QuantHouse, the leading independent global provider of end-to-end systematic trading solutions including innovative market data services, algo trading platform and infrastructure solutions, today announced that the FastMatch consolidated central market data product, the FX Tape®, is available on the QuantHouse API Ecosystem store. 

Euronext’s FastMatch FX Tape is the only consolidated FX tape available in the market, making pre- and post-trade benchmarking possible for the first time.  The FX Tape includes transactions from a wide variety of market participants and sources, including FastMatch’s ECN, delivering a reference point for executed trades in the spot FX market.

Available globally as part of the QuantFeed product that normalises and disseminates market data for more than 140 feeds, FastMatch’s FX Tape product provides much needed post-trade transparency in one of the largest asset classes in the world. More than 300+ buy-side firms and investment banks are connected to the QuantHouse API Ecosystem using solutions provided by buy and sell-side firms, execution venues and technology partners via a single managed QuantHouse API. As QuantHouse manages the API, customers can access services quickly and efficiently, simply by ‘plugging-in’.

Pierre Feligioni, CEO and Co-founder, QuantHouse, said: “Whether you sit on the buy-side or sell-side, anyone who trades FX will benefit from being able to access the FastMatch FX tape. We commend FastMatch for looking to create the first consolidated tape for the FX market and are delighted to be able to help expand their reach through our API global community of users.”

Kevin Wolf, CEO, FastMatch, comments: “FastMatch’s FX Tape makes post-trade information for the spot market accessible to everyone as we deliver transaction information from a broad range of sources. FastMatch experienced heightened interest in the FX Tape recently from several Central Banks following the January 2019 USDJPY flash crash which validates the value of an independent reference point in the market. We anticipate that QuantHouse will act as a complementary channel for those wishing to access the FX Tape in addition to our suite of Spot FX Market Data products.”

Fonetic, a global leader in voice processing, compliance and surveillance technology, has made two major hires across Europe and North America in response to burgeoning demand for voice surveillance systems.

Thomas Dinneny, former Head of Trade Surveillance at J.P Morgan, will be responsible for driving strategy and new business in the Americas. While industry stalwart Tony Foreman, who has worked for the likes of Progress Apama, will be tasked with deploying his two decades worth of market infrastructure knowledge to grow Fonetic’s global sales efforts.

The hires come as financial institutions become more accountable for their employee’s behaviour following the Senior Managers Regime (SMR) and regulations such as MiFID II.  With reputationally and commercially damaging conversations still prevalent in banking’s culture, the industry is increasingly turning to voice surveillance systems to ease the burden on compliance teams.

Commenting on his move to Fonetic Dinneny, who also served as Head of Compliance Surveillance at Thomson Reuters, said: “With regulation continuing to fuel demand for voice surveillance systems, there has never been a better time to join a forward thinking company like Fonetic. It is great to be working closely with such an innovative team to support the next stage of business growth across the Americas.”

Tony Foreman added: “Where previously voice surveillance was seen as an area which was too complex for the technology to get right, financial institutions are starting to realise that there are systems available which can cater to all of their needs. As banks seek out new surveillance solutions, there is a fantastic opportunity for Fonetic to broaden its customer reach internationally.”

Juan Manual Soto, CEO of Fonetic, concluded: “Thomas and Tony’s industry-renowned expertise coupled with a strong background in market infrastructure and technology makes them ideally placed to support our continued global growth.”

A.T. Kearney, a leading management consulting firm, has appointed Simon Kent as Global Head of Financial Services.  Simon joined A.T Kearney as a Partner in its London headquarters in 2013 from Navigant, where he served as Head of Financial Services. With over 25 years’ experience of advising financial services clients, Simon will be tasked with growing A.T. Kearney’s footprint in the financial services sector globally and leading the firm’s investment into the sector. 

A.T. Kearney has a strong track record of advising financial services brands, with a focus on the banking, insurance and payments markets, working on projects that underpin the CEO agenda and that typically involve strategic operational and digital transformation.

Simon Kent, Global Head of Financial Services at A.T. Kearney, said:

"Financial services companies are a vital element of the economy and a force for good when they get it right. It’s no secret that the industry has faced well-documented challenges over the past decade. It has taken – and continues to take – major strides to transform itself. At its best, financial services can serve as a powerful force for good in the economy, and clients are focused on that purpose as well as delivering shareholder and customer value. 

“Alongside that, factors like increasing disruption, open banking, rising customer expectations, new challenger firms and new regulation are all continuing to reshape the sector, driving demand for expert advice. A.T. Kearney’s global financial services team works with brands around the world to transform their operations for competitive advantage and create long–term success, and I’m looking forward to the challenge of delivering growth for the firm in these areas.”

Dimelo, a RingCentral Company, the leading cloud-based digital customer engagement platform, announces its integration with the WhatsApp Business solution that allows businesses to interact with customers in a fast and simple way directly through WhatsApp. 

With over 5 billion people actively using messaging apps every month, it’s evident that today’s customers want to connect with businesses in the same way they chat with friends and family, using  easy and hassle-free chat messaging services. The integration provides customers with flexibility and a more personalised experience, as asynchronous messaging allows agents to fit around customers’ needs and doesn’t prolong customer waiting times.

By relying on the RingCentral Engage omni-digital platform, businesses are able to let the 1.5 billion WhatsApp users contact them, providing even more valuable and seamless customer experiences.

Stéphane Lee, Dimelo’s Managing Director and co-founder, commented: “Messaging is the future of customer care. With this new integration, Dimelo enables its clients to  engage with their customers in a fast and effective way. Customers directly chatting with a business are able to enjoy the same experience as when they talk to their peers. At the same time, companies are able to manage all their digital conversations through a single platform. Messaging tools like the WhatsApp Business solution help companies to improve, personalise and speed up their customers interactions.”

With the WhatsApp Business solution, users can opt-in to start a conversation with businesses who then have 24 hours to reply. If a company is late in replying to its customers then they may be charged as a way of encouraging effective customer care.

Dimelo clients who benefit from implementing the WhatsApp Business solution include: cDiscount (FR - Retail), Crédit Mutuel - Arkea (FR - Insurance); AXA (CH/FR - Insurance); AllSecur (NL - Insurance) and LCL (FR - Banks) and multiple enterprises in various industries in EMEA. Dimelo is also providing its clients with support on best practices for customer care.

Commenting on today’s publication of a Government consultation on plans to repay HMRC ahead of pension schemes, trade creditors, and lenders in insolvency procedures, Stuart Frith, President of insolvency and restructuring trade body R3, says:

“The Government’s decision to push ahead with the return of ‘Crown Preference’ is frustrating and misguided. It’s a short-sighted plan for a quick cash grab for the Treasury at the expense of long-term damage to the UK’s enterprise and business rescue culture, and to businesses’ access to finance. The Government could undo fifteen years’ worth of progress on building an enterprise culture.

“More money back to the Treasury increases the impact of insolvency on everyone else. It’s not just lenders who will be worse off, but an insolvent company’s pension scheme and trade creditors, too.

“The Government’s plan will make lending to a business on a ‘floating charge’ basis much more risky. ‘Floating charge’ lending includes common types of lending, like asset-based lending. If things go wrong, a lender won’t get their money back – it’ll go to the Treasury instead. It’s simple: the greater the risk of lending, the less lending there is likely to be. This makes it harder to fund rescues, and limits lending options for healthy businesses.

“‘Floating charge’ lending is useful for expanding stock levels. It’s often used in the retail sector – which could do without this particular blow – but, with Brexit looming, businesses across the UK are having to buy extra stock as they prepare for the unknown. The timing of this proposal could not be worse. Little thought seems to have gone into how many businesses would fail if their lending facilities were withdrawn or reduced.

“While the Treasury may see some extra money back every year as a result of the change, it’ll be counting the cost of missing tax income and added tax losses in later years. Tighter access to finance for business means more business failure, fewer growing businesses to generate tax receipts, and higher redundancy payouts for the Government to cover.”

The Government’s Proposal

In insolvency procedures, creditors are repaid according to a strict hierarchy, set out in statute. Because an insolvent company is very unlikely to be able to repay all its debts, the lower a creditor is down the order, the less of their money – if anything – they are likely to see back.

The order of priority for repayment in corporate insolvencies is:

1. ‘Fixed charge’ creditors – creditors whose lending to a company is secured against a definable object (e.g. a mortgage on a building/warehouse)

2. Costs of the insolvency process – this could include staff wages or rent due during the process, or the fees of the office holder

3. Preferential creditors – this currently covers some payments due to employees, and money owed as part of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Until 2003, HMRC was classed as a preferential creditor (this was changed by the 2002 Enterprise Act)

4. ‘Floating charge’ creditors – creditors whose lending is secured against a class of asset (e.g. ‘stock’ in a warehouse, but not specific items of stock). Asset-based lending is a common type of floating charge lending

5. Unsecured creditors – almost all other creditors, including pension schemes, customers and trade creditors. HMRC is currently an unsecured creditor

6. Shareholders.

The Government’s plan is to restore HMRC’s preferential status for some tax debts (including PAYE, employee NICs, and VAT). Tax debts owed by an insolvent company itself (e.g. Corporation Tax) will remain an unsecured debt.

Baker Hill, a leading provider of technology solutions for common loan origination, risk and relationship management, CECL compliance, and smart data analytics, announced that New Valley Bank & Trust has selected Baker Hill NextGen® for Commercial and Small Business Lending to help the bank develop efficiencies in the lending process and modernize the borrower experience.

As the Pioneer Valley’s next innovative endeavor, New Valley Bank & Trust is championed by a diverse group of results-driven founders, investors and professionals capitalizing on the economic momentum of the region. The bank’s best-in-class product suites are thoughtfully designed to elevate the financial prosperity of its customers, with personalized services for the way they live and do business. Its robust digital platform is coupled with local decision-makers capable of moving in real-time to keep pace with a business community that is vibrant and growing. Currently in the process of completing its funding rounds, the bank plans to open its first branch in 2019. Given Baker Hill’s longstanding success in lending technology and advisory services, the bank selected Baker Hill NextGen® for its Commercial and Small Business loan origination software to support this new endeavor. 

With Baker Hill NextGen®, New Valley Bank & Trust will be able to originate commercial and small business loans and manage risk all within a single platform. The solution’s intuitive, mobile-responsive architecture, fluid workflows and robust decision engine will help the bank boost productivity by seamlessly integrating into the bank’s existing core solution and reducing duplicate data entry. Baker Hill NextGen® offers an extensive variety of formats and platforms that will allow new features to be implemented in order to grow with New Valley Bank & Trust as it expands.

“As a new institution, we are committed to embracing innovations that prioritize responsiveness and drive opportunity for our customers, especially for those digitally-driven,” said Jeff Sullivan, CEO and President of New Valley Bank & Trust. “To stay true to that commitment, we chose to partner with Baker Hill because of their proven experience and history in commercial lending. This, coupled with their leading-edge technology, will enable us to deliver the lending products our community needs and desires. We look forward to working with them to support growth now and in the future.”

“Baker Hill’s best-in-class solutions combined with our deep understanding of the industry and the modern demands of end users will support New Valley Bank & Trust to achieve efficiencies in its lending process to best serve its community and customers,” said John M. Deignan, President and CEO of Baker Hill. “Baker Hill NextGen® empowers financial institutions to maximize their growth and profitability potential, which will be critical as the bank grows. Their market will benefit from another great community financial institution to respond to the needs of its region, and we’re pleased to help support them in doing so.”

BT today announced that leading cryptocurrency exchange and custodian Gemini Trust LLC (Gemini), a New York-based trust company, has joined the BT Radianz Cloud. The move provides Gemini access to one of the world’s largest, secure networked financial cloud communities — which consists of thousands of brokers, institutions, exchanges and clearing and settlement houses — while providing community members access to the growing cryptocurrency market. 

Founded in 2014 by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Gemini offers customers the ability to cross connect directly to its trading infrastructure — matching the sophistication of major global equities and derivatives exchanges. By joining the Radianz Cloud, Gemini taps its global market reach and ability to scale with a commercial structure familiar to large institutions. Institutions that are already members of the Radianz Cloud community can benefit from the performance and reassurance of Radianz connectivity when accessing Gemini’s platform.

 "No other cryptocurrency exchange in the world offers our calibre of top performance and breadth of connectivity options. Adding Radianz Cloud connectivity to our current low latency offerings in the NY5 data centre allows our existing institutional customer base to access our FIX interface whether they are directly connected or in AWS. This strengthens our institutional investor connectivity and helps us better scale our offerings in this space," said Nick Vigier, chief information officer at Gemini.

"Global financial institutions have very specific requirements about the performance, resilience and security of the infrastructure over which they trade,” said Michael Woodman, managing director of BT Radianz. “They expect stringent service levels and will only do business under trusted commercial frameworks that help them to meet their own contractual and compliance requirements. This can make it difficult for small or new service providers to grow. By joining the Radianz Cloud, Gemini achieves the reach and scale demanded by global institutions and benefits from an established framework for doing business with them.” 

Through a single, resilient and secure network connection engineered for the exacting demands of the international financial markets industry, members of the Radianz Cloud can reliably access thousands of applications and services from more than 400 providers critical to the every-day running of the global financial sector.

Perkbox, Europe’s fastest growing employee experience platform, is today announcing the continuation of its global expansion plans by opening new offices in Sydney, Australia.The announcement follows only months after the company’s expansion into France, which achieved faster success than expected, and the launch of its three new products in the UK.

Perkbox Australia is currently building its portfolio of perks with providers such as  Experience Oz, Fast Cover, F45, looking to cater for the full spectrum of employee wellbeing - physical, financial and emotional, at an affordable price. After a successful initial launch in the UK, Perkbox will also be offering two of its new products, Perkbox Insights and Perkbox Recognition, in this new market. 

With offices in The Commons, for now the majority of the team is made up of experienced Perkboxers who, previously based in London, have been with the company from the start. This is a conscious decision made by the Senior Leadership Team to ensure the company starts off with an experienced talent pool and is able to remain relevant and competitive, whilst keeping the company’s renown culture intact.

The company has already signed up a number of exciting companies as customers including coworking workspace, Emerge Sydney; food and beverage startup, Hey You; suit maker, Institchu and SME loans company, Valiant Finance. Perkbox is estimating to onboard another 2,000 companies by the end of the year.

Ben Leeds, Country Manager of Perkbox Australia says: “Since our very beginnings in 2015, we set off to build a clean and intuitive solution that helps businesses improve their culture and motivate their team without breaking the bank. Today marks the start of an exciting new phase here at Perkbox, as we move towards spreading our ‘Perkbox movement’ into yet another market, slowly turning this into a global revolution.”

Saurav Chopra, Co-founder and CEO of Perkbox says: “We’ve seen many businesses that offer wellbeing perks top LinkedIn’s list of most popular companies to work for in Australia. Paying for top talent is important but money isn’t the only thing that makes employees happy - and Australians know it. We’re super excited to be expanding into such a dynamic and forward-thinking market and can’t wait to make a noticeable difference.”

EBA CLEARING announced today that its instant payment system RT1 has further expanded its coverage in the German market and now reaches a critical mass of payment service providers (PSPs) operating in Germany. With this large-scale connection to EBA CLEARING’s pan-European infrastructure platform, the German banking community has laid the foundation for rolling out euro real-time payment products and services to its customers nationwide.

RT1 has welcomed three additional major German payment market players – Deutsche Bank, DZ BANK and Commerzbank – since November 2018. This has increased to more than 1,700 the number of PSPs in Germany that are addressable via RT1, including the German cooperative sector connected via DZ BANK. The new participants joined UniCredit AG, Hanseatic Bank and the two Landesbanken Helaba and LBBW, which were already active in RT1; the two latter have been connecting the German savings banks sector to the EBA CLEARING system via their payments hubs since mid-2018. Additional German PSPs are scheduled to connect to RT1 in the next few months.

These recent developments in Germany tie in with instant payment roll-out activities of other communities and individual institutions across Europe. In addition to Germany, the ramp-up at country level, as witnessed by RT1, has been gaining steam in Italy, Spain, the Baltics and Austria in particular. As a result, the total number of transactions processed in RT1 tripled from 5 to 15 million between late October 2018 and late February 2019. These 15 million instant payments, of which over 99% were settled and thus final within less than three seconds, had a total value of over EUR 8 billion. 

“Around 900 cooperative banks in Germany have been reachable via Instant Payment since November 2018 and can receive SEPA Instant Credit Transfers. For DZ BANK, Instant Payments are a central building block in the payments business, which is why we are working intensively on active reachability: in the course of this spring, about 30 million customers of the cooperative banks will be able to initiate real-time payments,” said Jürgen Kaczmarek, Head of Operations Management, Payments & Accounts, DZ BANK AG.

“From our point of view, market penetration is crucial for instant payments. It takes quite a few participating institutions to ensure that customers get the money in their accounts within a few seconds. The number of banks offering the service is now sufficiently high for customers to be able to use it at a large scale. Customers of Commerzbank can receive payments in real time as of now,” said Stefan Wloch, Managing Director, Group Services Banking Operations at Commerzbank AG.

“Thanks to the tremendous support of our multinational user community, RT1 currently reaches practically all PSPs actively using the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme. That corresponds to 60% of all PSPs operating in SEPA.

The substantial onboarding of German banks onto RT1 is a spectacular example confirming that the instant payment take-up across Europe has been making great strides. We are happy to provide a resilient backbone for the processing of these soaring transaction volumes,” said Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING.

RT1 provides payment service providers in the Single Euro Payments Area with a real-time payment processing facility operating around the clock on any day of the year.

The EBA CLEARING platform went live as the first pan-European real-time payment infrastructure system on the launch date of the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) Scheme of the European Payments Council in November 2017.

RT1 participation is open to any account-servicing payment provider (AS-PSP) adhering to the EPC SCT Inst Scheme; the system currently reaches over 2,300 institutions. Different options to interact with the system allow any type of user access to the RT1 platform.

Surecomp®, the global trade finance fintech leader, announced today the launch of SureStore, an industry first app store offering best-in-class applications for banks and corporates trade finance departments. Today's announcement comes on the heels of Surecomp’s successful roll-out of APIsure, its open API platform that enables the rapid adoption of these new products and services.

Available now in the SureStore are four apps from handpicked, best-in-class fintech companies: Trafinas by Conpend, AGGREGO by SemSoft, Wave and WalkMe. Each of these companies is already working with leading banks around the world, SureStore serves as a platform for Surecomp clientele to utilize these services and bring the most state-of-the-art digitalization and automation into their systems. Additional apps from vetted and approved vendors are expected to roll-out in the coming months.

With a focus on trade finance digitalization, automation and compliance, Conpend, a Netherlands based fintech, offers market leading technology to streamline back-office operations and reduce risk. The Trafinas solution provides robotic process automation (RPA), Trade Based Money Laundering (TBML) detection and augmented Document Examination based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to extract data from unstructured text.  “Utilizing Trafinas will help users improve efficiency of the workflow that is managed by Surecomp’s back-office system and reduce risk when processing trade finance transactions”, said Marc Smith, Founder and CEO of Conpend.

SemSoft, a French fintech company, has a unique regulatory technology offering. SemSoft’s LESTR relies on their AGGREGO system to automate and streamline regulatory compliance, including TBML, anti-terrorism policies and more while keeping a full transaction audit for future reference. “SemSoft’s technology will aggregate and augment all relevant trade finance information and display it in one convenient place for Surecomp users”, said François Paulus, founder and president of SemSoft. 

Wave, an Israeli fintech company, has launched a pioneering B2B decentralized blockchain network allowing for the secured exchange of original documents. The technology digitizes the transfer of title of bills and certificates, effectively eradicates disputes and forgeries. Wave mitigates risk and eliminates environmental impact. “Wave is excited to partner with Surecomp, spearheading trade finance technology for the 21st century”, said Gadi Ruschin, CEO and Co-founder of Wave.  

WalkMe, headquartered in San Francisco, has partnered with Surecomp to enhance the user experience of its digitalized core systems. WalkMe’s solution offers a simple step-by-step navigation guidance, facilitating the onboarding process so that users can easily and efficiently learn the program. “The WalkMe platform will help people who are new to Surecomp software get up-and-running quickly,” said Gilad Friedman, VP Channel Sales at WalkMe.   

SureStore is the industry’s first platform for banks and corporates to rapidly adopt innovative products and services. “SureStore is the actualization of our pledge to enable our client’s digital future”, said Eyal Hareuveny, Surecomp president. “As our world becomes increasingly digital, the market demands new, easy to use solutions that will save time and money. Today we deliver just that.”  Lyron Wahrmann, Surecomp’s head of digitalization  agreed and added “SureStore is a game-changer. These apps will empower our customers to take a decades-old industry and turn it on its head, we look forward to collaboration with new and existing clients.”