BMC, a global leader in IT solutions for the digital enterprise, today announced the completion of the acquisition of BMC by KKR, a leading global investment firm. The company was acquired from a private investor group led by Bain Capital Private Equity and Golden Gate Capital together with GIC, Insight Venture Partners, and Elliott Management.  The terms of the agreement, which was previously announced in May 2018, were not disclosed.

"As we embark on our next chapter with KKR, BMC continues to provide our customers with transformational solutions that help them manage and optimize information technology across cloud, hybrid, on-premise, and mainframe environments," said Peter Leav, President and Chief Executive Officer of BMC. "With KKR's support, and the strength of BMC's world-class team, we will continue to grow and invest in our future as we drive innovation and results, and meet the changing needs of our customers and the marketplace. BMC is well-positioned for future growth and success."

Headquartered in Houston, BMC Software serves more than 10,000 customers worldwide, including 92% of the Forbes Global 100. Since 1980, BMC has consistently expanded its scope alongside constantly evolving IT markets to address the ever-changing needs of the global enterprise. This year, BMC was recognized as one of America's best employers for the third consecutive year by Forbes.

Anaplan, a pioneer in Connected Planning, announced the release of an IFRS 17 General Insurance application on its App Hub marketplace, developed in exclusive partnership with Deloitte. The solution combines the strengths of the Anaplan platform for Connected Planning with the depth of actuarial, finance and data expertise from Deloitte. 

The IFRS 17 solution goes beyond helping insurers comply with the new standard by unlocking additional business value with a comprehensive set of functionalities to address contract service margin calculations, planning, budgeting, cost allocations, management information, reporting and disclosures. It allows Anaplan users to run sensitivity analyses and simulations, scenario modelling and IFRS 17 impact assessments of any material changes in the business. These models, combined with Deloitte's unified data and disclosure management platforms, deliver a cost effective, and value adding, end-to-end IFRS 17 solution.

"The main differentiator of the IFRS 17 solution is the strong involvement of the Deloitte actuarial and finance teams," said Thierry Lotrian, Partner at Deloitte Australia. "The teams have co-designed and stress-tested the models to bring their intellectual property to life in the Anaplan platform."

The impact of IFRS 17 on insurers is significant and will change the way organizations evaluate, account and report insurance contracts. This will affect the full finance value chain, including switching from accounting to actuarial methods of valuations, cost allocations, planning, forecasting, simulations, reporting and analytics. Implementing the new standard requires comprehensive data management and collaboration across finance, actuarial, risk management and IT teams on open platforms to bridge all the different systems involved.

"Unlike most accounting regulations, IFRS 17 requires enterprise-wide collaboration to measure the gaps in the data, calculations and reporting," said Henri Wajsblat, Head of Financial Services Solutions at Anaplan. "The Anaplan platform provides capabilities to orchestrate the data from across the business in a highly collaborative and open platform to help insurers move towards the new, forward-looking approach for insurance contracts reporting."

The IFRS 17 solution available on Anaplan's App Hub will be introduced by Deloitte at the Anaplan Financial Services Summit on October 2, in London at the County Hall Riverside Building. Attendees will learn how the application helps insurers break down silos between systems and functions to ensure compliance to the new regulation and make faster, better decisions.

The International RegTech Association (IRTA) has unveiled the first iteration of its ‘IRTA Principles for RegTech Firms’, a new set of open standards spearheaded by the IRTA Innovation Working Group, with the aim of facilitating innovation and protecting innovators as they work on developing high-quality RegTech solutions.

RegTech provider members of the not-for-profit IRTA are invited to sign up to these voluntary high-level principles, which serve as an overarching framework intended to shape engagement and good practice for RegTech providers when working with all stakeholders, including customers, consumers, regulators and peer firms.

This important body of work is outlined in a launch webinar, featuring its co-authors Diana Paredes, Vice Chair of the IRTA Innovation Working Group, Executive Board Member Jane Walshe, and leading academic and regulatory advisor Dr. Daniel Gozman from the University of Sydney in Australia. IRTA members will also receive a fully-documented review copy. Work on these Principles will be ongoing; following the webinar, the IRTA has issued a ‘Call for Input’ to gather feedback from RegTech stakeholders around the globe and will publish a second iteration in March 2019.

The launch of these standards supports the IRTA’s key initiative to advance market development and the adoption of RegTech. Given its international nature, the IRTA is uniquely placed to support regulated financial institutions, regulators and RegTech innovators, by monitoring global regulatory trends, supporting growth in the RegTech community, and stimulating RegTech innovation globally. (For more information on the IRTA’s 2018-19 key initiatives watch the 5-minute video).

Ben Richmond, IRTA Chief Executive said: “The IRTA has gathered great momentum throughout its inaugural year, and the IRTA Board has formulated a solid and evolutionary strategic plan for the Association’s second year of operation. The enthusiasm and support of our members has been outstanding; I would urge all RegTech stakeholders to embrace these new standards and to join us in our mission to advance the industry as a whole.”

In its first year of operation the IRTA has established local Chapter representation and shared thought leadership at numerous events, created opportunities for regulated financial institutions and RegTech provider members to collaborate in accelerator programs, launched RegTech TV in association with Asset TV, and secured preferential event delegate and marketing benefits for IRTA members.

Baker Hill, a leading provider of technology solutions for common loan origination, relationship management and smart data analytics, announced they have been named for the third consecutive year to the IDC FinTech Rankings, ranking among the top 100 global providers of financial technology. The annual IDC FinTech Rankings are based on 2017 calendar year revenues attributed to financial institutions.

The 15^th annual IDC FinTech Rankings categorize and evaluate the top global providers of financial technology based on calendar year revenues from financial institutions for hardware, software and services. These providers supply the technological backbone of the financial services industry, an industry in which IDC Financial Insights forecasts worldwide spending on IT across the globe to reach half a trillion dollars by 2020.

“A place on the IDC FinTech Rankings is a significant accomplishment, demonstrating a provider’s commitment to the success of its financial institution clients,” states Karen Massey, Research Manager at IDC Financial Insights. “The IDC FinTech Rankings, now in its 15th year, is the global industry standard register of financial services tech providers, and we congratulate the 2018 winners.”

Baker Hill’s mission is to provide innovative technology and services to drive their clients’ success and profitability, address regulatory and competitive pressures and ensure a positive experience for their own customers. The company’s continuous product innovation and development is driven by Baker Hill’s passion for excellence, energized employees and world-class client experience.

The company has demonstrated a renewed commitment toward this mission with the completion of Baker Hill NextGen®, which supports the origination of commercial, small business and consumer loans, risk management and the execution of data-driven marketing strategies all on a single platform. The company’s expanding client base illustrates the growing demand for leading-edge technology like Baker Hill NextGen®. 

In response to the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) standard, Baker Hill also recently launched Baker Hill NextGen® CECL, an innovative solution that can serve as a standalone module or integrate seamlessly into Baker Hill’s existing loan origination system. The company’s CECL solution provides financial institutions with the ultimate holistic view of risk in a comprehensive framework to establish, evaluate and validate credit risk to support compliance with the new standard. 

“We are proud to rank among the world’s top financial technology providers and secure a position on the IDC FinTech Rankings for the third consecutive year,” said John M. Deignan, President and CEO of Baker Hill. “At Baker Hill, we strive to develop leading-edge solutions that promote continuous innovation. Being named to the IDC FinTech Rankings highlights the value that Baker Hill brings to financial institutions and shows our steadfast commitment to serving the financial technology industry.”

IDC Financial Insights publishes a comprehensive report about the year's findings that is available to view or download HERE. For more information about the rankings, visit HEREand follow on Twitter @IDC and look for #IDCFinTechRankings.

TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in integration, API management, and analytics, today announced TIBCO JasperReports IO, an industry-first, highly scalable microservice specifically designed to generate reports and embeddable data visualisations. The content produced by JasperReports IO ranges from pixel-perfect, multi-page reports to interactive data visualisations. Developers can use the service to design and distribute information together with RESTful ease. The initial release, TIBCO JasperReports IO Professional, is available today as a lightweight single-instance service, with plans to offer subsequent releases as a highly scalable microservice.

JasperReports IO is a natural fit with cloud and microservices-based architectures used by organisations today, and enables them to benefit from the technical efficiencies and cost savings that come with consumption-based software models. The JasperReports IO core functionality is exposed through a RESTful API, allowing any developer to access it using a simple API call. Additionally, JasperReports IO Professional includes a Dockerfile configuration, making it easy to deploy it in a Docker container that can be tightly integrated into DevOps pipelines.

Leveraging its extensive experience in embedded BI, TIBCO incorporated technology from its award-winning JavaScript API framework, Visualize.js, into JasperReports IO. This technology allows software builders to seamlessly embed reports and visualisations generated by JasperReports IO into the front end of their applications with minimal lines of JavaScript. The embeddability of JasperReports IO presents a powerful new use case for application developers, who receive a compact engine for visualising data as well as programmatic control of JavaScript to expose content to their users, all within the context of their applications.

“JasperReports IO enables users to easily integrate reports and data visualisations into their cloud-native applications,” says Jan Schiffman, vice president, engineering, TIBCO. “We’ve created a unique service that's built on the data connectivity and rendering capabilities of our core TIBCO JasperReports Library, accessed with a web-native API and integrated with Visualize.js. JasperReports IO is perfect for modern container-based architectures and allows users to realise the operational efficiencies of DevOps.”

“Due to its lightweight and quick-to-deploy nature, JasperReports IO can be implemented with little footprint and be used as a reporting engine without the need for a central infrastructure,” said Philip Moston, senior consultant, QuinScape GmbH. “I thus see JasperReports IO as a perfect product for lightweight, distributed report generation functionality. If you want to incorporate a pixel-perfect reporting engine into your product, JasperReports IO is the ticket.”

JasperReports IO can be downloaded from Jaspersoft.com/download through the end of 2018 as an extended free trial, and can also be purchased on the Amazon Web Services Marketplace for as little as 19 cents per hour.

 Wirecard, the leading innovation driver in digital financial technology, is launching the Try Before You Buy flexible invoice payment option. Partnering with PVH Corp.’s [NYSE: PVH] Europe headquarters, which operates the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger businesses in the region, the CALVIN KLEIN and TOMMY HILFIGER e-commerce sites in Europe will be the first to use this technology.

Try Before You Buy allows online shoppers to pay for products 30 days after the order has been placed, allowing consumers to try on styles at home and only pay for those they decide to keep. Wirecard’s Fraud Prevention Suite (FPS) is based on innovative technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, and secures consumer creditworthiness by analyzing data patterns stretching years back.

Oliver Timm, Chief Commercial Officer, PVH Europe, says: “Our consumers are at the heart of everything we do and the Try Before Your Buy scheme highlights our commitment to exploring new digital solutions that elevate online shopping. This approach bridges the gap between online and in-store purchasing experiences, enhancing consumer satisfaction and loyalty.”

Vanda Astfäller, Head of Sales Consumer Goods at Wirecard, comments: “We are delighted to announce our partnership with PVH Europe for the CALVIN KLEIN and TOMMY HILFIGER European e-commerce sites. The payment guarantee based on Wirecard’s AI risk management solution reveals how precisely the pre-recognition and fraud prevention processes nowadays work. Our innovative offering mitigates the risk of e-commerce payment defaults and allows forward thinking merchants, like PVH Europe, to provide consumers with Try Before You Buy flexibility.”

Online research from Equifax reveals nearly one third (31%) of people believe they won’t be able to pay off debt within their lifetime, and over one in 10 (12%) say they won’t even be able to reduce their debt levels.

The survey, conducted with Gorkana, indicates those aged 18-24 are the most pessimistic about debt, just half (50%) believe they will pay back their debt in full within their lifetime, compared to 78% of 55-64 year olds. Males are more confident they’ll manage to clear their debts in their lifetime (73%) than females (65%).

People from the East Midlands (59%) were the least likely to think they will repay all their debt over their lifetime, with those from the North East (16%) and London (16%) most likely to believe they won’t pay off any debt over this period.

The top methods people have found helpful to manage or reduce debt were buying own brand food or shopping at budget supermarkets (61%), decreasing expenditure on items such as clothes, holidays and gym memberships (52%), and cutting back on going out for dinner, drinks and other social activities (51%).

Those aged 25-34 are the most willing to make these lifestyle sacrifices to manage outgoings, with 78% buying own brand foods or shopping at budget supermarkets compared to just 58% of those 65 or over. Similarly, almost three quarters (72%) of 25-44 year olds have reduced their spending on items such as clothes, holidays and gym memberships in an attempt to reduce spending, compared to just 45% of those aged over 65. 

Richard Haymes, Head of Financial Difficulties at TDX Group, an Equifax company said: “There’s a clear generational divide when it comes to the perception and treatment of debt, with younger people feeling less confident of ever being debt-free. This may be down to factors such as increasing levels of student loans and exponentially higher property costs, as well as a prolonged period of low interest rates, which means credit for those who can afford is relatively cheap to access.

“With inflation hitting a six-month high in August (2.7%), a recent interest rate rise and limited wage growth, it’s disconcerting that a large proportion of people are taking on debt without a realistic expectation of being able to pay it back.

“According to our analysis, personal insolvencies are set to grow by 17% this year, and the main contributing factor is record levels of consumer borrowing. We encourage individuals who feel their debt levels have become unmanageable to inform their creditors as soon as possible and to seek impartial advice and support through resources such as Stepchange and Citizens Advice.”

Belgazprombank, a leading lender in Belarus, has implemented a system from FICO that screens financial transactions and customers in order to prevent financial crime. FICO^® TONBELLER^® Siron^® Embargo checks banking applicants and individual transactions to ensure that the bank and its customers do not do business with individuals on restricted lists, such as those who are involved in terrorist activities, and manages the risk of working with politically exposed persons.

More information: http://www.fico.com/en/risk-compliance/sanctions-screening

The system implemented by FICO partner RDTEX, with assistance from FICO consultants, enables the bank to comply with regulations by blocking financial transactions and freezing funds related to persons involved in terrorist activities. The bank will also use the system to manage financial transactions and work with individuals and public officials, in order to comply with international economic sanctions.

The implemented system includes two components, Siron^® Embargo and Siron^® KYC, and performs both online checks and retrospective analysis. Both components are built on a single database and share access to downloaded or created external and internal lists (National Bank lists, Dow Jones database, etc.). Information about high-risk customers is available to more accurately identify and analyse transactions.

"With the help of our partners, RDTEX and FICO, the bank quickly implemented two modules of the Siron suite, which allowed us to manage our work with various restrictive lists — including lists of public officials, sanctions lists, and lists of persons involved in terrorist activities — at a qualitatively different level,” said the executive director of Belgazprombank, Irina Kalechits. “Also, the system allows the bank to manage our own lists. We succeeded in meeting the new requirements of the legislation of the Republic of Belarus in a timely manner, and reduced the risks of non-compliance with international banking practices.”

“Regulators worldwide are focused on preventing the financing of financial crime,” said Torsten Mayer, vice president for compliance solutions at FICO. “We help Belgazprombank and other banks worldwide to keep up with new lists of high-risk persons and screen every transaction.”

FICO^® TONBELLER^® Siron^® Embargo accurately checks customers and transactions for ties to terrorism and significantly minimises false positives. Business partners and existing customers are continually matched with the latest sanction lists. New customers are checked using dynamic KYC questionnaires during onboarding. The sanctions screening system integrates simply and safely with the payment process and automatically blocks suspicious transactions matching watch lists.