JDX, the global financial services firm, announced today that it has hired senior financial services executive Lucy Dorr to spearhead its global consulting business. Lucy has 20+ years of leadership experience in the global markets and is a proven leader in business process, and technical design and execution.

Lucy joins JDX from Barclays where she was a Managing Director. Over ten years she held several diverse roles most recently as Head Business Architect at Barclays International, reporting to the COO of the Corporate, Investment Bank and International Cards business based in New York. Prior to Barclays, Lucy held multiple senior leadership roles in Operations and Finance at Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan. Throughout her career Lucy has acted on multiple industry boards and committees applying her technical and operational expertise towards the design and delivery of a range of industry initiatives.

At JDX, Lucy will be based in its New York Office and lead the global consulting services business, delivering business strategy and architecture, transformation, change and technology solutions to the firm’s banking and financial market intermediary clients around the world. She will also sit on the JDX Executive Committee and report directly to CEO Greg Hannah.

Lucy commented: “It is a very exciting time to be joining JDX. With an impressive outlook inspired by entrepreneurship and with a unique culture already established, the company is clearly at a pivotal stage of growth, with recent accolades highlighting the extent to which the company is making waves in the global financial markets. I look forward to working alongside my fellow ‘JDXers’ to take the company to the next level.”

Greg Hannah, CEO of JDX, said: “Our leadership team has a passion for people, project excellence, coaching our future leaders, and bringing innovative and efficient solutions to our clients. Lucy has a formidable track record of building and running high performing, diverse teams around complex functions, businesses and geographies within the capital markets. These traits make her a dream fit to lead our global consulting business. We are delighted that she has chosen to join us.”

Founded in 2012 and with more than 700 ‘JDXers’ the firm’s ability to resolve the most complex business challenge and yet also quickly provide skilled support for large-scale tactical operations, enables it to serve the entire financial service ecosystem – from corporate and investment banks, to   fund managers and insurers through to capital market intermediaries and the breakthrough fintechs.

SETL Ltd, the London-based institutional payment and settlement infrastructure provider using blockchain technology, today announced the completion of its corporate restructuring programme.

At the beginning of March this year, the previous entity, SETL Development Ltd (in administration), announced that it had appointed Quantuma LLP as its administrators.  

Sir David Walker, Chairman of the newly-formed entity, SETL Ltd commented, “The objectives of the appointment of Quantuma LLP by the Board were twofold.  Firstly, to act as a neutral party to represent the interests of all its creditors and stakeholders. Secondly, to help shape the future structure to enable the firm to balance its strategic infrastructure holdings and continue its software development activities.  I am delighted to report that both objectives have been achieved and well within the target timeframe.”

The newly-formed SETL Ltd, has acquired the operating assets, the staff and IP rights of SETL Development (in Administration) Ltd, that is being wound down.  SETL Ltd has reached agreement with all its major clients to continue its support and development activities and expects to push ahead now with a number of core initiatives.

SETL Ltd has restructured its balance sheet and simplified its business-model.  It will now offer blockchain-based solutions across a broad range of commercial cases in partnership with existing financial service providers and will continue to support infrastructures powered by SETL blockchain. Under the direction of its CEO, Philippe Morel, who joined in 2018, SETL Ltd has considerably restructured its cost-base, refocused its operations in London and the Ipswich development centre, and expects now to deliver robust financial performance for its shareholders.

Sir David Walker, ex-Chairman of Barclays PLC, and Christian Noyer, Honorary Governor of the Banque de France - both instrumental in guiding the management through the restructuring process - have been appointed Chairman and Lead Independent Director respectively of SETL Ltd.   SETL Ltd also welcomes Professor Philip Bond, Professor at Manchester University, Visiting Professor at Bristol University and Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, to the Board. Professor Bond previously headed SETL's cryptography and cyber security committee and will now lead those activities from the Board and further board appointments are expected to be announced in due course.

SETL Ltd  welcomes as shareholders and founders:  Philippe Morel (CEO), Anthony Culligan (Chief Engineer), Peter Randall (President), Nick Pennington (CTO), Katherine Kennedy (General Counsel) who will also serve as executive directors.

CEO Philippe Morel added, “We wanted to act quickly, decisively and to reorganise with the best guidance and support possible.  Our administrators, board members, management and teams have all pulled together to get us in the best possible shape as quickly as possible.”

Couchbase today announced the latest version of Couchbase Mobile, the industry’s first embedded NoSQL database. Couchbase Mobile 2.5 enables developers to create mobile applications and manage data with secure embedded local device storage, advanced sync capabilities, and Machine Learning (ML) queries.  

As today’s global enterprises look more and more at edge computing to address sensitivities around bandwidth, cost, and latency,¹ they are recognizing the intrinsic value of capturing and using edge data in their business-critical applications. Couchbase Mobile 2.5 introduces new functionality for enterprises capitalizing on business-critical information at the edge with:

1. Predictive Queries for applications using ML²
2. Delta Synchronization for bandwidth constrained environments
3. Enhanced supportability

Predictive Query

The new Predictive Query API allows mobile applications to use trained ML models to run predictive queries locally on mobile devices against stored data. The predictions in the database can be correlated with predictions made in real-time from mobile cameras and other local context sources.

ML in the database on the edge offers several benefits, including fast correlation of real-time predictions with application data, decreased operational cost of ML infrastructure, increased privacy, and online/offline support that all ultimately support a better customer and employee experience.

In retail, predictive queries enable employees and customers to easily access detailed inventory and product information using their phone’s camera. For example, when a customer asks an employee, “What shirts do you have that match these pants I’m wearing?” Using a mobile app that uses Predictive Query, the employee can point their phone camera at the pants, the query can correlate the image of the pants with the product catalog items stored on their phone, and the employee can answer that question like an expert – anytime, anywhere, online and offline.

Delta Synchronization

With delta sync, enterprises can realize bandwidth savings when synchronizing data between the mobile device and enterprise servers as well as with peer-to-peer syncbetween mobile devices. This feature only syncs the individual parts of the document that have changed, resulting in significant reduction in network usage and faster sync time. For example, the transfer size of a 50 byte change to a 2000 byte product catalog document using delta sync would achieve ≥97% compression, where transfer using Gzip would typically achieve ≤70% compression.

Enhanced supportability

The enhanced supportability of Couchbase Mobile 2.5 introduces enhanced logging support as well as advanced stats reporting. Troubleshooting issues in mobile apps deployed in production is challenging, and these latest enhancements alleviate these challenges with continuous logging support, where more detailed logs can be captured any time a problem occurs. Additionally, the enhanced synchronization statistics makes it easier to monitor and control costs of managing such deployments.

“Mobile is a significant trend in data management today, which has the ability to integrate data at the edge with business process data, thus enabling organizations to be able to take immediate action on that data. As an early mover in the mobile database space, Couchbase continues to iterate and innovate on its mobile database technology ensuring that its customers are well-positioned to take advantage of this trend.” --James Curtis, senior analyst, Data, AI & Analytics at 451 Research

“As an early adopter of Couchbase Mobile, we’ve been able to convert our vision of providing attendees with a first-class mobile experience into a reality.” --Brent Ryan, Senior Enterprise Architect, Cvent

“Since we initially launched Couchbase Mobile in 2014, the industry has come a long way in terms of fully understanding the true potential of data at the edge. What may have been seen as something nice to have back then has become a must-have today in order to provide rich interaction with customers at the point of engagement. It’s always an exciting time to release new versions of our products, but it’s especially exciting today because the market is finally catching up.” --Ravi Mayuram, Senior Vice President of Engineering and CTO, Couchbase

¹ Forrester, “Edge Computing Will Radically Alter Your Infrastructure Strategy,” pg. 3. December 5, 2018.

² Delta synchronization and enhanced supportability are available immediately with Predictive Query in developer preview.

Jumio today announced a new multi-year agreement with Monzo, further strengthening a long-standing partnership of hypergrowth between the leading AI-powered trusted identity as a service provider and one of the UK’s top digital banks.

Jumio has been Monzo’s primary identity verification solution provider since 2017, and the two companies have worked since day one to offer an easy-to-use, intuitive mobile onboarding experience for Monzo’s customers — a user base that is nearing 2 million. This customer-centric focus resulted in a double-gold win for Jumio and Monzo at the UK Digital Awards 2018 in the “Financial Services: Best User Experience” and “Best Online User Experience B2C – Best Digital Customer Journey” categories.

Jumio helps Monzo meet strict Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance mandates, all while minimising the need for time-consuming manual review.

Monzo decided to strengthen its relationship with Jumio after considering and testing various KYC vendors at scale using a range of ID types and identity scenarios. They continued with Jumio based on a number of decision criteria, which included meeting the established service level agreement (SLA), overall verification accuracy and the supporting user data that informed the final verification decision.

This criteria, together with the overall customer onboarding experience and strong working relationship, reinforced the decision to build the partnership further.

“Digital transformation is imperative for emerging banks and fintechs seeking to keep up with the needs of consumers, which is why it’s so important to adopt an automated KYC process,” said Simon Winchester, Jumio’s vice president of EMEA sales. “We’re thrilled that Monzo continues to partner with us and trusts Jumio to execute this essential step while also creating a streamlined onboarding experience for their ever-growing number of new users.”

“As Monzo continues to grow and pursue new markets, we know that Jumio will scale with our business and continue to provide an essential service — helping Monzo create the best-possible experience for our banking customers while fighting financial crime,” said Natasha Vernier, Monzo’s head of financial crime.

To learn more about Jumio and its award-winning end-to-end identity verification and authentication solutions, visit jumio.com.

Experts from Wolters Kluwer’s Compliance Program Management (CPM) business and Chartis Research will discuss ways in which financial services firms can tap the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to more effectively manage their regulatory compliance obligations in a webinar, “Leveraging AI for Regulatory Change,” on Tuesday, June 4, 2019 from 10-11 a.m. EDT.

AI’s ability to process large amounts of data and contribute to organizations’ data management and analysis capabilities is well documented, but financial firms must be cognizant that these technologies by themselves do not guarantee a sound regulatory management program. The webinar will look at what can and cannot be achieved in this space using AI, how human experts are critical to the regulatory change management process, and what this means to financial services firms.

“Dealing with regulatory change has long been a huge challenge for financial services firms in identifying constantly evolving laws and regulations with which they must comply wherever they do business, and also prove compliance to regulators,” says Chuck Ross, Vice President, Compliance Program Management for Wolters Kluwer. “Increasingly we are incorporating elements of AI technologies into our offerings, such as OneSumX for Regulatory Change Management, to help financial services customers better identify, track and manage their regulatory obligations. However, the key to that effort is creating a deliberate, informed process in which both machines and experts are leveraged to meaningfully extract regulatory laws and rules relevant to their businesses.”

“One can see massive benefits to applying AI in the financial sector if applied in the right manner,” notes Sidhartha Dash, Research Director for Chartis Research. “AI is best thought of as a cog in an analytical machine, rather than the machine itself. Many of the problems that arise in tapping AI to address the growing demands in data management aren’t about the analytics themselves, but the question being asked. Sometimes the issue is just too hard or complex for analytics alone, so the framing of the questions posed is vital for effective employment of AI technologies.”

The webinar will present an overview of the current market for AI applications in financial services, explore Wolters Kluwer’s approach through several case studies in helping clients manage regulatory change using AI, and look at the opportunities and longer-term implications of AI in financial services. Mike MacDonagh, Wolters Kluwer Global Content & Strategy Lead, will moderate a panel conversation with:

• Rajiv Arora, Operations Decision Science Director, Wolters Kluwer
• SK Karanam, U.S. Market Manager, Wolters Kluwer
• Sidhartha Dash, Research Director, Chartis Research

Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX for Regulatory Change Management leverages the power of AI to take many complex regulatory changes and organize them to create structured, value-added content that is paired with an easy-to-use software. By the linking of regulatory changes to their respective regulatory rules in a customizable, constantly updated regulatory library, Wolters Kluwer CPM clients receive actionable content. This content enables them to focus their time on supporting business strategy, spending less time scouring websites, synthesizing the changes, and determining applicability of the rules to the business. What's more, this content flows through a single data feed format, which simplifies integration and simplifies reporting.

Wolters Kluwer CPM, which is part of the company’s Compliance Solutions business, sits within Wolters Kluwer’s Governance, Risk & Compliance division. Wolters Kluwer CPM offers solutions that enable chief compliance officers at banks, securities, and insurance companies to stay on top of compliance with a myriad of financial and non-financial regulations.

FIS™, a global leader in financial services technology, and The Venture Center have announced the 10 portfolio companies selected to participate in the fourth annual FIS Fintech Accelerator program.

Executives from FIS and The Venture Center, as well as community leaders, were in attendance to meet this year’s participants at the kickoff event held yesterday at The Venture Center. The 2019 program received 225 applications from fintech companies across the U.S. and 31 other countries.

The 10 selected portfolio companies are:

• Digital Onboarding, Boston, MA
• Gremlin Social, St. Louis, MO
• Sendmi, Lehi, UT
• ChangeEd, Chicago, IL
• Voleo, Vancouver, Canada
• Neener Analytics, Sunnyvale, CA
• Genivity, Chicago, IL
• Curu, Charlotte, NC
• Highside, Bethesda, MD
• Mimble, Portland, OR

The selected companies will participate in a rigorous 12-week program designed to accelerate the development of their financial innovations. Each company will receive in-depth mentoring and training from FIS and The Venture Center as well as a monetary investment.

“We are excited to welcome these ten startups to our accelerator program and eager to see the technology they will bring to market in the months and years ahead,” said Bruce Lowthers, chief operating officer, Integrated Financial Services at FIS. “The pace of fintech innovation continues to accelerate, placing ever more importance on creative ideas and new solutions. The FIS Fintech Accelerator program is about bringing that innovation to life.”

“Our selection process combined with the extraordinary resources that FIS and the State have dedicated to this program is what has made this program a success,” said Wayne Miller, Executive Director of The Venture Center. “We’re grateful for the continued collaboration with the FIS team and are excited to be kicking off the fourth program this year.”

The 2019 program will culminate with a Demo Day on July 17th, where leaders from each of the participating firms will showcase their innovations to potential investors, regional community leaders and successful entrepreneurs.

Behavox, an enterprise People Analytics software company that provides holistic employee supervision solutions, today announced that Jefferies Group LLC (“Jefferies”), the world's largest independent full-service global investment banking firm headquartered in the U.S. focused on serving clients for over 55 years, has selected Behavox to supply a premier Compliance Supervision platform for its global operations.

“We are excited to join Jefferies as a partner, providing a robust Risk and Compliance ecosystem to support their global firm and diverse client base,” said Erkin Adylov, Founder and CEO of Behavox. “Behavox is committed to helping Jefferies constantly improve and expand the firm, while remaining compliant with regulatory ordinances and their commitment to risk management.”

The selection comes after a rigorous and competitive process consisting of multiple vendors and a proof of concept, in which Behavox demonstrated the highest capacity to reduce false positives, detect meaningful content, and provide the support and subject matter expertise that Jefferies requires. As the vendor of choice, Behavox will be replacing Jefferies’ current email supervision tool.

Marty DeMonte, Managing Director and CIO of Jefferies, noted, “Jefferies chose Behavox for their technology, responsiveness, and support model.”

Through machine learning algorithms based on 16 years of enforcement cases against traders and banks worldwide, Behavox’s software allows Senior Management and Risk and Compliance Officers to detect cases of market abuse, insider threats, collusion and reckless behavior in real time. This combination of cutting-edge technology, thought leadership, and industry collaboration, has allowed Behavox to create a Risk and Compliance ecosystem which transforms the way that firms conduct monitoring and supervise risk within their business.

“We look forward to partnering with Behavox – they have established themselves as a strategic technology solution when it comes to data analysis and regulation,” said Lauri Scoran, Jefferies’ Chief Compliance Officer. “The Compliance Supervision Platform Behavox developed further supports our regulatory and business requirements.”

Behavox provides an effective and scalable solution that delivers compliance with finance regulations such as Dodd-Frank, MAR, FCPA, SMR & MiFID II, and meets the requirements of the most exacting regulators (FINRA, CFTC, FCA, etc.).

Baker Hill, a leading provider of technology solutions for common loan origination, risk and relationship management, CECL compliance, and smart data analytics, announced that Prosper 2019 was yet another successful client conference, with a record 124 attendees represented across 54 financial institutions throughout the U.S.

Held in Nashville, Tennessee, this year’s three-day educational conference aimed to engage, inform and connect attendees with industry and solution experts. In addition to general sessions, the conference included daily breakout sessions focused on CRM innovations, loan portfolio wellness, and profitability for consumer and small business lending. Prosper also provided attendees with valuable insight to address the digital challenges of the industry and how to be competitive with the right tools. Attendees were able to network with peers and industry leaders to prepare for upcoming changes like CECL and discuss best practices going into the remainder of the year including deposit growth.

Attendees also gained in-depth knowledge about Baker Hill NextGen®, which was recently nominated for “New Tech Product of the Year” by TechPoint, the nonprofit, industry-led growth initiative for Indiana’s technology ecosystem. With the most comprehensive combination of loan origination and risk management functionality in a single platform, Baker Hill NextGen® empowers financial institutions to work smarter and drive more profitable relationships. Baker Hill showcased its latest enhancements to the solution and advised attendees on how to best leverage their current investments in conjunction with Baker Hill NextGen® to help reduce risk and drive growth.

“I don’t come to Prosper just for the fun. I come because of the people,” said Debra Hess, VP, Quality Control for Community Trust Bank. “There is a tremendous opportunity to meet and network with other institutions that may be facing the same challenges, and together we can share best practices and solutions to solve those challenges. It really feels like a family and I always look forward to attending.” 

“This is my first Prosper conference,” said Jenn Sansone, Commercial Information Systems Manager for Northwest Bank. “The sessions are informative and engaging, and the networking at Prosper is invaluable. Financial institutions like ours are able to meet with others and discuss similar challenges and learn new ideas, creating a truly collaborative environment. I would absolutely encourage other bankers to attend.”

“In its fourth year, Prosper is proving to be a highly-engaging event, arming attendees with actionable insight that can be applied within their financial institution to drive growth and profitability while reducing risk,” said John M. Deignan, President and CEO of Baker Hill. “The feedback from both our partners and financial institution clients has been tremendous, and the level of insight provided is empowering them to supercharge profitability while shrinking risk and loss. We’re proud of its success and look forward to Prosper 2020.”

Baker Hill has also announced plans for Prosper 2020, which will take place April 26 - 28 at the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale Resort & Spa at Gainey Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Fintech and other financial services firms must work harder to be able to secure the skills they need for the future. That is one of the main findings from a recent report from TheCityUK and recruitment firm Odgers Berndtson.

At a time where graduates with fintech expertise are increasingly in need, the Spotcap Fintech Fellowship programme offers young talent the opportunity to pursue studies in fintech. Now in its third year, the Fellowship offers an £8k award to one postgraduate student studying a fintech related course at a UK university. Applications open today and close on  August 15, 2019.

“The fintech industry is worth £7bn to the UK economy and there is a lot of talk about the flourishing fintech sector without acknowledging the elephant in the room — the growing skills gap,” says Niels Turfboer, Managing Director of Spotcap. “The Fintech Fellowship aims to support industry efforts to plug this gap by raising awareness of the issue and encouraging other stakeholders in the industry to get involved and to help attract the right talent.”

Charlotte Crosswell, CEO of Innovate Finance, comments on the launch: “Fintech is one of the UK’s fast-growing industries and one where we hold a strong competitive advantage. Success is however heavily dependent on talent, which is in short supply both domestically and globally. It is vital that we ensure we are inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators, and equipping them with the skills they will need to succeed."

Previous Fellowship Winners

Previous winners of the Fintech Fellowship include Mohammed Hussan, who – after his successful completion of an MSc in Computer Science at Imperial College London – co-founded Tru-Source, which automates blockchain oracle development. He comments: “The Fellowship helped improve my network and opened up opportunities to work with knowledgeable and talented people in the space.”

Sophie Peacock, last year’s winner, is currently completing a at University College London. “The Fintech Fellowship enabled me to do a MSc in Machine Learning and to gain the technical skills and knowledge necessary for a career in fintech. I would strongly encourage anyone studying a fintech related masters course to apply!”

The 2019 Judging Panel

Every year, a selected number of key industry leaders and fintech experts come together and join the Fintech Fellowship’s judging panel. For 2019, Spotcap is delighted to welcome:  

• Greg Michel, Head of Sectors (Fintech, Cybersecurity and Applied AI) at Tech Nation

• Julian Wells, Director at Fintech North & Whitecap Consulting

• Emily Nicolle, Technology Editor at City AM

• Sarah Kocianski, Head Of Research at 11:FS

• Ina Yulo, Global Head of Fintech & Financial Services at BrightTALK

• Niels Turfboer, Managing Director at Spotcap

For more details on the fellowship and how to apply, visit: https://www.spotcap.co.uk/fintech-fellowship/.