Nutanix, a leader in enterprise cloud computing, has appointed Dom Poloniecki as General Manager for its Western Europe & Sub-Saharan Africa region. With territories including the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and South Africa, as well as emerging markets in central and southern Africa, Mr. Poloniecki will be responsible for all sales and customer delivery activities within the region.

Mr. Poloniecki joins Nutanix after a 17-year career at IBM, where he built extensive business leadership experience in enterprise technology. For the last six years he was responsible for leading and transforming the company's software and software-as-a-services businesses in the UK and Ireland, latterly as Vice President of Cloud Software. Mr Poloniecki commenced his professional career at Morgan Stanley as an analyst in the company's M&A practice, and gained his first experience of technology sales in the financial services sector, selling scalable systems and virtualisation software.

Mr. Poloniecki holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Bristol in the UK. Married with three daughters, he lives in London and supports a number of charities, having swam the Solent for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, competed in a triathlon for the Thinking of Oscar appeal, raised funds for the Cure Parkinson’s Trust, and recently qualified as a maths tutor with The Access Project, an organisation which works with students from disadvantaged backgrounds to help them gain access to top universities.

Commenting on Mr. Poloniecki’s appointment, Sammy Zoghlami, Senior Vice President of Sales for the Europe, Middle East & Africa region, said: “I’m absolutely delighted to have Dom join our leadership team in EMEA. His extensive experience in cloud services and enterprise sales not only fits the Nutanix market position perfectly, but also our future ambitions. Most importantly, Dom is recognised as a leader with a strong reputation for developing the people working for him.”

Klarna, the fashion sector’s payments disruptor, announces its exclusive collaboration with renowned British fashion house, ‘House of Holland’ - shaking up the runway with a tongue-in-cheek T-shirt, at London Fashion week. 

Created with House of Holland’s infamous witty slogans, which have previously included “I'll show you who's boss Kate Moss" and “Let’s breed Bella Hadid”, designer Henry Holland presents ‘Shopping drama averted with Klarna’ - a limited edition slogan T-shirt, which will be revealed on the catwalk worn by Isabeli Fontana as part of the House of Holland Spring/Summer 2020 collection at London Fashion Week 2019.

The partnership highlights many similarities between the fashion brand and the Swedish bank. Both innovators in their field, House of Holland and Klarna are recognised for their quirky and bold branding, championing consumers and supporting both high-street and high-end fashion. 

Demonstrating the buy now, wear now - and Pay later - capabilities, the exclusive Klarna x House of Holland T-shirt will be retailed at £50 and available to buy via HouseofHolland.co.uk immediately after the show - fresh off the runway. 

For 48 hours only and commencing 5pm GMT on Saturday 14th September, consumers will exclusively be able to shop the  House of Holland website with Klarna’s Pay in 3 and Pay later products. 

Commenting on the collaboration, Founder of House of Holland, Henry Holland said: 

“We have been working with Klarna for a number of years through our e-commerce site, and I use it personally too. I love the flexibility it gives both myself and our customers. I want people to invest in our pieces and covet them for a long time so this partnership with Klarna gives more people the chance to buy, regardless of their budget.”

Laurel Wolfe, VP Marketing Growth Markets at Klarna, commented: “Anyone who knows Klarna knows we like to do things differently. By collaborating with iconic designer Henry Holland to create an exclusive T-shirt for London Fashion Week, we’re challenging the status quo of traditional banks. The availability to shop the look using Pay later, will ensure that the freshest catwalk pieces are available to as many people as possible.” 

Encompass Corporation, a fast-growing provider of intelligently automated Know Your Customer (KYC) solutions, recently carried out an analysis of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) related penalties handed down between 1 May and 31 August 2019.

Key observations from the analysis are as follows:

• 20 AML penalties were handed down globally, totalling over $352.5 million
• In the same period in 2018, four fines totalling $707 million were handed out
• $339.3 million of fines given to banks and $13.1 million to firms in other industries ($50,000 to an individual)
• The largest monetary fine was $336 million and the average was $18.5 million
• Seven fines given out were $1 million or over
• One business not given a monetary fine but instead shut down completely
• AML fines incurred by three gambling and gaming companies in the UK, with the highest being $7.2m
• Penalties handed down by regulators across multiple jurisdictions beyond the USA and UK: these were Belgium, Latvia, Norway, India and the Netherlands

This takes the total value of AML fines this year, from 1 January to 31 August 2019, to $8.07 billion – approximately 4.3 times the amount handed out over the same period last year ($1.87 billion).

* Refers to country where the regulator/government agency that issued the penalty is based.

Wayne Johnson, Co-Founder and CEO of Encompass Corporation, commented: “As 2019 runs on, we have seen yet another fine in the hundreds of millions, and we expect to see more large penalties over the remainder of the year. As we have noted previously, multi-million dollar fines are commonplace these days, as evidenced by the fact that seven of the 20 penalties given out from May to August were $1 million or higher.

In the year to date, around two-thirds of AML penalties were given to banks, but approximately a sixth were imposed on companies in the gambling/gaming and cryptocurrency sectors – highlighting the increasing attention these industries are getting as channels for money laundering. We expect to see this shift to non-financial services businesses continue in the future.

Large AML fines are often predominantly associated with the US and UK, since both countries have transparent regulatory cultures and active regulatory bodies, but in the last four months we have seen activity from regulators in multiple jurisdictions, with the largest fine originating from Belgium. This serves to show the importance being placed on the identification and prevention of money laundering at a global level. Given the current pace, we still think there is a good chance that 2019 could break the record set in 2014 for the highest value of AML fines given out in a year.”

Allevo, a Romanian financial software company, is being recognized as winner for innovation, at 2019 European Business Awards, one of the world’s largest business competitions of this kind.

Our company has been named ‘National Winner’ for Romania in The Award for Innovation with Turnover of €0-25M category, being one of 8 National Winners selected from 39 of the Ones To Watch in Romania that will now be attending the final Ceremony, Event and Judging in Warsaw, Poland, on the 3rd & 4th December 2019.

“Five years ago we have decided to embrace a fresh business model and roll out a new business strategy. We bet on open source and scratched the ice by offering open banking solution, built as open source software. A project we believed in, very new and innovative for our clients and for the market. As more banks opens up their business, our solution has proven its benefits and fully accomplished our vision”, says Ioana Guiman, Business Development Manager Allevo.

Allevo has made it to the final stage of the competition with companies from across Europe and it has been chosen from over 2,700 businesses named as ‘Ones to Watch’ in a list of business excellence published in July and selected as a National Winner by a panel of 50 independent judges including business leaders, politicians and academics.

The European Business Awards is now in its 12^th year and its primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe. This year it considered over 120,000 businesses from 33 countries.

The open source FinTP product is addressing the financial services segment, a traditional environment with strict regulations. Allevo has redefined its business strategy in 2017, when it also applied for European funds to develop a FinTP extension for companies that will be launched on the market in 2020 as FinOps Suite.

The project, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Competitiveness Operational Programme 2014-2020, also includes the development of an automated testing tool, a benchmarking tool, and the redesign of the portals www.allevo.ro and www.fintp.org, the latter being essential in strengthening the open source community set up by Allevo, FINkers United. 

Objectway achieved recognition from Celent, the renowned research and advisory firm focused on financial services technology, as a key player in the report Client Reporting: the shift in delivery from low-value data to high-value information.

Client reporting is evolving from delivering historical information on a periodic basis, to being a tool that encourages symbiotic communication, delivering personalised information in a proactive manner. Objectway’s client reporting features, part of the WealthTech Suite, are recognised in the report as enabling the delivery of high-value information.

Personalisation and Engagement

Investors expect to review their own portfolios and receive tailored advice at any point. Through its customisable investor portal and Apps, Objectway enables end-clients to get in real time a full reporting view of their assets, investments, goals, planned incomes, among others. Advisors have a full picture of their clients’ holdings and can generate client reports on the fly, as well as facilitate proactive discussions with them.

Omnichannel, omni-format delivery

Objectway offers different forms of client reporting: traditional PDFs, Apps, secure messaging, or remote collaboration via secure auditable video reporting. Reports can be generated by advisors or Compliance Offices, or requested by clients on demand. Objectway WealthTech Suite also supports proactive reporting with business alerts when, for instance, a suitability review is planned, when a MIFID-II depreciation event is happening, or in case of important updates about investments.

Data Management and Automation

Celent also highlights the information aggregation featured by Objectway. The reporting engine can create an aggregated business model for source-independent reporting, and the reporting services can create reports out of the aggregated business model. This guarantees strong flexibility in report creation, and independence of reports from sources.

“Our presence in the Celent report demonstrates our capability to meet the driving forces behind innovation within client reporting: the need of clients to be in control of their investments and in contact with their advisor anytime, anywhere; and a growing demand for personalised and proactive reporting, always meeting compliance requirements,” said Luigi Marciano, Objectway’s CEO and Founder.

“Innovative vendors and wealth managers recognise that reporting tools should be used to jump-start the client experience. Across client segments, a “checking the box” approach to investment performance is being supplanted by two-way communication based on the use of natural language technology, storytelling, personalised videos and other new media sources,” commented Will Trout, Celent’s Head of Wealth Management Research. “Scalability and improved time-to-market are among the benefits accrued by the modern wealth manager.” 

TreasurySpring, the London-based financial technology company today announced the closing of its latest capital raise, securing £2m of investment in a round that was led by ETFS Capital, with participation from MMC Ventures and existing investors. The round was more than three times oversubscribed and the company has now raised more than £3.5m since its first external capital injection in November 2017. 

TreasurySpring was voted one of the top 3 fintech startups in Europe at the prestigious Money20/20 conference in June 2019, before publicly launching its digital Fixed-Term Fund (FTF) portal in July, following a year of rigorous beta testing. It has already issued more than $600m of FTFs to clients from multiple sectors.

The firm was co-founded in 2016 by long-term business partners Kevin Cook (CEO), Matthew Longhurst (COO) and James Skillen (CTO) to unlock the multi-trillion dollar wholesale money markets by providing new digital pipelines to connect cash-rich firms to institutional borrowers from the sovereign, bank and corporate sectors.

FTFs enable all holders of large cash balances, from corporates to charities, private funds to insurance companies, family offices to private banks and beyond, to reduce and diversify risk on those balances, whilst simultaneously increasing returns. For investment-grade firms seeking financing, TreasurySpring’s FTF platform provides flexible, low-cost access to a diverse universe of new short-term funding sources.

Proceeds from the financing round will be invested in the development of the platform’s core technology and the expansion of TreasurySpring’s sales, technology and operations teams to meet the growing demand for FTFs.

Graham Tuckwell, Chairman, ETFS Capital, said: “We see many analogies between what TreasurySpring is building in the cash management space and the very successful business that we built over the last 15 years in the exchange-traded products market. They have developed a simple, unique and powerful way to offer access to a huge, desirable segment of the market that is currently unavailable to most institutions. We are delighted to have this opportunity to invest, as well as to increase our use of the platform. The ETFS Capital team is looking forward to supporting the team with more than just capital as they continue to grow their business.”

Kevin Cook, Co-founder and CEO, TreasurySpring, said: “We are delighted to welcome our new investors ETFS Capital and MMC Ventures. Their capital injections, together with the funds that we have raised from more than 40 senior financial markets professionals over the last two years, put us in a really strong position to accelerate our growth by further building our team, our public presence and our product offering. We are grateful for the financial and non-financial support from all of our investors and we are excited about what we can achieve with the proceeds of this funding round over the next couple of years.”

Alex Schmid, Managing Partner, ESO Capital, added: “We were the first external investor in TreasurySpring because we saw the huge opportunity that Kevin and the team had identified and strongly believed in their ability to deliver on their vision. Over the last two years they have achieved everything that they set out to do and more, so we were very comfortable following on from our initial investment for a second time. As a client of the platform, we have seen first-hand the value that it can bring in reducing the risk and simultaneously increasing the returns that we earn on our surplus cash.” 

Emirates NBD customers in the UAE will soon be able to get banking updates, track spends as well as listen to daily market briefings on their Amazon Alexa devices, as the bank continues to lead digital innovation in the MENA region with new Voice Banking solutions powered by “Amazon Web Services” (AWS).

Using the Emirates NBD skill for Amazon Alexa, customers will be able to ask for their account and credit card balances, as well as details of their recent transactions using conversational language through an Amazon Echo smart speaker from the comfort of their home or office. The service can also be accessed on the go with Amazon Alexa enabled headsets or through the mobile phone using the Amazon Alexa App. A daily curated summary of investments related news and global market updates from the bank’s Chief Investment Officer will also be available. Further, customers would be able to obtain information on signing up for new products such as a loan or a card instalment plan as well as on other general programs and initiatives the bank is engaged in. To get started, customers can just say ‘Alexa, open Emirates NBD’.

Emirates NBD Voice Banking has been co-created along with customers under the bank’s Better Together program whereby selected patrons were engaged to assist with developing and beta testing the innovation.  The service utilises Application Program Interfaces (APIs) built in line with established open banking standards, allowing exchange of financial information while upholding strict guidelines of security and privacy for users.

“Emirates NBD has always been at the forefront of banking innovations and Voice Banking is another step in this direction as we utilize new technologies to enhance overall customer experiences”, said Suvo Sarkar, Senior Executive Vice President and Group Head - Retail Banking and Wealth Management at Emirates NBD.  “Customers are increasingly looking to connect with banks using natural speech as it provides significantly enhanced convenience and our introduction of Voice Banking is a step towards building an AI based conversational ecosystem for our customers across all touch points”.

The new service builds on Emirates NBD’s collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced earlier this year, to leverage AWS’ artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and other technologies as well as cloud computing services to better engage with customers and simplify banking.

 PrePay Solutions (PPS), subsidiary of Edenred, the global leader in payment solutions for the working world, has been granted an E-Money Licence from the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) and has opened an office in Brussels.

UK-based PPS is the leading digital banking and payment services provider in Europe. It serves over 200 clients across 30 countries around the world, processing in excess of 1.6 billion transactions worth  $35 billion in 2018. The licence will enable the company to continue powering fintech companies residing in the EU regardless of the outcome of the UK Brexit negotiations

With the new licence under its belt, PPS has opened its “PPS EU” base, located in  Brussels, which is supporting PPS’ E-Money, Payment and Mastercard issuing services in the EEA.

Ray Brash, CEO, PrePay Solutions, said: “Even before the UK referendum vote in 2016 it was clear that being part of the European payments space was crucial for PPS and our clients. A large part of our business is in the EU and this market has massive opportunities and digital payments will continue to grow for many years. Our decision to establish an office in Brussels and obtain our issuing licence was a natural extension of this strategy. It’s often said that certainty is critical for business and PPS can now give certainty to its clients. Of course we welcome prospective customers looking for issuing and processing services within the EEA zone and I encourage those with concerns around Brexit to contact us.”