Eventus Systems, Inc., a multi-award winning global trade surveillance and risk management software platform provider, today announced that INTL FCStone Ltd., the London-based European subsidiary of Fortune 500 company INTL FCStone Inc., will deploy the firm’s Validus platform for market surveillance activities throughout the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. Building on last year’s adoption of the platform for futures market surveillance by the company’s U.S.-based FCM subsidiary, the new agreement substantially expands the relationship not only geographically but also across multiple product types and asset classes, including futures, equities and fixed income.
 
The newly expanded implementation will be active within weeks, also leveraging the cloud-based version of Validus on a T+1 basis, replacing the current outsourced system used by the London subsidiary.
 
Alexander Culley, Chief Compliance Officer, EMEAA  (Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia) for INTL FCStone Ltd., said: “Our colleagues in the U.S. have been extremely pleased with the ability to customize alerts as well as the performance and flexibility of the Validus platform – not only as it relates to U.S. trading venues but also in the European markets traded by U.S. clients. That was important for us, as the markets here that are a major portion of our business have their own unique character and culture. For instance, the fact that Validus works well with the unusual date structure of the London Metal Exchange (LME) was a big selling point for us. We only began discussions in the past seven to nine weeks but are already planning to go live in July so implementation has been very quick out of the blocks. Eventus has worked closely with us to reduce our costs and offer us much more flexibility while ensuring a more robust capability on each of the many markets in which we operate.”
 
Eventus CEO Travis Schwab said: “It’s particularly gratifying that INTL FCStone has chosen to expand significantly on our relationship after seeing the benefits of Validus first-hand over the course of the past year. This is a proven platform within the organization in reducing false positive alerts, enabling compliance staff to make better use of their time and achieving tangible cost efficiencies. We’ve worked diligently to ensure we cover the markets European firms need, as well as successfully address the unique regulatory requirements and exchange rules in the region.”
 
Eventus this year established a presence in Europe with staff in London to support clients locally and grow its business in the region. The firm is now actively surveilling activity for clients on more than 100 exchanges and trading venues around the world, regularly adding additional market centers upon client requests.
 
Validus is the first platform to apply machine learning in concert with a procedural approach to cut down on false positive alerts while ensuring firms have the necessary data to respond quickly and comprehensively to regulatory inquiries.

Cairo Amman Bank PLC. (CAB),is a public limited company located in Jordan, Palestine and Bahrain. Ever since its establishment in 1960, the Bank has been providing an inclusive range of services and successful banking solutions to fulfil the needs of its customers. CAB has deployed state-of-the-art networking technology from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. The solutions have improved performance, reliability and security of all digital services including internet and mobile banking and have resulted in three times lower TCO than the previous network switching infrastructure.

Cairo Amman Bank seeks to invest in technological advancements and innovative solutions, which makes CAB a leader in modern technology. CAB was the first bank in the world to introduce the Iris recognition in its ATM as a means of identification, allowing customers to access their bank accounts without the need of using cards and inserting their PINs.

With two data centres, and a vast network of 91 branches and over 190 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) located strategically across the country, secure high-speed connectivity is key to the Bank’s operations. All digital services, whether internal or external, depend on the underlying network.

In collaboration with NeoGenesis, CAB replaced the switches across its entire network with the latest Aruba Campus Switching Architecture including Aruba-8400 series Core Switches, Aruba-8320 series Server Access Switches, Aruba-8320 series Aggregation Switches and Aruba-2930 POE+ enabled Edge Switches. This resulted in an immediate increase in the speed of the uplinks from 1G to 40G, enabling the enhancement of the Bank’s digital services in the long run.

“All digital systems and services are dependent on the underlying network. Efficiency of the Bank relies highly on online and mobile banking as well as the vast availability of ATM machines in remote locations,” explained Mr. Ahmad Bilbeisi, CIO at Cairo Amman Bank. 

“An example of the key performance improvement is that the processing of over 400,000 salary transfer transactions, which previously took 8 hours is now completed successfully within only 30 minutes! The time required to back up the Bank’s CCTV data has been slashed by over 75%, while the previous issues relating to skips and jitter is eliminated,” Mr. Bilbeisi added.

As a financial institution, maintaining the highest level of security is essential to CAB’s operations. The Bank therefore utilizes the inbuilt MAC authentication feature on Aruba’s switches as a form of network access control which exclusively ensuresonly authenticated and authorized devices are able to access the network.

The implementation of Aruba-2930F Campus Edge Switches has empowered the Bank to take advantage of their support for PoE+ which has reduced cost and complexity of cabling for systems such as physical access control, Wireless Access Points (APs) and CCTV cameras. This has enabled the introduction of new conveniences such as an IP telephony system.

The Bank deployed Aruba Airwave Network Management which greatly assisted in the implementation and enabled central configuration and management as well as the scheduling of updates such that these could be carried out outside of business hours without any inconvenience to customers.

Analysing the capital and operational expenses for CAB’s network infrastructure results have shown over a five-year period, the total cost of ownership (TCO) for Aruba’s solution will prove three times less than what was previously deployed.

Impressed by benefits that exceed the initial objectives of the project, CAB may be expanding its relationship with Aruba and NeoGenesis. The Bank is keen to further enhance the security of its network with Aruba ClearPass which will give the IT department granular visibility, monitoring and control. The Bank is on track to deploy this solution within the next 12 months and also expects to deploy Aruba’s SD-WAN and SD-Branch, Wi-Fi and location-based marketing solutions in the same timeframe.

FSS Technologies (Financial Software and Systems), a global digital payment and financial technology company, announced today that Emrys La Carte, one of France’s leading consumer cooperatives has engaged with FSS to provide a hosted card issuance service. The Card Management Platform runs on FSSNeT, FSS’secure private cloud. The managed services model drives operational efficiencies, with dedicated cross-functional teams assuming responsibility for technical operations, platform enhancements, data security and regulatory compliance. 

Emrys is a cooperative neo-bank that unites its members around the innovative concept of solidarity consumption with fast growing membership across France and Belgium. FSS will help to enable the migration of their current paper-based offering to a modern card payment solution, with mobile app and online loyalty rewards. 

Europe plays a significant role in the development of digital payments and commerce the world over with a growing number of digitally empowered consumers but also a challenging regulatory environment. FSS’s complete business solution for Emrys tackles these challenges head-on with a complete business solution which includes payment acceptance for in-store and online transactions, settlement, risk management and reporting. 

Commenting on the occasion, Chief Revenue Officer-Global, K. Srinivasan, said: “We are proud to be the technology facilitator for Emrys and support its strategic goals to drive continued growth and innovation, particularly in prepaid. Our partnership marks the latest milestone in FSS strategy to continually innovate at speed and scale and to optimize revenue growth for all players in the acquiring and merchant space – not least here in Europe – an exciting region for worldwide payment leadership.”

Commenting on the partnership, Emrys founder and CEO, Wilfried Riviere said; “We chose FSS as our payment services partner after a rigorous selection process. Their world-class processing platform and ability to support product innovations will help us to bring a unique and differentiated service to consumers in France, Belgium and ultimately other European markets. Together we can increase the adoption of digital payments and effectively foster the creation of an inclusive-digital economy.”

The Emrys card program offers customers an instant virtual prepaid card linked to a mobile app to drive purchase frequency and deepen customer relationships. The card supports multiplewallets – an open-loop wallet as well as a closed-loop loyalty rewards wallet. Customers can use the open-loop wallet, resident on the card, to transact at merchant outlets affiliated to the Emrys network or at non-affiliated stores. For purchases made within the Emrys affiliate network, customers receive points that are credited to their loyalty wallet at the end of the day. Customers have the complete flexibility to use a combination of loyalty points and funds available in the general-purpose wallet at any Emrys merchant affiliate. 

The underlying FSS Card Management platform supports the complete gamut of capabilities to manage the lifecycle of the card including instant IBAN account issuance for funding wallet accounts, instant virtual card creation, advanced rule-based framework for defining membership tiers and eligibility criterion as well as integration with loyalty management systems. The system offers Emrys complete flexibility to load, delete and amend applications on the card, enabling quick roll-out of customer-centric card programs in response to evolving purchase patterns. 

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing, today announced that Kuwait’s Warba Bank has digitally transformed its financial services and mobile banking using the power of Nutanix’s hyper-converged infrastructure platform.

Warba Bank was established in 2010 and currently runs 14 branches nationwide, with several further launches already in the pipeline. To keep pace with the changing demands of retail, private and corporate customers, and to align with its plans of continued growth, the bank began an ambitious digital transformation program that targeted mobile applications and the governance of financial services.

“Mobile applications make our customers’ journeys so much easier,” said Wael Shawareb, Senior Director of Cyber Security and IT Governance, Warba Bank. “But once you get into digital transformation in our sector, you have to consider the governance of financial services, which is very strict when it comes to data protection and privacy concerns. You have to make sure you implement your security levels in accordance with meticulous standards.”

In selecting Nutanix as a partner for digitization, Shawareb and his team were drawn to Nutanix’s ability to integrate with Warba Bank’s legacy hypervisor.

He said: “Their understanding of the hypervisor running underneath showed that Nutanix were doing impeccable research into the back-to-back vendors, even for the non-related tickets relating to operating system issues. That, more than anything, showed us how solid they were. They were an ideal partner for us.”

Warba Bank’s journey to hyperconverged architecture began with software-defined storage. The organization then migrated to full IT automation lifecycle management. By digitizing its online banking services through Nutanix’s platforms, Warba Bank is now able to enhance the customer experience, by bringing newfound stability and simplicity to backend infrastructure, and delivering rich digital interfaces to its clients at the front end.

“The first thing we noticed after the implementation of Nutanix’s solution was the speed,” said Shawareb. “Once you realize that, ‘Oh, my goodness; I just created that server with all of that storage, and provisioned it faster than I have ever been able to do before,’ that is the moment where you understand just what profound change you have brought to your organization by going with Nutanix. Their GUI, from the moment you log in, gives you the impression that you are dealing with the simplest ever infrastructure. Deployment was a dramatic mind shift for us.”

Nutanix also supported Warba’s stakeholders in their migration of the company’s critical mobile banking application. The core services of Warba’s mobile banking services run on top of Nutanix. A series of legacy vendors had to be integrated to carry Warba’s digital transformation ambitions forward. By simplifying management and maintenance, and by enhancing provisioning speeds, Warba Bank discovered that its IT function was freed up to innovate. The team can now concentrate on the enhancement of the customer experience.

“Today, banking customers of all types expect to have relationships with their assets and investments like they are in the palm of their hand,” Shawareb said. “That close, 24-7 relationship calls for a robust mobile banking offering with impenetrable security, high availability and low latency. We also need to be able to roll out enhancements to that customer experience in real time, with no disruption to service. Nutanix understood all of that. And for that reason, and many others, we now see them as a strategic technology partner for Warba Bank.”

“The regional FSI sector is one of the most fiercely competitive industries in operation today, with customers that have some of the highest expectations imaginable,” said Aaron White, Regional Sales Director, Middle East at Nutanix. “The mobile computing and governance issues faced by Warba Bank are exactly the kinds of complexities that can be smoothed over by Nutanix technology that brings consumer-grade simplicity into enterprise data centres. We have enabled the Bank to leverage agile, efficient, multicloud-capable IT to become a truly digital enterprise.”

Wolters Kluwer is continuing to respond to the U.S. CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) by developing much needed financial technology to help local lenders. With the program now entering the loan forgiveness phase, Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions has launched its TSoftPlus™ PPP Forgiveness Module to help local lenders and their small business client recipients of PPP funding facilitate both online and in-person loan forgiveness applications. “The comprehensive, end-to-end solution facilitates and automates the application process for the forgiveness of loans to small businesses that received PPP emergency funding, providing seamless technology benefits to local lenders and PPP borrowers,” a spokesman said.

The TSoftPlus PPP Forgiveness Module builds on the success of Wolters Kluwer’s widely used solution, Paycheck Protection Program Supported by TSoftPlus™, which, since early April, has helped local lenders assist small businesses nationwide with payroll funding. The TSoftPlus technology has interfaced seamlessly with the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) E-TRAN platform, helping those businesses retain approximately one million U.S. jobs and thereby providing critical economic relief during the COVID-19 crisis.

“This phase is about having a well-documented process in place to treat all PPP borrowers in a fair manner and this module allows borrowers to start the forgiveness application using an intuitive customer journey experience. Notably, lenders need not have used the TSoftPlus technology during the loan’s origination phase to take advantage of the module’s efficient data import option,” said Steve Meirink, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions. “There is also the added benefit that enables lenders to request additional documents after the initial forgiveness application questionnaire is submitted. The module provides tremendous flexibility and clarity for lenders as they work through the loan forgiveness process with their borrowers.” 

“We’re a small bank and hadn’t processed an SBA small business loan in probably 20 years,” said Marji Wolfe, Loan Officer with Glasford State Bank in Glasford, Illinois. The bank helped several local businesses obtain PPP funding including two restaurants, a print supply firm, a construction company, area farmers, realtors and churches. “One customer said they didn’t think they’d stay in business without this lifeline. Wolters Kluwer’s technology was easy to navigate and allowed us to process 17 PPP loan applications. We are now looking forward to using the TSoftPlus software again for the loan forgiveness stage.”

The product’s online functionality expedites the loan forgiveness process for remote, electronic application processing. It features an online form pre-populated with required, existing PPP borrower loan information from the loan approval phase or, for loans outside of TSoftPlus, with data from other systems uploaded through Wolters Kluwer’s application programming interfaces. This approach speeds and automates delivery of forgiveness documentation, thereby enhancing overall application accuracy and improved document management, while reducing the occurrence of incomplete applications. Its E-Sign functionality enables electronic signatures on forgiveness applications, helping promote a convenient distance banking option for borrowers and lenders alike.

Lenders can also brand the forgiveness module with their organization’s name and, as Glasford’s Wolfe adds, the ease of successfully processing PPP loans with this technology can provide another customer benefit.  “Interacting with many of our existing customers has allowed us to work with them to ascertain what other banking products may be beneficial for them. The PPP loans have helped our close-knit community in a time of difficulty and, during this process, we have worked with a number of these PPP customers to identify other needs that we can support them with moving forward. All in all, this process has provided a real positive for the community.”

Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions is a provider of risk management and regulatory compliance solutions and services to U.S. banks and credit unions, insurers and securities firms. The business, which sits within Wolters Kluwer’s Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) division, helps these financial institutions efficiently manage compliance obligations tied to loan and deposit origination transactions and workflows, manage risk and other regulatory compliance obligations.

Earlier this year we reported how the company has been expanding its Minnesotan HQ for its Compliance Solutions business and other businesses that sit within its GRC Division, growing staff numbers by 25% compared with 2017. Wolters Kluwer now has 717 staff working in Minnesota, nearly a 25 percent increase from 575 full time employees in 2017, a figure confirmed by the GRC Division’s London-based Global Director of Corporate Communications.

Compliance Solutions is headed by Minneapolis-based Meirink who is responsible for overseeing the P&L, operations, and growth strategy for the business unit. Prior to joining Wolters Kluwer, Meirink was senior vice president and general manager for Assurant Mortgage Solutions, where he was responsible for driving the growth of new solutions and expanding Assurant’s business into emerging market areas.

He also held several senior level positions within Equifax, including vice president and general manager of the company’s United States Consumer Information Services – Mortgage Growth Initiatives portfolio. Prior to Equifax, Meirink held several leadership positions throughout the financial services industry including community banking, mortgage lending, insurance, and consumer credit

The TSoftPlus PPP Forgiveness Module is one of several expert solutions launched by Wolters Kluwer’s GRC division in response to the COVID-19 crisis, including the Business Entity Search for CARES Act solution, offered by Wolters Kluwer’s Lien Solutions business, which conducts bulk/batch corporate identity searches to verify the business status of potential borrowers. COVID-19 Noteworthy Developments Bulletins, meanwhile, aggregates COVID-19 related global regulatory changes, orders, notices and other informational updates for the financial services industry. The division has also launched a COVID-19 resource center to provide businesses and law firms with international, federal and state legislative updates.

FIME has released a new version of its automated open banking API test solution, TrustAPI+, including support for The Berlin Group, one of the largest open-access API standards. Banks and third-party providers (TPPs) can now assess compliance against two major Access to Account interfaces, the NextGenPSD2 and STET APIs. This reduces the cost and time required to verify APIs against PSD2-compliant standards and fast-tracks the launch of open banking use cases.

The test suites for The Berlin Group and STET open-access APIs are powered by the FIME Test Factory enabling automation, digitalization and customization of the open API testing process.

“Open banking API standards are streamlining the path PSD2 to compliance, but developing and validating APIs can be costly and time consuming,” comments Raphaël Guilley, VP Solutions at FIME. “TrustAPI+ now incorporates test plans for both The Berlin Group and STET. No more scripting test plans. No need to build test environments. Users simply run automated tests in our secure online tool and get the results in minutes. This innovation enables banks and TPPs to deliver new open-access services quickly and cost-effectively - without compromising on quality.”

“Flexible testing solutions are essential to ensure we meet all implementation, regulatory and market needs,” comments Wijnand Machielse, European market director at NISP. “FIME is a long-time supporter of payments standardization efforts, and has already demonstrated its API testing expertise on a number of open-banking projects. Its insights will therefore be invaluable to our NextGenPSD2 efforts.”

FIME’s experts are supporting several open banking standardization initiatives. FIME is facilitating the testing of STET’s open-access API standard and participating in The Berlin Group’s NextGenPSD2 task force. It’s also working with banks and TPPs across the world to define, design, deliver and validate their open API strategy. Find out more about how we can support your projects here.

The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), has opened an office in North America to extend its global reach. Established by the Financial Stability Board in 2014 and headquartered in Switzerland, GLEIF supports the implementation and use of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) to drive transparency within global financial markets. The new office is located in New Jersey, in close proximity to America’s financial capital, and supports GLEIF’s strategy to drive broad voluntary adoption of the LEI worldwide by banks and other financial institutions.

The New Jersey office, registered as GLEIF Americas, a New Jersey Nonprofit Corporation, is led by Karla McKenna, Managing Director. The team includes a newly appointed Business Development Manager, Peter Warms, who joins the organization formerly from Bloomberg. The focus of the North America team is twofold: to further the organization’s ‘on-the-ground’ engagement and collaboration with U.S. financial institutions to educate on the value LEIs deliver beyond regulated use in capital markets; and to champion and support pilot programs for financial institutions wishing to use the LEI more broadly across all financial services business lines, such as trade financing, corporate banking and payments. 

GLEIF has identified that the banking industry in particular can benefit immediately from scaling adoption of the LEI, for counterparty identification and verification purposes. Research published by GLEIF and McKinsey last year revealed that the wide adoption of LEIs could save the global banking community an estimated U.S.$2-4 billion annually in client onboarding efficiencies alone. The benefits are greater when extrapolated across further potential customer management lifecycle use cases including know-your-customer, transacting and billing, compliance reporting and risk monitoring. In light of this, GLEIF’s immediate priority is to support voluntary adoption of the LEI across all banking business activities so that these substantial efficiencies can be fully realized.

Stephan Wolf, GLEIF CEO, comments: “GLEIF is committed to working with the global banking community to ensure that the opportunities for efficiencies afforded by wider use of the LEI can be harnessed in the near to mid-term. The sector is on the edge of a transformation; banks and financial institutions already familiar with mandated LEI usage in capital markets now recognize the advantages of extending its use beyond regulatory reporting. There is a ground swell of interest and industry support in this area, fueled by compelling evidence that banks utilizing the LEI more widely will see huge benefits, such as significantly reduced costs, increased customer satisfaction, faster onboarding and regulatory compliance. GLEIF’s new U.S. office brings us closer to our stakeholders in this important market at this critical time. LEI issuance in the U.S. is the highest across all countries globally, and we recognize the importance of accessible and engaged GLEIF resources on the ground to help drive LEI issuance beyond regulation. This is especially important as we seek financial institutions globally to partner with us on pilot programs, to trial wider LEI adoption and to work with us in exploring how financial services firms can become active participants in LEI management. Our move into North America sends a clear message to our banking industry stakeholders in the region: GLEIF is here to help the sector benefit from broader LEI integration across business banking lines. We are here to assist you.”

Further to the publication of its joint report with McKinsey in October 2019, GLEIF has been evaluating the feasibility of changes proposed by the report, including an evolution of the Global LEI System. GLEIF will announce next steps later in 2020. To ensure that the future evolution of GLEIS aligns with the financial sector’s requirements, financial institutions worldwide are strongly encouraged to join the GLEIF Globally Important Financial Institutions (GIFI) Relationship Group.

EQ (Equiniti), an international technology-led services and payments specialist, is delighted to announce that it has partnered with Encompass to further bolster its KYC proposition.

EQ will work with Encompass to automate and use artificial intelligence to analyse data that helps build a dynamic picture of a company or individual in just minutes, enhancing EQ’s technological capabilities alongside their fully managed service. 

EQ provides a highly personalised, end-to-end service for customers’ KYC challenges, from customer onboarding and complex due diligence investigations through to large scale remediation projects. The addition of greater automation and data analysis further streamlines the KYC process for EQ’s customers, saving them time and money.

The partnership will also future proof EQ’s access to third party data sources through universal connectivity and allow for consistent compliance across jurisdictions.

Together, EQ and Encompass solve many of the critical challenges of KYC corporate onboarding, combining automated data and document discovery, workflow, and client outreach. Combined with EQ’s leading managed KYC service, this proposition revolutionises very complex, costly processes.

Chris Adams, Head of Product at EQ Digital commented: “We are delighted to announce this partnership with Encompass, who have proven success in delivering greater automation and access to data to their partners within the KYC sector. We consider ourselves experts in handling KYC cases that can’t be automated, in cases of complex ownership structures and screening hits for example. This partnership will help us in our wider market offering in delivering a truly comprehensive, efficient KYC product for our customers.” 

Nick Ford, VP, Distribution and Alliances at Encompass, commented: “At Encompass, we have developed strong partnerships with a number of industry-leading providers, and we are delighted to now count EQ as a valued partner. Together, EQ and Encompass solve many of the critical challenges of KYC corporate onboarding. Combining automated data and document discovery, workflow, and client outreach. Combined with EQ’s leading managed KYC service, this proposition evolutionizes very complex, costly processes.”