SWIFT is expanding options for customers moving to the cloud, announcing today both an initiative to smooth their migration to large public cloud providers such as Microsoft and Google Cloud, as well as the next generation of SWIFT’s own private cloud platform.

SWIFT already has a proof of concept in place with Microsoft, building on work that started last year with the technology company’s treasury operations establishing a prototype SWIFT connection on Microsoft Azure and the successful testing of payment transactions.

Under the new Cloud Connect initiative SWIFT will develop network architecture and automation templates for customers to ease deployment on ‘hyper-scale’ public cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. While large banks, corporates and fintechs increasingly use such providers, they also require the same level of reliability and security they experience on-premises. Cloud Connect will provide a resilient and secure method of connecting to the SWIFT network.

Also announced today, is SWIFT’s Alliance Cloud which will provide a robust option for institutions of all sizes that wish to host their messaging operations on SWIFT-managed infrastructure. Alliance Cloud has been designed to scale quickly to meet changing customer needs while seamlessly integrating gpi, sanctions screening solutions and other SWIFT services. It maintains 24/7 availability and the highest level of security, while reducing customers’ total operating costs.

Taken together, the developments demonstrate a broad embrace of a trend that banks, corporates and Fintechs are adopting to reduce costs, improve agility and resiliency, and streamline security and compliance burden.

Craig Young, Chief Information Officer, at SWIFT said: “Cloud computing is a key enabler of a faster, frictionless future and a powerful catalyst for innovative new services. Our community is seizing its potential, and we are committed to supporting them with a range of connectivity options reflecting their diverse approaches and breadth of needs. These new developments highlight that commitment, while also underscoring our unwavering focus on security and resiliency as we continue to adapt to an evolving marketplace.”

SWIFT plans to begin customer trials on its Cloud Connect initiative later this year, with a community-wide service targeted for the second half of 2020. A phased roll out of Alliance Cloud will meanwhile launch in 2020, starting in the second quarter.

Cyber security provider F-Secure has launched a new consultancy unit bringing the company’s research-led cyber security services to organizations all over the world. F-Secure Consulting’s global team of cyber security consultants use technical research to secure current and emerging technologies, defend organizations from attacks, and drive the cyber security industry forward.

F-Secure Consulting is a multi-disciplinary, global team that helps clients overcome the most complex security challenges and respond to the most advanced targeted attacks. Services are provided from 11 different locations across four continents, ensuring that offerings such as cyber defense, security assurance, and incident response services are available where and when organizations need them the most.

F-Secure Executive Vice President Ian Shaw, former MWR InfoSecurity CEO and the new head of F-Secure Consulting, describes the unit as bringing together the best of F-Secure’s existing cyber security services. According to Shaw, combining the different parts of F-Secure Consulting’s heritage to make it easier for clients to benefit from unique areas of expertise strengthens the whole unit.

“We worked hard building a global cyber security consultancy that retains a strong focus on research, and contributing to the industry’s progress. F-Secure Consulting has a proud and respected heritage. MWR InfoSecurity, nSense, InversePath, and F-Secure, have all pushed the industry forward with ground-breaking research and a commitment to addressing the technical challenges faced by our clients,” says Shaw.  “As a global team we are able to invest even more on growing our people and working closely with our clients on the challenges they face on a daily basis.”

F-Secure’s consultants invest over 150,000 hours every year in research. Collectively, their efforts have resulted in the publication of over 150 security advisories, 30 tools, and hundreds of pieces of research. Well-known research conducted by F-Secure’s consultants range from breaking access control systems, to developing complex chains of exploits to execute code on popular desktop applications, and everything in between.

“Sensible defensive strategies are born out of offensive security research,” explains F-Secure Consulting Practice Leader Tomi Tuominen. “We pull apart technologies like electronic locks and mobile operating systems to find the problems before attackers exploit them. Countless security incidents and data breaches have been averted thanks to ethical security research. Solving those real-world security issues and vulnerabilities before they’re turned against people and companies is what we do at F-Secure Consulting.”

Accuity, the leading provider of financial crime compliance, payments and Know Your Customer (KYC) solutions, announced new enhancements to its account screening and alert management platform, Firco Screening Insight – for accounts, including new data offerings, improved list management capabilities, and integration with third-party case management solutions. These additions will help create better operational efficiencies by lowering false positives and delivering highly accurate and prioritised alert results, while making it easier to keep up with the latest regulations and watchlists.

Firco Screening Insight – for accounts (formerly SBS SAFE Advanced Solutions Visual Intelligence Platform), is the newest addition to the financial crime screening portfolio of solutions from Accuity. It complements and improves current filtering platforms by applying its AI techniques to identify true matches and reduce the abundance of false positives.

According to a study from Accuity and Chartis Research, 66% of financial institutions face the significant challenge of achieving low false positive rates, putting unnecessary burden on their compliance departments and creating ineffective financial crime screening processes. Firco Screening Insight – for accounts analyses incredibly large volumes of customers and counterparties and scores them by match probability. It also ranks alerts by severity, providing a detailed view of the greatest alert risks so compliance departments can assign its resources to the alerts that should really be investigated, in alignment to the bank’s risk appetite.

Sophie Lagouanelle, VP Financial Crime Screening at Accuity, said “Financial institutions are struggling with increased regulatory scrutiny; an unsustainable volume of alerts, especially as domestic PEP screening increases; and, constrained resources. The new enhancements to Firco Screening Insight – for accounts further helps compliance departments uncover non-obvious relationships and flag anomalies to significantly improve the accuracy of alert matches and lower false positives. By also securely hosting this solution in the cloud, Accuity is helping its clients reduce total cost of ownership of the screening process.”

Firco Screening Insight – for accounts provides customers with the following new capabilities:

Data Integration

Firco Screening Insights – for accounts provides integration with WorldCompliance™ data and allows organisations to centralise all watchlists for expanded visibility into: sanctions, politically exposed persons (PEP), and reputationally exposed persons (REP), in support of compliance requirements. With the ability to manage all these disparate lists in one location, Firco Screening Insight – for accounts uses its AI techniques to uncover unexpected links across these large databases to improve match probability and detection accuracy.

Additionally, keeping up with ever-changing sanctions lists continues to be a challenge for organizations. Over the last five years, the number of entities sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) increased by 37% to 8,755. Accuity, which collects, validates, and enhances watchlists from all major sanctioning bodies, law enforcement agencies, and financial regulators worldwide, allows organizations to receive automatic updates through Firco Screening Insight – for accounts so continuous screening can be done through the entire client lifecycle process as sanctions change.

Third-party Case Management

Through the new Alert Reduction API, Firco Screening Insight – for accounts provides integration with third-party case management, including the addition of Oracle Financial Services Enterprise Case Management. This allows organisations to manage complex workflows using the alert investigation capabilities and helps prioritise alerts by risk severity to speed account resolution. Alert audit trails can be created automatically, and reports can be generated on demand to meet regulatory scrutiny.

Enhanced Private List Management

Most financial institutions maintain their own internal lists of counterparties who pose significant risks to ensure they are flagged across all lines of their business. However, maintaining these lists can be cumbersome and unreliable. Firco Screening Insight – for accounts easily manages these lists and ensures they are relevant and seamlessly integrated to help speed the account screening process against new and existing accounts and counterparties.

Availability

Firco Screening Insights – for accounts is available now as a cloud solution. 

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR), a global Fintech leader and part of the S&P 500® Index, today announced that its Global Asset Servicing Solution is now available on Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) and that a global tier-1 investment bank is in live operation with the solution and another global tier-1 bank is onboarding. Replacing multiple incumbent systems with a single solution can help these companies to achieve greater levels of efficiency through standardized processes and data globally, while reducing operational risks. They can also respond more effectively to regulatory reporting requirements and client service needs, by adding increased oversight and business control.

Broadridge’s full-end-to-end solution is designed to address key industry, business and operational challenges in global asset servicing, by streamlining corporate actions, dividend and coupon processing across multiple asset classes, business lines and regions. Operating the solution on AWS can add increased operational agility, improved and faster client onboarding, quicker deployments, and enhanced security, scale, and resiliency.

“Collaborating with AWS to leverage the latest in cloud technology will address the significant challenges of inefficient processes in asset servicing and reduced ability to control costs,” said Samir Pandiri, President of Broadridge International. “This is another example of delivering real business value through leading technology-driven solutions that set the standard for the financial services industry.”

“Asset Servicing is a vital component of the daily operations of banks and broker-dealers,” said Scott Mullins, Head of Worldwide Financial Services Business Development at Amazon Web Services, Inc. “By using AWS to power its industry-leading Global Asset Servicing Solution, Broadridge is providing its clients with increased operational effectiveness, resiliency and scalability, while providing the ability to effectively control costs.”

The Broadridge Global Asset Servicing Solution offers a unified global platform across geographies and business units.  Users can view, manage and report across portfolios, events and global trading models, bringing increased visibility and transparency across the entire asset servicing lifecycle. The solution is designed to enhance front office activities by helping traders and portfolio managers mitigate risk of loss and pursue revenue generation, for example, through arbitrage opportunities. 

CGI (TSX: GIB.A)(NYSE: GIB) has been awarded a contract by National Bank of Canada (NBC) to implement All Payments (APS) as its payments hub solution. Under the agreement, NBC will deploy new technology in preparation for its adoption of Payments Canada regulatory changes. The modernized payments ecosystem will increase the bank’s straight-through processing (STP), improveoperational efficiencies and allow more flexibility in the bank’s product offering.   

CGI All Payments will be used to support NBC’s transformation journey as it modernizes its payments ecosystem. Consolidatingpayments onto the CGI platform will give National Bank a continuous view of liquidity across all clearings, and consolidated payment transactions data. Having CGI All Payments as its payments hub platform will allow the bank to maintain its focus on innovation and develop new customer business.

“Implementing APS (All Payments solution) will significantly contribute to our payments modernization program and will help us make a positive impact on our customers and partners,” said David Bergeron, Senior Manager, Treasury and Payments Solutions, National Bank of Canada. “The technologies we are implementing deliver the scalability to support future growth and the flexibility to adopt future payments innovations.”

“CGI’s partnership in modernizing National Bank of Canada’s payments systems is based on more than 40 years of experience supporting national payment infrastructures in 20 countries around the world,” said Michael Godin, Senior Vice-President, Greater Montréal, CGI. “We look forward to working with National Bank of Canada on its journey to introduce innovative services for customers by modernizing its payments processing infrastructure.” 

“The Canadian Payments market is going through an ambitious modernization program currently, leading every bank in turn to modernize their systems,” notes Gareth Lodge, Senior Analyst, Celent. “What makes this announcement noteworthy is that National Bank of Canada have chosen not to concentrate on just the changes they needed to make and replicate what they had before, but take this opportunity and implement a leading edge solution. This will serve them well for future opportunities the market will bring.”

Form3, the leading provider of cloud-native API payments technology today announced the creation of its International Payments Business, a new initiative by Form3 to give financial institutions servicing consumers and SMEs access to low cost payments and FX services, utilising its API technology.

Through its initial partnership with Ebury, Form3 will offer end customers access through their respective banks and fintech to Form3’s API-driven real-time platform. With simple customer onboarding, financial institutions can embed this capability into their existing customer channels and mobile apps. Financial Institutions will be able to provide services that traditionally only global organisations and specialist fintechs could offer to customers.

To accelerate this business to help financial intuitions better serve SME’s, Form3 and Ebury are excited to have been awarded a £5m grant from the Banking and Competition Remedies fund (BCR) which will combine Form3’s API platform and real-time payments with Ebury’s SME offering. Form3 are engaging with other Financial Institutions to enable them to meet their ambitious product release plans for multi-currency domestic payments, forex and payment services capability in multiple countries.

The creation of Form’3 International Payments business is being led by Fabrizio Zanollo who was previously Head of Strategic Partnerships with TransferMate and Intuit.

Fabrizio Zanollo, Head of International Payments at Form3 stated, “Our goal is to dramatically improve access to payment services for SME’s worldwide. Working with our FI partners, we will enable customers to access International Payments (pay-in and pay-out) FX and Trade Finance and settle in up to 140 currencies globally from a single API.”

"At Form3, we believe we have the key to unlock the path to success for millions of SMEs across the world through the power of Partnerships." Find out more about Form3’s international payments offering at Sibos on stand 43B in the Fintech Discover zone.

NatWest has agreed a strategic partnership with Featurespace to profile and monitor payments and account activity to prevent fraud and scams using Featurespace’s ARIC™ platform. The platform has the ability to detect and reduce third-party fraud losses and prevent overall fraud before the point of payment.

The ARIC platform, powered by machine learning and Featurespace's Adaptive Behavioral Analytics, detects anomalies and risk scores each event to predict the likelihood of fraud. In addition, the ARIC platform reduces the number of false alerts, allowing fraud analysts to dedicate their time to reviewing genuine fraud alerts and removing friction in the payments process for customers.

Commenting on the partnership Alasdair MacFarlane, Head of Fraud Prevention & Response at NatWest said: "The only way to consistently stop multifaceted fraud and protect our customers is to learn about customers' specific behaviors, recognize what's normal and immediately detect anomalies. Featurespace allows us to more accurately assess risk and authenticate activity across multiple channels, while facilitating a much stronger incident management process."

Martina King, CEO of Featurespace, said, “NatWest’s selection of Featurespace demonstrates how seriously the bank is committed to safeguarding its customers from a constantly evolving fraud landscape. The fraud challenge requires an innovative partnership to stay ahead of threats posed to our dynamic payment landscape and we are delighted to be working together to solve this problem."

ConsenSys-backed Kaleido shares at SIBOS this week how leaders in financial services have moved past blockchain proofs of concept and pilots, and are achieving real results in production, powered by Kaleido’s blockchain business cloud.

One significant proof-point of blockchain’s viability for trade and finance is komgo, a blockchain-based commodity trade and finance network between the world’s largest banks, oil majors, traders, and certification companies. komgo achieved a significant milestone this July and August, executing a half a billion francs of commodity trade finance transactions related to shipments of crude oil from the North Sea.

komgo started with 15 core members including Citi, ING, Koch Supply & Trading, MUFG Bank, ABN Amro, Societe Generale, Credit Agricole Group, BNP Paribas, Shell and others. "We are in full acceleration,” states Souleima Baddi, komgo CEO. “It's a unique adventure to be able to transform an industry that has changed little for centuries. " By 2020, komgo anticipates to serve 50 regular customers.

Project i2i, a blockchain-based payment network spearheaded by UnionBank and others to connect rural community banks in the Philippines, successfully grew its network from 6 participating banks in 2018 to 31 financial institutions with 153 branches and 252,800 accounts. It has facilitated over 575 transactions amounting to 79.2 Php million. Importantly, the savings achieved on a single domestic remittance have been equivalent to a week’s worth of food for ‘unbanked’ families. Project i2i’s network achieved Philippines central bank approval (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) this spring and is on pace to have over 400 rural banks and over 2,500 branches in the region onboard by next year. Further building on the i2i platform this summer, UnionBank issued its own stablecoin, PHX, pegged to the Philipino peso and backed by UnionBank reserves. UnionBank used blockchain-based tokenized fiat to successfully remit
from OCBC Bank in Singapore to an account holder at Cantilan Bank, a rural bank in Surigao Del Sur.

To accelerate these and other enterprise blockchain networks, Kaleido, in collaboration with ConsenSys and Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure, offers the only production-ready, consortium-level cross-region hybrid deployment platform that caters to diverse needs world-wide. “As enterprise blockchain deployments mature, they depend on having an easy and cost effective way to onboard new members and scale. Privacy and governance concerns are paramount for enterprise networks,” says Steve Cerveny, Founder and CEO of Kaleido.

To help support rapidly advancing blockchain business use cases, Kaleido announced last week the inclusion of advanced cryptography to provide the extra levels of privacy that clients are requesting as their networks and use cases mature. Toon Leijtens, CTO of komgo, explains, “A challenge for blockchain networks is the protection of private information on the ledger. Zero-knowledge proofs offer a potential solution for this by allowing a party to verify the accuracy of a statement without conveying the actual information in the statement.”

Today, Kaleido shares two more capabilities to advance the maturity of blockchain networks.

As networks scale, they need mechanisms that allow for larger sets of blockchain ‘validators.’ Kaleido has added the ‘rotating signers’ service as an elegant way to allow participation of more than 15 members. Business consortiums also need better ways to govern the digital smart contracts where the business logic is executed. Kaleido is launching new smart contract management capabilities that allow for auditing, controls and consortia-level visibility of the smart contracts running on the network. Organizations and developers can start the blockchain journey by exploring and running proof of concepts on Kaleido's free starter plan and add capabilities as their projects grow.

Today, ConsenSys announced the launch of PegaSys Plus, the commercial distribution of its core Ethereum infrastructure. PegaSys is the protocol development team within ConsenSys that builds Ethereum tech for both the public-chain community and enterprises. Earlier this month, PegaSys was the first group building a mainnet Ethereum client to contribute its codebase to the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger, a global open-source initiative dedicated to advancing cross-industry blockchain technologies. Formerly known as Pantheon, Hyperledger Besu is PegaSys’ mainnet Ethereum client and includes a number of features for permissioned blockchains.

PegaSys Plus is a commercial distribution of Hyperledger Besu with enhanced features and support services for accelerating production deployment. In addition to the native security benefits of blockchain software architecture, PegaSys Plus enables enterprises and consortia to benefit from additional layers of encryption and security as well as improved efficiency to ensure use cases are responsive to data from their Ethereum client. PegaSys will provide 24/7 production support and customized training for clients using PegaSys Plus.

Features in include:
● RocksDB Encryption: Improved security configurations encrypt data when it is at rest, where it is
most vulnerable, making information surveillance-proof.
● Advanced Monitoring: Monitor the health of validator nodes to ensure consistent uptime.
● Event Streaming with Kafka or Kinesis: Event subscriptions can be made reliably on a granular
level and can be scaled in addition to customizable trigger alerts and functions based on events
relevant to your needs.
● Group Privacy Modifications: Increased flexibility on group membership and accessibility.
● Contract Permissioning: More granular control on types of transactions permitted per account.

PegaSys Plus will be available on October 22nd.