Business continuity and disaster recovery provider, Databarracks has been named winner of the Barclays Developing Resilience Award at the Business in the Community’s 2018 Annual Responsible Business Gala in London, attended by nearly 1000 business leaders and influencers and hosted by Sir Lenny Henry.

The event was the culmination of the 2018 Responsible Business Awards, run by Business in the Community – The Prince’s Responsible Business Network - to celebrate the innovative ways that businesses in the UK and abroad are making a sustained difference and transforming communities. 

Databarracks was applauded for its ongoing commitment to improving IT resilience amongst small and medium sized businesses (SMEs). At the heart of this is its jargon-free podcast offering listeners insight into real life experiences from actual incidents. The episodes cover a range of subjects relating to IT and wider business continuity issues, as well as advice that small businesses can take-on-board to improve resilience.

Additionally, Databarracks has also published a series of free online tools designed to help prevent business disruption which are now used by more than 3,000 people a year. One of these – it’s tabletop testing tool – is a simulator that walks businesses through example recoveries and offers advice at the end of each scenario.

Commenting on the award Peter Groucutt, managing director of Databarracks said: “We are thrilled to win this award. Given the standards of the other finalists in the Barclays Developing Resilience category, the award is a testament to our employees’ hard work and enthusiasm in improving resilience for SMEs.

“We view it as our responsibility to share our knowledge with organisations that might otherwise be deterred from continuity planning. We want businesses of all sizes to know that business continuity and resiliency can be achieved through simple planning, common sense and effective organisational management. This is at the core of our educational projects.”

Amanda Mackenzie, chief executive at Business in the Community, said: “Huge congratulations to Databarracks on their success in this year’s Responsible Business Awards. They are putting responsible business practices at the core of their company and are helping to create our mission to create healthy communities with successful businesses at their heart. We know they will now use this award to inspire and teach others. They do Britain plc proud with their leadership on the responsible business agenda.”

The Business in the Community Responsible Business Awards celebrate the very best in responsible business, and aim to inspire and enlighten the world with the innovative business stories that are at the heart of every community, and to highlight the untold stories of businesses that are driving positive changes in their operations both nationally, and internationally.

The finance sector is facing a multitude of challenges right now. MiFID II has hit at the same time as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and has required firms to overhaul significant areas of their operations, staffing and technology.  

However, recent research from TeleWare reveals that just 60% of employees in financial services firms have suitable processes and technology in place to capture, record and consequently retrieve real-time business communications. Meaning 40% of firms are risking non-compliance with Article 16 of MiFID II.

Firms that don’t comply with MiFID II risk fines of up to €5 million, or 10% of their annual turnover.

Compliance can often be seen as a necessary evil by firms, requiring investment and changes to processes. However, the same research also reveals there are huge benefits available to firms from embracing communications recording.  

Employees in the survey agreed that if they could record and recall information more effectively, this would benefit the business by:  

·                     Improved customer experience (58%)  

·                     Better customer service (55%)  

·                     Improved employee productivity (54%)  

·                     Increased collaboration across the business (36%)  

Steve Haworth, CEO of TeleWare, comments: “Financial services firms have been dealt a tricky hand in 2018, with MiFID II and GDPR coming into force just months apart. And with some contradictory requirements when it comes to the recording of personal data.

As the threat of non-compliance is so high, it’s critical that firms make the necessary investments in technology and infrastructure. Ensuring all employees have the tools to be compliant. Our research has shown that firms that do so will reap significant benefits in return, in addition to mitigating the compliance risks.”

Altaro, today announced a significant adoption at a leading global hosting company Beeks Financial Cloud, managing 7000 virtual machines (VMs) with Altaro’s VM Backup solution. Beeks Financial Cloud has made savings of more than 80% on its data stored globally, thanks to the exceptional augmented deduplication technology in Altaro VM Backup.

Most days, core infrastructure items can be depended upon to go according to plan in any business – but when things go wrong, you find out who you can truly rely on, and it is essential to have a backup solution you can trust.  This is all the more important for a high-caliber international company like Beeks Financial Cloud, an award-winning UK-based low-latency service provider for institutional capital markets. 

With nine data centres globally and low-latency connectivity between sites, Beeks Financial Cloud focuses on reducing barriers to entry and time to market for institutional clients trading forex/futures and equities. It is at the forefront in cryptocurrency hosting via connectivity to Gemini Exchange in New York, a US digital asset exchange for transactions in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) as well as in US dollars (USD). Established in 2011, the company’s head office and Network Operations Centre are in the UK, with a team engaged across the UK, US, Austria, Indonesia and Japan.  

Beeks operates to exacting standards as it provides institutions with bare metal cloud infrastructure and connectivity in the data centres that matter for financial markets, with 100% of its revenue and focus around capital markets clients and consumers. It currently has nearly 7,000 VMs across its locations.

Altaro VM Backup - A solution for a fast-growing infrastructure

The company had spent considerable time looking for the right VM backup, restore and disaster recovery product to meet its needs. Due to its highly dynamic infrastructure activities and with thousands of virtual machines (VMs) to back up, Beeks wanted a solution that provides enterprise features and fast reliable support for its VMware environment “and this without breaking the bank”.

Additionally, the selected solution would need to scale up due to Beeks’ continually expanding infrastructure, and it had to provide an API. 

They noted-

“We used and analyzed several products, and none of them were able to fit our requirements,” says 

Markus Seywald, Head of Virtualization at Beeks. None, that is, until they found Altaro VM Backup.

“Price, management, features and support are key points for us. Most applications cover downtime risks, data loss and optimizations for saving time and money. But for us, Altaro was the clear winner, as they also provide an API and an excellent support team for a low price that is based on servers instead of sockets.”

Technical support you can bank on

The Beeks team is satisfied with its choice, especially thanks to the sterling support provided by Altaro. 

“Altaro provides very customer-friendly support. When we had issues or individual challenges, the Altaro team was quick to help us and worked on a solution. They avoided lip service and standard phrases, and focused on the issue. This is important for us, as we think the best application is only half as good if the support team behind it is unwilling or unable to help, or to listen to customer needs.”

ITRS Group, the leading provider of real-time monitoring and IT operations analytics to financial services firms, has announced a partnership with Apica, industry leaders in performance monitoring for enterprise business. Following ITRS’ recent acquisition of Sumerian, a leader in capacity planning, this partnership with Apica will mean ITRS can now offer performance modelling from the front-end user systems such as a website or mobile, all the way through to back-end infrastructure and application servers, and present a single view of the complete technology estate in one dashboard.

The combination of ITRS Geneos and Apica delivers monitoring and testing infrastructure to meet any demand. It also ensures application reliability at scale by running performance tests using millions of virtual users in scripted real-world scenarios. This facilitates identifying and capturing issues before they happen by allowing customers to proactively monitor any web, mobile or API based applications from over 180 locations in more than 60 countries, including mainland China.

Customers can ensure that critical technology estates such as trading applications, banking apps and payment portals have maximum uptime, performance and are ready for peak conditions so customers have a seamless and uninterrupted experience.

Mark Loader, Director of Product Management, Marketing & Partners at ITRS, said: “Our customers are increasingly asking us for solutions to monitor customer facing websites and applications that need to be available 24/7. With a host of recent IT failures affecting millions of customers’ user journeys and experience, but also critically their ability to conduct financial transactions and pay for essentials, the need for robust synthetic monitoring and load testing is critical from a reputational point of view, and increasingly from a regulatory point of view.”

“Our partnership with ITRS will combine both of our market leading solutions and experience to help joint customers accelerate their digital transformation" said Sven Hammar, CEO at Apica. "This joint offering provides complete monitoring coverage for both transaction centric applications and mixed enterprise environments. By implementing proactive testing through synthetic monitoring and load testing customers quickly reduce the risks of operational failures and minimize any resulting downtime."

SimplyFi, a leading innovator in crowdfunding for Russian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), has teamed up with Tochka Bank to offer its fast, online lending services directly to the bank’s business clients.

With just a few clicks, Tochka’s clients will now be able to apply for an unsecured loan of up to 500,000 rubles—the sort often used to replenish a company’s working capital or close cash-flow gaps. The entire loan process is fully electronic, and requires only online copies of a company’s statutory documents and an extract of its turnover for its current bank account. Credit decisions are made within just two hours.

Once the loan is approved, the money is transferred to the client's Tochka account. Loans are offered at an attractive fixed rate of 2.5% per month, with the possibility of early repayment without penalties.

The SimplyFi platform is backed by a large investor base of individuals and investment funds (and with the platform’s integration, Tochka’s clients will now have the ability to participate in the funding pool as well). The platform’s underlying technology enables a detailed verification and thorough analysis of the creditworthiness of potential borrowers; these processes are supported by cutting edge fintech innovations, including proprietary algorithms and big data analysis. Meanwhile, SimplyFi and its parent company, SimpleFinance, closely monitor and manage portfolio risk exposures.

During the beta-testing of its integration with Tochka, SimplyFi has been highly popular, especially amongst retail and services companies. In the months ahead, the company expects to be able to increase its lending limit to 1 million rubles, and to achieve an origination volume of over 300 million rubles monthly through Tochka.

For more on the partnership, please go to: https://simplyfi.ru/tochka/

SunTec, the leader in revenue management and customer experience orchestration, today announced its partnership with Mashreq Bank, one of the leading financial institutions in the UAE. Through this collaboration, SunTec will enable seamless computing and invoicing of the recently introduced Value Added Tax, without causing disruptions to Mashreq’s existing systems.

Commenting on the corporation, Nanda Kumar - Founder and CEO of SunTec, said, “We are proud to be the partner of choice for Mashreq Bank in their journey towards VAT compliance. Xelerate for VAT has been designed specifically to ensure that our clients find it convenient to become VAT compliant with least amount of interference to their existing infrastructure and carry on with business as usual. This is achieved by integrating all key systems with a single over-the-top (OTT) VAT solution that can become a real-time basis for tax computation.”

Commenting on the partnership; Sandeep Chouhan, Head of Operations and Technology, Mashreq Bank, stated: “We are pleased to implement SunTec’s Xelerate, which is expected to have a tangible positive impact on streamlining our operations and establishing a convenient tax compliance structure. As Mashreq works on building an efficient and smooth VAT computing system both within our frontend and backend processes, we believe Xelerate is a technology that will easily integrate within our existing infrastructure. Ultimately, we believe the new technology will largely benefit our customers, many of whom are still adapting to the changes that VAT brings, and help them understand how their financials are being affected in a clear and precise manner.”

SunTec’s Xelerate for VAT has been specifically developed for the Gulf nations to cater to the newly added complexity of taxes. It is uniquely designed to be an over-the-top (OTT) solution and can easily integrate with the existing technology landscape of Mashreq Bank. This ‘out-of-the-box’ will integrate multiple back-end systems and ensure banks’ and financial institutions’ smooth journey towards VAT compliance.

VAT is the first step that the GCC countries have taken towards a tax regime. All industries will get affected by this, including banking and financial services which is one of the major industries SunTec caters to. Companies with presence in multiple GCC countries will likely see manifold increase in complexities over time. It is imperative to streamline operations so that service offerings are not compromised and the financial institutions maintain the competitive edge.

Skrill Send Direct now available in nine new countries

Paysafe, a leading global payments provider, has extended the reach of its money transfer service, Skrill Send Direct, to a further nine countries. This means that Skrill customers can now transfer money from anywhere in the world to bank accounts and mobile wallets in a total of 45 countries. The nine new countries added to the Skrill Send Direct network are: India, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Morocco, Venezuela and Vietnam.

The total value of money transferred using remittances worldwide reached US$582.4 billion in 2016, and the World Bank estimates 3% to 4% per year growth in 2017 and 2018. Skrill Send Direct is designed to help expats and people living overseas to send money home to their families more securely, more efficiently, and at a lower cost than traditional bank transfer services which require the sender to have a bank account.

According to the World Bank, over 250 million people — or 3.4% of the world’s population — currently live and work abroad. Highlighting the significance of Skrill Send Direct being available in these new countries, World Bank figures also show that India is the biggest remittance market: Indians abroad sent US$69 billion in remittances back home in 2017.

The money transfer service is offered by Skrill - a Paysafe digital wallet that provides consumers with online stored value accounts. Launched in February 2018, the Send Direct service extends the money transfer options for Skrill customers enabling them to send funds, in any one of 40 different currencies on offer, direct to someone’s bank account or multiple other local payment options.

CEO of Skrill, NETELLER and Income Access at Paysafe, Lorenzo Pellegrino, said: “Skrill Send Direct is fast, low cost and convenient and meets a growing consumer need as more and more people around the world work abroad and send money home to families. This includes the millions of existing Skrill users who not only use their digital wallets to spend money online, but also to send money to family and friends.”

“We are continually strengthening our money transfer capability and extending its reach means we can serve the underserved in economies which are predominantly cash-based where people may not have a bank account. Ultimately, money remittance is about people looking after their families. The less it costs and the sooner it arrives the faster the family — and the local economy — can benefit.”

CODE Investing announces that it has entered into a long term strategic partnership with BNP Paribas Asset Management (‘BNPP AM’) as part of the development of BNPP AM’s SME Alternative Financing platform.  BNPP AM will invest in loans to small businesses originated through CODE Investing, the UK’s institutional marketplace for SME debt.

As an origination partner to BNPP AM, CODE Investing will provide direct lending access to unsecured SME loans of between £500,000 and £5 million.  Under the leadership of Stéphane Blanchoz, SME Alternative Financing offers BNPP AM’s client base differentiated and unique access to SME lending as an asset class.  The platform is currently operational in the UK, with plans to deploy across other markets in Continental Europe.

BNPP AM joins a wide range of institutions on CODE Investing’s lender panel, highlighting the increasingly important role alternative finance platforms are playing in stimulating the real economy.

Stephane Blanchoz, Head of SME Alternative Financing at BNP Paribas Asset Management said: “Given the structural shift in the way that SMEs access financing, we are very pleased to have entered into a partnership with CODE Investing as part of the development of our SME Alternative Financing franchise.  As BNPP AM expands its SME lending capability in the UK and in Continental Europe, the partnership will be key in originating loans to enable us to provide clients with an attractive investment offering.”

Ayan Mitra, CEO and Founder of CODE Investing said: “Accessing finance has traditionally been a lengthy and frustrating process for SMEs. CODE aims to deliver a more streamlined, certain, and user-friendly experience to SMEs in search of growth capital. With our emphasis on institutional – rather than retail – lenders we believe CODE’s marketplace will ultimately be able to provide SMEs with an aggregate view of financing available to them in the market.

“Our institutional partners are able to directly access SME debt more efficiently and in greater volume without compromising their internal lending preferences and credit criteria. We are delighted to be selected by BNPP AM as one of its first origination partners for the SME Alternative Financing platform and look forward to contributing to its success over the coming years.”

Following the awards ceremony, held at the Insurance AI and Analytics USA Summit, Chicago, the three winners of the Insurance Nexus AI Pioneers Awards have been announced.

The awards were held to showcase and celebrate those companies and individuals who have made the most impact in insurance AI innovation over the past year, with entrants nominated, and voted for, by the industry. The volume of responses was outstanding, with 3,000 votes cast across the three categories.

There were three categories of awards: Underwriting Application of the year (recognizes the most exceptional business case on underwriting over the past 12 months), Customer Experience Application (recognizes the most exceptional business case on customer experience over the past 12 months) and Claims Application (recognizes the most exceptional business case on claims over the past 12 months). The winners of the three awards, announced last week, are:

• Underwriting Application – ‘Pod’ by Hippo Insurance with 56.1% of the votes
• Customer Experience Application - Safelite Alexa Skill and Watch Us On Our Way, by Safelite Autoglass with 48.5% of the votes
• Claims Application - Intelligent Water Monitoring Solution, by Eddy Home with 30% of the votes

Mariana Dumont, Head of New Markets at Insurance Nexus commented:

‘We were thrilled with how the industry engaged with us on the AI Pioneers awards. There is clearly a huge focus on innovation in insurance right now, particularly where AI and automation are concerned. Carriers and technology providers must work together to create the best products and services and we hope to continue inspiring innovation by celebrating those who are leading the way!’

The conversation continues ahead of Insurance AI and Analytics USA’s return in 2019, with Insurance Analytics Canada in September (25^th & 26^th, Toronto) and Insurance AI and Analytics Europe in October (9^th & 10^th, London, UK). To find out more about Insurance Nexus events, click here http://bit.ly/2zd1GRG.   

For more information, contact Mariana Dumont on +44 (0) 207 422 4369 or mariana.dumont@insurancenexus.com

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