience design, that enables non-IT staff to take multiple complex data sets and compare them within seconds. What's been really compelling is that you don't even need to understand the data, Affinity knows how to compare complex data sets and the results are achieved in seconds - it’s that simple.”

Victoria Harverson, Global Head of Business Development for SmartStream Air, states: “SmartStream Air is like nothing else, it transforms traditional operating models as it behaves like a consumer app and requires no training or configuration, and no IT projects are needed. We understand that when it comes to managing data and finding discrepancies quickly it’s of paramount importance that our customers have a solution for every scenario and don’t miss a thing. Controlling risks, delivering transformation projects and optimising data quality processes is going to be easier than ever with this introduction of our next generation AI application”.