ICSFS, a leading universal core banking provider, with over 100 customers across the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia, Central Asia and Europe, invests in its software suites by utilising modern technology in launching new products, constructing a secured and agile integration, and keeping pace with new standards and regulations worldwide. ICS BANKS software suites future-proof banking activities by providing a broad range of features and capabilities with more agility and flexibility, to enrich customers' journey experience, hence improving the trust and confidentiality between the customer and the bank. ICS BANKS has always been a pioneer in utilising the latest technology to serve financial institutions. In addition to its embedded Service-Oriented-Architecture (SOA), the system can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud.

With no room for doubt, this benchmark demonstrates how ICS BANKS high performance benefited from its own unique design and architecture for on-line, end of day and digital channels. As demonstrated by the workload testing described in this paper, ICS BANKS universal banking solution running on Oracle Exadata servers, sets a new standard of scalability and proofs viable solutions for the largest banks.

Running ICS BANKS from ICSFS on Oracle hardware is packaged as one complete solution with best-of-breed technologies, to provide banking solutions that address today’s industry challenges and demands in the most cost-effective way, while offering the agility to respond to the business and technology opportunities of tomorrow. ICSFS and Oracle provide a complete integrated end-to-end solution that is easy to deploy, with ongoing maintenance and address scalability without complexity. The results of this benchmark are the highest achieved up-to-date, as no public available benchmark of this kind is known to provide higher performance.

“We wanted a platform that helps our customers to support their growth plans, consolidate their databases whilst still reducing their cost and achieving the highest levels of business performance.” Ghassan Sarsak, CTO & CIO of ICS Financial Systems, discusses how ICS BANKS and Oracle Exadata accelerate core & digital banking, and revolutionize end-of-day banking processes.

 Chargebacks911, the dispute management specialist, has been named the Best Technical & Service Provider Organisation at the Merchant Payment Ecosystem (MPE) Awards.

The award, which was voted for by a panel of expert independent judges, recognises organisations that provide outstanding services to merchants or merchant service providers. It was awarded during the MPE 2020 Awards ceremony at the Intercontinental Hotel Berlin, part of the three-day MPE 2020 event, Europe’s largest merchant payments conference.

Chargebacks911 was among stiff competition in the category and its win validated its success in tackling the $100 billion+ chargeback problem.

Using a combination of payment data, enriched industry data, big data, and proprietary AI and machine learning applications, Chargebacks911’s solution helps businesses identify the true cause of disputes, prevent friendly fraud and mitigate chargebacks by mending inefficient business processes. In the past 18 months alone, the company has improved false decline rates by 1.6% for merchants and recovered over £50 million in revenues lost to invalid or fraudulently filed disputes.

Monic Eaton-Cardone, COO and Co-Founder of Chargebacks911, commented: “We’re thrilled to have won big at the MPE Awards! At a time when chargebacks and friendly fraud are hitting merchants hard, it’s encouraging to be recognised for how much we’ve helped businesses across the ecosystem address the problem.”

She added: “Since we created Chargebacks911 in 2011, we’ve achieved some fantastic results for our partners. Our solutions and processes are now industry best practice for identifying fraud that was previously impossible to detect. We deliver positive results for merchants, acquirers and issuers alike, and I think this award is a reflection of that.”

Self, a leading fintech startup offering people a way to build their credit while also saving money, today announced a $20 million round of Series C financing, co-led by Altos Ventures and Conductive Ventures. The funding will allow Self to accelerate its company growth by hiring additional members of the team and investing in marketing and product development to improve overall customer success, building even further on rapid growth in 2019. 

As consumers set goals for 2020, financial wellness remains top of mind —  nearly 100 million Americans have a credit score of 600 or lower or are unscoreable because of a lack of credit information, according to the Financial Health Network*. Coupled with a potential recession that could lead to even more credit card debt, it will be vital for consumers to access the right tools to set them on the path to a better financial future.  

“Self inspires us with their dedication to helping consumers take control of their financial future,” said Paul Yeh of Conductive Ventures. “Today, it’s imperative to be aligned with partners with a shared vision that is meaningful and delivers change for the greater good.” 

Carey Lai of Conductive Ventures added, "In every interaction we've had with James and his team, we were impressed by their caliber, vision, and most importantly, their mission-driven values. We are very excited and looking forward to Self’s continued success.” 

With more than 500,000 consumers and $400 million in CD-secured loan originations, the company has achieved unparalleled growth in the past year by offering a way for consumers to build credit through the Self Credit Builder Account and the recently launched Self Visa® Credit Card, the first-of-its-kind secured credit card that does not require a credit check and enables customers to build their security deposit in installments rather than having to make a large upfront deposit. That’s important in an environment where 41% of Americans can’t cover an emergency medical expense.**

“Our goal from the beginning was to create a mission-driven company that gives the power back to consumers and helps them achieve their financial goals,” said James Garvey, founder and CEO at Self. “We’re thrilled that with Conductive Ventures’ investment, and the continued support from Altos Ventures and our ongoing investors, we can impact so many more consumers on their journey to financial wellness and stability.” 

Small business cash flow forecasting app, Slide, has today announced its rebrand to SlideBy. 

SlideBy exists because most small business failures happen when they run out of cash. As the first dedicated and user-friendly app designed specifically to help small businesses easily model cash flow, SlideBy is helping UK businesses avoid the pitfalls associated with cash management.

Hand-in-hand with its rebrand, SlideBy has introduced product enhancement that allows users to automatically populate their cash forecast with data from regular transactions, using Open Banking connections to four major UK banks. This is giving small businesses access to advanced but accessible technology that helps improve business stability.

Paul Ormrod, creator of SlideBy says; “As SlideBy we will continue to empower small businesses to predict and control their financial future. Business owners have traditionally struggled to forecast what their cash position will look like - which means they are basing financial decisions on guesswork.”

Ormrod continues: “Our SlideBy designs are channelling everyday iPhone actions to simplify day to day cash management and place a business’ growth and forecasting in the hands of its owners. The name SlideBy better reflects the way users interact with the app, which is easy to use and designed to minimise friction.”

SlideBy is unique in the functionality it delivers and is the only Open Banking application that is focused on supporting small businesses. It has been downloaded over 1,400 times since launching on Apple’s App Store six months ago. 

Leading open banking provider Yolt Technology Services (YTS), has announced it has joined the Berlin Group’s advisory panel for NextGenPSD2. The advisory panel, which is part of the NextGenPSD2 Taskforce, is aimed at helping to shape the development and future adoption of PSD2 compliance in Europe.

The advisory panel represents the market demand-side and includes an extensive list of open banking providers and third-party providers (TPPs) from across Europe that are consulting on the strategic, business and technical topics related to the use and evolution of the NextGenPSD2 standards. By offering their views on NextGenPSD2 activities and future specification, the advisory group help to foster adoption of NextGenPSD2, remove potential barriers and promote pan-European engagement and collaboration.

YTS provides the technology behind Yolt, the smart money app and the first third-party provider (TPP) to secure API connections with all nine major UK banks and continues to be a trailblazer in the consumer Open Banking space. Yolt enables its users to aggregate their bank accounts into a single, easy to view location and gain insights on their spending and saving habits.

Leon Muis, Chief Business Officer, Yolt Technology Services, comments:

“The Berlin Group’s NextGenPSD2 initiative is pivotal to the development and implementation of Open Banking in Europe and we’re delighted to confirm our place on the Advisory Group where we can share our learnings, vast insights and experience to help mould future legislation.”

The Riksbank is conducting a pilot project with Accenture to develop a technical solution for an e-krona that can work as a complement to cash. The aim of the project is to show how an e-krona could be used by the general public. A digital krona should be simple, user-friendly as well as fulfil critical requirements for security and performance. In the test environment, simulated users shall be able to hold e-kronor in a digital wallet, make payments, deposits and withdrawals via a mobile app. The user shall also be able to make payments via wearables, such as smart watches, and cards. The pilot project runs until the end of February 2021, with the option to extend and further develop the technical solution.

The pilot project’s technical solution will be based on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), often referred to as block-chain technology. The technical solution will be evaluated in a test environment, in which participants, for example the general public and banks, are simulated.

There is currently no decision on issuing an e-krona, how an e-krona might be designed or what technology might be used. The main purpose of the pilot is for the Riksbank to increase its knowledge of a central bank digital krona.

More than two fifths (43%) of UK based trustees and pension managers do not feel properly equipped to monitor and report on their pension schemes’ ESG policy to a high standard, according to analysis from the UK pensions side of the asset servicing bank, CACEIS.

From the 1^st of October 2019, new UK legislation has required trustees to outline how they approach financially material factors, including ESG and climate change considerations, into the investment decision making within their Statement of Investment Principles. 

The legislation is a step forward towards ensuring trustees have a plan of action when embedding ESG risks into trustee governance and strategic plans for schemes. Good governance involves responsible investing. However, it’s clear that implementing an ESG framework won’t always be easy to apply because of the numerous touchpoints involved. It can be very difficult, for example, to assess the Environmental, Social & Governance characteristics of a company – and sometimes analysts may disagree on their findings. This creates a governance challenge for trustees, especially as they balance the demands of pension scheme members with the new ESG and climate change requirements.

On climate change, according to CACEIS’ recent survey, nearly three quarters (73%) of participants in the pensions industry are unfamiliar with climate change-related risks and over a quarter (26%) find getting access to the right information to help with their pensions scheme ESG policy challenging. This information gap will make the necessary reporting even more labour intensive and time consuming. Trustees will want to validate the fact their funds have implemented sustainable or ESG principles’. Gaining access to the right data will be key to do this.

The momentum across the industry is firmly moving towards responsible and sustainable investing. In fact, 55% of those trustees and pension managers surveyed believe that exposure to ESG-related investments will increase significantly in the next three years. This is further evidenced by the fact that 58% feel that better ESG integration aligns with the values of their scheme members. The demand is clearly there.

Ensuring the vital message around the long-term investment consequences of all ESG factors is communicated to all stakeholders, of varying ages and exposures is an area where improved resource and education is needed.

Pat Sharman, Managing Director, CACEIS, said: "While 2019 saw ESG, and with it the improved standards of governance, creep higher on the corporate agenda; now is the year ESG becomes front and centre for UK pension schemes.

“From a corporate citizenship perspective, as well as fiduciary requirement, implementing climate change and good ESG principles will be important for pension schemes of all shapes and sizes to help manage longer term risks for the benefit of members. As a trustee myself, I fully understand the complexities involved – as a result, we are working with the PLSA for the second year running as an education partner and we’ll focus on helping trustees navigate this challenging landscape”.