Managers and directors in British businesses want more action and less box-ticking in their workplace in 2020, according to a major new study conducted by YouGov for IRIS Software Group.

The research, which looked at the views of over 500 respondents in multiple fields across business and education, revealed nearly half (48%) are yearning for software to reduce their administrative burden. Respondents highlight this as the one thing that would have the biggest positive impact on their organisation in 2020, allowing them to focus on higher value work each day.

Keeping up with legislation – the necessary but complex, time-consuming tasks organisations must comply with - are also holding teams and businesses back. Almost one quarter (23%) stated mission-critical, operational software to take on this activity would increase their organisation’s productivity and performance.

Elona Mortimer-Zhika, CEO at IRIS Software Group, says: “Leaders know their staff are being distracted by complex administration. Automating these tasks has a huge impact on their organisation’s efficiency and success. Software solutions are available to take the strain of almost every operational task, allowing professionals to focus on moving their business forward.”

Engaging employees in the journey to modernising the workplace is viewed to be an important element when introducing technological change. Nearly one quarter (23%) cited that a lack of understanding and awareness of new ways of working are the key obstacles, when introducing innovation to an organisation. 

Elona Mortimer-Zhika continues: “The accuracy of tax and accounts or employee HR and payroll records is vital. Combined with the need to maximise productivity and radically improve engagement with employees and customers, businesses must embrace the benefits operational software brings to their business.”

In addition, many organisations reported issues with accessing good data. Currently more than a quarter (28%) of managers admitted it’s difficult for them to access information to support decision making. While two thirds (69%) felt a single dashboard of the data they needed for their role would improve their ability to do their job.

Notably, a key barrier to embracing new technology isn’t people but budget, with over a quarter (29%) of respondents highlighting this as an issue. 

Not addressing increasing administration demands on staff also threatens to impact recruitment in the future. With nearly two thirds (65%) of people believing not keeping up with the latest technology, such as automation to manage routine tasks, could stop younger recruits wanting to join their organisation.

Elona Mortimer-Zhika concludes: “For organisations to be confident about what lies ahead, they need to ensure staff aren’t crumbling under the weight of administration and compliance.  Technology needs to do the tough stuff, so people can trust it will be right first time, every time. This will give them the freedom to spend more time on their business and servicing their customers.”

IHS Markit, a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, today announced a collaboration with Credit Benchmark in which it will use Credit Benchmark’s credit risk analytics in its Securities Finance platform to offer additional performance measurement and reporting capabilities for global lending programs.

“Consensus credit analytics brings new and much-needed transparency to the entire securities lending landscape across beneficial owners, agents and principal borrowers,” said Mark C. Faulkner, co-founder of Credit Benchmark. “I am delighted to be returning to the securities finance space with this particular service targeted at helping industry participants ‘know your counterparts creditworthiness’ (KYCC).”

“Our collaboration with Credit Benchmark creates the industry’s first solution for managing counterparty credit risk in step with securities lending inventory and loan activity,” said Paul Wilson, managing director and global head of Securities Finance at IHS Markit. “Following the addition of HQLA reference data and inventory and portfolio stability metrics to our platform, the inclusion of credit risk analytics will help firms optimize their use of capital.”

The IHS Markit Securities Finance performance measurement tool enables firms to compare returns on portfolio assets against a variety of customizable peer groups. Enriched with Credit Benchmark consensus analytics, the tool can independently evaluate risk-return exposure based on the credit quality and liquidity of counterparty assets. 

Credit Benchmark is the first financial data company to provide consensus credit risk assessments on a global range of corporations, financial institutions, sovereigns and other funds. Its credit risk inputs are sourced from more than 40 of the world’s leading financial institutions, providing a new unique measure of risk.                                                                                                                           

IHS Markit Securities Finance tracks more than $25 trillion of global securities in lending programs from 20,000-plus institutional funds. The platform includes more than 15 years of historical data on 6 million daily transactions, sourced from leading industry practitioners, such as prime brokers, custodians, asset managers and hedge funds.

Deutsche Apotheker- und Ärztebank eG (apoBank), headquartered in Düsseldorf, is further expanding its cooperation with the Avaloq group by offering securities settlement through Avaloq’s Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) solution.

Following its decision to replace its core banking system with the Avaloq Banking Suite in order to accelerate its digital transformation, apoBank has now decided to also rely on Avaloq's BPaaS services for its securities processing. Both parties are jointly preparing this step. Next to existing offices in Berlin and Leipzig, Avaloq will open a further office location in Düsseldorf and take over 75 employees.

BPaaS gains significance in the German market

Jürg Huziker, CEO of Avaloq, sees this as a further important step for Avaloq in the German market: "I am delighted that apoBank has decided to intensify our cooperation even further. This is a great success for our service business in Germany, and we are pleased about this proof of confidence by apoBank, a pioneer in digital transformation in Germany. We see increased demand in the market for SaaS and BPaaS and our high-performance digital banking solutions, and I’m confident we will continue to benefit from this momentum going forward."

Strengthening core competencies through digitisation

Upon go live of the new core banking software, the securities settlement will be transferred to Avaloq. Eckhard Lüdering, member of the apoBank executive board, said: “We are moving ahead with our IT migration and are currently getting our infrastructure ready. We envisage going live in the middle of the year. The effort will be worth it because the new IT is the basis for us becoming faster, more digital and more specialized." The long-term decision in favour of Avaloq's BPaaS offering is in line with the strategic orientation of apoBank. "We want to offer our customers innovative digital solutions for securities settlement," adds Lüdering. "Transferring our securities settlement to Avaloq in a BPaaS model was a logical step. It will reduce complexity, simplify and accelerate processes, and create the space for us to concentrate on personal advice in our customer business and further expand our services."

Avaloq currently employs around 185 people in Germany. Its other German clients include Julius Baer, Quirin Privatbank, Vontobel Europe, V-BANK, Tradegate Wertpapierhandelsbank and Isbank.

Fenergo, the leading provider of digital transformation, customer journey and client lifecycle management (CLM) solutions for financial institutions, has announced today that it has closed its latest funding round. The award-winning enterprise software provider has raised capital from ABN AMRO Ventures and DXC Technology.  ABN AMRO’s investment follows the investment by DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) into Fenergo in the summer of 2019. 

The funding will facilitate further product enhancement and the potential acquisition of new business units and/or capabilities that are strategically important.

ABN AMRO Ventures is the bank’s corporate venture fund that makes strategic investments in innovative technology companies to boost and accelerate ABN AMRO’s digital transformation. The fund is EUR 100 million. As the world’s leading independent, end-to-end IT services company, DXC Technology helps global companies run their mission critical systems and operations to deliver new levels of performance, competitiveness and customer experiences.

Hugo Bongers, Director, ABN AMRO Ventures, said: “We are very happy to add Fenergo to our investment portfolio. This investment will contribute to ABN AMRO’s strategic priority to build a future proof bank and fight financial crime. We are impressed with the management team and solution Fenergo offers. In addition, this gives us additional exposure to a group of tier one investors.”

Dmitry Loschinin, Executive Vice President, DXC Technology said: “We believe that Fenergo shares our vision to provide clients transformative digital solutions at scale by deploying best-in-class KYC, AML, and digital onboarding capabilities with an outcome-based approach. Our decision to invest and partner with Fenergo aligns with our strength and success in financial services. It also presents new opportunities to grow our business, expand our partner ecosystem, and deliver exceptional value to our clients.”

ABN AMRO’S Erik van Gelein Vitringa, Product Owner, KYC and Client Acceptance, outlines how ABN AMRO leverages Fenergo’s unique enterprise software solution to solve its KYC and Client Lifecycle Management challenges in this video.

Marc Murphy, CEO, Fenergo: “We are delighted to join ABN AMRO Ventures and DXC Technology’s investment portfolio. Their pedigrees, deep experience and industry knowledge make them both ideal investment partners for Fenergo. ABN AMRO joins BNP Paribas on our list of clients that are also investors. Ultimately, we only exist to serve the needs of our customers. Our goal is to ensure they can digitally transform, be regulatory assured and able to deliver award-winning customer experiences.”

“ABN AMRO and DXC Technology’s investment and partnership with Fenergo is testament to the credibility of both firms. They will be joining the ranks of BNP Paribas, Insight Venture Partners and our other equity holders” said Spencer Lake, Vice Chairman, Fenergo. “We look forward to further accelerating digital transformation, enabling better client experiences and delivering even greater value to our shared customers going forward.” 

Fenergo’s market leading CLM solutions enable global financial institutions to digitally transform client onboarding while optimising customer experiences and ensuring regulatory certainty. Fenergo recently expanded into new markets including asset and wealth management, private, retail, business and commercial banking and appointed global team leaders to spearhead growth.

In the past calendar year Fenergo added key global customers to its roster of over 70 clients including ANZ, PNC, Banc of California, National Australia Bank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, UBS Asset Management, Anglo Gulf Trading Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Tricor, Exos Financial and Mizuho. Fenergo grew its revenue by 21% in 2019.

The leading pan-African bank, Ecobank, has signed a cross-border remittance agreement with Alipay, the world’s leading payment and lifestyle platform, that aims to bring more inclusive financial services by providing a fast, safe, affordable and convenient way for workers to transfer money back home.

The partnership will facilitate instant transfers from Rapidtransfer, Ecobank’s remittance solution, to users of Alipay, which serves more than 1.2 billion people globally together with its local e-wallet partners. This provides an additional channel option which will increase options available to users, help lower transaction costs and enhance the quality of service in the market.

Nana ABBAN, Group Consumer Banking Head said: “Our panafrican cross-border remittance solution, Rapidtransfer, has over the years been delivering transparent, convenient, and affordable services to the African diaspora and their African-based dependants. So, it is a natural extension for us to use it to deliver the same advantages to migrant workers across Africa. Through our partnership with Alipay we are further leveraging the scale and capacity of our unified payments ecosystem on the global stage.”

“We are excited to partner with Ecobank and use our technology to bring fast, affordable, and convenient remittance services to more users globally, especially workers who are living far from home,” said Ma ZHIGUO, Alipay’s head of the global remittances business. “We are committed to working with partners such as Ecobank, using innovative technologies to help global consumers gain access to inclusive financial services, creating greater value for society and bringing equal opportunities to the world.”

Wolters Kluwer’s Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) division has won three major accolades, recognizing it as a “Global Employer of the Year”. The awards, all decided by independent editorial panels, “celebrate Wolters Kluwer GRC as an employer that values it’s staff, recognizes and promotes talent from within and fosters a collaborative and high-performing culture,” according to a statement from the company.

Corporate Vision magazine has named Wolters Kluwer GRC The Best Place to Work for Legal and Regulatory Compliance Software. US Business News, meanwhile, has named its three Banking & Regulatory Compliance businesses  as its Global Employer of the Year for Financial Technology, as has Finance Monthly magazine in its hotly contested FinTech Awards 2020.

Wolters Kluwer GRC provides legal and banking professionals with a broad range of solutions to ensure compliance with ever-changing regulatory and legal obligations, manage risk, increase efficiency, and produce better business outcomes. Its portfolio of businesses include two which provide Legal Solutions (CT Corporation and Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions) and three which are dedicated to Banking & Regulatory Compliance (Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions, Wolters Kluwer Finance, Risk & Reporting (FRR) and Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions). It’s Chief Executive Officer is New York-based Richard Flynn, a former American Express executive.

The awards follow a record year for award wins in 2019 for Wolters Kluwer GRC. Risk magazine awarded Wolters Kluwer FRR its coveted Regulatory Reporting System of The Year Award for the second year running and Waters Technology has also named the business its Best Market Risk Solution Provider in its annual Technology Rankings.  Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions won a record 14 awards in 2019, including for new product launches such as Portfolio Sync and iLien Motor Vehicle. Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions, meanwhile, enjoyed 30 award wins last year, including major accolades from Chartis across Enterprise Governance, Risk & Compliance, IT Risk Management and Operational Risk & Conduct Risk. Wolters Kluwer is also the #1 provider in both Regulatory Reporting and Liquidity Risk according to the RiskTech100, as compiled by Chartis, ranking #8 overall and #1 for Customer Satisfaction in the Top Ten. Wolters Kluwer GRC’s Legal Solutions businesses, meanwhile, picked up a total of 28 accolades from leading award programs.

“These prestigious awards reflect our ongoing commitment to providing our 4,000 global employees with a collaborative environment that fosters innovation and excellence,” said Paul Lyon, London-based Global Director of Corporate Communications for Banking & Regulatory Compliance at Wolters Kluwer GRC, speaking with Financial IT. “We have started the year with notable successes, with more award wins set to be announced this week across our Compliance Solutions, FRR and Lien Solutions business lines. Such success is only possible due to the dedication of our staff who ensure all business lines remain leaders in their fields. Sincere thanks to the editors of all three publications for recognizing Wolters Kluwer as an exciting and rewarding company.”

Earlier this month, as reported by Financial IT, Wolters Kluwer FRR announced it had won three major accolades for its industry leading integrated regulatory compliance and reporting solutions. The awards specifically celebrate the success of the company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) Regulatory Reporting solution and its Regulatory Engine Upgrade, both launched in mid 2019.

IBS Intelligence has named Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX suite of solutions its Most Innovative Compliance/RegTech Solution in its inaugural Global FinTech Innovation Awards. Established in 1991, IBS Intelligence, a member of Cedar Group, is a highly regarded global FinTech news, research and analyst firm.

Editors of the publication noted how Wolters Kluwer FRR “has had a busy 2019 with the launch of OneSumX on the cloud as part of the regulatory reporting SaaS solution. Available as a cloud service for the first time, it aligns with the cloud technology strategies adopted by the company’s customers for predictable and lower costs.”

Since the launch of the service, the Dutch partially state-owned BNG Bank has signed up to use OneSumX in order to automate its regulatory reporting processes and to better ensure reconciliation of reporting between the bank’s own functional departments. “Wolters Kluwer expects plenty more uptake in 2020, as it is putting customers’ needs consistently at the heart of its business by listening and innovating” editors at IBS Intelligence added. “OneSumX is a great example of a true market leader, making Wolters Kluwer FRR a worthy winner of this accolade.”

Finance Monthly, meanwhile, has bestowed Launch of the Year accolades on Wolters Kluwer FRR for both its SaaS Regulatory Reporting Solution and the Regulatory Engine Upgrade, as part of its FinTech Awards for 2020. The new Regulatory Engine is characterized by enhanced performance and a better user experience, in terms of speed, automation and scalability.

Wolters Kluwer is an information services and solutions provider for professionals in the health, tax and accounting, risk and compliance, finance and legal sectors. The Dutch-based company reported 2018 annual revenues of €4.3 billion, maintains operations in more than 40 countries and employs approximately 18,600 people worldwide.

Monica Eaton-Cardone, COO and Co-Founder of dispute management specialist, Chargebacks911, has been named winner of the Women in Payments US Innovation Award.

The 2020 awards program, which took place at the Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner, in Virginia this week, recognises the achievements of those that distinguished themselves as leaders and innovators in the payments industry throughout 2019.

Monica scooped the gold thanks to the instrumental role she played in promoting innovation in the payments industry, using her creativity, vision and perseverance.

Monica set up Chargebacks911 over a decade ago to tackle $100 billion+ chargeback fraud problem. The company works to prevent friendly fraud and mitigate chargebacks by mending inefficient business processes, using its Intelligent Source Detection™ (ISD) technology and expert data analysis.  

Throughout 2019, Monica worked closely with some of the largest retailers and financial institutions to continue tackling the issue. Judges favoured the effectiveness of the technology that Monica helped create, despite no formal qualifications in software engineering. It uses a combination of payment data, enriched industry data, big data, and proprietary AI and machine learning applications to identify the true cause of disputes – an essential part of mitigating chargebacks.

With Monica’s direction, the company engineered an eight-step representment process that is now industry best practice for merchants in digital goods industries, allowing it to identify friendly fraud that was previously impossible to detect.

On receiving the award, Monica commented: “It’s amazing to be recognized by the Women in Payments for this award. With the digital age bringing an influx of chargebacks and friendly fraud, so it’s encouraging that my achievements in fighting the issue are recognised.”

In addition to her hard work helping businesses effectively mitigate chargebacks, Monica has also leveraged the success of her company to set up a not-for-profit organisation, Get Paid for Grades, which aims to inspire the next generation of young innovators.

Monica added: “Going forward, I hope winning this award will help inspire diversity in the payments industry and encourage young women to consider STEM subjects as part of their education. We need greater diversity at senior level throughout the entire tech industry to solve some of the industry’s most difficult issues.”

NYMBUS, a provider of the world’s most advanced financial services platform, today announced TransPecos Banks, SSB has selected and is currently converting its existing core, payments and digital banking solutions over to NYMBUS.

Committed to providing the highest level of care and leadership in the communities it serves throughout West Texas, TransPecos Banks, SSB sought to upgrade its core banking platform in order to rapidly meet and respond to the rising digital demands of today’s modern consumers. With NYMBUS’ digital-first product suite, all required banking functions are unified into one system, providing an unparalleled experience for customers while simplifying back-end processes to improve efficiencies and drive revenue growth.

“Our BankMD partnership with NYMBUS SmartLaunch helped us quickly deploy new digital experiences and capture revenue opportunities with minimal cost or disruption to our existing business. Our experience with NYMBUS convinced us they were the right choice for rebuilding our larger bank infrastructure,” said Mike Kozub, President and Chief Executive Officer of TransPecos Banks, SSB.  “Their modern platform and open architecture provide the technology foundation we’ve been looking for to offer cutting-edge digital experiences for our customers.”

TransPecos Banks, SSB has selected NYMBUS SmartCore®, a cloud-based core platform, to provide a single, quality digital experience for banking customers. The Bank will also implement NYMBUS SmartDigital™ for Internet and mobile banking and NYMBUS SmartPayments™ for debit card processing and fraud protection. The digital-first product suite allows TransPecos Banks to unify all the required banking functions into one solution, enabling a multi-channel customer experience, while automating and simplifying back-end processes and workflows for its employees.

“We’ve had the great pleasure to support TransPecos in their business transformation,” said David Mitchell, President of NYMBUS. “Our progressive SmartLaunch model has proven to accelerate their speed to innovate and compete with a new digital-only bank. Now, by undertaking the transformation of their current technology eco-system, we can help in their long-term success with near endless innovation to adapt to whatever comes next in the market.”