Published
- 01:00 am
Speaking in London today, at a Guernsey Finance seminar showcasing Guernsey’s global leadership in application of technology in financial services with the introduction of the Electronic Agents Ordinance 2019, the Guernsey Financial Services Commission outlined an approach to provide greater regulatory reassurance in the application of electronic CDD.
“The GFSC has always been supportive of the safe secure exploitation of technology. We are happy to work with all stakeholders to look to develop an approach that creates greater certainty for providers deploying electronic AML. The introduction of a revised AML handbook provides a welcome opportunity for us to make clear our commitment to ex ante discussions over the deployment of technology in the AML process,” said Emma Bailey, Director of Authorisations and Innovation at the GFSC, who spoke at the event.
The GFSC published a new anti-money laundering handbook late last year which offers an opportunity for the island to provide clarity and confidence in the supportive nature of the regulatory regime to encourage greater market-based provision.
Dr Andy Sloan, Deputy Chief Executive, Strategy, at Guernsey Finance, said that the development was to be welcomed.
“Certainty, clarity and confidence of the regulatory approach are key for the application of technology and key to its widespread adoption. It is great to see, among other things, the GFSC helping to create these conditions to support the widespread adoption of technology-based AML solutions in Guernsey,” he said.
“Our strategy is to support a market-based approach to the application of technology in the AML arena. We are fortunate to be home to some of the market’s leaders in the provision of technology-based AML services to funds and fiduciary sectors.
“It’s a point possibly under-appreciated, but Guernsey has been open to the exploitation of technology in financial services, and has many examples of excellence, including the world’s first commercial deployment of blockchain in private equity market by Northern Trust, the market-based provision of electronic CDD services from The ID Register, and the world’s first listing on a regulated exchange of notes digitised on a blockchain by Solidum Re.”
Also at the seminar in London, lawyer Stephen Ozanne, Senior Associate at Walkers, provided a briefing on the impact and potential of the island’s recently-lodged ”smart contracts” and “electronic agents” legislation.
The lodging of the Electronic Transactions (Electronic Agents) (Guernsey), 2019, Ordinance earlier this month in the island offers greater certainty as the use of artificial intelligence and distributed ledger technology grows. It will boost confidence and enable adopters of technology solutions to use Guernsey.
The laws of most jurisdictions do not yet explicitly address electronic agents. Guernsey’s move is being seen as an important development in progressing the island’s digital ambitions, and positioning Guernsey law as the international law of choice for commercial contracts for those seeking to use smart contract technology.
- 09:00 am
Coupa Software, a leader in business spend management (BSM), today announced that it has been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Accounts Payable Applications 2019 Vendor Assessment, US44753119, January 2019.
Among the strengths contributing to Coupa's position in the Leader category are:
- Strong technology platform with high satisfaction from end users
- Globally available invoicing with robust approval and compliance capabilities
- Exceptional reporting capabilities for any level of visibility
According to the report, IDC recommends considering Coupa if you are looking for an "AP automation platform capable of handling large and complex organizations" or "a solution with a large supplier network and powerful self-service tools including full configuration and global e-invoicing compliance without the need to develop custom code."
"Finance leaders today are seeing the value that comprehensive solutions for managing accounts payable automation can bring to their organizations," said Kevin Permenter, senior research analyst at IDC. "Coupa continues to deliver innovation and value in several areas of a company's accounts payable process through consistent execution and a clear vision."
"Being named a Leader and recognized for our comprehensive and unified BSM platform in the IDC MarketScape for AP is wonderful validation of our focus on driving innovation and value with our customers," said Raja Hammoud, senior vice president of products at Coupa. "As a community, we are laser-focused on transforming employee and supplier experiences to digitize business and increase value for both sides of the business spend equation."
The IDC MarketScape found that Coupa offers advanced, configurable control models that deliver e-invoicing compliance for 40 countries as well as Coupa InvoiceSmash, a feature that converts PDF invoices into structured data "much more accurately than OCR." This automation can save time, reduce the chance of error, and minimize the burden on suppliers.
For Coupa customer Ionis Pharmaceuticals, automated AP led to significant increases in efficiency and productivity. "Coupa provided us an accelerated time-to-value. We are now able to process more than double the number of requisitions and nearly three times the number of invoices than we did prior to Coupa," says Isaac Ballesteros, assistant director of Accounting at Ionis Pharmaceuticals.
- 09:00 am
Today, Atos announces its project to distribute 23.4% of Worldline’s share capital to Atos’ shareholders leading to the creation of 2 listed global pure play leaders. As a consequence, while continuing their industrial and commercial partnership, Atos will reinforce its focus as a leading digital pure player and Worldline will benefit from an strengthened equity profile and enhanced ability to pursue consolidation opportunities.
During 2018, the Group completed two transforming acquisitions, Syntel, a € 0.9 billion revenue company in the digital services market, and SIX Payment Services, a € 0.5 billion revenue company in electronic payments. The change in size and business mix has led the Group to build a 3-year plan to the horizon of 2021 taking into account its new structure.
At the occasion of an Investor Day held today in its Headquarters in Bezons (France) the Group launches ADVANCE 2021, its new three-year plan, building on its reinforced global profile in digital services.
Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO said: “In 2018, Atos strengthened its digital services global profile and capabilities with the acquisition of Syntel and enhanced Worldline’s position as the undisputed payment leader in Europe through the acquisition of Six Payment Services. The project to distribute 23.4% of Worldline’s share capital to Atos shareholders will create two pure play global leaders with increased strategic and financial flexibility.
With ADVANCE 2021, our new three-year plan, Atos will be well positioned to support its customers as they face the disruption created by the digital shockwaves and meet the challenge to securely manage and leverage the value of their data to create new business insights.
With that purpose, Atos will strengthen its customer centricity through a reinforced vertical go-to-market approach pulling through all of Atos’ capabilities and mobilizing its people skills and key talents.
- 08:00 am
Tide adding 5,000 members in January 2019 and is growing faster than any other business banking player
Ambitious plans to accelerate growth through recently announced partnership with Clearbank which brings together ClearBank’s robust, next-generation infrastructure andTide’s market-leading propositions to help entrepreneurs run and grow their businesses.
With Tide’s support, ClearBank has applied for a grant from Pool A of the Capability and Innovation Fund of the RBS Alternatives Remedies Package. If successful, market share expected to grow from 1.1% to up to 10 - 16%, depending on grant
London, 30 January 2019 - Tide, the SME-only digital challenger bank, has today revealed that it is adding more than 5,000 new business accounts in January 2019, equivalent to capturing 0.1% of the UK market in a single month. Tide is growing faster than any other business banking player and is the clear leader in digital challenger banking for SMEs with ambitious plans to accelerate growth. Tide now has 60,000 members and is rapidly approaching the scale of traditional challengers such as TSB and the Co-Op who are looking to grow their share of the UK business banking market.
According to the Department of Business Innovation and Skills, there are a total of 5.7 million UK SMEs, which means Tide now has 1.1 per cent of the UK market, after launching operations just over two years ago.
Earlier this month, Tide announced it was set to partner with ClearBank, a next-generation clearing bank, to transform banking for small businesses. ClearBank has applied for a grant from the RBS Alternative Remedies Package worth up to £120 million. With Tide providing the customer facing proposition, the partnership aims to take advantage of a once in a generation opportunity to challenge the oligopoly that dominates the UK business banking market. The bid has outlined in its proposal’s ambitions to, depending on the grant level, to capture 10 to 16% market share.
Oliver Prill, CEO of Tide, said: “This has been a strong start to year. Customers come to us because they want a dedicated and focused partner that will help them grow their business, and not the poor customer service, high costs and bureaucracy of the high street banks.
“Additional funding would mean we can transform the market even more quickly and create a genuine scale alternative to the traditional banks. With the infrastructure and customer proposition in place, we can focus the funding on driving awareness of the Tide
brand, overcoming switching friction, and creating extremely powerful reasons for customers not to default to the Big 4 Oligopoly that has served them so poorly.
“We are very committed to the Banking Competition Remedies’ objective of changing business banking for the better and believe that this means there needs to be at least one digital centric player in the award mix. Tide has already demonstrated its credibility by being the fastest growing business banking service provider in the UK.”
Tide offers its growing army of members business banking without monthly, weekly or annual, or card usage fees. The only costs are for transfers from non-Tide accounts, ATM use and cash deposits at the post office. Unlike traditional banks, a new Tide account can be up and running in just five minutes rather than what can be weeks on the high street. As well as balances and payments, Tide can be fully integrated into accounting systems. Tide was among the first to launch with Xero's new bank feed integration.
- 09:00 am
Connected Claims is welcoming Andreas Kleiner, the CEO and President at American Modern Insurance to the Connected Claims USA 2019 (June 5&6, Chicago)!
This is the first time a CEO joins Connected Claims to deliver the opening keynote “The Strategic Value of Claims for an Insurance Company”.
Download the event brochure for the full speaker line-up and conference agenda.
It is a new era for claims executives in which rapidly changing customer demands and the urgency to build agile and nimble insurance organizations will go a long way toward determining the future.
In addition, some of Connected Claims’ hot topic sessions this year include:
- Navigate from Low Touch to Straight Through Processing: move along the spectrum of increasing claims automation, from fast-tracked, to minimal-touch, to completely automated claims
- Achieve Seamless Experience: Identify quick wins to drastically reduce cycle times and make your customers smile
- Drive Change Management: shift from waterfall to agile and build the ability to dynamically change to meet your customer’s needs and stay ahead of your competition
Download the event brochure for the full speaker line-up and conference agenda.
Germanas Kavalskis
Chief Communications Officer at Penki Kontinental Group
Far future comes sooner than it seems. The banking sector will face a big challenge in 2020. see more
- 07:00 am
NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC., (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of service assurance, security, and business analytics, announced today that Banpará – Banco do Estado do Pará – one of the most-highly respected retail banks in Brazil, has deployed the nGeniusONE® Service Assurance Platform to ensure the availability of its services as it expands its operations and extends its infrastructure.
Founded 57 years ago, Banpará has grown more in the last seven years than its entire history, increasing from just 42 branches in 2011 to a presence in all 144 counties in Pará state today. As such, the bank is in the process of modernizing its IT infrastructure to support this expansion, which is primarily aimed at supporting the development of local businesses and the inclusion of the population in the banking system. Banpará’s expansion also needed to invest in critical new infrastructure to support a broader portfolio of digital services for its clients.
“The quality of NETSCOUT’s solution has exceeded our expectations. As a result, our partnership has grown stronger. I am sure that any expansion Banpará makes in its network or services will count on the effective monitoring of NETSCOUT’s technology - because it definitely helps us consolidate the services we supply,” said Eugênio Pessoa, chief technology officer, Banpará.
“We are aware of our responsibility toward Banpará and will continue to do our best to contribute to the excellence of the bank’s services and the expansion of its business,” said Geraldo Guazzelli, country manager, Brazil, NETSCOUT. “We are very pleased to see the positive results of our joint work. “
Growth and quality
The bank’s growth and the nature of today’s financial market required technological controls that surpassed the resources of Banpará’s legacy systems. In order to maintain the availability of the bank’s services, as well as more reliable and secure IP communications, Banpará needed to update its infrastructure.
As Banpará became aware of the need to monitor traffic throughout its network, its IT infrastructure team looked for a proactive monitoring solution that could identify even subtle degradations in performance that could ultimately impact network and application availability. By using NETSCOUT’s technology, the bank can quickly and efficiently troubleshoot issues, and ensure high-quality service delivery to employees and clients.
After a proof of concept trial, Banpará selected NETSCOUT for its ability to deliver visibility across Banpará’s entire infrastructure and the applications that run on it, enabling the bank to effectively monitor for performance issues and anomalous network or application behaviour. Banpará chose the nGeniusONE Service Assurance Platform and adopted a complete NETSCOUT solution.
While NETSCOUT’s aggregation devices and TAPs ensure network traffic visibility, NETSCOUT’s analytics solutions help deliver a comprehensive view of service and application performance for Banpará. The bank’s virtual infrastructure is monitored through vSTREAM, NETSCOUT’s virtual appliance that extends the company’s patented Adaptive Service Intelligence® (ASI) technology to virtual and public or private cloud environments. As a result, Banpará enjoys consistent visibility across its hybrid environment.
The nGeniusONE platform enables Banpará’s IT teams to identify the root cause for performance issues impacting the prompt delivery of application services occurring across the service delivery environment. With this view, Banpará’s IT teams can quickly triage performance issues even in complex multi-vendor environments, ultimately reducing Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). The nGeniusONE platform provides Banpará’s IT teams with an efficient top-down approach to situational analysis, problem identification, service troubleshooting, and resolution. Using a consistent set of service-oriented workflows, the nGeniusONE platform enables contextual transitioning across multiple layers of analysis. These workflows allow the nGeniusONE platform to facilitate efficiently and informed hand-off of incident response tasks across different IT groups with Banpará, fostering IT team collaboration, and improving the ability of its IT teams to quickly identify, and remediate, service quality issues for the bank’s clients.
- 01:00 am
LiquidityBook, a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based provider of buy- and sell-side trading solutions, today announced the addition of Alexander Ponyrko as Principal Software Engineer.
Before joining LiquidityBook, Mr. Ponyrko spent 11 years at aPriori, the product management software firm, where he most recently held the title of Senior Principal Software Engineer. Throughout his career, he has led teams of programmers that excel in building cutting-edge technology solutions for firms with complex workflows.
Commenting on the hire, Sean Sullivan, Chief Revenue Officer at LiquidityBook, said: “As more fund managers have begun to see the benefits of a SaaS-based software provider, our business has grown considerably. As a result, client demand for technology that can be seamlessly integrated into complex workflows is greater than ever. We are thrilled to add Alex, who will lead the way in developing solutions that will keep our clients at the forefront of the investment management space.”
Mr. Ponyrko added: “Throughout my career, I have enjoyed the challenge of building industry-leading solutions with a user-first sensibility. With its dedication to providing client-driven enhancements, it is clear to me that LiquidityBook shares these values. I am truly excited about the work we are doing to help our clients trade as efficiently and effectively as possible.”
- 04:00 am
The license permits Qbroot Financial Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which owns the brand ‘Fintify’, to provide aggregation and data analytics-based insights to users under the Open Banking guidelines.
Open Banking follows the PSD2 regulatory guidelines under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 for the provision of payment services.
The directive enables personal customers and small businesses to share their data securely with other banks and with third parties, allowing them to compare products on the basis of their own requirements and to manage their accounts using regulated third parties to provide new and innovative payment services.
The FCA approval for Fintify comes on the heels of their successful public beta launch in December 2018.
Fintify, a mobile-only experience, helps users to link and monitor their finances across multiple bank accounts, credit cards, investments, pensions, mortgages and insurance. Consumers benefit by being more aware of their money by being able to track investments, categorize spending, set budget and payment alerts and get deep insights into their insurance and loan portfolios while tracking key financial events in a personalized financial calendar.
“The current image of ‘finance’ intimidates people. People understand money. We want to break down the stiff-collared perception of finance and play the role of a money buddy who is vigilant, yet helpful. We don’t want to tell you to spend less on your morning coffee but instead make sure you aren’t losing money on bank charges and sub-standard financial products.” said Ameet Gaikwad, CEO and co-founder at Fintify.
“Our users should benefit from their financial data themselves rather than their banks mis-selling them a one-size-fits-all product” he added.
Fintify's global reach means users can link global accounts across multiple geographies on a single mobile-only platform. In the initial phase, Fintify will focus on providing personalized services to the large, yet heavily under-serviced, U.K - India wealth management corridor targeting the Indian diaspora with financial footprints in both United Kingdom and India.
Partnerships with financial service/ product firms in their home country, will give expats with cross border financial interests, a more informed and personalized array of products to choose from.
Javed Memon, the other co-founder at Fintify added, “Open Banking is a revolution in money management and Fintify will be at the forefront to offer truly personalized features based on user needs.”
As other geographies look to implement guidelines similar in spirit to those of Open Banking, a standardized cross border platform will offer the global citizen a truly unified view of his wealth and the means to manage it better.
All eyes then on Fintify, to see how its vision to make personal finance truly personal, changes the way we think of money management whether it is saving, borrowing or investments.
- 05:00 am
Sepio Systems, a leader in the Rogue Device Mitigation (RDM) market, introduces the next generation software solution that offers comprehensive mitigation of hardware-based cyber-attacks.
The advanced mitigation capabilities protect against manipulated peripherals, transparent network devices, and firmware vulnerabilities.
Sepio's solution has been deployed in over 20 mid to large banks, insurance, and telecom companies in the U.S., Singapore, Brazil, and Israel. The current install base secures over 600,000 workstations and network ports.
Rogue device cyber-attacks are rapidly growing as demonstrated by recent reports of European banks losing tens of millions of dollars after hackers implanted hardware attack tools that compromised the secured infrastructure.
"These attacks are just the 'tip of the iceberg' as most remain undisclosed.", said Yossi Appleboum, CEO of Sepio Systems Inc. “In many cases, hitting an organization is as simple as replacing a trusted peripheral with a manipulated one. For example, we discovered multiple Raspberry Pi computer modules, that include wireless connectivity, implanted in keyboards that were used for exfiltration attacks. The implant was emulating keyboard keystrokes to infect the workstation and steal data and was running undetected before Sepio’s RDM was deployed.”
In another incident, an off-the-shelf network router was used for infiltrating a Tier 1 bank. This tiny device was plugged in-line between a printer and the enterprise network, allowing covert remote access into the bank’s IT systems. Sepio’s software was able to trace this rogue device based on its physical fingerprint.
“Manipulated devices, intentionally used by insiders or socially engineered employees, are causing significant damages. We also witness an increasing number of penetrated uncontrolled supply chains that deliver infected equipment.” said Appleboum. “While companies were focused on their software cyber risks, they overlooked the threat coming from their hardware. Users can not install unregulated software on a corporate computer but can easily connect an uncontrolled hardware accessory.”
