Sparkassen- Prüfungsverband has chosen Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting to provide its market leading regulatory reporting software functionality for the mandatory audit reports and appendix to the reports (the so-called “Anlage zum Prüfbericht”). These yearly bank audits need to be performed by the auditors for all banks in Austria, with many choosing to utilize OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting.

OneSumX Regulatory Reporting as such uses a single source of data to ensure consistency, reconciliation and accuracy and includes the firm’s Regulatory Update Service. This unique service is maintained by Wolters Kluwer experts who actively monitor regulation in approximately 30 countries.                                                                                 

“Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX solution has an excellent reputation in regulatory reporting,” noted Mag. Gerhard Margetich, Chairman of the Board at Sparkassen-Prüfungsverband, leading the selection process of the reporting software. “We required an expert in the field to ensure we are comprehensively managing our reporting and audit documentation obligations in line with the regulator’s exacting requirements. Wolters Kluwer was the natural choice given its long track record in the field.”

“Wolters Kluwer is delighted to extend its client base in Austria and we look forward to work with Sparkassen-Prüfungsverband on the implementation of our software,” commented Kris Van Bavel, Managing Director, EMEA, for Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting business. “We have a strong presence in Austria and continue to add clients here, and across EMEA for that matter. We expect this trend to continue with banks active in the country keen to ensure they are utilizing our expertise in integrated regulatory reporting. The decision by auditors to use our software is also an important testament to our industry expertise.”

Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk, & Reporting (FRR) business, which is part of the company’s Governance, Risk & Compliance division, is a global market leader in the provision of integrated regulatory compliance and reporting solutions. It supports regulated financial institutions in meeting their obligations to external regulators and their own board of directors.

Wolters Kluwer FRR receives frequent independent recognition of its excellence and innovation. In mid-2018, Risk magazine awarded the company its coveted Regulatory Reporting System of The Year Award and Central Banking magazine recently named OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting its Best Technology Solution For Regulatory Compliance. Wolters Kluwer FRR is also this year’s Category Winner for Regulatory Reporting in the annual RiskTech100® report. This comprehensive study of the world’s leading risk and compliance technology companies is compiled by Chartis Research. Notably, this is the seventh time in eight years that Wolters Kluwer FRR has achieved this honor.

Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) today announced that it has been selected by three Finnish financial institutions, Savings Banks Group, Oma Savings Bank Plc and POP Bank Group, as their strategic partner to build and operate a shared core banking platform to enable their digital transformation plans. More than 10 percent of Finnish banking deposits and loans will be managed by the new platform.

Under a multi-year agreement, Cognizant will transform and operate the banks’ common core banking systems and support each individual bank’s enterprise digital strategy. The new core banking platform, based on Temenos T24 and Temenos Payment Hub (TPH), will enable the banks to streamline processes and have greater agility and scalability while helping reduce overall costs of systems and business operations. The banks will be able to launch new products and services more quickly and cost-effectively, and their customers will benefit from improved experiences across mobile, internet and in-branch banking.

As part of the agreement, and subject to satisfaction of certain regulatory closing conditions, Cognizant will acquire Oy Samlink Ab, the current technology services provider owned by Savings Banks Group (42%), Aktia Bank PLC (22.56%), Oma Savings Bank Plc (15.45%), Handelsbanken (7.53%), Posti Group PLC (5.88%), POP Bank Group (5.24%) and several other minority shareholders. Oy Samlink Ab associates have deep expertise in the Finnish banking market, and the company has two delivery centres in Finland. The addition of Oy Samlink Ab will further strengthen Cognizant’s banking capabilities, and expand its network of delivery centres in the Nordics.

“We needed a strategic partner with global scale, and proven success in modernizing banking IT systems and delivering the type of robust capabilities required to foster our collective digital transformation goals -- a key part of which is the core banking platform renewal.  This is the most significant digital transformation project to date in the banks’ histories,” said Tomi Närhinen, Oy Samlink Ab’s Chairman of the Board. “This is part of a bold initiative that will allow us to automate processing and offer our customers a wider range of products. With Cognizant’s deep expertise in business process operations and developing and implementing complex banking systems and technologies, we are confident we have chosen the ideal partner.”

“We are pleased to be working with Savings Banks Group, Oma Savings Bank Plc and POP Bank Group to advance their digital strategies,” said Santosh Thomas, President, Global Growth Markets, Cognizant. “A secure, cloud-enabled core banking system supports faster roll-out of new features and provides superior customer experiences, while reducing operational lag, providing each bank with new future-ready capabilities.”

Thomas added, “We look forward to welcoming Oy Samlink Ab employees to Cognizant. Oy Samlink Ab is well-known in Finland for its deep technical expertise, collaborative culture and strong reputation for excellent delivery. We plan to establish banking and financial services’ centres of excellence at their facilities which will enhance Cognizant’s ability to serve clients across the Nordics, specifically, and in Europe as a whole.”

Business information provider IHS Markit (Nasdaq:INFO) today announced that ABN AMRO, Banco Santander, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, ING and three other financial institutions have joined its technology design team for Securities Financing Transaction Regulation (SFTR) reporting.

“With significant engagement from more than 40 industry leaders, we are confident that we are developing a comprehensive, universal SFTR reporting solution that will streamline compliance requirements for the full range of firms active in the securities lending, repo and prime brokerage markets,” said Pierre Khemdoudi, managing director and global co-head of equities, data and analytics at IHS Markit.

SFTR was enacted by the European Parliament in 2015 to provide greater transparency on cross-asset class lending, borrowing, repurchase agreements and sell/buy-back agreements among counterparties in the EU. Firms subject to the regulation will have to report 155 data fields, including a unique transaction identifier (UTI), a legal entity identifier (LEI) and a master agreement for each trade, on a daily basis. Transaction reporting requirements under Article 4 are expected to begin in Q1 2020.

Since 2017, leading financial institutions and other partners have been working with IHS Markit and Pirum Systems to develop the IHS Markit SFTR reporting solution. The solution will streamline trade reporting to repositories for repo and reverse repo agreements, securities loans and borrows, commodities loans and borrows, prime brokerage margin lending and collateral re-use. 

To ensure interoperability within the industry ecosystem, IHS Markit is also engaging vendors, trade repositories and agents with approved publication arrangements (APAs) on the design of its SFTR reporting solution.

SFTR will be phased in through 2020, and additional reconciliation requirements are under consideration for a later date.

Fenergo, a leading provider of Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions for financial institutions, introduces Fenergo Digital Configuration Studio, a low to no-code administration suite that allows financial institutions to easily configure the Fenergo CLM solution to suit their organisational needs. Fenergo Digital Configuration Studio was designed in response to feedback from Fenergo’s global regulatory and client community seeking a user-friendly administration console that can be maintained without the need for advanced programmer skills.

Financial institutions can easily configure Fenergo’s out-of-the-box platform and tailor it to suit their exact technology and business environments. With the ability to oversee routine CLM configuration and deeper project-specific requirements, Fenergo Digital Configuration Studio allows business users to become self-sufficient in best practice configuration, testing, maintenance and trouble-shooting while reducing costs and overheads. 

“Fenergo’s community-based approach to our platform development enables us to gain a true understanding of our clients’ needs. As our customers embark on digital transformation initiatives, there is a growing requirement to democratize technology and the no code Digital Configuration Studio was developed to meet that need. By putting configuration of our platform into the hands of the business user, our clients can benefit from a smarter, faster implementation,” said Marc Murphy, CEO of Fenergo. 

Key features of Fenergo Digital Configuration Studio include:

• Import and export of function modules
• Graphical user interface (no need for developer tooling or skills)
• Schematic and hierarchical views of solution modules
• Linked, interactive modules for an intuitive user experience
• Instant testing and analysis of changes
• Web-based utility for rules management
• Self-service troubleshooting

“We want our clients to be as agile as possible. Digital Configuration Studio enables this while ultimately helping them achieve their goal to digitalise the end-customer onboarding experience and reduce time to revenue,” continued Marc.

Fenergo Digital Configuration Studio includes a data model, user interface, workflow, rules and localisation modules.

SWIFT’s figures show an average of 31.31 million messages a day in 2018 as its annual traffic rose to an all-time high of over 7.8 billion. This marks an 11.3% increase on 2017 – and a 56% increase over the last five years.

Traffic growth was driven by the mass adoption of SWIFT gpi – which now accounts for over half (55%) of cross-border payment instructions carried on the network, only two years since its launch.

Growth in SWIFT’s payments traffic was strong in all regions as well as in domestic and cross-border segments. The cooperative also recorded a new peak traffic day in 2018, processing 35.22 million FIN messages on 31 May 2018.

Gottfried Leibbrandt, CEO at SWIFT, said: “Our traffic increase is remarkable, and I’m delighted we’ve hit an all-time high of 35 million messages in a single day. This is not only indicative of the wider growth in the global economy, but also the financial services industry’s continued trust in SWIFT. The success of SWIFT gpi and its rapid adoption has played a key part in our increased annual message traffic, with well over a million payments a day now passing over gpi.”

During 2018, SWIFT’s gpi service, which is supported by hundreds of banks, including more than 50 of the world’s top banks, continued to radically transform correspondent banking and is now used to send over $300bn in payments every day – more than 55% of SWIFT’s cross-border traffic. SWIFT gpi has transformed the cross-border landscape with payments typically made within minutes or even seconds, and over 50% of SWIFT gpi payments credited to end beneficiaries within 30 minutes.

Against this backdrop of strong traffic growth, rapid adoption of SWIFT gpi, and the roll-out of real-time payments in Australia and the Eurosystem, SWIFT continued to demonstrate operational excellence, with 99.998% availability for its FIN and 99.999% availability for its SWIFTNet messaging services

InterAct saw a 12% growth in traffic in 2018 mainly driven by T2S, while FileAct traffic grew 8% in 2018 with the main contributor to this growth coming from increased activity from corporate customers.

Yawar Shah, Chairman at SWIFT, said: “In 2018, SWIFT continued its core mission and commitment to its customers by ensuring high security and continued reliability. This was achieved against a backdrop of rolling out new capabilities such as the Payment Controls Service and instant payment solutions in Australia and Europe. I’m confident that in 2019 SWIFT will continue to accelerate this momentum across its payments, securities and financial crime compliance areas.”

Signalling a vote of confidence in British fintech, business lending platform Growth Street has raised a £7.5m scale-up investment round led by the Merian Chrysalis Investment Company Limited (Merian Chrysalis). Asset manager Merian Global Investors has joined forces with leading individual investors including Rob Rankin, former co-Head of Corporate Banking & Securities at Deutsche Bank, and Peter Brodnicki, CEO of the Mortgage Advice Bureau, in backing Growth Street.

Existing Growth Street investors are also contributing to the round, including Christiaen van Lanschot, who serves as Growth Street’s chairman, Paolo Cuniberti, former CEO of Mediobanca UK, and Pi Capital CEO David Giampaolo. Growth Street was advised by Zeus Capital, who are also participating in the round.

Merian Chrysalis is advised by leading asset management firm Merian Global Investors, which has a total of £31.6bn under management.* The funding round values Growth Street at £27.5m.

The funding underscores Growth Street’s ambition to be the next disruptive force in UK fintech. After the 2008 financial crash, bank lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) collapsed, with the recovery since being dubbed “slow and uneven” by the OECD. Growth Street’s own research suggests that total UK overdraft lending reduced by around £18bn between 2008 and 2018.

As the UK prepares for its exit from the EU, the Merian Chrysalis portfolio management team believes that Growth Street can shake up an ossified lending market and accelerate loan book growth. Growth Street supports growing, profitable SMEs with GrowthLine, a transformation of the traditional bank overdraft. Powered by Open Banking and cloud accounting integrations, GrowthLine delivers flexible facilities up to £2m.**

The FCA-regulated company, which was founded by CEO Greg Carter and serial investor Thomas Hoegh in 2014, aims to combine traditional and personal relationship management with best-in-class technology to provide long-term support to its clients as they grow. 

Commenting on the announcement, Growth Street co-founder and CEO Greg Carter said:

“New regulations and technologies are driving rapid change within business lending. In a short period we have proven that ambitious businesses can thrive with GrowthLine. We are now working to expand access to GrowthLine and strike new relationships throughout the financial services ecosystem.

“I’m delighted Merian and leading investors share our view that business owners deserve better.”

Thomas Hoegh, Growth Street co-founder and investor, said:

“Having built and backed more than 50 tech businesses, I have experienced entrepreneurs’ struggles first-hand. With Growth Street, we give business owners the financial flexibility they need, right when they need it. As businesses scale over the coming years, Growth Street will be there to support them.”

Richard Watts, co-fund manager of Merian Chrysalis, said:

“Growth Street has built a differentiated product that provides flexible funds to SMEs, filling the vacuum created by the retrenchment of high-street banks in this space. We’re excited to work with Greg, Thomas and the team to provide supportive capital, allowing British businesses to continue to grow.”
 

4Stop ("FourStop GmbH"), a leader in providing premium global KYC, compliance and anti-fraud technology, announces today they are live and operational within FlashFX's global payment transfer solution. 

FlashFX is an international money payment service that can transfer to 35 countries across 18 currencies securely, quickly and with no transaction fees. It is underpinned by the latest technology and partly integrated with Ripple (the distributed ledger payments protocol), providing a cost-efficient, highly automated payments platform to its users. FlashFX has further enhanced the security of their services by integrating 4Stop's all-in-one KYC, compliance and anti-fraud technology to future-proof their risk mitigation and compliance processes.

One of 4Stop's technology features is providing hundreds of global KYC data sources available with real-time activation and performance, all from their single API. These capabilities make them an ideal solution to support and enhance services on a global scale with the best data coverage and experience possible.  

The primary implementation of 4Stop's technology for FlashFX focuses on performing industry-leading KYC verifications, including real-time document identity authentication in a manner that does not compromise a frictionless, simple 1-2-3 on-boarding experience. 

Furthermore, 4Stop performs additional transactional authentication functionality to provide FlashFX end-users with further confidence when facilitating transactions around the world. Through this single integration, FlashFX has access to 4Stop's proprietary anti-fraud technology to automate risk management processes with a multi-faceted, real-time risk engine, real-time intelligence and transactional monitoring, all from a centralised view. 

"The ever-changing global regulatory environment makes it imperative for businesses to find a KYC solution that will not only facilitate the requirements globally and per localised region for today, but enables them to adapt with requirements in a seamless manner. Our solution does just that and we are very excited to be supporting FlashFX on an international level with our future-proofed, frictionless KYC for secure customer on-boarding and enhanced transactional verifications," states Ingo Ernst, CEO, 4Stop.

"Security and safety of our clients' personal details and money is our highest priority at FlashFX. Partnering with 4Stop's KYC, compliance and anti-fraud technology enables FlashFX to meaningfully increase our global compliance and risk management controls. In an industry that demands a robust and thorough KYC solution, we are excited to be using a platform that helps us to continue to meet regulatory standards and provide enhanced on-boarding and transaction security for our clients," says Nicolas Steiger, chief enabling officer, FlashFX.

NEXT Biometrics (Oslo Bors: NEXT), a global leader in fingerprint sensor technology, today announced that it will start sampling its dual interface smart card solution (One Touch Flex CL) early in the second quarter of 2019. The solution enables NEXT's unique technology to be used with contact and contactless smart cards, including payment cards.

NEXT One Touch Flex combines the high security and accuracy levels of the Company`s flexible, large area fingerprint sensors with the ease and convenience of dual interface smart cards. The biometric card module is capable of performing one touch fingerprint enrollment and verification operations on a dual interface smart card by solely harvesting power from a standard ISO/IEC 14443*   NFC reader.

"This is a key milestone in our Company strategy and we are excited to be part of the development of these next generation dual interface smart cards," said Ritu Favre, CEO of NEXT Biometrics. "We are convinced that card issuers and their customers will greatly benefit from the smooth and reliable fingerprint enrollment and verification that our technology offers."

Independent research in several countries shows that consumers are willing to abandon PIN codes and passwords in favor of more convenient yet safer fingerprint authentication for smart card transactions. Adoption of biometric smart card technology is projected to gain a foothold in the market from 2020 onwards. Market size for biometric smart cards is expected to reach up to USD 800 million in 2022 with payment cards accounting for some 60 percent, Government ID for some 25 to 30 percent and transportation and access control applications for some 5 to 10 percent of total market volume. 

Based on NEXT`s unique fingerprint sensor technology, enhanced user experience and excellent cost-sensor size-ratio, the Company is ideally positioned to gain a significant position in this sector. The NEXT One Touch Flex biometric dual interface smart card subsystem has been specifically designed to meet the card industry`s requirements for ISO compliance, interoperability, and durability. It integrates with state-of-the-art smart card chip and operating system technologies and is suited for standard card manufacturing technologies.

Transaction Network Services (TNS) today announced the acquisition of Chicago-based market data, connectivity and hosting specialist R2G Services.