Leading provider of self-invested pension products integrates Cashfac’s flagship solution to drive process automation and increase productivity

A leading provider of self-invested pension products (SIPPs) – has doubled customer growth of their business operations by integrating Cashfac’s flagship virtual accounts solution with its existing core systems.

The provider - with billions of assets under administration which services thousands of clients – has driven process automation and increased productivity across all aspects of its cash management operations by integrating Cashfac Virtual Bank Technology (VBT) in to the heart of its operations.  

Self-Service Banking with Virtual Accounts

The company decided to run a scalable business transformation programme to help drive business growth and reduce their reliance on manual processes such as account opening/closure, payment processing and reconciliation.

Cashfac was selected to implement a self-service banking model using virtual accounts. Doing so replaced thousands of individual bank accounts with one pooled bank account. Key customer journeys became automated using a rules-based approach to transaction processing, with double entry book-keeping for accounting control.  

Improving Customers’ User Journeys

In addition to automating customer journeys, the company wanted to improve the user experience across their administration teams. This was achieved by integrating Cashfac with their primary business systems. This meant all transactions and account opening instructions from their existing system were passed automatically to Cashfac for real time processing and routing to their bank for settlement.

The expected contributions are now automatically allocated at client level when received, with data being passed to their primary system each morning for bulk mark-up to speed up the reconciliation process.

In addition, centralising liquidity within one bank account has enabled the company to easily implement a Treasury Management Solution (TMS), to diversify client monies across a number of banks.

Preparing for What’s Next 

New industry developments such as Request to Pay (RtP), virtual IBANS and Open Banking through PSD2 bring additional opportunities for automation and enhanced customer service. The virtual account banking model accounts will allow the company to evaluate and more flexibly adopt new industry practises within their operational framework.

Standard Chartered and leading payments solution provider, Assembly Payments, have set up a new joint venture to deliver next generation payment solutions for the USD 29 trillion global e-commerce industry.

The new company will be headquartered in Singapore with the intent to grow the business globally, and will offer a sophisticated digital payment platform to manage transactions across multiple payment types and countries, including online, mobile and point-of-sale, digital wallets, debit and credit cards and real-time payments.

E-commerce is growing exponentially in emerging markets, as internet adoption increases among the growing middle-class population. The new venture will roll out its payment services to global merchants, supporting their ambitions to scale and solving key challenges they face in managing risk, fraud, integration, reporting and reconciliation.

Commenting on Standard Chartered’s payments strategy, Michael Gorriz, Group Chief Information Officer of Standard Chartered, said: “Payments is a critical pillar of banking services. Enabling Real-time Faster Payments and high volume transactions has been a core area of investment for Standard Chartered in line with the evolving needs of clients, particularly with the growth of e-commerce platforms and wallet apps. Our venture with Assembly Payments complements these capabilities, giving our corporate clients a complete offering for high throughput inward and outward payments.”

Alex Manson, Head of SC Ventures, the innovation, fintech investment and ventures arm of Standard Chartered, said: “As the world moves towards platform-based e-commerce, the need for the next generation of tools to empower merchants and enable financial inclusion continues to grow. We identified payments as an area where we wanted to make a strategic investment. Assembly Payments shares our vision and we are pleased to partner them based on the strength of their core technology and talented team.”

Simon Lee, Co-CEO Assembly Payments said: “This deal creates a once in a lifetime opportunity for Assembly. We have created a significant business in Australia and now, together with Standard Chartered, we are well placed to crack the international payments market and exponentially grow the business. We are also proud that this is one of the first major global fintech deals between a global bank and a major Australian fintech company.”

Assembly Payments is one of Australia’s fastest-growing fintech businesses. Named in Australia’s top ten startups for work by LinkedIn two years in a row, the startup has gone from strength to strength in pioneering payment innovation in Australia. Assembly has been working to capitalise on the demand for new payment solutions -- brought on by the introduction of the country’s fast payment network, the New Payments Platform -- in Australia and abroad. 

Standard Chartered has actively been experimenting with new business models to meet the evolving needs of banking clients. In Hong Kong, it has established a strategic joint venture with PCCW, HKT and Ctrip Finance to deliver a new standalone digital retail bank in Hong Kong and has set up virtual banking partnerships in Taiwan and Korea. It has also set up a digital open platform, Solv, to help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India and other markets grow by providing a range of financial and business services.

2020 is a leap year — the one year in four when tradition says it is acceptable for women to propose to their partner on February 29.

Shopping service Klarna believes everyone should get what they love, and not have their decisions dictated by outdated rules or traditions. Launching today, Klarna and fashion activist and celebrity stylist Bea Åkerlund, have released a pair of limited-edition rings — the Knight Finger and Unification — empowering everyone to propose when and how they want. 

“At Klarna, we believe everyone should get what they want in shopping and in life.” says David Sandström, CMO Klarna. “That's why we have designed a pair of limited-edition rings that symbolise the beauty of getting what or who you love, without rules standing in your way.” he continues. 

Åkerlund is known for her innovative, over-the-top style and work with A-List celebrities, including Madonna, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé and the two bespoke rings are anything but traditional. Both the Knight Finger and Unification rings are made of gold vermeil. The Knights Finger features 246 rose pink and four crystal stones in pavé settings whilst the Unification ring features a single crystal stone.

"Life is full of principles and expectations on who to be and how to act. These rings were designed to inspire us all to fearlessly love on our own terms and cast aside traditions of the past to define our own futures.” says Åkerlund. "It's an honour to fight for someone you love. Be the knight in shining armour." she continues.

Priced at $950.00 (Knight Ring) and $500.00 (Unification), both rings are available from February 12 for pre-order on hbx.com as part of an exclusive partnership with HYPEBEAST. For more information visit here. All proceeds from the sale of the rings will go to Dress for Success, a global not-for-profit organisation that empowers women to achieve economic independence by providing a network of support, professional attire and the development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.

Klarna is the pioneer and global leader of buy-now-pay-later and the future of shopping. With 85 million+ customers and 200,000+ merchants, Klarna allows consumers to purchase products that enhance their day-to-day lives, while creating a smooother way to shop and pay.

CLS, a market infrastructure delivering settlement, processing and data solutions, today announces that Actinver, BNP Paribas, Citibank and J.P. Morgan are live on CLSNet, a standardized, automated bilateral payment netting calculation service for over 120 currencies operating on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform. 

There are now nine market participants live on CLSNet, including Bank of America, Bank of China (Hong Kong), Goldman Sachs, Intesa Sanpaolo and Morgan Stanley, with several other market participants due to join over the coming year.

CLSNet standardizes and increases the levels of payment netting in the FX market, enabling improvements to intraday liquidity, greater operational efficiency and increased risk mitigation for non-CLS-settled currencies, many of which are in emerging markets that are growing faster than those in current CLS jurisdictions. 

In addition to existing CLS settlement members, CLSNet can be used directly by non-CLS banks and the buy side, enabling a wider group of market participants to benefit from the reduction in operational costs and risk the service delivers.

Alan Marquard, Chief Business Development Officer, CLS, said: “The addition of these latest participants is testament to the value which CLSNet is delivering to the FX market. The service continues to gain flow and participants and is operating efficiently. We will continue to invest in the growth and resilience of the service and have a roadmap of enhancements that will further expand the value proposition to clients.”

Héctor Sánchez, Head of Operations, Actinver added: “CLSNet will enable us to address our wider post-trade processing needs and increase our operational efficiency by optimizing liquidity, enabling real-time awareness of currency and counterparty exposures, and reducing risk.”

Joe Nash, Foreign Exchange and Local Markets Digital COO, BNP Paribas, added: “We are looking forward to seeing significant benefits to BNP Paribas in the form of reduced operational processes and associated risks, as well as support for business growth in the trading of non-core currencies.”

Mike Lawrence, Global CAO Rates & Currencies, Citibank said: “We are delighted to become a participant of the CLSNet service. CLSNet brings high-quality industry standardization to previously fragmented and inefficient bilateral netting models. It will enable broader access to settlement netting as a risk mitigant at an industry level, whilst delivering significant operational efficiencies as the network builds.”

Brian Gallagher, Managing Director, Markets Operations, J.P. Morgan, said, “CLSNet will bring efficiencies in the FX settlement for non-CLS settled transactions and provide other valuable benefits to our FX business.”

 Colt Technology Services, a leading provider of agile, high bandwidth connectivity solutions and a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) today announced it will provide dedicated, private and on-demand access to Oracle Cloud through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect.

The Colt IQ Network is a 100Gbps optimised intelligent network that’s distributed to data centres and data network connection points around the world. The expanded collaboration between Colt and Oracle allows customers to take advantage of on-demand, high-speed secure connectivity from their sites to Oracle Cloud.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect provides dedicated connectivity to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and other Oracle Cloud services. FastConnect provides an easy, elastic, and economical way for companies in the UK to connect to Oracle Cloud with high bandwidth and low latency, providing a more reliable and consistent networking experience versus public internet-based connections.  

Colt On Demand for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure allows customers to self-provision secure, high bandwidth connectivity to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure regions in a matter of minutes, and allows them to dynamically scale bandwidth up or down in near-real-time. Colt On Demand for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is controlled by an online customer portal and purchased through a flexible, pay as you use commercial model.

Colt and Oracle announced their initial relationship in October 2018. Today, through further collaboration, Oracle customers can now benefit from reliable high bandwidth access to their Oracle Cloud data and applications globally via The Colt IQ Network. 

Keri Gilder, Chief Commercial Officer for Colt said: “These next few years are going to see the momentum shift for enterprises who are starting to migrate more and more business-critical applications to the cloud. In order to experience a truly successful cloud migration, you need a network that reacts in the same way as the cloud – flexibly and intuitively. 

“By deepening our relationship with Oracle, a best-in-class network is being paired with a best-in-class cloud platform, and we know this partnership will enable enterprises to enter the next decade in the best possible position; able to digitally evolve and thrive,” Gilder added.  

“Enterprise customers require seamless secure connectivity from their data centres and networks to Oracle Cloud for their most demanding workloads and applications,” said Vinay Kumar, vice president, product management, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “The expanded collaboration between Colt and Oracle will allow enterprises who rely on latency sensitive enterprise applications, big data and high-performance computing to really make the most of their cloud environment. Usage of Oracle’s highly secure Generation 2 Cloud via the dedicated private line connection that’s pre-configured with Colt gives enterprise customers the performance, compatibility and security they require to run their most demanding workloads in cloud, and easily connect them with the workloads they continue to run in their own data centres.”

Oracle Cloud is built and optimised specifically to help enterprises run their most demanding workloads securely. With unique architecture and capabilities, Oracle Cloud delivers unmatched security, performance, and cost savings. Oracle’s Generation 2 Cloud is the only place to run Oracle Autonomous Database, the industry's first and only self-driving database. Oracle Cloud offers a comprehensive cloud computing portfolio, from application development and business analytics to data management, integration, security, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain.

Bottomline Technologies (NASDAQ:EPAY), a leading provider of financial technology that helps make business payments simple, smart and secure, today announced the release of the 2020 Treasury Fraud and Controls Survey in partnership with Strategic Treasurer. According to the survey results, 60 percent of companies now report experiencing fraud with a 50 percent increase in fraud over the past three years.

In the same study conducted in 2017, only 40 percent of companies reported experiencing fraud. These findings underscore the growing acknowledgement that fraudsters are stratifying their methods to optimize returns by automating and scaling attacks. Automated attacks such as ransomware, business email compromise (BEC) and system-level takeover fraud outpaced high-touch attack methods such as check fraud. As such, the top areas where participants reported increased defence spend were business email compromise (48 percent), bank transaction fraud (36 percent) and transaction controls (33 percent).

“There’s been steady progress, but fraud prevention efforts must outpace increasingly sophisticated fraudsters,” said Chris Gerda, Risk and Fraud Prevention Officer, Bottomline Technologies. “The survey results highlight the need for defence spending at each step of a payment, especially at the human level.”

The survey found some differences in the various ways companies experience fraud based on their size. Large companies have a 10 percent disadvantage versus small companies when it comes to fraud attempts as they are targeted more frequently with higher payout methods.

However, the costs of fraud prevention are increasing for companies of all sizes. The study found that 43 percent of respondents indicated that the costs and burden of defence have increased more, or significantly more, in the past year. Additionally, 19 percent of banks and corporates reported a significant increase in spending for fraud prevention and controls in the past year.

The report also found that adding and maintaining controls to prevent fraud continue to be top of mind, with 47 percent of corporates adding employee training programs in the last year. Criminals are ensuring their crime pays by leveraging automation, securing larger payoffs and targeting weaker areas, particularly the human element. However, the study found there were little to no improvements for visibility to bank accounts or reconciliation frequency. By improving visibility and promoting defence as part of the company culture, there is a significant opportunity to mitigate payment fraud risk and reduce losses. 

“No one is immune to fraud,” said Craig Jeffery, Managing Partner, Strategic Treasurer. “Banks and corporates of all sizes must critically evaluate their processes for preventing and detecting fraud for all payment methods.”

Hazelcast, the leading in-memory computing platform that delivers radically fast application performance at scale, today announced the expansion of its Series D round due to over-subscribed interest from global investment entities.

With the UK having left the European Union, N26 has announced that it will be leaving the UK market. The timings and framework outlined in the EU Withdrawal Agreement mean that the company will in due course be unable to operate in the UK with its European banking licence.

Thomas Grosse, Chief Banking Officer at N26 said: “While we fully respect the decision that has been taken, it means that N26 will in due course be unable to serve our customers in the UK and will have to leave the market.” Customers with accounts in other markets will not be affected.

“Although we will be leaving the UK, we will continue our mission to radically transform the global banking industry through innovation and the power of technology. This means growing within the European Union, where we recently crossed the 5 million customer mark, building our presence in the US, one of the most attractive global banking markets, and expanding into new countries.”

Following the closure of the company’s UK operations, the majority of N26’s UK staff will move into new roles within the business as the Mobile Bank continues to grow its global team.

Will Sorby, General Manager, N26 UK added: “We would like to thank all N26 customers for their support.

We’ve planned the next steps carefully to ensure this process is as smooth as possible for every customer in the UK.”

All N26 accounts in the UK will be closed on 15 April 2020. Until then, accounts will work as normal, including all card payments and direct debits. Customers with money in their N26 accounts are asked to transfer their deposits to an alternative bank account.