A new interview series featuring some of Britain’s leading business, political, and sporting names will launch this week – and anyone can join. The series, which has been created by NatWest, will be available to both customers and non-customers alike and will give the UK’s 4 million SMEs the opportunity to hear directly from some of the most influential voices in the industry.

NatWest’s ‘In Conversation With’ series will feature a new interviewee each episode, who will share their views and advice following a turbulent six months for business.

The first instalment launches today on YouTube with high street retail entrepreneur Jo Malone CBE taking the hot seat to discuss resilience, leadership, and how to remain innovative and competitive while working remotely from your team.

Future guests in the series will include Labour’s former shadow chancellor Ed Balls; Karen Blackett, WPP UK Country Manager and CEO of GroupM, and James Averdieck, founder of dessert success story Gü. Each has been invited to take part and share their personal view of lockdown and what they’ve learned, while sharing anecdotes and advice with the UK’s SMEs.

Paul Thwaite, CEO Commercial Banking, NatWest Group said:

“Throughout the Coronavirus crisis, NatWest has worked hard to anticipate and respond to the needs of small businesses, whether through our support via government lending schemes, or increasing the number of our people ready to support our customers.

As we move out of the initial crisis into recovery, we know businesses are looking for advice on what to do next, which is why we’ve launched our new ‘In Conversation With’ series. We hope that SMEs and entrepreneurs across the country will take inspiration from the experts that we’ve lined up, and alongside our full range of support, can go on to survive, thrive and prosper in the wake of the unique challenges this year has presented.”

NatWest’s ‘In Conversation With’ begins 28 July at NatWest.com , and on the NatWest YouTube channel, and a new episode will be published every fortnight until mid September.

FeedStock, the AI-driven data analytics platform for smarter decisions, today announces it has completed Red Hat Container certification for its FeedStock Connector and has been published in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog, to enable frictionless deployment of FeedStock’s systems to optimise costs and drive revenue in every type of client environment. 

This certification enables FeedStock to use Red Hat’s container registry and deploy Red Hat certified containers in FeedStock’s client environments, enabling frictionless deployment at scale of its automated data management solutions. By accessing FeedStock’s data management platform, enterprises gain instant insights from within their unstructured communications data. FeedStock’s AI and NLP technologies drive real time strategic decisions, reveal cost-control opportunities and enable streamlined workflows and improved productivity across the entire front-office. 

Container technologies are among the most cutting-edge techniques available in software development today. They are a community-driven, open source, open standards-based technology. The security and privacy of FeedStock’s software applications is the company’s highest priority and the Red Hat certification further validates that their open source container technology can meet the stringent requirements of the financial services industry. 

Containerisation techniques also enable FeedStock to deliver customisable and bespoke solutions across all types of IT environments, from on-premise, through to hybrid, cloud and multi-cloud environments. 

“We are pleased that FeedStock has completed Red Hat Container certification for FeedStock Connector, providing greater choice of data management solutions to our customers in regulated industries.  As a Red Hat software partner, FeedStock is able to provide their certified container solutions on Red Hat’s portfolio of hybrid cloud technologies to tackle a variety of use cases across enterprise IT environments,” said Mike Werner, senior director, Global Technology Partners, Red Hat. 

Marco Paolini, CTO of FeedStock, continues: “The collaboration with Red Hat has been progressive and positive from the outset. Red Hat helps drive the interaction of large enterprises with small, agile technology providers such as FeedStock, to enable effective deployments and deliver cost optimisation and business-level benefits to our clients within large, highly regulated environments.” 

Venio, the mobile application providing "nano-credit" facilities to consumers in emerging markets accessed via a smartphone, has begun offering easy-to-access credit facilities to unbanked consumers in its maiden emerging market, the Philippines.

Venio’s aim is to lift a generation of unbanked people into the financial system, help them to achieve financial discipline and a credit footprint in order to open up fair and equal access to useful financial services that wouldn’t otherwise be available to them. The need for these services has become more acute as COVID-19 has caused unprecedented impacts, increasing hardships and difficulties in accessing basic necessities.

Venio is the first “nano credit” service available on smartphones for emerging markets and in the Philippines market the service is taking the lead in meeting the strong demand for credit products and services among communities who have historically been underserved by traditional financial services. Within the first week of operations the Venio App saw 10,000 downloads. The initial rollout for the fast-growing app comes ahead of wider regional expansion plans for high growth emerging markets in Asia and Latin America.

According to the latest report from the World Bank Group, as many as 1.7bn adults are unbanked globally, a figure approaching one fourth of the global population, the majority of these cases are in emerging markets. In the Philippines alone 54m adults are unbanked which is over 81% of consumers in the country. The unbanked do not have access to essential financial products and services such as bank accounts to meet their needs. Moreover, they are unable to participate in the cashless economy and have no access to credit or financial support.

Venio represents a viable solution to address this global challenge. Receiving approval for Venio’s product does not require collateral and offers Venio users immediate access to small or “nano” loans starting at US$1 – US$5.00. In the Philippines one dollar can cover the cost of two kilos of rice, basic medicine and transportation to and from work for a week.

Venio’s easily accessible financing and redemption is available via an extensive network of local and national retailers and service providers operating across retail, grocery, healthcare, transportation, leisure, and entertainment. The Venio network includes several global and multiple local brands as well as thousands of the Philippines’ Sari-Sari convenience stores that have partnered with Venio to offer credit facilities to customers.

The app reimagines financial services for the unbanked and those outside of the traditional financial system by providing them with a credit history and a pathway to financial inclusion and support services such as credit. In this way Venio creates a positive social impact making a real difference in people’s everyday lives. Nano Credit can help users meet needs for emergency cash flow shortages, food, transportation, communication and home expenses.

The App’s underlying proprietary technology provides ease of use and efficiency in loan processing for consumers and merchants alike. The backend technology is sophisticated, scalable and proprietary.

Warren Platt, Founder & CEO at Venio commented: “Venio aims to revolutionize personal finance in emerging markets through a community grassroots approach facilitated by leading tech. The global payments industry is advancing at a fast pace, however, access to loans and other services has not been universal despite the strong demand. Venio is addressing this problem head-on and is bringing financial services to the unbanked in emerging markets where small loans are essential products for driving financial inclusion, which is critical for the vibrant growing economy of the Philippines and wider global markets. The Venio App has been designed to encourage responsible lending and borrowing and will allow customers to build their own credit history opening a gateway of financial services. In the post-Covid era financial inclusion must be ensured for the economic development of communities impacted by the pandemic.”

Diego Jose Ramos, Founding Director of the Philippine Association for Digital Commerce and Decentralized Industries and a Board Trustee of the Fintech Philippines Association said: “The health crisis is likely to exacerbate inequality as those already financially excluded have been disproportionately impacted. Fintechs such as Venio have a clear role to play in delivering financial inclusion and empowering more people economically, the journey begins with access to services and the start of a credit history, which in turn can open limitless possibilities for growth not just for individuals with access to financial services but the economies they participate in.”

IQPC Ltd, the organiser of FinTech Connect which is the UK’s largest financial technology trade show with over 6,000 attendees in 2019, has announced that the 2020 edition will take place as an online event.

While lockdown is easing in many European countries, FinTech Connect attracts an international audience and, based on close consultation with past attendees, sponsors, partners and its advisory board, IQPC has elected to shift the event to an online platform. The health and comfort of everyone involved in the event must be of paramount concern.

“After canvassing opinion from industry stakeholders, we feel that there remains too much uncertainty around business travel currently for us to plan for a physical event this year,” said Steve Clarke, Managing Director of FinTech Connect. “Our actions have to be governed by our partners and while so many of our exhibitors, speakers and attendees have measures in place which limit their ability to attend or travel to events, reverting to digital delivery feels like the considerate and responsible thing to do.”

As a result of the change to digital delivery, this year FinTech Connect will be extended to run across a full week, from November 30^th to December 4^th. The event will still include all of the features that attendees are familiar with; multiple conference tracks covering Digital Transformation, Paytech, Regtech, Blockchain and Start-Up Growth, as well as a large-scale virtual exhibition, workshops and tech demos.

“Virtual event environments are really sophisticated these days, and while we appreciate it’s not a like-for-like substitute for a physical event, advanced technology will enable us to deliver excellent value for attendees and exhibitors through enhanced networking, demos, presentations, and discussion groups,” added Clarke.

The event, which featured 185 exhibiting fintechs in December 2019, is entering its 6^th edition since launching in December 2015.

Anyone interested in speaking or sponsorship opportunities should enquire via email at info@fintechconnect.com. 

Fintech payment service provider Paynetics AD, digital banking platforms provider phyre and Bulgarian telecoms provider VIVACOM have today launched the Mastercard Digital First card. It is the first payment card of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and one of the first Digital First cards in Europe. VIVACOM is the first telecom which has launched a Digital First card in the CEE region.

The service provides access to a virtual payment card in the digital Pay by VIVACOM wallet, as well as a physical card with all the functionalities of a contactless card but with greater security, better control and a clean minimalist design. 

For the convenience and security of users, only the name of the cardholder is written on the physical card and no sensitive information is included. The unique 16-digit number (PAN) and the CVC code for online card payments are stored in the digital wallet only, and the cardholder alone has access to it by using their biometric data or passcode. This prevents the possibility of misuse - in the instance of loss or theft, the card cannot be used at an ATM or for online purchases, and the user can "lock" it with one click in the application. 

This new product meets the changing needs of the modern consumer: Mastercard data  confirms that with the growing digitalisation of the banking industry, people are looking for security now more than ever, citing it as one of the most important criteria for using digital banking services (69%). At the same time, 44% of consumers note the convenience and speed as a major factor in the use of these services. Nearly two-thirds (68%) believe that the demand for mobile financial solutions will increase in the future, as they make operations easy and convenient.

Antonina Martinova, CEO, Paynetics, commented: "We're proud to have worked on this innovative new Digital First card with phyre, Mastercard and VIVACOM, which directly responds to consumer's demands for safer and more convenient payment methods. Once again, we've proven that with a lot of hard work and collaboration you can be a leader in the payments industry at both a European and world level, even if you are from a small country and a less developed market."

"This product is a further testament to the fact that Bulgaria is fast becoming one of the most established fintech hubs in Europe,” said Ivo Gueorguiev, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Paynetics. “We're excited to bring such an innovative payment solution to market and to take this technology to the rest of the region, as we continue our mission to streamline payments processes for businesses and empower them as they digitally transform." 

Powered by Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (GHDDI) launched a Free AI Virtual Screening Service for COVID-19 in order to facilitate COVID-19 drug discovery effort globally. The free and web-based research engine provides researchers with an AI powered tool for virtual screening computation, which is powerful enough to support the prediction of SARS-CoV2 relevant target binding the phenotypic properties of any query compound with just one click. As a result of Alibaba Cloud’s high-performance computing (HPC) resources and GHDDI’s artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, the computation process is accelerated exponentially. 

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has put GHDDI in the forefront of drug repurposing research to tackle the new coronavirus. Since the launch of the GHDDI COVID-19 information sharing portal hosted on Alibaba Cloud in January 2020, GHDDI has received 130 research applications worldwide, and partnered with 10 research institutions to investigate 9,255 antiviral substances, 256 anti-corona active small molecules and biological agents, and 18 high potential drug candidates recommended by AI through data mining from historical records.

Web lab experiments were soon followed using AI shortlisted high potential compounds, and researchers constantly discovered compounds with significant inhibitory effects on the new coronavirus in vitro. The portal also provides real-time statistical analysis of COVID-19 global research progress, with daily automatic updates, powered by a natural language processing AI engine. This AI engine can generate a report that covers over 1,000 current worldwide clinical trials of 840 small molecule drugs, 306 biologics and 84 vaccines (as of 7/22/2020) against COVID-19 and hundreds of anti-SARS-CoV2 active compounds from in vitro experiments by research groups from all over the world.

“The high-performance computing power provided by Alibaba Cloud has significantly enhanced our drug discovery process by speeding up molecular docking and deep leaning computations, which may shorten the time needed to find a cure,” said Dr. Lurong Pan, Senior Investigator, AI platform lead of GHDDI. “As we are racing against time to tackle one of the worst public health crises in human history, leveraging AI and cloud computing in the research process give us a better chance to save more lives.” 

Supercomputers have tens of thousands of processors that work together to perform large scale computations, which normally would take decades if done manually. Powered by the 7th Generation of Elastic Compute Service (ECS), Alibaba Cloud’s HPC is highly scalable and elastic, and can be deployed over the cloud quickly without any infrastructure investment.

“We believe technology and research institutions should work hand in hand in order to tackle the pandemic,” said Dr He Wanqing, Director of Alibaba Cloud HPC, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “Global research institutions such as GHDDI are crucial to finding long-term solutions in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, and Alibaba Cloud is committed to offering our leading technology such as HPC resources free of charge to support the good cause.”

As businesses worldwide increase their use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the issue of diversity in analytics has become more important. In a new video, global analytics software firm FICO highlighted the need for greater diversity in analytics development teams to fight bias. This video, produced by the Women@FICO team for International Women’s Day 2020, has just received a bronze award at the 2020 Bulldog PR Awards.
 

For more information, view the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAOrxQI9s_4.
 

“Our industry cannot afford to let any kind of bias weaken our performance or place obstacles in the paths of talented people,” explained Will Lansing, FICO CEO. “Our Women@FICO program helps us build and foster a culture where inclusion and belonging are the norm and where equal opportunities are provided to everyone. I congratulate the Women@FICO team for producing such an engaging and powerful video and thank everyone involved in its creation and production.”
 

“The inclusion and visibility of women in the STEM fields is not as strong as it should be,” said Sally Taylor, vice president and general manager, B2B Scores, FICO, one of the women featured in the video. “We work hard to promote women in analytics and it is part of FICO’s mission to champion diversity and promote women across the world. We believe that to create analytics without bias, it is essential to nurture diverse thinking – which takes both men and women, from a variety of backgrounds.”
 

“Diversity isn’t exclusively gender diversity – it’s about bringing a wide variety of perspectives to any issue,” said Hannah Scott, HR director at FICO, who managed the project with the Women@FICO EMEA steering Committee.  “We filmed the video across locations in the US, the UK, Brazil, Germany, South Africa and India to showcase the truly global approach we take to solving tough business problems with analytics. This video sends a strong message about the importance of gender diversity in our industry, and we hope that data scientists and others who see it will be inspired to come and work at FICO. We received such a positive response to this video, both from colleagues and from people who saw it online.”
 

The Diversity in Analytics video FICO produced for International Women’s Day 2020 was also a finalist in the The Drum Chip Shop Awards; The Drum is a leading marketing publication in the UK. The video is also a finalist for Small Idea, Big Impact in the 2020 Gartner Communications Awards, which will be announced later in the summer.

Kroll, a division of Duff & Phelps, a global leader in risk mitigation, investigations, compliance, cyber resilience, security and incident response solutions, today announced that it now offers credit monitoring services as part of its suite of identity and fraud protection solutions available to UK companies responding to a data breach. GDPR requires timely notification and breached companies are increasingly providing a credit and identity monitoring package to help impacted consumers monitor for identity fraud.

Kroll’s continuous credit monitoring service alerts members when activity is detected on their credit profile. If a member determines the activity is fraudulent, Kroll’s fraud investigators offer guidance to help prevent further fraudulent activity and provide restoration assistance if identity fraud is confirmed.

"With the proliferation of multi-jurisdictional data breaches and the implementation of GDPR, many organisations face the regulatory challenge of staying compliant with multiple privacy laws. “Providing the same level of identity support, regardless of the home countries of the affected individuals, helps ensure that everyone receives meaningful tools to help safeguard or restore their identity,” said Brian Lapidus, Managing Director and Global Leader of Kroll’s Identity Theft and Breach Notification practice. “By including credit monitoring alongside identity monitoring, consultation and assisted restoration services, any company who collects and stores data can now offer their UK consumers the same benefits that are commonly available in other jurisdictions.”

The UK led Europe in both breach complaints and notification events between May 2018 and March 2019. At the same time, identity fraud saw an 8% increase, forcing companies to confront the long-term costs of a data breach, including reputational damage and customer turnover. A comprehensive response includes providing those affected with peace of mind by giving them a solution and support to help resolve any issues surrounding potential fraud.

“The need for credit monitoring in the UK is becoming increasingly essential as more and more organisations are falling prey to data losses from ransomware, phishing scams and hacking incidents,” added Andrew Beckett, Managing Director and EMEA Cyber Risk leader. “With identity fraud increasing, we’re seeing an interest from organisations who want to provide the greatest protection for their customers who have entrusted them with their personal data,” says Beckett. “Credit and identity monitoring can’t prevent identity fraud, but when combined with Kroll’s consultation and restoration services, you know you’re implementing a breach response plan that leaves those impacted with the best defense available.”

Kroll continues to expand its data breach notification services globally. The company now offers full services in the U.S., Canada and the UK, with plans to further extend its capabilities in the EMEA and APAC regions.

In the latest episode of the RegTech 20:20 podcast from Encompass, the Know Your Customer (KYC) RegTech software provider, guest speaker Francesca Hopwood Road, Head of RegTech and Advanced Analytics at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), is interviewed about how the regulator is working with those within the industry. 

This episode also focuses on the link between RegTech and SupTech [Supervisory Technology], with Francesca providing expert insight into how SupTech has evolved.

During the discussion, she makes reference to TechSprint, events that bring people together to focus on problem statements like financial crime and regulation. Reflecting on their purpose and form, she states that “earlier this year, we published a report evaluating the lessons we have learned from hosting numerous TechSprints, which has been a growing way of bringing experts together to crack pain points that we are all experiencing”. 

Francesca breaks down the data strategy and highlights the work of the FCA and how it strives to be data enabled and data led. She notes that “there is a lot of work that continues around really understanding what activity is alive within the wider RegTech ecosystem”, which allows the FCA to discover new areas of work.

In this podcast, Francesca acknowledges that “in the early days, the capabilities and techniques that the FCA wanted to test, like network analytics, were observed in the RegTech portfolio, so, since that time, the work programme around  SupTech has really developed”. This has helped them harness their ability regarding efficiency and automation as an organisation. 

In addition, she goes on to speak about the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects  it is having across the wider community and market. The FCA conducted research, reaching out to networks to understand the emerging insights and Francesca continued “we wanted to know what the negative and positive impact was on the RegTech ecosystem, working out what our role as a regulator might be”. Touching on the long-term impact, she told how the crisis could provide an opportunity for firms in how they navigate their way through it in a way that puts technology at the forefront. .

When asked about the future of the RegTech sector, Francesca notes that “internationally, there is a huge opportunity” and hopes that the market seizes these opportunities.

If you would like to listen to this month’s episode of RegTech 20:20 in full, visit https://www.encompasscorporation.com/regtech2020-podcast/  You can also find this episode, and the rest of the series, on all major platforms such as Apple, Spotify and Google.