Temenos (SIX: TEMN) the banking software company, today marked a major milestone with the launch of two new products. Temenos Infinity – a breakthrough digital front office product and Temenos T24 Transact – the next generation in core banking. These new products combine the most complete banking functionality in the market, leveraging 25 years of functionality from 3,000 banks in over 150 countries with the most advanced cloud-native, cloud-agnostic, API first technology and design-led thinking. 

Through APIs, both products can be implemented independently or integrated. Clients will be able to roll-out new applications in hours utilising advanced continuous deployment tools and methodologies.

The conversion from Temenos’ existing Digital Front Office and T24 Core Banking products are automatic and upgrades for existing clients to the new cloud-native, cloud-agnostic Temenos products are available from April 2019. All Temenos SaaS products run on the new Temenos platform.

Temenos Infinity is the major next step in the award winning Temenos Digital Front Office product, which has over 300 banking clients. Temenos Infinity is an independent, omni-channel digital banking product which helps banks transform multiple siloed banking channels and legacy applications into a fast, consistent, frictionless customer journey. Through design-led thinking, user journeys and multi-country onboarding capabilities, Temenos Infinity enables banks to orchestrate all their customers’ touchpoints and interactions.

With its open API-first design, Temenos Infinity enables banks to connect with a wider ecosystem of financial and non-financial providers as well as the developer community to innovate and bring products to market faster. Temenos Infinity also integrates the recently purchased Avoka platform, the leading product in digital customer acquisition and onboarding. Temenos Infinity can be easily implemented through APIs as an independent front office platform on a third-party core banking system or integrated with the market-leading Temenos T24 Transact product.

Temenos T24 Transact is the most complete core banking product leveraging the most advanced cloud-native banking technology. Temenos T24 Transact takes the deep and extensive banking capabilities of Temenos T24 Core Banking, the world’s #1 core banking product supporting over 700 banks across all banking segments and re-platforms them onto a new, cloud-native and cloud-agnostic platform. The isolation of the banking functionality from the technology platform has been a hallmark of Temenos products and has allowed Temenos for the past 25 years to remain the most technologically advanced and functionally rich product in the world.

Temenos Infinity and Temenos T24 Transact can be deployed on-premise, in a customer cloud or managed by Temenos Cloud. All products run on Microsoft Azure, AWS and the Google Cloud platform.   

David Arnott, Chief Executive Officer, Temenos, said: “We have been at the forefront of innovation for the last 25 years, investing over 20% of our revenues in R&D and we were the first to launch a core banking system in the cloud in 2011. This marks another key milestone as we revolutionise our banking software to accelerate cloud adoption. We see the market opportunity for packaged software expand significantly as banks look for a faster time to value.

The launch of Temenos Infinity and Temenos T24 Transact gives clients the most complete set of digital front office and core banking capabilities. Using the latest cloud-native, cloud-agnostic technology, banks are able to rapidly and elastically scale benefiting from the highest levels of security and multi-cloud resilience, generating up to 10x in infrastructure savings. Advanced API-first technology coupled with leading design-led thinking and continuous deployment empower banks to rapidly innovate, connecting to ecosystems and enabling developers to build in the morning and consume in the afternoon. These substantial benefits apply equally to banks whether they are running their software on-premise, on private or public clouds.”

Both Temenos Infinity and Temenos T24 Transact leverage the common Temenos Platform architecture. Key features and benefits include:

Continuous deployment - With advanced and automated tools and methodology, the testing and deployment of change means banks can reduce their release cycles from months to hours enabling them to roll-out new applications at speed. 

Open APIs - Banking applications of the future will integrate and form part of a wider ecosystem. The enhanced Temenos Developers portal has an extensive library of published APIs for clients, partners and any third party development teams empowering them to innovate at speed and accelerating time to value. In addition, clients can connect to the Temenos’ MarketPlace, an online digital store, which brings together over 150 financial software products from over 65 certified fintech partners that are fully pre-integrated into the Temenos software.

Cloud-native, Cloud-agnostic - Banks now have an infrastructure to support the flexible experiences demanded by today’s digital customers. Elastic scalability eliminates the need to over-provision costly infrastructure and enables banks to pay for their actual usage, yielding significant costs savings. Hyperscaling means banks can respond to any surge in demand by scaling their applications up and down automatically. Temenos’ cloud-agnostic approach enables the highest levels of long-term resilience and redundancy without creating a dependency to a single technology provider. This is a key Temenos strategy and an answer to regulatory concerns.

Distributed databases - Traditional relational databases are not always fit to gain the maximum benefits from the cloud. The Temenos products support distributed databases that are natively designed and optimised for the cloud. Through a strategic partnership and participation in NuoDB an enterprise-class distributed SQL database provider, banks will benefit from unlimited processing capacity, auto-elastic scalability and the highest levels of active/active resilience across data centers, geographies and cloud platforms.

Temenos Infinity and Temenos T24 Transact will be showcased at the Temenos Community Forum (TCF), 2-4 April 2019, The Hague, The Netherlands.

MineHub Technologies, Inc. ("MineHub") and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a collaboration to use blockchain technology to help improve operational efficiencies, logistics and financing and reduce costs in the high-value mineral concentrates supply chain -- from mine to end buyer. 

Goldcorp Inc. (TSX: G), ING Bank (NYSE: ING), Kutcho Copper Corp. (TSXV: KC), Ocean Partners USA Inc. and Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (TSX: WPM) are working with mining technology company MineHub to build the new mining supply chain solution on top of the IBM Blockchain Platform. 

The $1.8 trillion* global mining and metals market has traditionally suffered from inefficiencies due to manual, paper-based processes and a lack of transparency between supply chain participants. Blockchain technology helps address this by providing a shared ledger to create a single, real time view of transactions and data across the supply chain that can be seen by all permissioned participants. Each of the participating companies represent key areas of the supply chain from mining, streaming, trade and finance.

"We are delighted to be working with some of the most forward thinking and innovative companies from each area of the mining and metals industry. By digitizing the supply chain, we can increase the level of automation, reduce reliance on intermediaries and increase the speed at which goods are transferred from miners to end buyers. This creates the opportunity for transformative efficiencies and cost reductions throughout all aspects of operations," said Vince Sorace, Founder and CEO of MineHub. "This is a significant advancement for an industry looking to integrate and use data in ways not previously possible."

The first use case will be built on the MineHub platform and will manage concentrate from Goldcorp's Penasquito Mine in Mexico throughout its path to market. When ore is mined, the mining company will upload data, including sustainability and ethical practices, allowing independent verification from regulators to end users as required. When materials are loaded for transport, the MineHub platform can record each transaction and allow permissioned parties to view and reconcile information throughout its journey. Smart contracts for supply chain processes such as trade finance, streaming and royalty contracts will be used by companies such as Wheaton Precious Metals and other institutions who provide credit facilities such as ING Bank in connection with the Penasquito Mine. 

Arnout van Heukelem, Global Head of Metals and Mining at ING said, "As a global leader in banking in the metals and mining sector, we feel many of the operational challenges that our clients face. Blockchain has the potential to reduce or even overcome these, as shown by our pioneering work in energy with VAKT, in trade finance with Komgo and Voltron, and in the soft commodity sector. I am excited to be working together with MineHub and help our clients in metals and mining lower costs, increase transparency and contribute to sustainable production and trading."

The MineHub supply chain platform is built on the cloud-based IBM Blockchain Platform, powered by the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger Fabric. MineHub plans to expand the collaboration to additional members across the mining industry to encourage innovation and new applications using the technology.

"Blockchain technology can serve as the foundation for transforming entire business processes in the mining industry while creating greater transparency across the supply chain," said Manish Chawla, general manager, Global Industrial Products, IBM. "By bringing together stakeholders at different points across the mining and minerals supply chain, MineHub is building a platform that has the potential to bring new levels of efficiency and trust to the mining industry."

MineHub and IBM plan to work together to collaborate on new ways to scale and expand the platform, identify new use cases, and incorporate innovative technologies into the platform in the future.

Bloomberg announces today that its affiliate, Bloomberg Trading Facility B.V., has received authorisation from the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) to operate a Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF). 

Banker’s Toolbox, which acquired MainStreet Technologies (MST) and Sageworks in 2018, announced today that it is now Abrigo. 

Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 - GTO), the world leader in digital security, and the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ) have been chosen to produce secure and innovative health insurance cards for the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ). RAMQ delivers 2.3 million healthcare cards to citizens, and the SAAQ provides 1.7 million driver's license and identity cards through production with Gemalto. 

Optimizing government services across industries

By choosing the SAAQ and its existing contract with Gemalto, the Quebec healthcare authorities can avoid duplication and promote sharing of expertise between agencies. The province can also leverage the existing infrastructure and issue both healthcare cards and driver's licenses at the same time, maximizing cost savings and ensuring quicker delivery to their citizens.

A focus on security and convenience for Quebec's citizens

Gemalto's secure card will be the first of its kind to undergo embossing and laser engraving at the same time. Combined with a cutting edge card body with built-in security features, this process greatly improves the reliability of Quebec's healthcare card. Gemalto also provides the full implementation and maintenance of SAAQ's personalization infrastructure. This enables the SAAQ and RAMQ to offer Quebec citizens a seamless and speedy renewal service when obtaining their new driver's license and healthcare card. 

"The unique opportunity to provide both healthcare cards and driver's licenses is perfectly suited to Gemalto's expertise with over twenty years of issuing secure documents. Being the first to emboss and engrave at the same time provides more options to our customers who have legacy infrastructures for validation and allows us to provide a lower risk of fraud and stronger, longer lasting cards to residents"

• Steve Purdy, vice president of State and Provincial Government Programs, Gemalto

Solactive is pleased to announce the launch of the Solactive Global Gold Giants Index, which will be used as the underlying of Harvest Portfolios Group Inc.’sHarvest Global Gold Giants Index ETF (TSX: HGGG). The Index intends to track the price movements of the 20 largest gold mining companies by company market capitalization listed on a regulated stock exchange in North America, Australia or in certain European countries.

“Harvest Portfolios Group Inc. approached us with a well-defined perspective on the structure of the index universe, and we developed the index in a very straightforward manner,” elucidates Steffen Scheuble, CEO of Solactive. “We are very happy that Harvest Portfolios Group Inc. has chosen a Solactive index for their ETF for the first time.”

Working profitably in times of a lower gold-price, the selected companies consolidated their prevalence within the industry and are now benefiting from a margin expansion due to the metal’s current price increase.

“The gold market and gold mining producers have been in a long decline lasting almost 7 years, bringing values down considerably from the highs of 2011/12,”notes Michael Kovacs, President & CEO of Harvest Portfolios Group Inc. He continues: “The Gold Giants have been able to take advantage of these prices to acquire or partner with smaller producers to expand their reserves and production. We are pleased to work with Solactive to bring HGGG to the Canadian market.”

The Global Gold Giants Index ETF is targeted at investors who follow a defensive investment strategy since experts at Harvest Portfolios Group Inc. believe the current economic cycle is in late stages, resulting in a potential weakening of the US dollar.

LiquidityBook, a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based provider of buy- and sell-side trading solutions, today announced that 2018 was a record year across multiple sales and client growth metrics tracked by the firm. This rapid growth was fueled by a continued rise in demand for its industry-leading POEMS (portfolio, order and execution management system) platform, which provides significant cost, management and functionality benefits versus the legacy platforms many investment managers currently employ.

Three of the key highlights from the year were as follows:

• LiquidityBook’s total revenues for 2018 were up by more than 20% year-over-year. In addition to strong full-year sales numbers, December saw especially promising results, with monthly recurring revenues and OMS recurring revenues growing by 37% and 56%, respectively, over December 2017.
   
• LiquidityBook made several key senior hires in 2018, including Ryan Canfield, who joined as Lead Product Analyst in October, and Matthew Howard, who signed on as Head of Asia-Pacific Client Service in March. The new team members have focused on further building out LiquidityBook’s PMS capabilities, enhancing its swaps trading workflows, adding new automatic order marking functionality for Regulation SHO compliance and more. LiquidityBook expects to add additional senior technologists and client service staff in 2019 as demand from its current clients and prospects continues.  
   
• LiquidityBook signed more than 20 new software customers in 2018 and added over 25 new brokers to LBX Connect, the firm’s FIX routing network. Over 90% of the client wins were platform replacements at $1B+ managers, such as Tremblant Capital Group, who outgrew their legacy systems as their workflow needs became too complex for them to handle. In fact, in a May impact report, capital markets research and advisory firm Celent found SaaS-based platforms like LiquidityBook’s are uniquely able to handle this type of workflow complexity, as well as offering superior security and significant cost benefits to traditionally deployed software.
   
• Commenting on the record-setting year, Chief Revenue Officer Sean Sullivan said: “The past few years represent a terrific run for LiquidityBook, but 2018 will stand as a milestone year on its own. Top researchers have demonstrated the many benefits SaaS-based trading platforms provide over traditionally deployed systems, and as more industry players have incorporated this knowledge, we’ve added more and larger clients to our roster at a dizzying pace. We’re excited to continue this growth in 2019, and have built out our team around the globe in order to do just that.”

The LiquidityBook platform delivers significant benefits in the following areas:

• Cost: LBX is a fully SaaS-based product, delivered 100% via the cloud leveraging AWS’s global footprint and architecture, which is the most reliable and secure in the industry. That means there is no need to pay for hosting, remote connectivity, back up of firm trading and position data or business continuity planning. The platform provides full redundancy and accessibility anywhere in the world; users simply need a browser and connectivity to trade.
   
• Stability and Service: LBX is an OMS/PMS/FIX order routing platform built on a single code base. Every client runs the same version, and updates are rolled out weekly. The platform is not an amalgamation of different stitched-together products; it was developed only a few years ago, making it far more reliable than competitive offerings.
   
• Functionality: The fact that the product is one integrated platform has significant usability benefits. For instance, the GUI is incredibly flexible, allowing users to create custom columns and calculations on the fly.
   
• Business Model: Since LiquidityBook provides its products on a SaaS basis, the firm can offer them at a very competitive price point while still being able to fully fund development, growth and product enhancements. The firm is not and has never been dependent on transactional fees to drive revenue growth. Not only do those cut into broker commission wallet commitments that many buy side are struggling to reach, this model is also potentially considered an inducement under MiFID II unless the vendor also provides connectivity.

European stock markets continue facing pressures on the U.S. government shutdown and China’s economic outlook related wariness.
The current government shutdown is the longest in the U.S. history. The U.S. federal government has been in a partial shutdown since December 22, 2018 with a slew of key government agencies such as Department of State, Department of Justice and Department of Transportation affected due to the differences between the country’s President Donald Trump and Democrats over funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall. With great many of the country’s main agencies’ employees not working, the U.S. economy is being hurt really badly, which reverberates onto the global economy overall.
What’s more is that Europe’s investors fear that China’s economy might face challenges, too, with the concerns fuelled by the country’s economic statistics being rather weak lately. The two most downbeat indicators here are the country’s imports and exports that are sliding down on a persisting U.S.-China trade war. And though both countries have made some steps in order to put an end to the situation that is toxic to all parties concerned, there’s still a long way to go until the dispute is finally resolved.
For Europe itself, Brexit remains a burning issue with no deal reached yet, while Britain is slated to leave the EU on March 29 either with or without a deal.