Comarch is excited to introduce a first of its kind cross-sector artificial intelligence platform, Comarch Artificial Intelligence Management (AIM). Powered by the latest innovations in AI and machine learning (ML), Comarch AIM is the cross-industry, enterprise-ready, cloud-based solution that will change the way you do business – making your enterprise more efficient, cost-effective, and data-driven than ever before. With faster implementation and easier integration, AIM reduces the risks associated with transitioning to AI-driven processes with easy, configurable solutions that will grow with your business requirements.

Our suite of best-in-class AI solutions were built to take your enterprise to the next level. Comarch AIM is an out-of-the-box solution that will allow you to:

• Detect system anomalies before they disrupt your work
• Streamline ongoing regulatory compliance management
• Unlock key benefits from your data to better understand your customers’ behavior
• Automate tasks – from addressing customer requests to guiding employees through internal processes
• Empower your employees to focus on the high-value work critical to your enterprise

Gain a competitive advantage with a cutting-edge solution specialized for your industry. With over 26 years of industry experience, Comarch has worked with clients of all types and sizes – from banks to airlines to retailers. Of Comarch’s 6,000+ employees, over 85% are engineers dedicated to providing technology that helps clients better meet their business needs. Comarch invests 12% of its revenues to research and development every year, because technology is at the heart of our operations, and each of the solutions we provide is fueled by our proprietary technology.

“We’re excited to introduce AIM as our latest innovative solution,” said Jerry Filipiak, CEO and head of R&D at Comarch Inc. “We believe this new suite of AI and ML capabilities will demonstrate the strength of our solutions and our dedication to providing our clients with the tools they need to ensure seamless business operations.”

In a data-driven world, leveraging AI has become critical to businesses’ success. Drive efficiencies, maximize resources, fuel data-driven decision making and gain a competitive edge by choosing Comarch, an AI provider that will be with you through every step of the implementation process.

TALL Security Print, part of the TALL Group of Companies, is celebrating another series of new contract wins in Africa, adding two Nigerian Universities to its fast-growing portfolio in the region.  Under the terms of the new deals TALL Security Print will print graduation certificates for a number of Nigerian universities including the University of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello University, taking their total to 17. 

A base stock of certificates is produced and stored at its UK premises for overseas customers that can then be ordered directly.  This results in a quick turnaround without a backlog.  Each document is personalised with student details and a photograph if requested, giving both the university, the student and any employer the assurance that their certificates are genuine, verified and trustworthy. This year alone the company has already received orders for over 150,000 certificates. 

 Martin Ruda, Group Managing Director of the TALL Group of Companies, said, “Universities and students can have faith in our products and know that they will be accepted with confidence in the wider world by future employers.  Secure printing is of great importance to Nigerian universities, which often fall victim to fraudulent printing. As a result many universities are now approaching TALL Security Print because we have established an internationally renowned expertise in this market for over two decades.”

The new contracts come after the Group announced they had become suppliers for the University of Ilorin, the Federal University of Technology, Minna and the Lagos State Polytechnic. Prior to using the TALL Security Print secure certificate service, between 100-150 incidents of document fraud were found each year at the University of Ilorin and this figure has now been reduced to virtually zero.

Elsewhere in Africa, TALL Security Print has now printed certificates for various universities in Somaliland and schools certificates for the Somaliland National Examinations and Certification Board (100K). For KNEC (Kenya National Examinations Council), they produced around 2M certificates of various types as well as certificates for LUANAR (Lilongwe University of Agriculture & Natural Resources), Malawi.

At its annual conference, Backbase Connect 2019, Backbase has announced the winners of its Partner Awards. The awards, which recognize pioneering collaboration achievements in global digital banking, were split into three categories: Regional Partner of the Year,  Customer Success Award and  Partner Solution Award. Bring Global, Accenture and PwC won each category respectively. 

Bring Global were awarded the Regional Partner Award for their success in the Middle East and Africa. Founded as a sole Backbase entity, Bring Digital has its own go-to-market engine and used its local proximity to gain local customer confidence through its facilities in Dubai and Kenya, supporting the maturing of digital banking in the region. 

The Customer Success Award was awarded to Accenture, recognizing the firm’s achievements in enhancing Backbase customers’ implementation programs, significantly streamlining the deployment of solutions. The standout innovation with this being that many of the projects were completed remotely, clearly demonstrating that the offshore delivery model can work. To add to this, Accenture is the fastest growing Backbase delivery powerhouse in 2019.

Several partners accepted the challenge to compete for the Partner Solution Award, PwC came out on top. PwC created the Bank of the Future initiative; initially aimed at rapid account opening and servicing, PwC’s Bank of the Future provides highly specific needs-based offers and guides the customer through the entire onboarding journey. It is the first go-to-market offering by a Backbase partner. 

Patrick Rood, Global Director of Partner Business at Backbase: “Fundamentally, this is all about improving the experience of the end users. The commitment and ‘out of the box’ thinking that our partners are demonstrating is incredibly valuable in achieving clients’ goals. Through collaborating with us, they’ve made the impossible become possible, and every year, they raise the bar even higher.” 

BEQUANT, a leading cryptocurrency exchange with prime brokerage services is collaborating with Avelacom, the high-performance global connectivity and IT infrastructure provider; to provide crypto currency market participants with faster access to BEQUANT’s market infrastructure via Avelacom’s low latency network. 

Through this initiative BEQUANT’s colocation facilities and connectivity footprint globally will be increased through a point-to-point fiber in Equinix’s LD4 data centre, providing proximity and lowest latency connections between both companies’ networks. 

In turn, this will provide BEQUANT’s professional trading clients, including investment banks, hedge funds and other proprietary traders using the most demanding algorithmic strategies with more colocation and connectivity options both within and outside of the LD4 data centre. 

Clients will be able to receive real-time pricing data and place large volumes of orders across various crypto markets at consistent millisecond speed while using the industry benchmark protocol – FIX. These are must-haves for institutions managing large multi-asset portfolios globally who are constantly looking at improving their trading performance.

George Zarya, CEO of BEQUANT Exchange and prime brokerage services said “Speed and efficiency of the trading infrastructure is a key step to bridging the gap between the traditional financial institutions and the crypto market. We are delighted to have agreed this partnership with IT Infrastructure providers, Avelacom. Both organisations are going through the same evolution pattern so it's a great way to leverage each other's brand and provide our users with a greater trading experience.”

Aleksey Larichev, CEO of Avelacom said: “Crypto is a key growth market for Avelacom and we see lots of opportunities across our entire solution suite. We expect our partnership with BEQUANT will further support our efforts to expand our client base, particularly for those who want access to cryptocurrencies and those who are interested in leveraging their trading and enjoy better trading experiences in crypto.” 

Path Solutions, the global Islamic banking software company, today announced a new partnership with Nityo Infotech, the fastest growing next-generation global IT services company. By virtue of this agreement, Nityo Infotech will act as Path Solutions’ Business Alliance Partner for sales and services related to iMAL enterprise Islamic banking & investment platform for all countries in South East Asia. Nityo Infotech will also provide post-sales implementation and support for iMAL clients in this region.

This partnership will enable Path Solutions to seamlessly offer innovative banking products to address this region-specific Islamic banking requirements. iMAL is the first and only 100% Sharia-compliant core banking platform according to industry standard-setting bodies. Built on cutting-edge open technologies, iMAL brings the richest packaged Islamic banking functionality combined with digital banking offering, empowering Islamic financial institutions with modern, scalable, and sustainable technologies for a sustainable future.

Mohammed Kateeb, Group Chairman & CEO, Path Solutions said, “Sharia-compliant financial assets are forecasted to reach $3.2 trillion by 2020 according to ICD Thomson Reuters Islamic Finance Development Indicator, with ASEAN countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Thailand leading the Top 20 Countries in Islamic Finance Asset. Given the rapid and outstanding boom the Islamic finance sector is witnessing in this region, we have partnered with Nityo Infotech to help expand our client base in South East Asia”.

Kateeb added, “Taking advantage of the opportunities digital disruptions offer as we are entering the new, digital-driven era of globalization 4.0, we built iMAL on modern and advanced architecture to fulfill the ever-evolving needs of the Islamic finance industry. The platform also reduces market pressures and regulatory burdens, and supports Islamic financial institutions in their digital transformation journeys in a cost-effective way”.

Naveen Kumar, Founder and CEO, Nityo Infotech said, “This partnership is an expression of our confidence in Path Solutions’ top-notch Islamic banking technology, industry business practices, track record of fail-proof implementations, and world-class business model. We hope that together we will create the perfect partnership to offer a unique value proposition that helps Islamic financial institutions in South East Asia gain a distinct competitive advantage in an increasingly complex and dynamic market. We view this partnership as a win-win proposition, and we look forward to a successful business relationship with Path Solutions”.

The overwhelming majority of consumers would prefer their main bank, as opposed to other banks or third-party providers (TPPs), to be their primary source of open banking services, a new pan-European study from Mobey Forum and Aite Group has revealed.

The report, entitled ‘Open Banking: Open Minds? Consumer appetites for open banking services’, draws on a survey of over 1000 consumers in Finland, France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. It highlights the opportunity for banks to create new open banking services and emphasises that the window during which consumers are hesitant to share account data with other banks and TPPs will close as the category quickly evolves.

“It’s crucial that banks act on their short-term advantage quickly to avoid disintermediation by TPPs as the open banking market evolves,” comments Elina Mattila, Executive Director, Mobey Forum. “Consumers trust their banks because no-one else does data security and privacy like they do - it’s a cornerstone of their success. Consumer confidence in third party banking services, however, continues to grow. Open banking is the next chapter in the digitalisation story and a new generation of agile, specialist TPPs is forming to capitalise on API-based payment and data services. If banks want to protect their place at the forefront of the industry they need to act now, either to offer TPP services under their own brands, or to create their own. Either way, they need to move before the TPPs can establish an independent base.”

Despite open banking’s infancy, the study reveals that already approximately one third of consumers are either ‘very interested’ or ‘extremely interested’ in five open banking enabled use-cases: account information services (32%), pay by bank (33%), purchase financing (25%), product comparison (35%), and identity check (35%).

Security and privacy, however, are cited as the main factors inhibiting adoption among those consumers expressing concerns. The report contends that banks should pay strong attention to these differentiating factors when launching open banking services, as competition for consumer trust increases.

The report also explores under which circumstances consumers might be willing to deprioritise trust and, instead, favour convenience and usability. When questioned over their willingness to adopt a new payment method, for example, 91% respondents indicated that they could be tempted to switch either by financial incentives or the promise of greater convenience. 

“Trust alone is not enough,” adds Mario Brkic, co-chair of Mobey Forum’s Open Banking Expert Group, George Labs. “Banks must also focus on developing services with convenience and usability in mind. People are already willing to give huge amounts of their personal and financial information to brands like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. When the services deliver real value, they are ready to share data. Many open banking TPPs can respond to consumer demand faster than traditional banks can, so the race is on. The real winners in open banking will be those that can provide superior customer experiences under a trusted brand.”

MayStreet, a modern market data platform engineered to deliver the highest-quality, most complete capital markets data commercially available, today announced it has assumed the role of market data provider for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Market Information Data Analytics System (MIDAS). The SEC has transferred the vendor contract by novation from the previous provider, Thesys Technologies, as part of MayStreet’s acquisition of Thesys’ business unit that operates MIDAS.

The SEC’s MIDAS platform combines advanced technologies and empirical data to enable the Commission to better monitor and understand short- and long-term market trends and achieve dramatically better insight into the functioning of the capital markets.

“We are thrilled to be taking over the MIDAS system for the SEC,” said Patrick Flannery, CEO and Co-Founder at MayStreet. “This is a huge validation of our vision to build and deliver a next-generation market data platform for modern capital markets, and we’re excited to be entrusted by the SEC with responsibility for such a mission-critical system.”

Beginning November 1, 2019, MayStreet contracted directly with the SEC to provide all US equities, options and futures data as it relates to MIDAS. In the initial phase of the transition, MayStreet will implement its proprietary data packet capture technology. All existing MIDAS data transformation, cloud storage and client access technology will be retained in the short- to middle-term to ensure a smooth transition of the MIDAS system to MayStreet.

MayStreet was founded in 2012 by software engineers with deep expertise in building market data systems for some of the world’s most performance-dependent market makers and proprietary trading firms. Combining ultra-low latency platform architecture with high-precision, full depth-of-book data, MayStreet enables its clients to gain deeper insights into how global capital markets operate. MayStreet provides the only market data platform that delivers both real-time and instant intraday historical data through a single API - supporting firm-wide workflows, from trade execution and surveillance to instant market analysis, end-of-day reporting, historical back testing, and more.

Profile Software, an international financial solutions provider, announced today its participation once again as a Silver Sponsor in the 5th International Funds Summit taking place on 10-12 November 2019 in Nicosia, Cyprus aiming to discuss and present its pioneering and award-winning Investment Management solution to leading fund managers.

During the event, professional delegates will have the opportunity to experience how Profile’s leading Fund Management solution can empower fund managers to simplify and automate traditionally tedious processes, risk-free, meeting their investors’ requirements and expectations in today’s digitised world while addressing regulatory scrutiny, all on a single platform. Profile’s proposition for the industry includes:

>        Axia: the award-winning Investment Management platform offering advanced Wealth, Asset and Fund Management, Personal/Private Banking, Robo-Advisory and Custody with cloud/web-based, omni-channel capabilities.

Other solutions in the company’s portfolio include:

>        FMS.next: the internationally implemented Digital Banking system available in Cloud and SaaS, accommodating Core Banking, Lending and Loans, Payments, Alternative Finance and FinTech requirements.

>        Acumen^net: the comprehensive Front-to-Back-to-Risk Treasury platform, covering all financial instruments including very complex structures.

>        RiskAvert: the complete and modern Risk, Capital Management and Regulatory Reporting system supporting international frameworks (Basel ΙΙΙ, IFRS9), XBRL validation and conversion functions.

At its stand, Profile Software’s team will be presenting its Axia Fund Management solution that holistically covers both asset management with advanced performance and risk analysis tools as well as administration of funds with multiple share classes in different currencies, investment types and strategies. Profile will also be presenting its Axia Robo Advisor solution, which automates all investment management operations as a full self-service or hybrid advisory service model.

The 5th International Funds Summit in Cyprus, is organised by the Cyprus Investment Funds Association (CIFA) and Invest Cyprus, supported by the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investments (CISI) and the International Capital Market Association (ICMA), while being held under the auspices of the President of the Republic of Cyprus. It has been structured to provide the ideal environment for knowledge and experience transfer through active networking, interactive panel discussions and first-class presentations by a world-renowned gathering of industry professionals and thought leaders on topics such as: The European Investment Management Industry, EU Regulatory Issues/ Priorities/ Changes, Asset Management/ Investment Policies, FinTech, Funds Distribution and the Cyprus Funds Industry.