Eventus Systems, Inc., a multi-award winning global trade surveillance and risk management software platform provider, announced today that Gemini Trust Company, LLC (Gemini), a leading cryptocurrency exchange and custodian, has selected Eventus’ Validus platform for the exchange’s new trade surveillance solution. The signing marks the sixth major exchange in the digital asset space to turn to Eventus for trade surveillance.

Gemini has adopted the cloud-based version of Validus on a T+1 basis for market surveillance that identifies a wide range of potential market manipulation behaviors.

Gemini Chief Operating Officer Noah Perlman said: "The digital asset space is a constantly changing environment, and working with a solution that is tailored for our market needs, including built-in flexibility as the landscape evolves, is critical. Eventus has a great track record, and its solution combines strong machine-learning and automation capabilities alongside a high-touch support model."

Eventus CEO Travis Schwab said: “We are thrilled to provide our trade surveillance platform for one of the most established cryptocurrency exchanges on the market. In the past two years, we have significantly enhanced our capabilities in the digital asset place as more exchanges and market participants turn to us for our expertise in the area. As digital assets grow in popularity, it’s more important than ever that marketplaces like Gemini establish comprehensive trade surveillance programs and procedures to ensure they remain constantly vigilant to address any potential threats of market abuse.”

Gemini was founded in 2014 by twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to empower the individual through crypto. To learn more, visit https://gemini.com.

Arcserve, the world’s most experienced data and ransomware protection provider, has entered into a partnership with the North East Business Resilience Centre (NEBRC), a non-profit organisation which supports, educates and helps to protect businesses in the North East of England from cybercrime, informed by the National Cyber Security Centre's (NCSC's) advice and guidance.

As part of the NEBRC’s goal of bringing national level industry expertise to their core partner base of local organisations in hospitality, manufacturing, and education, Arcserve will provide free educational resources including webinars, newsletter contributions and industry specific content.

This advice will draw from Arcserve’s over 35 years of data protection knowledge, including a nuanced understanding of the disaster recovery market, and proven track record of delivering a diverse suite of data protection and security solutions to ensure business continuity for any type of workload. This will allow the NEBRC to further help businesses in the region protect themselves from cyberthreats, in collaboration with their established network of ethical hackers from local universities and seven police forces.

“Though many businesses in the North East are faced with a challenging set of economic circumstances outside their control, this is not a time for letting business continuity and data protection fall to the wayside,” said Rebecca Chapman, director at the NEBRC. “Ransomware, to give just one example, continues to pose a significant and rising threat to UK small businesses. By giving our partners access to Arcserve’s decades of hard-won, in-the-trenches, IT expertise, we can better give them the support they need.”

Mick Bradley, vice president of EMEA at Arcserve, says: “We thought this was a unique opportunity to help UK businesses in their time of need, and one that was near impossible for us to turn down. We see businesses in the North as a key element of our shared economic future and securing them is an indispensable part of Arcserve’s UK mission. Joining with the NEBRC will help us to fulfill our social responsibility of providing them with education, best practices, and industry insights to help protect themselves from cyberthreats - in addition to just providing them with tools for the task.”

Arcserve has recently deepened its alliance with Sophos, the world’s leading cybersecurity provider, to offer new solutions for cloud and SaaS-based workloads.

To learn more about partnering with Arcserve, visit: https://www.arcserve.com/partners/.

Mphasis (BSE: 526299; NSE: MPHASIS), an Information Technology (IT) solutions provider specialising in cloud and cognitive services, today announced its strategic partnership with UK-based software company iMeta Technologies Ltd, a leading provider of onboarding, client lifecycle and master data management software and services for global, regulated organisations. Working together to deliver a new advanced solution for the onboarding / KYC industry, the partnership offering will focus primarily on UK and Europe region.

Financial Services Institutions (FSIs) have a growing legal and social responsibility to prevent money laundering and other forms of financial crime. Businesses are now expected to provide increased levels and variants of information to ensure compliance is met, and the need for good client data management is even greater for organisations with multiple banking relationships. To mitigate these risks, the FSI industry is turning to KYC (Know Your Customer) solutions to help them streamline their customer onboarding.

iMeta Technologies is a trusted provider of client lifecycle management solutions, enabling accelerated, compliant customer journeys – from onboarding to offboarding and everything in between. iMeta specialises in mastering data, automating processes and regulatory compliance. Mphasis has a long track record of working with global banks and financial institutions on their customer and digital journeys. Mphasis brings AI/ML and operations capabilities in KYC and iMeta brings a disruptive and solid platform, thus re-defining the onboarding / KYC landscape. This collaboration contributes to developing a one-stop solution that addresses all issues of the onboarding process.

The solution covers the whole KYC lifecycle: from the collection of information through a Customer Identification Program (CIP), to risk assessment – known as Customer Due Diligence (CDD), through to the final steps where Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) is initiated and contract terms are modified according to the risk.

“Streamlining customer onboarding is essential for financial services institutions worldwide who are now looking at a tech-based approach to manage it efficiently. We at Mphasis strive to enable enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation journey. Combining our digital and AI transformation capabilities for the banking industry with iMeta’s expertise in delivering solutions to the global financial services industry, we are confident that we can offer our customers a unique and disruptive KYC solution,” said Anurag Bhatia, Head of Europe, Mphasis.

Ben Marsh, CEO, iMeta commented: “Having worked for many years with financial organisations, we have seen similar problems they face around inadequate data management and processes. Through this experience we developed a proven software solution that cleverly automates data and regulatory compliance, cuts onboarding times, increases operational efficiency and enables organisations to deliver a rapid, first-class customer experience. We really look forward to collaborating with the Mphasis team to provide the European financial community with an innovative solution to accelerate their client onboarding.”

• 24.08.2020 -- 08:42 am

Aya Karlieva of Financial IT interviews Michel Roig of Fingerprints, a Swedish based biometrics company that develops and produces biometrics systems. Michel Roig is the SVP, Head of Busines Line Payments & Access at Fingerprints and here he talks about the missions, challenges and trends in the biometrics world amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Riverbed® revealed today that 90% of IT decision makers (ITDMs), and 86% of business decision makers (BDMs) in the financial sector see digital performance as vital to business growth. Furthermore, almost half (44%) of finance BDMs state that slow running and outdated technology is currently impacting their businesses’ ability to commercially develop. These are two of the findings from Riverbed’s latest report – ‘Rethink Possible: Visibility and Network Performance – The Pillars of Business Success’– which reveals a definite link between strong IT infrastructure and financial institutions’ success. 

The survey also found that 81% of IT and BDMs in the finance sector see visibility into network and application performance as key to both staff retention and business innovation. This is higher than the 73% of C-Suite executives that agree industry-wide; demonstrating the heightened importance of effective technology to business success in the financial sector.

Commenting on the report findings, Colette Kitterhing, Senior Director UK&I at Riverbed Technology at Riverbed Technology, said: “During these unprecedented times where maintaining business continuity is essential, it is more important than ever for financial organisations to have the strong IT infrastructure they need for effective business operations. In particular, the shift to a more distributed workforce as a result of COVID-19, has emphasised the importance of visibility across network and application performance to ensure that employees can remain productive whilst working from anywhere. Given the links between IT performance, staff productivity and competitive advantage, it is encouraging to see financial decision makers recognise the importance of visibility in optimising network infrastructure.”

Poor visibility into system performance blocks technological investment

Despite the importance of strong IT infrastructure in finance, full and consistent visibility into its performance is lacking. In particular, there is a disconnect between the visibility IT staff in financial institutions have and the visibility their business counterparts believe they have. In fact, 81% of BDMs believe IT has a comprehensive overview of applications, networks and end-users; yet one in three ITDMs report they do not have this. Given this, it is unsurprising that three-quarters of all finance groups surveyed (73% of ITDMs and 75% of BDMs) report frustrations with the performance of their networks. The inability to identify poor performance underplays the need to invest in new technology. This ultimately stands in the way of financial companies improving their productivity and boosting innovation to get ahead of the curve.

Evolving business needs call for updated IT infrastructure

The technology financial companies depend on must evolve in line with the constantly changing requirements of the sector. It is positive to see that financial ITDMs and BDMs recognise this necessity – 83% of BDMs and 77% of ITDMs argue that investing in next-generation technology is vital. With a further 78% of ITDMs recognising their IT infrastructure will need to actively evolve in the next five years to support new ways of doing business. Additionally, 97% of all respondents stated innovation and breaking boundaries is crucial to the success of financial businesses.

Kitterhing continued: “In any situation, but especially during times of disruption, poor network performance has a serious impact on productivity. This has a significant knock-on effect on the efficiency of business operations, potentially resulting in client loss and an inability to attain new contracts. But it can easily be prevented, if finance businesses are willing to rethink what’s possible through technology. 

“We, at Riverbed, want to help financial ITDMs and BDMs appreciate the importance of coming together to discuss where the visibility challenges in their businesses lie and assist them in identifying which solutions will help tackle these challenges. This will ensure employees can enjoy seamless digital experiences and lay the foundation for productivity and innovation. These benefits will ultimately be passed on to the customer, helping the finance sector thrive.” 

Rethink Possible: Evolving the Digital Experience

More than 80% of all finance leaders (83% BDMs and 84% of ITDMs) agree that businesses must rethink what’s possible to thrive in today’s challenging business climate. Technology is the enabler in this process. Riverbed’s portfolio of next-generation solutions is giving customers across the globe the visibility, acceleration, optimization and connectivity that maximizes performance and visibility for networks and applications.

To find out more, download the full ‘Rethink Possible: Visibility and Network Performance – The Pillars of Business Success’ report by visiting here, and join in the conversation here.

Today the British Business Bank has announced that it has approved BLG Development Finance, Conister, RM Funds and Western Union Business Solutions for accreditation under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS).

These new CBILS lenders will be able to provide finance to smaller businesses with turnover of up to £45m that are suffering disruption to their cashflow due to lost or deferred revenues during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Following their approval, the lender will put in place the operations required to start lending under the scheme and will confirm the dates from which they will be ready to start receiving applications from businesses across the UK.

Government published statistics show over 1.2 million businesses have to date[1] benefitted from loans and guarantees worth £52.65 billion through schemes delivered by the British Business Bank. This includes 1,174,854 Bounce Back Loans worth over £35 billion, 60,409 facilities worth almost £13.7 billion through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme and 516 facilities worth £3.5 billion through the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme.

The Bank continues to review applications from a wide range of lender types – from PRA-regulated banks, to platform lenders, debt funds, invoice finance lenders, asset finance lenders and responsible finance lenders.

Cappitech, a multi-award winning and leading provider of regulatory reporting, best execution analysis and business intelligence solutions for the financial services industry, announces the extension of the regulatory regimes it supports to include the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) OTC Derivatives transaction reporting through The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the premier post-trade infrastructure for the global financial services industry.

Investment firms and Significant Derivative Holders falling under scope of the MAS’ regulation can leverage Cappitech’s transaction reporting experience and technology to automatically transform their data and submit it to DTCC’s Global Trade Repository (GTR) service. By connecting to DTCC ‘s GTR service and other TRs/ARMS, Cappitech expands its existing compatibilities and provides a single interface for multiple global regimes including EMIR, SFTR, ASIC, US and Canadian reporting.

MAS reporting regulations cover OTC derivatives trades for interest rate, credit, FX, equity and commodity derivatives contracts. The regulation was expanded in October 2019 with additional company types falling under scope, with its final phase set for 2021. The 2021 date greatly increases the number of firms required to report under MAS rules.

Some of the challenges involved with reporting include matching of UTIs among counterparties, updating mark to market valuations for open positions, identifying terminated positions and filtering out non-scope trades such as ETDs.

Oliver Williams, DTCC’s Head of GTR in Asia said: “As the leading trade repository in the world, GTR is uniquely positioned to help clients achieve compliance with the MAS October 2021 deadline. We are pleased to be partnering with Cappitech to deliver increased value to our mutual clients as they prepare for the forthcoming MAS reporting requirements.”

Ronen Kertis, Cappitech CEO and founder comments: “For many of our clients, the opportunity to use a single platform for reporting under multiple regulatory regimes is crucial for efficiency, cost savings and business insights. Our platform offers the widest variety of services across regulations and to multiple trade repositories, with clients increasingly consolidating their reporting requirements via our platform. Adding MAS reporting to the DTCC, the only trade repository currently approved by MAS for OTC derivatives reporting, is an important step in ensuring a convenient and simple process for their Singapore trading business.”

Singapore has become an important hub for investment firms as a global centre for foreign exchange trading and due to its proximity to the rest of Asia. Cappitech’s MAS reporting service will ensure all in-scope firms, including investment firms, banks, asset managers and brokers, can access seamless, accurate daily compliance reporting and tracking, automate their transaction reporting to DTCC’s GTR service and ensure compliance with MAS regulations without additional effort or human errors.

Bankia, the fourth largest financial institution in Spain¹, has selected Avaloq’s on-premises solution to support the bank’s aspiration to further grow its wealth management business. Bankia, which selected Avaloq after a highly competitive tender process, is the wealthtech’s first Spanish banking client.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis worldwide, Bankia and Avaloq have risen to the challenge and are working together closely on a new project despite the restrictions in place with regard to physical interactions. This is proof of the high degree of digitalization within the financial industry, and it has become apparent that financial institutions that have invested in their digital systems in recent years are more agile during this crisis. Bankia was ahead of the curve early on with the very solid systems it put in place, and the bank has now decided to further invest in their investment management capabilities with the implementation of Avaloq’s on-premises solution. The fact that both companies were able to kick off a complex project like this during these challenging times demonstrates their resilience and stability. The combined teams are working remotely to bring this project to fruition, and this successful collaboration is the best evidence that projects and businesses can continue to prosper with the right digital tools and systems.

Bankia has gained very strong momentum in the competitive Spanish wealth management market. In its 2019 results², the bank stated that it had become the leader for new net mutual fund inflows (EUR1.54bn), with around a million unitholders, following Bankia’s ability to attract more than 100,000 new clients last year. In addition, more than half (53%) of its clients are classified as “digital”, with 36% of total sales in 2019 through digital channels, exceeding the target Bankia had set in its strategic plan.

Avaloq has been selected to help Bankia capitalize on its market proposition and accelerate its wealth ambitions across all client segments, including traditional private and retail banking clients – which Bankia anticipates can be better served with holistic data analytics and more personalized service capabilities. Bankia’s three-year strategic plan involves the bank increasing assets under management from mass affluent clients, complemented with new investment management and advisory products. Bankia is the fifth bank with operations in Spain to become an Avaloq client after Banco Alcalá, Banque Pictet & Cie, Banque privée Edmond de Rothschild and Julius Bär. Yet it is the first Spanish bank among the company’s client base.

Ignacio Ezquiaga Dominguez, Corporate Director of Asset Management and Private Banking at Bankia, said: “Our decision to appoint Avaloq to provide on-premises solutions is a big step forward in our digital-led growth journey and our aspiration to be the leading provider of wealth management services in Spain. The nature of financial services is changing, and changing fast, and it is apparent that only the most digitally robust institutions will be able to compete and grow in this new environment.”

Uwe Krakau, General Manager and Regional Head for EMEA at Avaloq, said: “We are absolutely delighted that Bankia, one of Spain’s leading financial institutions, has chosen Avaloq’s powerful solution to accelerate its wealth ambitions for all client segments. As a company, we believe in turning the democratization of wealth management into a practical reality by helping our clients deliver cost efficient and user-led experiences to all their customers, and we greatly look forward to leveraging our expertise to support Bankia’s growth ambitions in an increasingly competitive investment management market.”

¹ https://www.bankia.com/en/who-we-are/about-us/factsheet/

² https://www.bankia.com/en/communication/news/bankia-posts-attributable-profit-541-million-euros-2019-best-commercial-year-history.html

Populous World, the company behind the Populous Invoice Platform ‘PIP’, is officially announcing the release of the Populous Exchange ‘PopEx’. The sole purpose of PopEx is to further bring together the world of crypto and traditional finance under one roof, making it easier for users to access and trade various cryptocurrencies while also giving users direct access to traditional financial markets such as invoice finance via the PIP.

PopEx has been created with the same and enhanced security design which is currently used by the Populous Invoice Platform. The wallet functionality of the PopEx has now been integrated into the PIP making it a one stop shop for depositing and withdrawing your tokens for use on the PIP. This also includes major updates to the PIP platform, optimising and removing the use of smart-contract in favour of the exchange.

This means instantaneous deposits, withdrawals for investors without the need to wait for smart contract deposit addresses to be generated. For invoice sellers we’ve focused mainly on the speed of uploading invoices i.e. connecting various accounting services such as Xero and Sage to allow clients to seamlessly sync hundreds of invoices, and start auctions on the PIP platform.

Steve Nico Williams said: ‘Not only have we built a world class exchange that is integrated with our invoice platform, we have also obtained regulated approval to conduct business in the areas of exchange trading and custody of cryptocurrencies’.

In order to reward loyal holders of the Populous World’s PPT and PXT tokens, we have introduced a stake-based fee system; the more you hold PXT or PPT in your account, the lower your fee on subsequent trades. Furthermore PopEX has been designed and built by an experienced team of crypto and financial professionals who understand the importance of security and integrity when it comes to offering innovative world class products and services.

Visit the exchange via the following link PopEx.

SnapLogic, provider of the #1 Intelligent Integration Platform, today announced new enterprise automation capabilities that empower employees across the business to quickly and easily connect applications and data, streamline workflows and processes, and deliver exceptional experiences for customers, partners, and employees. For workers in marketing, finance, HR, IT, or any line of business, these new innovations from SnapLogic – including prebuilt, end-to-end process automations; ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) features and a quick-start solution for faster data warehousing; and an intuitive, visual interface powered by machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) – accelerate productivity, data-driven decision making, and business outcomes.

Leading organizations are embracing the cloud, data, and AI to rethink and rewire their businesses. Manual, repetitive tasks are being replaced by automated, digital ones. Data flows freely and business processes run without interruption. Skilled workers are freed up to focus on strategic projects that deliver real business value. As a result, these organizations can see around corners, flex and adapt as needed, and run faster in order to scale up and seize the moment, especially in times of rapid change.

“Automation makes possible what every organization wants: a single source of truth for data-rich decisions; agile innovation that delivers products and services to market faster; exceptional experiences for customers, partners, and employees; and amazing business results – higher revenue, profit, market share, and competitive standing,” said Gaurav Dhillon, CEO at SnapLogic. “Our new enterprise automation capabilities enable organizations to unlock the power of their applications and data to deliver on the promise of the agile, connected, data-driven enterprise.”

“Organizations are increasingly investing in intelligent automation initiatives to accelerate business transformation and ensure resilience in these times of rapid change,” said Neil Ward-Dutton, VP of AI and Intelligent Process Automation at IDC Europe. “Process and data automation can drive radical improvements in employee productivity, customer experience, business process efficiency, and operational intelligence.”

New Innovations Power Data-driven Teams

With SnapLogic’s self-service, AI-powered integration platform, IT teams as well as business users across every business function – from marketing to finance to HR – can use the low-code solution to connect apps and data and automate workflows and processes. New product innovations being rolled out today and through the end of the year automate mundane, rote activities while augmenting workers with digital intelligence and data-enriched processes that enable them to work smarter and at greater scale.

These new innovations include:

●       New Prebuilt Automation Journeys: New prebuilt, out-of-the-box automation journeys unify all the applications and data that make up a complete business process, such as hire-to-retire, quote-to-cash, procure-to-pay, and customer 360. The SnapLogic platform learns, understands, and connects to all of an organization’s underlying systems, streamlining flows and processes, automated in their construction, with rich AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities layered on top, leading to faster, data-enriched outcomes.

For example, SnapLogic, together with its partners, will deliver a prebuilt automation journey for the employee onboarding process. By bringing together all the applications, systems, and processes needed to on-board a new employee – everything from benefits enrollment to payroll processing to laptop provisioning to user ID and system access, and more – organizations can deliver a fast, seamless, productive experience for the new hire and HR teams alike.

Likewise, a prebuilt solution unifying applications and data across the customer journey will follow. For example, in the ‘Buy’ stage of the customer journey, key processes including sales quote approval, contract generation, invoice processing, and more can and should be automated. With integrated systems and automated processes driving a connected customer 360 strategy, marketing and sales teams can focus on delivering a superior customer experience.

●       New NLP-powered Flow Interface: A new, intuitive, visual flow interface guides non-technical business users through the integration and automation of end-to-end business processes. With these new flows, the platform captures the user's intent and leverages Iris AI’s capabilities to build automations rapidly in just a few hours, without the user needing to have any knowledge of application endpoints, schemas, or data transformations.

New NLP capabilities, expanded ML features, and automated endpoint data discovery will further simplify and accelerate business process automation. The new flow interface will enable data-savvy business users with no previous integration experience to easily automate business processes and quickly access data without having to rely on IT, while fully within parameters set by IT governance.

●       New ELT Snaps: Available immediately, new ELT Snaps accelerate the integration and movement of large volumes of complex data – whether in the cloud, on-premises, or in hybrid environments – into a cloud data warehouse and provide customers flexibility to leverage its compute power for data transformations. This increased flexibility allows customers to distribute data transformation workloads across the SnapLogic platform and cloud data warehouses for better resource utilization and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

●       New ‘Fast Loader’ Solution: Available immediately, this new quick-start solution from SnapLogic helps enterprises load data from multiple cloud and on-premises applications and data sources into their cloud data warehouse by up to 20 times faster. Whether moving batch, real-time, or event-based data, a new wizard-based interface and sophisticated parallel loading capabilities make data warehouse loading fast and easy. This solution is available to new customers for free, up to one million rows of data per month. To learn more about this new Fast Loader solution and to get started today, click here.

Customer Quotes

“With SnapLogic’s easy-to-use, low-code environment, we’re able to eliminate one-off integrations and speed up critical business processes, while driving operational efficiencies and considerable cost savings,” said Travis Pendleton, Data Warehouse and iPaaS Architect at enterprise identity governance provider SailPoint. “Case in point: we were able to automate service processes that eliminated 30% of our helpdesk workload, a significant result.”

"Delivering a great customer experience starts with engaged, productive, happy employees," said Harsh Desai, Enterprise Architect at Denny's, the leading full-service restaurant chain. "The SnapLogic integration platform enables us to build fast, secure integrations across dozens of HCM, ITSM, and other applications to automate all stages of the employee journey, from recruiting and onboarding, to growth and development, to promotions, through to separation from the company. By seamlessly connecting our HR systems and optimizing the end-to-end employee journey, we're setting the stage for our thousands of dedicated employees to deliver engaging customer experiences that drive loyalty and revenue."

“Our business requires the secure and fast movement of quality data across the firm,” said Chris Throop, Global Head of Data Science at international commodities company Castleton Commodities International LLC. “With SnapLogic, we’re able to quickly and easily move large volumes of complex data from numerous apps and sources securely into our cloud data warehouse, helping us analyze business-critical information in real-time so we can make data-driven decisions and take fast action.”