Caixa Geral de Depósitos, the largest commercial bank in Portugal, has chosen Finastra to power its end-to-end treasury and capital markets business. It has selected Fusion Kondor, Fusion Risk and Regulatory Reporting as a Service to support this front-to-back-to-risk transformation. The bank’s users will have access to automated and standardized interfaces which will improve day-to-day operations and will benefit from an enhanced user experience and better reporting functionalities.

Caixa Geral de Depósitos offers a selection of corporate services, including commercial banking, investment banking, asset management, brokerage and venture capital. To keep up with market trends and changing regulations, the bank was looking to transform its current technology landscape to make it more user friendly and more efficient. The chosen solution includes front-to-back treasury, straight-through processing for all asset classes, accurate pricing from the front office to risk, including structured products, collateral management and regulatory cloud reporting.

Fusion Kondor will standardize and integrate the bank’s trading and risk services, whilst Fusion Risk will manage its risk and compliance functionalities. Regulatory Reporting as a Service will enable the bank to manage its reporting in a more automated way, whilst making sure it is keeping up to date with changing regulations such as the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) and the Securities Financing Transaction Regulation (SFTR).

José de Brito, Executive Board Member and CFO at Caixa Geral de Depósitos said, “Quality and customer service are the driving forces behind our bank. With business growing, we were looking for an innovative solution that would help us optimize our treasury function whilst still ensuring a focus on our core commitments and regulatory compliance. We spent a lot of time looking at different market offerings but, in the end, Finastra was able to offer us a solution that aligned closely to our vision and approach. Fusion Kondor and Fusion Risk will enable us to drive innovation into our operations, digitizing previously manual-intensive tasks to help us manage risk and continue our growth. We also believe its open architecture will ease development for us and are impressed with the transparent approach to implementation. We’re looking forward to developing this relationship over the next years.”

“Caixa Geral de Depósitos was seeking the best solutions to optimize its treasury and capital markets functions, together with a trustworthy partner to provide seamless integration and support,” said Pedro Porfirio, Global Head of Treasury and Capital Markets at Finastra. “The treasury, risk management and regulatory reporting solutions chosen by the bank will help support its targets for cloud enablement, digital transformation and future growth as it seeks to expand to new markets.”

Finastra Global Services team is working with Caixa Geral de Depósitos  to deliver the services through the Fusion Adopt best-practice implementation program. The bank has chosen Finastra’s recommended configuration and process models to deliver the solution.

Reuters Events will be hosting a free online webinar series focused on commodity trading and commodity value chains.

Commodity traders are under pressure to undergo massive transformation. Unprecedented volatility, changing consumer and governmental demands, digital transformation and an intense geopolitical landscape are impacting every commodity stakeholder.

That’s why, on Wednesday June 24, Reuters Events will kick off their 2020 webinar series with a live fireside chat entitled “A View From the Top”.  Reuters’ Editor in Charge (Energy, EMEA), Dmitry Zhdannikov will interview Mercuria Energy Trading’s CEO, Marco Dunand, to .

Sign up to tune in live or get the recordings

The fireside chat will address the following key discussion points to provide listeners with C-suite market insights:

• Understand how volatility is affecting the energy markets and learn how to respond effectively
• Discover the unique opportunities in commodities, in a covid-19 era
• Hear the energy sector outlook to help you map your future operational strategy

Can't join live? Register now to get access to the recordings

Furthermore, all webinar registrants will be automatically enrolled for a free pass to the inaugural Reuters Events Commodity Trading Summit (November 16-17, Online).

Reuters Events exists to deliver the intelligence and foster the relationships that shape strategy and safeguard success at leading companies worldwide.

The financial world is experiencing great uncertainty. Asset owners, by and large, are now facing extreme volatility. Private assets face even more insecurity as their pricing becomes more challenging in the context of an extended lockdown. 

On June 24, join industry experts Troy Paredes (former SEC commissioner) and Patrick O'Meara (CEO, Inveniam Capital) to unpack the future of private assets, data and pricing.

Join the live free webinar “The Digital Economy” on June 24^th at 11 am ET.

The session will tackle in depth:

• How to protect your assets in an economic downturn
• How real-time asset-pricing is only the beginning of the road to data integrity
• How to make markets more efficient through technology

Join the live free webinar “The Digital Economy” on June 24^th at 11 am ET.

If you can’t join live, sign up anyway and I’ll send you the recordings.

Marek Razzouk

Research Lead, Financial Services

Investment Summit by Reuters Events

Phone: +44 7748655237

Toll Free: 1 800 814 3459 Ext: 4369

Email: marek.razzouk@thomsonreuters.com

Investment Summit by Reuters Events is part of Thomson Reuters.

Investment Summit by Reuters Events is the central hub for investment executives. Through in-depth industry analysis, targeted research, niche events and quality content, we provide the industry with a platform to network, discuss, learn and shape the future of investment.

ADYEN (AMS: ADYEN), the global payments platform of choice for many of the world’s leading companies, announced today the support of Amazon Pay as a payment method. Amazon Pay enables Adyen to provide its merchants’ shoppers with a familiar, fast, and secure way to pay online.

Amazon Pay will help Adyen’s merchants remove friction from the checkout process by allowing customers to use the information already stored in their Amazon account – without having to create an account, re-enter credit or debit card information, or type in their billing and shipping address. Adyen’s merchants can also access innovation in voice commerce through Delivery Notifications[i] via Amazon Alexa. This feature allows Adyen merchants to proactively notify customers when their Amazon Pay order is on its way or has arrived.

“We are excited about the opportunity to offer Amazon Pay’s ease-of-use to Adyen’s partners and their shoppers,” says Patrick Gauthier, VP of Amazon Pay. “Our aim is to provide as many Amazon customers as possible with a secure and smooth shopping experience, and our agreement with Adyen supports that goal perfectly.”

Adyen will support Amazon Pay in countries such as the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain. Amazon Pay has been enabled on top of Adyen’s payment processing infrastructure, making sure that Amazon Pay transactions seamlessly flow into merchants’ existing reporting, settlement, and reconciliation within the Adyen platform.

“Our promise of continuous innovation to our merchants is highly important to us, so it excites me that we have expanded our payment method offering with Amazon Pay,” says Kamran Zaki, COO of Adyen. “Through Amazon Pay, our merchants are able to provide a large group of shoppers with a familiar payment flow – and thus to offer a great shopping experience.”

“Based on merchant demand, we’ve been working with Amazon to make it easier for our merchants to accept Amazon Pay,” says Edgar Verschuur, Head of Global Acquiring of Adyen. “We aim to offer as many popular payment methods, including digital wallets, to our merchants as possible. This partnership will not only offer more options for our merchants, it will help them convert more customers and drive more sales.”

ComplyAdvantage, a global technology company transforming how institutions manage their financial crime risk and compliance, has today been named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.

Founded in 2014, ComplyAdvantage has rapidly made its mark on the compliance industry globally in combating money laundering and terrorism financing. The company applies proprietary algorithms and ontology to data sets using data science and machine learning in the development of the first global, connected database to tackle financial crime.

The World Economic Forum’s annual list is a selection of companies involved in the design, development and deployment of new technologies and innovation, and that are poised to have a significant impact on business and society. Previous recipients include Airbnb, Google, Palantir Technologies, TransferWise, Twitter and Wikimedia. ComplyAdvantage is one of only two regtech firms awarded this year. 

“We’re honoured to be acknowledged as a Pioneer by the World Economic Forum,” said ComplyAdvantage Founder and CEO Charles Delingpole. “There is an estimated $2 trillion laundered globally every year. With criminals always being one step ahead, it is this money that facilitates activities like human trafficking and terrorism. Recognition from the Forum this year is confirmation our advanced technology is helping financial institutions put a stop to this financial crime.”

“The strategic focus of the Forum is promoting innovation as a way of tackling some of the most critical issues facing society as well as being a driving force for future economic growth. We look forward to contributing to the Forum dialogues on the financial crime challenge,” said Delingpole. 

“We’re excited to welcome ComplyAdvantage to our 20 th cohort of Technology Pioneers,” says Susan Nesbitt, Head of the Global Innovators Community, World Economic Forum. “ComplyAdvantage and its fellow pioneers are developing cutting edge technologies all over the world. Beyond their innovations, these firms are contributing greatly to improving the state of the world.” 

Following the company's selection, CEO Charles Delingpole will participate at World Economic Forum activities, events and discussions throughout the year. ComplyAdvantage will also contribute to Forum initiatives over the next two years, working with policymakers and private sector leaders to help define the global agenda on key issues. 

The full list of Technology Pioneers 2020 can be found here. 

Leading chargeback remediation and dispute technology specialist, Chargebacks911, has launched its revolutionary new brand, Fi911, to provide financial institutions with a suite of next generation chargeback and merchant lifecycle management technology.

Developed by Chargebacks911’s experts, in collaboration with some of the world’s largest institutions and payments processors, Fi911 will empower financial institutions with APIs and innovative quick launch components to help deliver speed-to-market capabilities for managing chargebacks and related activities.

Fi911’s tools are built for the challenges that financial institutions face today in the midst of the global growth in card payments and double-digit year-on-year growth in chargeback volumes – such as its proprietary DisputeLab™. This solution will help make resolving chargeback disputes faster and more efficient by optimizing each step in the dispute cycle.

In addition, as part of its AI-driven platform, Fi911 will offer merchant onboarding, post-transaction monitoring, lifecycle management and reconciliation services.

Leading the technology integration and development is Sandeep Menon, Chief Technology Officer of Fi911. Sandeep has over 20 years’ experience in building information systems and financial products for the likes of First Data, Western Union, ICICI bank, PaySys, NCR Europe and several Fortune 1000 companies and banks worldwide.

“The great thing about this platform is the amount of efficiency and efficacy that can be achieved by removing legacy redundancies,” Sandeep explained. “Each component of our new technology suite is designed to complement an acquirer’s business structure, reducing the increasing pressure to grow and innovate while cutting costs. It supports institutions with cost savings, increased insight and diverse value-adds, creating a competitive edge that resolves pain-points and helps them stay ahead of the curve.”

Fi911’s product suite is entirely customizable, enabling institutions to easily cater to their customers’ needs while remaining compliant – components can be reconfigured in real-time to respond to changes in policy, extraordinary circumstances, or adapt to day-to-day business needs.

Changes to logic, rules, routing, decisions, and associated configuration can be made without the need to incorporate additional technology, saving time and money.

Chargebacks911’s Co-Founder, Monica Eaton-Cardone, added: “Working closely with some of the largest institutions and payment processors across the globe, with the goal to better understand key challenges, has empowered us to create a solution that’s not only built for our current climate, but designed for tomorrow.

“Fragmentation and evolving complexities have always inspired our roadmap. Being entirely cloud-based – with the use of artificial intelligence – combined with the deep experience of our SMEs, the once thought ‘impossible’ is within reach. With the understanding that we can’t solve today’s problem with yesteryear’s solution, Fi911 was developed for the scale and scope required to ensure sustainable growth, protect brand integrity, and safeguard the customer experience.

“With advancements of this sort, you can’t always remove the human component, but it is possible to dramatically streamline the process and drive efficiencies for all related activities – a much-needed development for every stakeholder in the value chain.”

Identifying the need for a better exchange of data that integrates the requirements of merchants and institutions, the Fi911 platform provides financial institutions with the ability to manage and engage their entire ecosystem – whether back-end processing platforms, agents, partners, merchants, or third-party intelligence feedback.

Fi911 supports traditional card payments, alternative payment methods, loyalty programs, and real-time collaboration tools, extending plug-and-play connections to hundreds of data sources through one single integration.

By enabling acquirers with more intelligent tools, more data connections, and more flexibility, Fi911 hopes to encourage stronger data-led decision-making and more proactive action to be taken for all chargeback-related activities.

For more information about Fi911, go to: https://fi911.com/.

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, was ranked the market’s leading software provider in digital banking, core banking, payments and risk management product categories according to the IBS Intelligence Sales League Table 2020 (SLT). Temenos was also named a regional leader in both Europe and Americas. Temenos, with its AI and advanced cloud technology, continues to be the undisputed leader in the main product categories in the IBS League Table with the greatest number of competitors.

Temenos has been ranked as the best-selling core banking system for 15 years, as well as the best-selling vendor for digital banking for the fourth consecutive year. For 21 years running, Temenos has demonstrated consistent leadership, placing in the top two positions for core banking systems. In this year’s Sales League Table, Temenos led in nine categories, including:

• #1 Digital banking and channels with Temenos Infinity, gaining 38 new name deals
• #1 Best-selling core banking system with Temenos Transact, securing 51 new name customer deals
• #1 Retail payments system with 51 new deals for Temenos Payments
• #1 Risk management system, closing 53 new deals with Temenos Financial Crime Mitigation
• #1 Regional Leader in Europe, working with ABN AMRO and challenger banks such as Lunar and Alba
• #1 Regional Leader in Americas, partnering with innovative banks such as CWB Financial Group
• #2 Regional Leader in the Middle-East and Africa with key clients such as Egyptian National Post Organization
• #2 Regional Leader in APAC with innovative clients such as TSB with Temenos Infinity Digital Onboarding and Virgin Money Australia
• #2 Islamic Banking, partnering with the world’s largest Islamic bank, Al Rajhi Bank

Max Chuard, Chief Executive Officer, Temenos, said: “It’s a great honor to be recognized as the best-selling banking software provider with the most modern technology across the main product categories of digital, core banking, retail payments, and risk management systems. Now more than ever we see an acceleration in digital and cloud adoption – banks need agile, modern banking technology across the front and back office. We offer our offer our clients, both established banks and new entrants, the winning combination of the richest banking functionality and the most advanced cloud-native, cloud-agnostic technology. We deliver solutions for the ‘New Normal’ that give our clients agility, speed to market, hyper-personalized services at the front end and automation and operational excellence in the back office. The IBS report reconfirms Temenos as global powerhouse and the world’s #1 banking software company and I would like to thank our customers, partners and employees for helping us achieve this exciting milestone.”

IBS’ Sales League Table Panel, said: “2019 was a record-breaking year for our Sales League Table, with nearly 900 validated deals globally and the highest level of vendor participation to-date.  Temenos’ success was notable due to achieving #1 positions in the most intensely competitive categories including digital banking, core banking, retail payments and risk management systems. At IBS Intelligence, we are seeing banks re-visiting their digital transformation plans to support their businesses through the current COVID-19 crisis. 2020 will be an interesting year for our industry and we will be continuing to track new deals and trends to support our clients worldwide.”

Temenos continues to relentlessly focus on innovation, investing 20% of its revenue in R&D – more than any other provider in the industry. The IBS Intelligence Sales League Table is the global barometer for sales performance of banking platforms ranging from retail, to private, to Islamic, to digital-only and universal banking. The SLT provides a vital tool to executives in banks for selecting vendors for RFIs and influences vendor selection across conventional and digital banking. 

Relying on Enfuce’s turnkey service, indó can develop and scale “the world’s least powerful bank”.

Helsinki June 16, 2020: indó, Iceland’s first-ever challenger bank, has selected Enfuce – Finland’s biggest fintech startup – as its partner for payments, open banking and sustainability services. The collaboration assists indó in its announced plans to introduce the first new bank in Iceland in decades, by leveraging Enfuce’s leading industry and compliance expertise.

Founded in 2018, indó aims to reinvent banking with a simple and transparent neobanking service. Once its pending banking license is approved, indó will launch a card-linked app and current account with market-beating interest rates. In its mission to become the ”world’s least powerful bank”, indó never directly manages user funds. Instead, it operates a ‘narrow banking’ model whereby deposits are safely deposited with the local central bank, ensuring a 100% safe and transparent banking service.

To realise its ambitions, indó was seeking a full-service partner with a focus on speed and compliance. Joining forces with Enfuce, indó is equipped with the know-how necessary to operate compliant banking services at scale. Enfuce’s turnkey service contains the capabilities for implementing data-driven features in the indó app, set for launch later in 2020.

“We at indó are thrilled to partner up with Enfuce on our journey.  The core value for which indó stands, and our desire to affect a real change in the banking industry, is matched by Enfuce’s drive and vision.  Enfuce is not only a partner in our venture, they are a crucial element in our above-and-beyond value proposition to our customers,” said Haukur Skúlason, CEO at indó.

The key pillars of Enfuce’s offering – Payments Services, Open Banking and My Carbon Action – will underpin various elements of the indó user experience. Using Enfuce’s payments platform, indó can monitor card payments and seamlessly control in-app features. The open banking solution allows indó to build smarter money management services using a single, PSD2-compliant access point to Europe’s financial data.

The Reykjavik-based startup leverages Enfuce’s offering in order to efficiently develop secure, socially conscious banking services. The latter is manifested through My Carbon Action – Enfuce’s plug-and-play carbon footprint tracker – which will show indó users the CO2 emissions of their individual spending in categories like food and transportation,  and provide actionable insights on sustainable lifestyles.

“We’re convinced that indó is going to shake up the status quo in Icelandic banking. That indó chose to subscribe to our full offering – from payment processing to open banking – is humbling, and speaks to the huge long-term potential of this partnership. Together, we are greater than the sum of our parts,” said Monika Liikamaa, Co-Founder and Chair at Enfuce.

Banks that take a wait and see approach to Basel IV are likely to face higher financial IT costs and added travails in implementation, as well as  fewer commercial benefits in the years ahead. That’s according to a new white paper from the Marketing Team at Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting (FRR) business that reveals how banks can adopt a path to greater productivity and profitability, becoming a “better bank,” not just a more compliant one.

The white paper, “Basel IV – Your Path to a More Profitable Business,” notes how the deadlines for implementing the latest round of Basel guidelines have been delayed to help institutions cope with the personal and commercial toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. As immense as the toll is likely to be, and as urgent as resolving issues related to the pandemic are, banks should not lose sight of the importance of preparing for Basel IV and the many difficulties it will create along the way. New or revamped technology will be required. New or revamped thinking and organizational structures will be required, too, and, as the white paper discusses, not just during the implementation phase, but long after.

The message encapsulated in the phrase “Basel IV for business” has been articulated for years by Wolters Kluwer as financial supervision has evolved through IFRS 9/CECL and earlier Basel Committee guidance. The continued emphasis on forward looking analysis and a holistic, collaborative organizational structure for compliance and reporting purposes, supported by data management capabilities designed along the same lines, can be leveraged for strategic planning and other commercial objectives.

“Success in streamlining operations and maximizing productivity and profit potential, and any edge gained over the competition, can reap especially great long-term rewards when achieved at times like these,” commented Jeroen Van Doorsselaere, author of the white paper and Director of Value Propositions for Wolters Kluwer FRR. “Leaders of financial institutions have a lot on their minds these days, but there is a persuasive case to be made right now for seizing the opportunity presented by Basel IV for business. If banks can devise a solid plan and handle implementation and execution urgently and appropriately, they will find that Basel IV compliance is not an unavoidable cost of doing business to grudgingly write off, but an investment that can generate a healthy return.”

“To help with this Wolters Kluwer FRR clients are implementing OneSumX Basel IV - the integrated regulatory compliance and reporting solution that helps financial firms achieve consistency and address interdependencies within Basel IV,” the company said in a statement. “Using a single source of data for finance, risk and regulatory reporting that is enriched with value-added content from Wolters Kluwer’s in-house experts, OneSumX for Basel IV helps remove barriers triggered by traditional silo structures and generates a deeper insight for the entire enterprise.”

Wolters Kluwer FRR, which is part of Wolters Kluwer’s Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) division, is a global market leader in the provision of integrated regulatory compliance and reporting solutions. It supports regulated financial institutions in meeting their obligations to external regulators and their own board of directors.

The Marketing Team at Wolters Kluwer FRR is headed by Inga Rottmann. Finance Monthly magazine recently named Rottmann, Vice President of Marketing, as one of its Women in Finance award winners. Finance Monthly is a global publication from the Universal Media stable, providing news, comment and analysis, distributed to more than 195,000 people each month.

The prestigious award recognizes Rottmann’s industry leadership and role in leading the global marketing strategy for Wolters Kluwer FRR. “The finance experts which feature in this year’s edition of the Finance Monthly Women in Finance Awards are women who consistently go above and beyond of what is expected of them, despite the challenges which the industry poses,” the magazine notes.

Rottmann joined Wolters Kluwer in 2012, initially to lead marketing across EMEA before being promoted to run the function globally. Her background includes seven years at Thomson Reuters in increasingly senior risk management positions. She has held senior roles at Algorithmics – again in the risk management field.

Wolters Kluwer FRR receives frequent independent recognition of its excellence and innovation, celebrating a record year for award wins in 2019. Risk magazine recently awarded the company its coveted Regulatory Reporting System of The Year Award for the second year running and Waters Technology has named the company the Best Market Risk Solution Provider in its annual Technology Rankings. Wolters Kluwer FRR is also the #1 provider in both Regulatory Reporting and Liquidity Risk according to the RiskTech100, as compiled by Chartis Research.

Wolters Kluwer’s GRC division is leveraging its product innovation and domain expertise to help the financial services industry respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its Compliance Solutions business, for example, offers Paycheck Protection Program Supported by TSoftPlus™ to support stimulus loan applications and loan forgiveness processes under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act or U.S. CARES Act. Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions, meanwhile, has also recently established a technology solution specifically designed to help U.S. lenders navigate Paycheck Protection Program loan applications, and associated compliance and risk mitigation requirements, resulting from the CARES Act. The Business Entity Search for CARES Act solution conducts bulk/batch corporate identity searches to verify the business status of potential borrowers.