Technology, data and analytics firm, LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, which is a part of RELX Group, was recognised as the category leader for Financial Crime (data) in Chartis Research’s RiskTech100® study of the leading global risk technology providers. LexisNexis Risk Solutions jumped 11 spots in the ranking this year to number 16. Chartis is the leading provider of global in-depth research and actionable advice on risk technology. The award was conveyed at a black-tie event in New York City last night.

“After deep analysis into the marketplace, we determined that LexisNexis Risk Solutions was category winner, in part because of the completeness of its financial crime information, which covers global sanctions watchlists as well as digital identity and physical identity data,” said Rob Stubbs, Head of Research at Chartis. 

LexisNexis Risk Solutions works every day with the world’s largest banks and corporates to help them grow their businesses by creating an environment that makes it easier than ever before for consumers and small businesses to transact while at the same time keeping out bad actors, which are a threat to companies’ brand reputations.   

“The complexity and ever-changing dynamics of the global marketplace lets in new and different types of risks that banks and other companies have to manage on an ongoing basis,” said Thomas C. Brown, senior vice president, U.S. Commercial Markets and Global Market Development, LexisNexis Risk Solutions. “Leveraging sophisticated technology, data and advanced analytics through easy-to-use platforms like Bridger Insight XGenables banks, fintechs, retailers and e-commerce companies to reduce exposure to money launderers while staying compliant with shifting sanctions regulations, all in an efficient way.”

Sageworks, a financial information company that offers lending, credit risk and portfolio risk solutions to banks and credit unions, concluded its inaugural CECL Transition Workshop series this month. Sageworks hosted seven workshops throughout the country in 2018 to help financial institutions transition to the FASB’s current expected credit loss (CECL) accounting standard.

The company was one of the first vendors to release a software that offered CECL methodology elections, and Sageworks ALLL – the company’s CECL solution – is an ABA-endorsed solution for CECL. The workshops focused on recommendations for a Practical CECL Transition. Attendees had the opportunity to engage with Sageworks Advisory Services and Implementation teams in a face-to-face environment with ample time for discussions and questions regarding CECL. The workshops were open to current users of Sageworks ALLL and others, and they attracted more than 300 attendees from 207 institutions, with assets ranging from $30 million to $75 billion. 

CECL Transition Workshop attendees had the opportunity to see how such software can aid in the CECL transition, giving participants a step-by-step walkthrough of what to do when making CECL calculations. “I feel much better after going through this session,” said one Washington D.C. workshop attendee whose institution is utilizing Sageworks ALLL. “I was concerned that we were behind the curve, but after seeing the capabilities of Sageworks, I am much more confident.” 

In addition to practical hands-on sessions, each workshop also covered case studies on data, segmentation methodology, average life-of-loan and forecasting. The case studies allowed participants to understand how different loss rate methodologies and scenarios can be implemented in a CECL-ready model, giving them a sense of what would be most effective for their own institutions as they prepare for their transition. 

Sageworks will host additional CECL Transition Workshops in 2019. Dates and locations for next year’s workshops will be announced in December 2018. Please email events@sageworks.comif you would like to receive the announcement email.

Leave the do-it-yourself projects at home and make way for do-it-together.

While do-it-yourself may have worked previously, Mastercard believes the best way to drive scale and unlock new opportunities for businesses large and small is through collaboration – the answers to the questions surrounding today’s connected and complicated world aren’t found in one place.

Besides, who’s going to read you the directions when you’re holding the nail and hammer?

Mastercard Developers is our single gateway for our partners to easily access a diverse range of Mastercard APIs across payments, data, security and experimental categories. By using Mastercard’s renowned technology, innovation is powered elsewhere.

“Because Mastercard APIs unlock new potential, we are expanding Mastercard Developers to include a Partner API category and provide even more value-added services,” said Lisa Bongiovi, vice president for APIs.

The sources of the partner APIs? Mastercard Start Path companies. 

Start Path, Mastercard’s award-winning startup engagement program, leverages company experts, technologies and channels to connect later-stage startups with banks and merchants.

“After almost five years and working with 180 startups globally, Start Path has cultivated a global network of innovators building the future of commerce,” said Amy Neale, vice president, who leads Start Path.

By linking both audiences, Mastercard is paving the rocky road of opportunity.

Here are the partner APIs, sourced by Start Path:

• Railsbank: A global banking and compliance platform providing access to wholesale banking services in just five lines of code.
• Shieldpay: The Shieldpay Escrow API enables secure transactions by using confirmed actions to release payment funds.
• Vouchr: Vouchr turns existing money transfers or digital prepaid services into a gamified gift-giving experience.

Mastercard recently introduced 10 new startups into the Start Path program. Under bespoke training programs, these companies are now engaging with banks, merchants and other members of the payments ecosystem to accelerate solutions and diagnose realized pain points.

• 360 kompany provides real-time access to official and audit-proof commercial register information, including company filings covering more than 100 million companies in 150+ jurisdictions.
• Aivo revolutionizes the communication between companies and their customers, using artificial intelligence.
• Cerebri.ai uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to quantify customer commitment and dynamically predicts “Next Best Actions” to accelerate profitable growth.
• MAX is on a mission to make moto-taxis safe, affordable and accessible across West Africa.
• Mercaux enables retailers to provide the digital in-store experience.
• Signzy harnesses a combination of the blockchain and artificial intelligence to offer digital onboarding solutions for financial institutions.
• Sparkle CS removes a significant barrier to entry for retail application vendors.
• Stratifyd captures customer interactions and turns them into actionable business intelligence.
• Trust Stamp powers a comprehensive AI-powered facial biometric identity authentication solution.
• Uniken gives organizations multiple protections against fraud in one seamless solution.

The do-it-together approach will advance commerce with convenience and conviction and move everyone closer to a World Beyond Cash.

Bullionist Technology (a Singapore fintech company) announced that it has developed "ELUME," a digital platform on the IBM Blockchain Platform and targeted at the bullion market supply chain. The platform aims to promote transparency, authenticity and true ownership of bullion assets through the use of blockchain technology. The lifecycle of the bullion assets and related transactions in the supply chain will be tracked on the blockchain, which  provides assurance to investors, and mitigates supply chain risk while protecting against issues arising from fraud and breach of security. 

ElumeGold (EAU) is the unit of physical gold trades in the digitized supply chain and each unit represents the ownership of physical gold. EAU is NOT a cryptocurrency. EAUs have corresponding amounts of physical gold and those are kept in the designated vault, and gold is redeemable upon requests. The following are the details of EAU:

• 1 EAU represents 1 gram of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) accredited refinery's 999.9 gold.
• 1 EAU can be broken down into a minimum of 0.001 EAU.
• EAU prices are quoted in USD per 1 EAU.
• All the trade information including ownership transfer will be recorded on the distributed ledger.
• The corresponding amount of physical gold bars will be kept in the authorized vault and audited regularly.
• 1000 EAUs are redeemable to 1 kg physical gold.

Mr Hidetaka Namiki, Chief Executive Officer of Bullionist Technology Pte Ld, said: "The objective of ELUME is to transform the existing eco-system into a digitalised eco-system.  ELUME will be an interactive electronic trade matching and record keeping platform to connect all supply chain members -- refineries, logistics, bullion banks, bullion dealers etc. under blockchain technology."

ELUME is unique for the level of integrity and transparency it offers while preserving privacy of asset ownership and related trade transactions. Care is taken to ensure that trades only occur between counter-parties that have been pre-screened. ELUME uses the IBM Blockchain Platform powered by Hyperledger Fabric on the IBM Cloud to build the foundation of the digitized supply chain. In addition, the platform caters to interactions with supporting digital trading networks to facilitate atomic exchange of asset ownership between members.

Mr Alan Lim, Asia Pacific Practice Leader -- Blockchain Lab Services & Garage, IBM, said: "The bullion supply chain is very complex and requires integrity, confidentiality and auditability. Representing real world bullion assets digitally enables them to be traded easily with reduced friction. Meanwhile, the establishment of a permissioned network of refineries, storage providers, and bullion dealers is important to increase trust and transparency in the bullion ecosystem. The IBM Blockchain Platform delivers unique network capabilities such as enhanced security and confidentiality, efficient processing, scalability, standard programming languages and a modular structure that can be customised for further deployments."

"ELUME will improve transparency of the bullion market including true ownership of gold and traceabililty of all trade details including ownership transfer as those recorded in the blockchain. All transactions under ELUME platform and eco-system will be secured including instant transfer of ownership. There will also be improved settlement procedures. ELUME will revolutionise the bullion settlement infrastructure. It will also develop new markets such as to facilitate lending and borrowing for investors against their underlying bullion assets.  This will help increase market liquidity," added Mr Namiki.

ELUME will facilitate stronger digital collaboration across the multiple parties involved in the bullion supply chain, improve the efficiency of transactions, and promote transparency among participants. Furthermore, it is envisioned that the platform will support regulated financial institutions as well as regulators such as Customs or other government agencies with anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing and cross-border commercial crimes prevention initiatives. This will increase investors' confidence and bolster Singapore as a precious metal trading hub.

ELUME has the support of the industry players such as Metalor Technologies Singapore Pte Ltd (gold refinery), Loomis International (specialist for international valuables logistics). The following companies have also come forward to support the platform -- Aurora Precious Metal International Pte Ltd, CIT Coin Invest AG, Besure Pte Ltd, Bin Bin Goldsmith Pte Ltd, BullionCafe, Coininvest GMBH, Global Bullion Suppliers, Jin Sing Li Trading Pte Ltd, LH Precious Metal Investment Pte Ltd, Nadir Metal Rafineri San. ve Tic A.S, NumisCollect, Ingot Investments Pte Ltd, Siong Hin Jewellery & Handicraft, SK Bullion Pte Ltd and UPP Enterprise Pte Ltd. 

CloudMargin, creator of the world’s first and only collateral and margin management solution native to the cloud, has been named Collateral Platform Provider of the Year in the Custody Risk Global Awards 2018. The awards ceremony took place last night in London following decisions by a judging panel of industry experts assembled by Custody Risk.

The award marks the third time CloudMargin earned a Custody Risk award in the past four years.  The firm has received more than a dozen awards and recognitions for its innovation and industry-leading technology.

CloudMargin CEO Steve Husk said: “This has been a key year for us in attracting new funding, significantly growing our client base; broadening our appeal to even the largest buy- and sell-side institutions, including two Tier 1 banks with massive data sets; strengthening our offering with a new User Interface/User Experience; and helping our clients smoothly navigate increased regulatory requirements such as Initial Margin. Our clients continue to reap the benefits of the cloud with unprecedented cost and time savings, ease of use and continuous feature and functionality enhancements at no extra cost. We are honoured that Custody Risk has recognised these important achievements – all of which help us deliver on simplifying our clients’ collateral lifecycle needs and bringing significant operational efficiencies to their organisations.”   

The Custody Risk Global Awards aim to acknowledge the best custodians and fund administrators, as well as the best organisations among a number of fiercely contested categories.  The panel of judges considered a broad range of factors including investment in staff, innovation, business performance and level of client support.

Mobey Day, the annual flagship event of global industry association Mobey Forum, is this year titled ‘The Next Challenge: Engagement’. It will explore the various elements required to effectively engage consumers through digital services, with delegates learning from the success stories of industry leaders such as Alipay and Klarna. 

The two-day event is hosted by Erste Group and will take place in Vienna, 04 – 05 December. Confirmed speakers include representatives from Erste Group, CaixBank, Ceska Sporitelna, KBC, Klarna, Rabobank, Aite Group, Alipay, Mastercard, Mostly AI and Oracle.  

“As banks enter the next phase of digital transformation, they are shifting their focus from availability to adoption,” comments Elina Mattila, Executive Director at Mobey Forum. “Banks cannot create services and automatically expect strong user uptake. To deliver compelling experiences and drive truly meaningful engagement across diverse demographics, digital services must combine simplicity, functionality and utility. In Vienna, we will deep-dive to understand the approaches, culture and strategies required to make this happen, whether it be educating consumers to drive awareness, enhancing security to increase confidence, streamlining the user journey or creating personalized, tailored services.”

Elina adds: “This year will mark the 8^th annual Mobey Day in Europe. Over this time, the event has evolved into much more than just another industry conference. Through open conversation, trustful collaboration and frictionless networking, we create insights that money cannot buy. With hundreds of delegates spanning close to 40 countries, and over 20 banks represented, we can’t wait to once again bring our unique community together.”

Kaleido, a ConsenSys company, in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, is helping enterprises break through the proof-of-concept stage to live production blockchain networks with the announcement of its next major step forward. The newly launched Kaleido Marketplace extends its Blockchain Business Cloud to become the first full-stack enterprise platform available today. The new marketplace includes trusted tools and services from Kaleido, AWS, and members of the new partnership program, all offered as plug-and-play.

Early adopters of the Kaleido Marketplace have said that it eliminates 80 percent of the custom code required to build their blockchain project. Clients now have access to native AWS integrations, popular services such as HD wallets for privacy and ID registries for organizational identity, as well as industry products such as Chainlink for smart contract oracles, Viant for supply chain management, OpenLaw and Clause.io for real-time legal contracts, and many others—all at the click of a button. 

With the business value-add of blockchain technology expected to exceed $3.1 trillion by 2030 (Gartner), it’s easy to see why blockchain is one of the most talked about technologies in business today. In fact, 84 percent of executives said their companies were "actively involved" with blockchain when surveyed by PwC in August 2018. However, to date, most companies have struggled to build complete, production-ready blockchain solutions, compounded by a shortage of blockchain skills and talent across the industry.

Since its launch in May, Kaleido has helped organizations create over 1,000 blockchain networks with its Blockchain Business Cloud. Now, Kaleido is going even further, offering the first full stack of blockchain capabilities needed to build a complete solution, get to live production state and keep the solution up and running.

“We’ve seen successful patterns of deployment as enterprise networks go into production and we’ve baked these best practices into the Kaleido Marketplace services, to help radically simplify the adoption of blockchain and eliminate some of the specialized blockchain expertise needed,” said Kaleido Founder and COO, Sophia Lopez.

“The reality is only about 10 percent of an enterprise blockchain project is the blockchain itself. There are many other application, data and infrastructure components required to go into production,” said Kaleido Founder and CEO, Steve Cerveny. “I’m very excited that we have a whole cloud of blockchain technologies pre-integrated for our clients to use. The Kaleido Marketplace is a one stop shop for all things enterprise blockchain.” 

One Kaleido client is Komgo, a cutting edge commodity trade and finance network comprised of global institutions like Citi, ING, Koch Supply & Trading, MUFG Bank, Societe Generale, Credit Agricole Group, BNP Paribas, Shell and others.

“By building on an open blockchain system, Komgo can select from the best protocols in development across the ecosystem and use existing building blocks for an optimized solution,” said Souleïma Baddi, Chief Executive Officer of Komgo. “Now with the proof of concepts and pilots behind us, Kaleido will help us deliver production ready products for a large number of participants at a very fast pace.” 

Kaleido is also launching its Partnership Program in tandem with the marketplace, providing significant opportunities for third-party providers to join the ecosystem by promoting their offerings in the Kaleido Marketplace, embedding Kaleido in their own blockchain solutions, or accelerating client engagements by using Kaleido in their consultations.

“Having our legal smart contract solution promoted in the Kaleido Marketplace creates an instant channel to bring our technology to a global audience and immediate access for new clients,” said OpenLaw Co-founder Aaron Wright.

Greenfence Consumer and Radiant Earth are embed partners and are using Kaleido to enhance their own blockchain networks; Greenfence to help Hollywood studios such as Sony and Fox revolutionize digital marketing for movie fans, and Radiant Earth to equip NGOs with aggregated open Earth imagery and geospatial data. On the consulting side, systems integrators such as ConsenSys Solutions are now using Kaleido to accelerate their clients’ blockchain engagements. 

UEFA and Alipay, the world’s leading payment and lifestyle platform, operated by Ant Financial Services Group, are proud to announce a new eight-year global partnership for all UEFA national team football competitions from 2018 to 2026. 

Alipay, with over 700 million active users in China, becomes the Official Global Payment Partner, Official Global Digital Wallet and the Official Global FinTech Partner, for all men’s national team events, including UEFA EURO 2020 and UEFA EURO 2024.

Alipay’s first four-year cycle as a UEFA national team competitions sponsor will see them involved in a total of eight competitions, spanning 420 matches and having an estimated total live audience of 7.4 billion people. 

Football fans from all over the world will experience top-quality national team football. As global leaders in digital financial technology and mobile payment, Alipay and Ant Financial aim to bring digital innovation to football fans, enhance their onsite experience and provide seamless payment and other services to fans in Europe and across the world.

“We are proud to announce this unique and groundbreaking partnership with Ant Financial and Alipay for UEFA’s national team competitions,” UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin said.

“Alipay is at the forefront of digital payments and in association with its global partners, Alipay has unique connections with over 900 million users. We believe the partnership will further innovate the way in which UEFA engages with football fans around the world.”

“We will work closely with Alipay to provide a unique digital experience for the hundreds of thousands of football fans that will follow their teams during UEFA EURO 2020 across 12 countries, and in Germany at UEFA EURO 2024.”

Eric Jing, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ant Financial, said: “We are thrilled to work with UEFA to bridge the world through the common language of football. We will empower UEFA to engage with football fans around the world through digital platforms and help UEFA reach and interact with a potential audience of billions in Asia.”

“Alipay will offer digital payment experiences to football fans using mobile phones and other technology innovations both online and on-site. The innovation we will bring to the partnership will also allow fans to engage with their teams and show their support in completely new ways.”

“Alipay has been working with partners who share the same dream of bringing the world equal opportunities by providing inclusive financial services to individuals and SMEs. Together, Alipay and its global partners will connect fans from all over the world with the exciting UEFA national team competitions.” 

“By partnering with UEFA, we hope to share the passion and happiness of football with more people across the world and bring them the benefits of digital life.”

The partnership was established with the support of China’s sports business market leader Shankai Sports.

The alternative investment specialist Aquila Capital has agreed with EDP, Portugal’s biggest energy company, to acquire a portfolio of 21 operational small-scale hydropower plants located in Northern and Central Portugal with a total capacity of approximately 100 MW. The investment marks Aquila Capital’s first step into Portugal’s hydropower market. 

Aquila Capital is already active in the Iberian Peninsula’s integrated energy market, operating from its Madrid office. This latest transaction follows Aquila Capital’s first investment in Portugal’s renewable infrastructure, which was the acquisition of a PV portfolio with a capacity of 170 MWp at the end of 2017.

The new hydropower portfolio consists of 14 run-of-river units and seven reservoir plants. It is diversified across 10 river systems and all plants have been in operation for several years. Approximately half of the portfolio’s annual energy production stems from plants with attached reservoirs, whose importance and economic potential is increasing as the share of renewable energy grows steadily. The assets also benefit from attractive feed-in tariffs financed by end-consumers, improving the predictability of investors’ returns.

Roman Rosslenbroich, Co-founder and CEO of Aquila Capital, comments: “Portugal’s renewable energy market is grossly underestimated by general opinion and investors alike. The country is highly attractive to our investors for several reasons, including the predictability provided by feed-in tariffs, the stability of the binational energy market and the absence of currency risks. In particular, Portuguese hydropower is an ideal addition to our institutional investors’ portfolios because it offers diversification both regionally and by asset class.”

Dr. Tor Syverud, Head of Investment Management Hydropower at Aquila Capital, comments: “This new portfolio, representing about 25% of Portuguese small-scale hydropower plants, can benefit from potential savings identified through our in-house expertise. To achieve synergies for our institutional investors, we plan further expansions on the Iberian market while following our active asset management approach.

We are continuing to implement our acquisition strategy and with over 100 plants in Norway, Aquila Capital is the largest independent operator of small-scale hydropower plants in Europe.”

United Overseas Bank (UOB) today announced that its advanced data enrichment and categorisation capability will help UOB Digital Bank customers keep track in real time of their savings and expenses more easily and clearly.

Meniga, a global leader in digital banking solutions, will be the engine running this capability for the Bank.

UOB will be the first bank in Southeast Asia to employ Meniga’s solution to simplify complex and multiple transaction datasets into simple and relevant data for its Digital Bank customers. It will also enable UOB’s Digital Bank to understand customer needs better and to prompt them to make smarter decisions in managing their finances.

Dr Dennis Khoo, Head of Regional Digital Bank and Digital Banking, UOB, said that the collaboration with Meniga is a key building block in the Bank’s data-centric approach to use data as a strategic asset to create engaging and effortless experiences for the growing group of mobile-first and mobile-only consumers in ASEAN.

Meniga’s solution will help to remove friction and to ease pain points which consumers generally experience when managing their finances.

“A pain point customers typically face when tracking their monthly expenses is the inconsistency in how retail names are recorded. As a result, it takes a longer time to match their expenses with what is reflected in their statements. The inconsistency is due to the transaction data coming from different sources, each with its own classification set. Meniga’s solution powers UOB’s Digital Bank’s advanced expense tracking which sorts and categorises these large volumes of complex transaction data. This means our customers can match their purchases without having to scratch their heads trying to figure out the retail or brand name associated with the merchant. Our customers will also be able to organise the way in which they manage their finances in real-time so that it is always personal to them and relevant to their own needs,” Dr Khoo said.

Meniga’s solution will enable UOB’s Digital Bank to analyse transaction data in real time and to offer actionable information or insights to prompt customers to save and to spend cleverly. For instance, a customer who dines out frequently could be asked if they would like to set a budget for dining out and to be alerted to stay on track. The customer can also categorise expenses through personalised hashtags, such as #rainydayfund or #coffeewithfriends and check in real-time how much has been spent in each category in order to remain disciplined.

Georg Ludviksson, CEO and Co-founder of Meniga, said: “Collaborating with UOB marks an important milestone in Meniga’s geographical expansion and I believe is one of the largest and most exciting personal financial management partnerships ever made in Southeast Asia. The collaboration will see our product launched in several exciting, high-growth markets where we look forward to making a positive impact on people’s personal finances. We have been particularly impressed by UOB’s strong commitment to personalise their digital channels as well as their structured approach to collaborating with FinTech companies.”

UOB’s collaboration with Meniga follows other industry-first announcements UOB has made as it builds its digital bank, including the establishment of its joint venture Avatec.ai to create a next-generation digital credit assessment solution, its investment and partnership with Personetics to deepen the Bank’s AI capabilities and the launch of a pan-regional Engagement Lab focussed on using the latest technology and behavioural insights to deepen customer engagement.