Published
- 02:00 am
B-Hive adds another tech powerhouse to its partner list as they sign an associate partnership with Sentia, one of the leading companies for Managed Cloud-Services in North-Western Europe. Their partnership was announced at B-Hive’s FIN AND TONIC on Thursday.
B-Hive, an innovation fintech platform, continues making its mark in the financial services sector by adding another associate partner to their already extensive list. The partnership with Sentia will foster B-Hive’s mission to grow their ecosystem while preserving and cherishing innovation.
Sentia is a cloud competence center that offers Managed Application Continuity in the cloud for leading publishers & media companies, digital agencies, banks & insurance companies, retailers, not-for-profit and health organisations. For their customers, Sentia capitalises a significant opportunity presented by the cloud ecosystem and digital transformation of organisations. Sentia Belgium accelerates and enables medium and large enterprises to adopt the digital possibilities of the Cloud in a transparent and trustworthy way, allowing you to focus and continue to lead or differentiate in today's multi-cloud world.
Together with Sentia, B-Hive aims to make a difference in the financial services sector. Their expertise in cloud services will provide valuable assets to the community as a whole. B-hive’s Executive Chairman Fabian Vandenreydt is excited to welcome Sentia as a new partner of the B-hive community.
“We are extremely happy to be partnering with Sentia Belgium. As the interest in Cloud Services keeps rising, it is crucial to stay on top of the latest solutions and challenges and with Sentia, we can now offer their expertise to our ecosystem. I am looking forward to joining forces with Sentia!”
Sentia’s Sales and Marketing Director, David Temmerman, agrees and is committed to work together with B-Hive to create positive change in the financial services world
“I believe that B-hive has demonstrated strong partnerships geared towards helping the finance and fintech sector. This in times when digital transformation is remodeling the business. Sentia is here to support the community in this journey.” Temmerman believes.
Sentia took part in B-Hive’s latest FIN AND TONIC on Cloud Selections and will continue working together with B-Hive through various events, one-on-one matchmaking sessions and innovation projects.
- 06:00 am
Pelican, a global provider of AI-powered payments and financial crime compliance systems for banks and corporates, has launched a breakthrough sanctions self-learning module capable of delivering significant reductions in false positive rates (FPRs). Pelican Sanctions Self-Learning can be deployed as part of the Pelican watchlist filter, or can operate with any existing third-party sanctions screening application.
Pelican Sanctions Self-Learning is part of the comprehensive ‘PelicanSecure’ suite of compliance solutions, and leverages the company’s extensive AI expertise, incorporating Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing technology, to screen accurately against any standard or proprietary watchlist. The extensive tuned knowledge base can immediately deliver significant FPR reductions. Combining the AI disciplines together with deep compliance domain knowledge, Pelican technology can capture, analyse and learn from operator actions to automate the creation of new models – delivering further improved FPR reductions over time of up to 72%.
The ground-breaking Pelican Sanctions Self-Learning solution supports any file format or message type, including unstructured and free format text, and can operate in real-time payment environments. The solution incorporates detailed alert explanations and investigation dashboards, capable of reducing review times by up to 80%.
Parth Desai, founder and CEO of Pelican, commented: “Pelican Sanctions Self-Learning is a giant leap forward in the sanctions screening industry and is a powerful tool enabling financial institutions to reduce the number of alerts, while maintaining complete control and a full audit trail. In today’s environment of fluid and complex global financial crime compliance obligations, Pelican Sanctions Self-Learning can drastically cut compliance costs, whilst delivering reputational protection across all payment processes and counterparties. We are already working to extend the self-learning functionality beyond sanctions filtering to AML transaction monitoring and fraud prevention.”
Celent profiled Pelican in its Cognitive Corporate Bank report based on Pelican’s advanced AI offering, noting that Pelican has been at the forefront of AI applications in sanctions compliance, fraud, and payments processing. Alenka Grealish, author of the report and Senior Analyst at Celent, found that: “Pelican has pushed the envelope in NLP and machine learning to develop its unique ‘semantic understanding’, resulting in significant improvements in reducing the false positive rates and review times for sanctions screening.”
- 06:00 am
On December 6, Manila will welcome the second Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Philippines by Smile-Expo – the large event focused on DLT and crypto coins. The last year’s meeting has gathered 300 guests, 12 companies in the demozone and top speakers from top world companies.
Who will speak at the conference?
At this year’s event, sphere’s top professionals will discuss the topical issues regarding the technology and the crypto industry’s trends.
The Co-Founder and CCO at Satoshi Citadel Industries Miguel Cuneta will deliver the presentation “You Probably Don’t Need Blockchain For It.” During his talk, the expert will explain when blockchain is not needed and regular database is enough.
The event will also include the panel discussion “Smart Contracts and Legal Contracts.” Among the participants there will be Rafael Padilla, one of the establishers of Blockchain Association of the Philippines (BAP). The organization spreads the crypto knowledge and unites DLT enthusiasts to promote the global adoption of the technology.
Business Owner at Tagcash – Mark Vernon – will explain what are the permissioned blockchains and will demonstrate use cases with MultiChain and Stellar. During his speech, the expert will focus on shared KYC, international remittance and supply chain tracking.
Lito Villanueva, Chairman at FinTechAlliance.ph, will give an insight into the digital assets as liquid alternatives in investment. The goal of his organization is to stimulate innovations and promote the expansion of the technology.
Jorge Azurin, CEO & Founder at MediXserve, will describe how DLT works in the medical industry, present real-life use cases and examine the future of healthcare with blockchain.
What else is waiting for visitors?
The conference will also involve the demozone, where DLT-based corporations will have a space to present their new crypto products to the audience.
Pitch-sessions will be a part of the program as well – during small presentations, crypto startups will acquaint the guests with their ideas.
Networking will present the opportunity to find potential business partners and investors.
Venue and tickets
In honor of Bonifacio Day, the organizer of Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Philippines – Smile-Expo – is giving a 50% discount on tickets. You can buy them from November 29 to December 5 inclusive.
- Discounted ticket price: $50.
- Undiscounted ticket price: $99.
The conference will take place in luxurious Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites Makati. The event program and details are available on the website. Join the blockchain revolution right now!
Organizer
The event will be coordinated by the company Smile-Expo – an organizer of 48 successful blockchain events in 25 countries.
- 08:00 am
Smartoptics, a leading provider of open optical networking solutions, today announced that the Internet Exchange Australia (IX Australia) has deployed Smartoptics DCP-M40 Open Line System and Pluggable DWDM QSFP28 PAM4 Transceivers to provide high capacity links between IX Australia’s metro locations in Sydney. The new, automated, network was delivered by Independent Data Solutions (IDS) and provides IX Australia with lowest cost 40 x 100 Gb/s traffic capability over a single pair of fibers.
IX Australia is a member owned, not-for-profit peering exchange established in 1997 by the Internet Association of Australia Inc. (formally the Western Australian Internet Association Inc.) and operating 5 Peering Points throughout Australia accessed by major metropolitan data centers. Recently, IX Australia has decided to upgrade its metropolitan link capacities, to cater for the rapidly growing data traffic.
The new Smartoptics DCP-M40 Open Line System deployed by IX Australia enables up to 40x100G wavelengths over spans exceeding 50km with fully automated addition of new channels for ease of use. Space and power considerations were important factors in the technology choice due to the cost of colocation and available power in hosting facilities. The 1U form factor and max 45W power consumption for a fully loaded 40 channels system were significantly differentiating factors over more traditional coherent transponders.
With its new network, IX Australia will be able to provide new services to its members, while at the same time increasing overall capacity. A special feature of the network is its capability to embedded DWDM at 100G in QSFP28 form factor, using COLORZ© from Inphi. This has not been possible to date without use of expensive coherent CFP or CFP2 modules, usually not available for the most current and dense switching platforms.
The network is supplied by local Smartoptics VAD partner IDS, who will additionally manage after sales services in Australia.
Joe Wooller, Technical Manager at IX Australia says: “We are delighted to have been able to upgrade our network, based on the very modern Extreme 870, so easily and significantly increase available capacity at the lowest possible cost. We are now able to easily scale service flexibility and capacity just by adding new transceivers to our switches. The line system automation handles everything else, no complex provision needed. As demand on our network grows, we need the flexibility to handle adding new capacity when it is needed with no drama.”
Iain Ashley, CTO at IDS comments, “The Smartoptics DCP-M40 represents a step-change in the ability to deliver high-capacity networks over metro distances for our customers. Instead of complex, expensive, telco-sized closed systems, the DCP-M40 enables businesses to roll-out high bandwidth low latency networks and keep pace with the development of smaller, denser and faster switching technology”.
Magnus Grenfeldt, CEO Smartoptics, commented, “In winning this important network expansion project, Smartoptics demonstrates continued success in commercializing PAM4 technology, our unique open line system and network automation technology as new foundation for Data Centre Interconnectivity. IX Australia has seamlessly expanded the capabilities of its network selecting the most optimal technology for their interconnects. Selecting PAM4 over coherent technology for less than 80km interconnects is clearly significantly advantageous in terms of cost, complexity, availability and latency.”
- 09:00 am
Fintech leader Avaloq and crypto-asset custody infrastructure specialist METACO* have entered into an innovation partnership with Gazprombank (Switzerland) Ltd, a Swiss bank, to implement their integrated crypto asset solution. The aim of this product innovation is to provide banks and wealth managers with a fully integrated solution for the management of client portfolios across all asset classes including cryptocurrencies. Gazprombank (Switzerland) Ltd, which is already an Avaloq client, aims to offer a cryptocurrency service to its clients in mid-2019.
Security and ease of use will be fundamental to the new solution. It will seamlessly integrate SILO, METACO’s crypto-wallet management and storage solution, within the Avaloq Banking Suite. The new solution will make transactions with crypto assets and currencies as simple as transactions involving traditional assets. It will allow banking and wealth management clients to buy, sell and transfer crypto assets and currencies, with their positions displayed in one consolidated view with all other assets in their portfolio, without any need for a crypto-wallet or private key management.
METACO has developed market-leading, high-grade cryptographic solutions that can be fully integrated into a bank’s core processes as well as SILO, its highly secure crypto-asset custody solution for institutional clients. METACO’s HSM (Hardware Security Module) ensures a military security solution for storing private keys and managing wallets and operations. The new solution will support a multi-signature system for transaction approval, therefore ensuring a true ‘four-eyes’ principle on cryptocurrency transactions.
Thomas Beck, Group CTO at Avaloq, said: “For both institutions and bank clients, trust is key. Avaloq and METACO have considered this for the development of a fully integrated solution that can be offered to clients by their trusted bank. Thanks to the close integration of the METACO storage solution, banking and wealth management customers won’t have to trust additional third parties when trading with cryptocurrencies. By bringing together all asset classes in one portfolio view, the solution will also ensure the highest levels of convenience and usability.”
Adrien Treccani, Founder and CEO of METACO, adds: “This innovation partnership with Avaloq is a truly exciting evolution towards the mainstream use of cryptocurrencies and crypto assets and their integration into a banking and wealth management proposition. We know that security and secure custody are of paramount importance and METACO’s multi-signature support will make the solution fully capable for institutional use.”
- 01:00 am
Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) announces a joint pilot with a leading airline to bring additional convenience and security to the traveler's experience via biometric boarding in Terminal 4 at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The test will confirm that passenger needs and expectations are met through use of facial recognition versus a traditional boarding pass as well as satisfying CBP (Customs and Border Protection) U.S. Exit requirements.
The world of travel is changing rapidly, and with air traffic expected to double and reach 7.8 billion passengers by 2036, airlines and airports are innovating to meet new government and consumer demands for enhanced security and efficiency. Gemalto will satisfy these needs together with biometric boardingusing facial recognition.
"Being able to use your face instead of your boarding pass will not only enhance security but allow passengers to board more easily and quickly." said Neville Pattinson, SVP of Government Programs, Gemalto. "The passenger process is changing globally and we are pleased to be on the leading edge of this change by enabling our partners to offer improved service and security with our biometric capabilities."
Easier boarding process with minimal hardware and infrastructure changes for the airport and airlines
The pilot program at LAX is uniquely flexible with regards to space limitations and future options as the solution will be integrated into the existing agent podium to facilitate boarding. Passengers will approach the gate and receive confirmation via a computer screen and camera following a facial verification from Customs and Border Protection's Traveler Verification Services. Once verified, the captured images will be wiped from the system to ensure privacy for all passengers.
At a recent Department of Homeland Security biometric testing rally[2] Gemalto's Live Face Identification System (LFIS) achieved a 99.44% successful acquisition rate in less five seconds, comparing very favorably to the average of only 65% over the same period amongst the other vendors present.
- 03:00 am
To usher in the new year, the Emerging Payments Association (EPA) is delighted to announce the addition of four payments leaders to its Advisory Board. This board is now composed of 16 experienced C-level executives from leading payments companies who all want to change the payments industry and ensure a profitable, sustainable payments ecosystem.
Advisory Board members are nominated and elected to the board based upon their ability to lead and influence the payments industry, their experience, and their seniority in their company. They are voted into this role by EPA members through a democratic vote. After an extensive nominating and voting process, the following four were selected from 14 candidates to join the existing Advisory Board in January 2019:
· Alan King, President at Fleetcor
· Marion King, Director of Payments at NatWest
· Julian Sawyer, Chief Operating Officer at Starling Bank
· Huw Davies, Chief Commercial Officer at Token
The Board also includes senior representation from Paysafe, Modulr, Kompli-Global, Mastercard, Global Processing Services, and Banking Circle. Advisory Board members contribute new ideas and views relating to the strategy and priorities of the EPA, endorse the EPA’s brand and outputs to industry stakeholders, support EPA projects with mentorship and guidance, and strive to drive innovation and shape the industry landscape for the better.
The Advisory Board’s purpose is to leverage the passion, talent, and expertise of the UK’s PayTech industry to help advance payments innovation. The board collaborates to identify common issues faced by the industry and EPA members, determine effective and feasible solutions, and influence relevant regulatory bodies by speaking with a common, unified voice.
In conjunction with that, both John Davies and Myles Stephenson have been appointed as Deputy Chairs to the Advisory Board, replacing Rich Wagner who has served as both Chair and Deputy Chair of the Advisory Board during his term. John and Myles will be supporting the incumbent Advisory Board Chair, Andrea Dunlop, for the next year.
Andrea Dunlop said, “I am delighted to start my second term of chairing the EPA Advisory Board. 2018 has been an exciting year with great initiatives and achievements. I am looking forward to continuing the good work with our inspirational board and community members at this exciting time of regulatory changes.”
Tony Craddock, Director General of the Emerging Payments Association, commented, “I’m delighted to see that both FinTechs and banks have joined the Advisory Board in 2019 to help lead the payments industry. It shows that the EPA represents the entire payments ecosystem, driving change that benefits players of all shapes and sizes, and that our ethos of collaboration is being embraced.”
The EPA has eight projects mentored and led by the members of the Advisory Board. These project teams are composed of over 100 volunteers from our member companies, who drive change in the industry through the actions of these projects:
- Project Banking Access represents non-bank PSPs when becoming Third Party Providers under PSD2, supports the adoption of single, global, interoperable Open Banking Standards by the payments ecosystem, and raises awareness of the treat to bank accounts for PayTechs due to de-risking
- Project Financial Crime delivers community-driven solutions to address the problems posed by digital and financial criminal activity, and positions the EPA and its members as leaders in tackling financial crime
- Project Futures provides insight and thought leadership on the implementation, adoption, and scalability of innovation and technology, while firmly positioning the EEPA and its members on the cutting-edge of payments
- Project Inclusion works with local and central government to promote the adoption of new PayTech innovations and solutions that reduce financial exclusion and the poverty premium
- Project International Trade encourages trade between EPA members and organisations that use payments outside the UK, stimulates the adoption of new payments products and services in emerging markets, and supports the growth of early stage PayTech companies around the world
- Project Regulator engages regulatory bodies to promote and champion the concerns of EPA members and drive change through the development of a fairer regulatory landscape for payments companies
- Project Retail enables retailers to take advantage of the latest payments innovations in order to keep pace with rising customer expectations, reduce basket abandonment and increase share of wallet and customer lifetime value
- Project Women in PayTech provides a supportive community of mentors, connections and information to drive gender balance within the payments industry at every level
In 2019, the EPA Advisory Board will be shaping the EPA’s strategy across its policy initiatives, with particular focus on addressing financial exclusion through the launch of an accreditation service that recognises financially inclusive products – titled ‘Inclusion Signpost’. The EPA will also drive industry-led activity and information sharing to reduce financial crime, with a whitepaper detailing the recommendations from the payments industry.
- 06:00 am
Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS) a leader in digital security, semiconductor and IP products and services, today announced that Bank Islam Brunei Darussalam (BIBD), the largest bank in Brunei, has selected the Rambus Token Service Provider (TSP) as part of its mobile payment strategy to enable secure transactions to its customers.
As Asia has seen a proliferation of digital payment solutions in recent years, the need to secure digital transactions has become critical to a bank’s success. With the rise of solutions such as QR-based payments, NFC (near field communication), host card emulation (HCE) and real-time payments, consumer trust has become critical to success, with security and fraud prevention more important than ever to businesses and end-users alike.
Payment tokens help minimize fraud
The Rambus TSP solution helps secure the BIBD NEXGEN Mobile banking app, allowing customers to digitize their cards and send payments, without revealing any sensitive payment information. The Rambus software platform will replace cardholders’ details with unique reference numbers to minimize the risk of fraud and the severity of data breaches. Unique payment tokens are worthless if stolen.
Tokenization and host card emulation support secure payments within BIBD NEXTGEN Mobile app
By generating temporary personal account numbers (PANs), or payment tokens, the Rambus solution is a modular platform that combines tokenization with HCE to enable payment issuers and processors to securely perform a wide variety of roles in the payment process. Using HCE and tokenization, BIBD will enable their cardholders to securely pay using their mobile app.
“We’re delighted to be selected by the largest bank in Brunei to secure mobile payments for BIBD’s customers,” said Chakib Bouda, vice president and CTO, Rambus Payments. “This collaboration reinforces our leadership in mobile payment and tokenization technologies. It also marks significant progress in our efforts to expand into the Asian marketplace that is seeing a boom in digital payment solutions.”
“As the security of our customers is our highest priority, we are pleased to announce our collaboration with Rambus to enable our customers to pay safely and securely with their mobile devices,” said Dr. Gyorgy Ladics, COO, BIBD. “While digital payment methods grow exponentially in the marketplace, customers are becoming increasingly mobile-centric; therefore, it’s imperative to facilitate mobile transactions in a hassle-free and secure manner, providing the ultimate ease of mind for our customers.”
- 09:00 am
Princeton Mortgage’s digital mortgage platform, SnapApp, will leverage Finicity’s Verification of Assets (VoA) solution to give lenders access to the data insights they need to streamline the loan application process, reduce mortgage fraud, free up resources and shorten time to close. Automation cuts the verification process from days to minutes as borrowers no longer need to search for bank statements, and lenders have more time to focus on high-value activities, such as approving more loans.
“We’re thrilled to work with Princeton Mortgage and provide its customers with an innovative, paper-free and hassle-free experience,” said Steve Smith, Finicity CEO. “As the leading financial data aggregator in the mortgage lending industry, we are always looking for partners who share our goal of transforming outdated loan origination processes into seamless digital experiences.”
Princeton Mortgage created The Effortless Mortgage™ to perfect the user experience in loan origination. The solution includes platforms for integrating, managing and securing data to reduce stress and complications in the process for both brokers and borrowers. This is always backed by the Princeton Promise -- if clients feel that their loan process was not effortless, they can request up to $1,000 credit back at closing. The Princeton Mortgage SnapApp is a key component to this process as it allows customers to get pre-approved in minutes from their phone, tablet or desktop.
“Borrowers want an effortless mortgage experience, and with our new SnapApp they get just that. Through SnapApp’s automated digital mortgage process, borrowers can apply, verify their income and assets, pull their credit, run an automated approval and even receive a pre-approval letter in the middle of the night, at their convenience,” said Nicole Gordon, Princeton Mortgage Sales Enablement Manager. “We are excited to partner with Finicity to help make this digital mortgage process seamless and simple.”
Finicity is an authorized, integrated provider of asset verification reports within Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriter® (DU®), giving lenders a validated asset report through Fannie Mae’s Day 1 Certainty™ initiative, and the company is part of Fannie’s Single Source Validation (SSV) pilot.
Finicity is also a Freddie Mac automated asset and income validation third-party service provider, and Freddie Mac and Finicity are working together on new methods to validate income from payroll deposit data from bank statements.
- 07:00 am
Supervisory Board Chairman Stefan Schmittmann acknowledged with regret the upcoming departure of Frank Annuscheit and the announcement by Michael Reuther, and expressed his recognition of their many years of successful work.
Michael Reuther said of the reasons for his decision: “I have always found my work at Commerzbank and with my fellow Board members very enjoyable. But after what will be 13 years on the Commerzbank Board, I would like to embark on a new chapter in my professional life. Under my current life plans, extending my contract is no longer an option. Therefore I would like to give the Bank enough time to find a suitable successor, and, in my final year at the Bank, bring the restructuring of the Corporate Clients segment to a successful conclusion. I think this is also a good time for a change of management in the Corporate Clients business. My successor can then focus fully on the further growth of the business.”
Martin Zielke, Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors of Commerzbank, commented: “I am sorry to learn of Michael Reuther’s decision, but I respect it. Michael Reuther is a valued colleague with a broad international profile and strong market expertise. He has made very good progress with the reorganisation of the Corporate Clients business, and I am pleased that he will be actively working with us on the transition and the search for his successor. During the integration of Dresdner Bank, he very successfully combined the trading operations of the two investment banks. The focus on client business only has made us a frontrunner in the industry. That deserves great credit. For that I extend my warmest thanks to Michael Reuther.”
Frank Annuscheit said of his reasons for stepping down: “I have been responsible for the Bank's IT and operations areas for 15 years, 11 of them as a member of the Board. That is a long time with a lot of transformations which have left their mark on me both professionally and personally. So the decision to withdraw from operational business did not come easily. But it is now time for me to focus on other priorities.”
Martin Zielke, Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors of Commerzbank, commented: “Frank Annuscheit has been an important driving force for us. The head office restructuring recently decided on, whereby important IT functions are to be integrated into product development, was partly initiated by him. This is a bold and groundbreaking step for the Bank. The successful integration of Dresdner Bank’s IT was also attributable to him. I would like to extend my thanks to Frank Annuscheit for this, and am pleased that he will continue to work with the Bank in the future.”
Frank Annuscheit added: “In a digital enterprise, the IT has to be even more closely integrated into product and process responsibility. It is a good time, prior to the start of the crucial phase of this restructuring, to hand over responsibility to someone new. I am pleased the Bank has found, in Jörg Hessenmüller, a successor who will accomplish this task with great passion and energy.”
Jörg Hessenmüller, currently Divisional Board Member for the Group division Digital Transformation & Strategy, is to take over from Frank Annuscheit.
The Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors of Commerzbank, Martin Zielke, said: “I am delighted to welcome Jörg Hessenmüller to the Board. As Head of Strategy he was actively involved in shaping Commerzbank 4.0 and revamping the Group head office. In his new role he will drive and implement the ongoing digital transformation of the Bank. As a board member of mBank in Poland, he gained a wealth of experience in new technologies and their implementation.”
