AutoRek, a global financial controls, regulatory reporting and data management platform, announces its partnership with Cforia Software. Cforia Software, Inc. is a world-leading provider of software and services for global customers that automate their Order to Cash business processes.

 “AutoRek is both proud and excited to announce this strategic alliance with Cforia.” said Gordon McHarg CEO of AutoRek. “Both companies are proven global leaders with multinational clients, both companies use the same advanced technology stack, but most importantly, both share the same vision for improving working capital for our customers. With this announcement, we will be jointly extending our global reach and offering companies an end-to-end solution from cash collection to cash application and cash reconciliation.”

“This certainly  made our decision to completely integrate our solution into Cforia.autonomy™ an easy one.” Continues McHarg. “Not only will our customers benefit from this partnership, but the opportunity of new customer acquisition is considerable, particularly in North America where the demand for a “single vendor solution” is so high.

AutoRek is a leading provider of global financial, operational and regulatory reporting software, and in this partnership, both organisations will be able to deliver a next-generation, fully integrated and end-to-end order-to-cash solution. This integrated Cash Application module provides the ability to identify and match payments received, with Zero-Touch Straight-Through-Processing (STP) Postings of EDI, EFT, ACH, PCI Level 3 Compliant Credit Card, Direct Debit, Check and Lock-Box, as well as Cash Payments.

Cforia and AutoRek will also combine globally proven Intelligent Algorithms with new OCR Machine Learning technology, to increase the efficiency of critical data capture for more accurate payment matching.  We will also make these AI generated matches reviewable, pre-posting to the system-of-record. This approach eliminates the problems caused by cloud-based cash application mismatch, which causes unwanted and unproductive manual-rework within the billing systems. This capability combines Artificial-Intelligence with Human-Intelligence for First-Time-Right decisions, which greatly impacts functional match-rates and produces higher efficiency within Cash Application, Bank Reconciliation and Regulatory Compliance processes.

For seventeen years Cforia has been the leading global Credit, Collections, Dispute Manage and Cash Forecasting software supplier, where multi-country, multi-currency and multiple billing systems and ERP systems present significant challenges. Cforia’s unique approach to building globally capable systems provides solutions which solve the complex system challenges of today’s global enterprises. Due to this partnership, Cforia will now be able to add Machine Learning and AI Driven Automated Reconciliations, Advanced Matching Workflow and Cash Application to their roster, which will dramatically improve Working Capital results. Resulting in two new applications:

• Cforia.autonomy™ Intelligent Cash Application
• Cforia.autonomy™ Intelligent Bank Reconciliations

 Speaking on the partnership, Chris Caparon, CEO, Cforia Software said: “With the integrated release of the Cforia Cash Application and Bank Reconciliation Modules, Cforia.autonomy™ has extended our straight-through-processing capabilities for Zero-Touch Posting of EDI, EFT, ACH, PCI Compliant Credit Card, Direct Debit, Lock-Box and Cash payments.”  

He continues: “Cforia now provides Cash Application, Bank Reconciliation and Regulatory Reporting for all major billing systems, including SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, JD Edwards, IBM Custom Software and many others”,  continued, Chris. “Cforia continues to expand our list of Fortune 2000 Clients by delivering proven, cost-effective, real-world productivity tools that result in improving financial performance.  Our customers see immediate impacts in capacity, accuracy and key performance indicators while providing increased visibility, command and control of global working capital. 2018 was the most significant growth year in Cforia’s 17-year history, 2019 is already improving on those exceptional results”.

FSS (Financial Software and Systems), a global payments technology company, has launched FSS Voice Commerce, a real-time voice banking platform that offers customers, meaningful, contextual and personalized banking interactions. Enabling banks to deepen customer engagement via conversation-led banking and deliver interactive service experiences to its customers, FSS Voice Commerce is set to take frictionless banking to the next level. The launch took place at the Seamless Middle East event that was hosted in Dubai this year.

FSS Voice Commerce uses machine-learning language processing techniques for analysis and synthesis of language and speech to deliver personalized service experiences. Furthermore, with ML capabilities embedded into the solution, consumer patterns will begin to emerge and result in insight-led banking and personalized customer experiences. At the backend, FSS Voice Commerce interfaces with any retail banking system to provide real-time information of accounts and balances, thereby enabling delivery of a unified and seamless omni-channel banking experience.

FSS Voice Commerce supports an extensive set of 200 transactions, enabling seamless 24/7 secure access to a broad range of financial banking services such as fund transfers, bill payments, card controls and non-financial transactions such as service requests, like ordering for a cheque book, new credit / debit card and loan request.

Instances of use-cases include:

Drive Sales: Based on the recommendation engine and by transaction analysis, banks can craft a personalized offer to customers. E.g. special interest rates for fixed deposits, eligibility for personal loans etc.

Customer Support: Instead of customers reaching out to support centres of the banks to raise the services request, the customer can just log in to Alexa to raise the service request which will land on the bank CRM system to facilitate the customer request.

Lead Generation: Generate customer interest towards respective banking products/offers/cash backs through an advertisement.

All financial transactions initiated are completely secure. FSS Voice Commerce supports out-of-band multi-factor authentication including one-time passcodes and biometrics, to maintain the integrity of the transaction ecosystem and prevent fraud.

Speaking on the launch, Khaled Moharem, Regional General Manager - Middle East, FSS said, “In an era of rapid technology adoption, the transition from chat-bots to voice assistants is quite visible today. With data-driven banking services on the rise, the key is to offer personalized services and delve deeper into the lives of the consumer and create a seamless experience. Today, consumers demand services that are unified, accurate, quick and secure and our aim is to accentuate the process of frictionless banking to the next level with FSS Voice Commerce.”

GoldenSource, the leading independent provider of Enterprise Data Management (EDM) and Master Data Management (MDM), has announced the appointment of Ramesh Pulandaran as Head of Sales for Asia-Pacific.

Based in Singapore, Pulandaran will report to Managing Director of Global Sales & Client Operations Neill Vanlint and play a crucial role in further growing GoldenSource’s customer base in the Asia-Pacific region.

Ramesh Pulandaran said: “Managing change and driving value from data has become essential for making progress against the economic, regulatory and geo-political headwinds of recent years. Establishing an enterprise data infrastructure is fundamental to creating and protecting value across all financial services firms. GoldenSource has both the solution and expertise for banks, brokers, asset managers, asset owners and exchanges. I look forward to extending the relationships I’ve built with firms over the past 15 years living and working in the Asia-Pacific to further support GoldenSource’s growth in the region.”

Pulandaran has more than 18 years of experience in financial services including stints at SunGard and Broadridge Financial Solutions. His experience spans broking, trading, operations and sales.

“Financial firms in the APAC region are planning and executing their growth strategies in extremely dynamic conditions,” John Eley, CEO of GoldenSource said. “Banks are facing more stringent stress tests and the challenge of implementing the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book regulations. Exchanges are looking to invest in data management platforms to underpin their operations, streamline the flow of corporate actions announcements and help monetise their data assets.  Funds are looking towards cloud-based data warehouse solutions to manage data from all sources centrally and to address portfolio holdings disclosure and product dashboard requirements under the MySuper and Stronger Super regimes. All these factors bring huge opportunity for us, and Ramesh’s hire will further boost our ability to service customers in our fastest growing region.”

Cobalt, the foreign exchange (FX) infrastructure based on shared ledger and high performance technology, has appointed Stephen Wolff as a Strategic Advisor to support its global growth strategy.

Stephen specialises in advising early stage, venture-backed financial technology companies. He has served on the board of numerous financial market technology and infrastructure companies including R3, Tradeweb and ClearCourse Partnership. Prior to this, he ran corporate strategy and M&A at IHS Markit from the period prior to Markit’s IPO, through to the successful merger between IHS and Markit Group which created a ~$17bn data and information company.

He was also previously Managing Director and Head of Strategic Investments at Deutsche Bank. In this role he managed a portfolio of principal investments primarily focused on financial market infrastructure.

Stephen Wolff comments: “I am delighted to be joining the Cobalt team during an exciting time for the company and the FX industry as a whole. The market is experiencing an unprecedented period of evolution, not least in the post-trade space where new technologies are fast-replacing the outdated infrastructure of yesterday. Cobalt is at the forefront of this modernisation of the middle and back office.”

Adrian Patten, Co-Founder and Chairman of Cobalt, adds: “Stephen has a wealth of specialised experience in the fintech industry and is a trusted advisor to many financial services firms. We are pleased to welcome him on board and look forward to working with him as Cobalt enters its next stage of evolution in FX.”

Appway is thrilled to be named in WealthTech 100 as one of the 100 most forward-thinking companies redefining the wealth and asset management industry. 

Investments in WealthTech have grown dramatically, with nearly five times more invested in the sector in 2018 than in 2014. “With the rise of mobile and digital distribution channels, new business models, and personal finance consumer propositions, the wealth management industry is undergoing huge change,” Richard Sachar, Director at FinTech Global, explains. 

To offer insight into the industry’s leading technology visionaries, FinTech Global has launched WealthTech 100, a list of the world’s top pioneering companies selected by a panel of industry experts and analysts. These are the companies every leader in wealth and asset management, private banking, and financial advisory needs to know about as they consider and develop their digital transformation strategies and new customer propositions. 

“We are very proud to have been included in the WealthTech 100 list,” said Madli Lillemägi, Appway’s Marketing Manager for EMEA & APAC. “Throughout our over fifteen years building innovative technology for wealth managers, we’ve seen just how relevant digital onboarding and the overall digital customer experience has become in the industry. Customer centricity throughout the entire client lifecycle is the first element to consider when designing a digital offering.” 

Onboarding expectations are growing and will continue to grow into a key differentiator for wealth managers. Appway’s expert-driven solutions help wealth management firms tackle evolving industry challenges. 

Nordic Capital Fund IX (“Nordic Capital”) today announced the acquisition of Signicat, a high-growth provider of digital identity and signature solutions that operates the leading digital identity hub in the market. Nordic Capital will, in close partnership with the company’s management and existing shareholder Viking Venture, accelerate Signicat’s international expansion and strengthen the company’s market leading position and unique product offering.

Founded in Trondheim, Norway in 2007, Signicat leads innovation in verified digital identity solutions, reducing risk while providing a smart and intuitive user experience. Its solutions enable companies and institutions, both in regulated and non-regulated industries, to offer efficient and user-friendly advanced online authentication, identification verification and electronic signature solutions.

Signicat has more than 500 clients, with a stronghold in the financial services sector where the company works with providers such as DNB, Klarna, Rabobank, Santander, Société Générale and Western Union. The company’s solutions are also increasingly adopted across new verticals, being used for instance by blue-chip companies such as BMW, Konica Minolta and Schibsted Media Group. Among Signicat’s largest customers are also several of Nordic Capital’s current and former portfolio companies including Nordax, Nordnet, Intrum and Resurs Bank. In 2018, Signicat generated revenues of approximately NOK 180 million (EUR 19 million), primarily consisting of recurring subscription or transaction based revenues. The company has circa 115 employees across offices in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal.

Signicat was acquired from Secure Identity Holding AS and other shareholders. Viking Venture III AS, Signicat’s other major shareholder, will re-invest all proceeds and continue as a minority owner, together with employee shareholders and with Nordic Capital as the majority owner.

“As one of the most prominent and experienced investors in the FinTech sector with a long and proven track record of growing businesses, Nordic Capital is the perfect partner to support Signicat’s accelerated international expansion strategy,” said Gunnar Nordseth, CEO and Co-Founder of Signicat. “We live in a digital society where interactions between consumers and institutions are predominantly online and mobile-first. Trust is at a premium, and digital identity is the solution. Over the last 12 years Signicat has built a digital identity platform with all the tools any institution requires to establish mutual trust with its customers. With the ongoing global digital transformation, we are ideally placed to address this burgeoning market opportunity.”

“Born from the most advanced digital identity market in the world, Signicat is a recognised leader in one of the most exciting and fast-growing technology areas globally acting as a key enabler for the digital economy,” said Fredrik Näslund, Partner at the Advisor to the Nordic Capital Funds. “The company has shown consistent high growth since inception, driven both by a rapidly increasing number of customers and strong volume growth among existing customers. Signicat’s highly experienced management team is well positioned to capitalise on enormous growth opportunities across geographies, customer verticals and products, as the digital transformation of the economy continues. Drawing on Nordic Capital’s significant experience across enterprise software, payment technology, financial services, and from scaling businesses globally, we are enthusiastic about the opportunity to help Signicat to further strengthen its market position and customer offering.” 

“As a leading Nordic growth software investor, we at Viking Venture have backed Signicat to become the market leader within digital identity in the Nordics. Together with Nordic Capital, we will support the company to become a global leader,” said Jostein Vik, Partner, Viking Venture.

The acquisition of Signicat is the ninth investment by Nordic Capital’s latest fund, Nordic Capital Fund IX with EUR 4.3 billion in committed capital and which closed in May 2018. The acquisition builds on Nordic Capital’s recognised expertise and outstanding track record in the technology sector. Nordic Capital has made 14 Technology & Payment platform investments, including Bambora, Point and Trustly, and more than 40 add-ons since 2001.

The parties have agreed to not disclose any financial details.

Extend has announced its $11 million Series A financing. Extend’s platform enables frictionless virtual credit card issuance for banks, corporations, and other startups. The round was led by Point72 Ventures and FinTech Collective, with additional participation from Reciprocal Ventures and strategic partner City National Bank.

Extend, which is building core infrastructure for the future of payments, is transforming the $1.6 trillion U.S. corporate card industry. Its platform also offers a simple, secure virtual card payment option for the $864 billion U.S. gig economy. Having integrated with both Mastercard and Visa, and already partnered with a half dozen strategic banks, Extend will use the funds to launch new features for its app and open APIs, accelerate bank partnerships, and recruit top-tier talent across engineering, marketing, and operations.

“Growing customer expectations are driving fintech startups and financial institutions to develop and deliver more dynamic, feature-rich digital payments experiences for their customers,” said Tripp Shriner, Partner, Point72 Ventures. “Extend’s platform enables that innovation and we are thrilled to support the team as they execute on the large opportunity in front of them.”

"As companies take increasing advantage of microservices and the gig economy to build their businesses, Extend is building the critical infrastructure that will redefine how corporate credit cards can be distributed to manage these new categories of expenses," added Gareth Jones, co-founder and Managing Partner at FinTech Collective. "As seen in recent news, virtual cards are an area which will continue to see major innovation this year."

Extend partners with card issuers so they can deliver advanced virtual card capabilities to their clients. This allows banks to accelerate innovation and meet client needs. With Extend, businesses can instantly send virtual credit cards to anyone, each with a unique spending limit and validity period, taking control of spend, gaining visibility, and earning rewards.

"Extend allows banks to keep up with the fast pace of the evolving payment landscape. Our cutting-edge capabilities sit seamlessly on top of existing bank card platforms, eliminating traditional technical hurdles to deployment." said Andrew Jamison, CEO of Extend. “We lead the way for future financial innovation by serving as the layer between fintech startups and financial institutions, enabling them to better integrate their services for the mutual benefit of their customers."

“Customers across industries want easy-to-use solutions to their payment challenges, such as instantly providing access to a credit card without losing spend control or adding onerous processes. In Extend, we found both the mobile-based technology our clients need combined with a team of industry experts that we wanted to work with,” said Vince Hruska, Head of Enterprise Cards at City National Bank.

Taulia, a leading fintech company, partners with Google Cloud to launch AI-powered invoicing solution.

The solution launching at Google Cloud Next ‘19 showcases how Taulia has addressed the pain businesses experience processing invoices. Supplier invoices are typically generated in a myriad of formats containing unstructured data that is difficult to process using current technology. This antiquated workflow results in a large amount of manual intervention, high administrative burden and ultimately delay of vital payments. A Gartner study suggests that upwards of 80% of all data created by businesses globally is in unstructured formats.

Cognitive Invoicing enables businesses to successfully process invoices in any file format from their suppliers. The solution leverages the optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities of Google Cloud’s Document Understanding AI to read and interpret unstructured supplier invoice data in Taulia’s global invoicing platform. Exceptions are easily handled on a collaborative basis - in the cloud - with the ability for corrections to be made by either party. This delivers an automated end-to-end invoicing process for buyers and suppliers.

By finally automating the process through the application of AI, Cognitive Invoicing is set to reduce the cost of processing an invoice from dollars to cents. Businesses’ ability to process and approve invoices faster also means that their suppliers gain a greater opportunity to access early payments, improving their liquidity.

“Using AI we have finally cracked the intractable invoice processing issues that many businesses face. We are now able to fully realize our vision of enabling buyers and suppliers to freely exchange information,” says Brady Cale, CTO of Taulia. “The faster an invoice can be processed, the sooner it can be leveraged within the company’s working capital strategy, thereby bringing more opportunities for companies to free up cash. It’s a complete game changer for Finance teams.”

“Enterprises are looking for easy, scalable solutions to extract deep insights from their unstructured content and documents,” said Pallab Deb, Head of ML Tech Partners at Google. “We are thrilled to offer Document Understanding AI in collaboration with partners like Taulia to enable our customers to unlock valuable insights from their documents.”

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM^®) solutions provider, today announced a new client driven strategic focus in line with the new FSA (now PRA) rules governing liquidity management for UK and foreign branches. In response to the new regulations, SmartStream has appointed Nadeem Shamim to lead cash and liquidity management solutions globally.

Nadeem brings over 30 years of experience in treasury, cash and liquidity management within transaction banking and treasury consulting, across Europe and Asia. Prior to SmartStream, Nadeem was at Standard Chartered Bank, in his role as Managing Director he was responsible for corporate treasury solutions. Previous to this he was at J.P. Morgan, Head of Financial Institutions Group EMEA, Treasury Services, focusing on regulations and cash management.

Nadeem will report into Vincent Kilcoyne, Head of Product Management at SmartStream. In addition, two members of the internal teams Paul Randell, previously Business Engineer at Credit Suisse, and Richard Morris, previously Global Head of Cash Management Technology at Morgan Stanley, will be taking on the roles of products managers reporting to Nadeem.  

Vincent Kilcoyne, Head of Product Management, SmartStream, says: “Nadeem brings with him solid experience of strategic advisory and innovative thinking in bank transformation, treasury risk management, FinTech and supply chain financing. I am delighted to have such a strong and committed team with Paul, Richard and Nadeem - we will see great success in the coming future”.

Nadeem Shamim, Head of Cash and Liquidity Management, SmartStream, states: “Banks and other financial institutions are asking themselves some fundamental questions about managing liquidity - the pressure is on in terms of, not only monitoring intraday liquidity, but to manage it on a just-in-time basis. Our aim is to ensure clients are compliant, as well as, heading in the right direction in terms of technological advances, including AI and machine learning. We have a highly skilled team who can deliver value to our customers”.

Velocity Ledger Holdings Limited ”VLHL” has been approved to conduct an initial coin offering “ICO” by the Ministry of Finance of Bermuda in accordance with the companies act of 1981.  VLHL is a Bermuda Company with two subsidiaries for which the ICO will fund operations: VL Financial and Velocity Ledger Technology Limited ("VL Tech").

VL Financial is currently engaged in the application process with the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), which regulates the financial sector, to obtain the required licenses to operate. Following approval by the BMA, VL Financial would operate a digital asset exchange in Bermuda supporting asset backed investment and real estate tokens.

VL Tech is a private blockchain enabled platform for the generation of tokenized assets, secondary trading and settlement of trades. It is a comprehensive technology solution that operates as Software-as-a-Service (SAAS). Participants utilizing the technology will require token ownership.

VL tokens may be used for payment for licensing VL technology platform and services. Benefits include revenue sharing and monthly distribution of newly minted tokens to stake-holders.   The VL token sale was approved on March 22, 2019 and is expected to commence in the middle of April, through July of 2019.

“Bermuda has adopted pragmatic, non-restrictive frameworks for digital assets that provide regulatory certainty to market participants,” said Shawn Sloves, CEO of Velocity Ledger. “Bermuda will be a focal point for blockchain initiatives globally.”

Premier, the Hon David Burt, JP, MP, said: “Velocity Ledger represents the exact kind of company that Bermuda is pleased to attract. They have a traditional finance industry pedigree and are building solutions for the institutional finance market. Their platform will showcase the potential of what Fintech and Bermuda have to offer. I am pleased that they have been granted a license to issue an ICO and will be proceeding to apply for a Digital Asset Business License. I look forward to them developing their business and creating jobs in Bermuda.”