PEX Insure, the managing general agent (MGA) founded by Byron Shepherd, has chosen two separate SSP platforms to distribute its insurance products. Shepherd was formerly one of the heads of the Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIB), responsible for services including MyLicence and the NCD database.

The MGA has chosen SSP Pure Broking to retail standard motor cover, with further products to follow. In addition, as PEX Insure has its own delegated authority, it has also signed up to wholesale insurance products through SSP's brokers. 

These wholesale products – including motor excess protection, guaranteed car hire and vehicle breakdown – will be made available via SSP's commercial e-trading platform. 

Ron Atkinson, Distribution Director at SSP said:"I am delighted that, after working with various software houses at MIB, Byron has chosen to partner with SSP for his new venture and to adopt multiple platforms."

Byron Shepherd, CEO at PEX Insure said:"I know Ron and Adrian Coupland [SSP's Customer and Marketing Managing Director] very well from my work at MIB. If I need to call them, I can, and they get things done.

"It's important to be able to speak to the key decision-makers quickly. Ron answers the phone and gets on with what needs to be done. You don't get that with other software houses."

HPS, a multinational company and leading provider of electronic payment solutions for financial institutions, card processors, merchant acquirers, independent sales organizations (ISOs), and national and regional switches around the world, has increased its presence within Africa with a new office in Johannesburg, South Africa.

For more than 20 years, HPS, through its innovative PowerCARD platform, has been helping financial institutions across Africa to adapt and future-proof their payments systems to the rapidly evolving and digitised payments landscape. Johannesburg has been identified as the ideal base to enable HPS to continue this tradition and provide local support to clients operating within South Africa and southern Africa to adapt to this new landscape. 

Martin Evans, Commercial Director at HPS, commenting on today’s announcement, said:

“Southern Africa has one of the most dynamic, exciting and evolving payments ecosystems in the world, and we are delighted to reaffirm our commitment to clients operating in this ecosystem with the new office in Johannesburg. The office provides us with a perfect base to develop even closer working relationships with our clients, gain a greater understanding of the local challenges they face, that will enable us take their payments operations in South Africa and beyond to the next level.”

Saxo Bank, the leading Fintech specialist focused on multi-asset trading and investment, has today announced that its transformative fixed income offering, available on mobile via SaxoTraderGO, has won the Best Mobile Trading Initiative at the 2018 Sell Side Technology Awards.

The Sell Side Technology Awards recognise the leading technologies and third party vendors in their areas of expertise through an auditable and transparent methodology developed by the publication’s senior journalists. 

The launch of the fixed income service, which covers liquid government and corporate bonds, was part of Saxo's mission to democratise trading for investors and mid-sized institutional clients. Through Saxo Bank’s digital bond trading solution, clients can connect with the entire global bond market, including over 5,000 investment grade and high yield corporate and government bonds in 20 different currencies.

Built on OpenAPI and fully accessible through any browser on a desktop, tablet or mobile device, SaxoTraderGO is pioneering mobile trading, moving the industry away from the legacy systems of the past. 

The fixed income launch comes at a particularly relevant time when, due to the best execution requirements of MiFID II, there has been a move away from the highly inefficient Request for Quote (RFQ) manual trading models which in most cases do not explore the depth of liquidity and the range of prices available in the market place.

Furthermore, Saxo Bank’s fixed income fee model is commission-based and is aligned with MiFID II's requirement for greater transparency in fee structures. 

Commenting on the win, Simon Fasdal, Head of Fixed Income, Saxo Bank said,

“We are extremely pleased to have won this prestigious industry award which recognises the transformative nature of our fixed income offering. Through our fixed income service, clients receive the same mobile trading experience as they are accustomed to for their equity trading, offering both speed of execution and transparency." 

Swedbank and Meniga have partnered since 2017 to improve Swedbank’s digital customer experience through a personal finance activity feed and data aggregation platform, which will give customers better control over their daily finances and a more personal, engaging experience than today.

Now, Swedbank is further strengthening this partnership with Meniga by making an equity investment of EUR 3m in the company. Meniga is a leader within software for personal finance management and has a large number of leading banks as their customers in over 20 countries.

The investment forms part of a strategic financing round in Meniga which includes other key customers of the company.
“We know our customers want us to be proactive with relevant offers and services to make their everyday life easier, and we know that more and more of our customers prefer to meet us digitally. We see Meniga as an innovation partner to give our customers a digital experience that includes a better overview and insights of all their finances both from Swedbank and external parties. We are very pleased with the agreed partnership,” says Lotta Lovén, Head of Digital Banking at Swedbank. 

“We are delighted to welcome Swedbank as a strategic investor and look forward to playing our part in their digital transformation. We have been very impressed by Swedbank’s ambition and dedication to digital innovation,” says Georg Ludviksson, Co-founder and CEO of Meniga. 

The TALL Group of Companies, the UK leader in the provision of secure paper and electronic payment solutions, is honoured to have secured the UK’s highest official accolade for business success. Her Majesty The Queen has approved the Prime Minister's recommendation that the organisation should receive a Queen's Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category this year.

The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the most prestigious awards for UK businesses and are globally recognised. Now in their 53^rd year, the awards have a long history of recognising exceptional UK businesses. The Queen's Award to Industry, the scheme's original title, was instituted by Royal Warrant in 1965, with the first Awards announced in 1966. It later became known as the Queen's Awards for Export and Technology in 1975, before becoming the Queen's Awards for Enterprise in 1999.

Each entry is judged by a specialist panel that makes a recommendation to the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee. Her Majesty the Queen then decides the winners, who each receive an official grant of appointment and an invitation to a reception at Buckingham Palace.

This is the second time that The TALL Group has been accorded the Queen’s Award after Hinckley-based Checkprint Limited received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation in 2005 for its cheque printing software applications.

Now operating internationally, The TALL Group successfully exports to over 20 countries, with products ranging from cheques to vouchers and from certificates to ballot papers for elections around the world. The growth of this international trade has established The TALL Group as a market leader for highly secure and top-quality print products and services. This has encouraged organisations around the world to rely on the organisation’s committed workforce in the UK to provide a wide range of secure documents.

Indeed, The TALL Group achieved record sales over the judged period for the award, boosted by an order for 20 million ballot papers for elections in Uganda.

Martin Ruda, Group Managing Director, said: “We are thrilled to have won this prestigious award for the second time. This new award recognises companies that have demonstrated significant commercial success through the development of international business for products or services supplied from the UK.

“The TALL Group’s core business is built on printing special cheques and credits and whilst the use of the cheque is changing we have thrived due to our ability to position ourselves in new markets, making use of new technology and developing our business internationally.

“As a Group, we have been able to utilise the collective experience of our teams, based in our three sites, to grow our export sales activity avoiding reliance on one product stream. By being innovative we have not just survived in this business but have also been incredibly successful.

 “This new award is a testament to all the hard work and dedication of our staff across the Group and marks their commitment to growing the business both here in the UK and worldwide.”

FlexTrade today announced the official release of FlexNOW, an out-of-the-box, broker neutral EMS to address the needs of hedge funds and mini-primes who require a streamlined, multi-asset trading system at the click of a button.

Multi-Asset, MiFID II Compliant Trading -- Designed to handle trading for equities, futures and options, FlexNOW is MiFID II compliant; provides connectivity to leading market data providers; easily integrates with any order management system (OMS) via FIX and API; and comes with its own built-in transaction cost analysis functionality.

Easy Installation -- According to Rhyd Lewis, FlexNOW Product Manager at FlexTrade UK, FlexNOW’s zero-touch onboarding and installation process gets clients up and running in a matter of minutes. “By combining the one-click installation process with secure, online connectivity, we have greatly reduced the on-boarding lead time for customers,” said Lewis.

Streamlined Trading Workflows -- “We developed FlexNOW based on FlexTrade's industry experience and the feedback of our clients and prospects,” continued Lewis. “It’s this user research that helps us provide fresh updates to the platform to keep the trading workflows as effective as possible.”

Currently available in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, FlexNOW already has more than 200 live users with firms such as Albar Capital, PSG Capital and Wesleyan Assurance Society recently joining as new clients. FlexNOW’s availability across other regions of the globe will be announced in the coming months.

"We chose FlexNOW based on FlexTrade's proven track record in the trading technology space, the easy installation process, and connectivity to our brokers and RMS. Overall, we find FlexNOW to be an easy-to-use EMS that allows us to focus on trading and best execution," said Chris Beton, CTO/CRO at Everett Capital Advisors.

"FlexTrade is doing a great job for us," said Michael Perry, COO of Albar Capital. "Their collaborative approach and fast response time means that we regularly see the benefits of our feedback incorporated in a same-day platform update."

The major payment networks Visa, Mastercard and American Express say they are preparing for a better online payments experience by backing the EMVCo Secure Remote Commerce specification (SRC). 

The specification, announced in November, establishes the technical framework for enabling consumers to use their payment cards across channels more easily than current protocols allow. For example, a consumer could choose to set a tokenized version of their payment card with an eligible merchant though that merchant may not use the current card-on-file system.

As the physical point of sale continues to evolve, driven by the explosion of EMV chip cards and the rise of contactless payments, the digital commerce landscape is also evolving tremendously. This is fuelled in part by the proliferation of smart devices and internet of things, brought into the spotlight by new ways consumers expect to conduct their digital commerce. In 2017, consumers spent $453.46 billion on the web for retail purchases, a 16.0% increase over 2016. Overall, e-commerce accounted for 49% of the growth seen in retail last year.

To sustain this growth, there is a need for new payment experiences that enhance security, simplify digital commerce for consumers, and eliminate complex authentication and integration processes for merchants and issuers. To respond to this need, EMVCo created the EMV Secure Remote Commerce  – Technical Framework version 1.0 to pave the way for what’s next in digital-commerce innovation. The framework seeks to define, among other things:

• A consistent payment payload for processing and integration across networks and integrated cardholder security by replacing the sensitive account information stored in PANs with EMV Payment Tokens. EMV Payment Tokens complement and can also be interoperable with gateway / acquirer security tokens.
• Integrated cardholder security by integrating cardholder verification, issuer authentication and interoperability with EMV 3-D Secure, a messaging protocol that promotes frictionless consumer authentication when making card-not-present (CNP) e-commerce purchases. 

In a world first, GoldCrypto is protecting and guaranteeing its cryptocurrency tokens from any theft through hacking. In the unlikely event of any hacking theft, stolen tokens will be replaced. This positions GoldCrypto AuX tokens as a better than bank-standard cryptocurrency.

GoldCrypto offers a gold-backed token with over a 50% premium in physical gold that keeps increasing over time. As well as having this token protected from hacking theft, it presents a rock-solid entry into the gold and cryptocurrency markets that is unmatched anywhere.

Through this innovation, GoldCrypto participants will benefit from bank-standard token (account) protection as well as 50%-plus leverage in gold-backing at initial commencement.   

The GoldCrypto cryptocurrency security initiative is being implemented through the CryptoSecure Cryptocurrency Platform, which makes hacking and theft of tokens futile. Stolen tokens are rendered worthless in the hands of any cybercriminal and replaced into the victim's account. For more information on the security platform, visit: www.cryptosecure.com.

GoldCrypto pre-purchases the gold bullion backing its AuX tokens through the Key Capital Corporation (OTC: KCPC) Mining Division. GoldCrypto has already pre-purchased over 13,000 ounces of gold. The Key Capital Mining Division team of specialists will monitor gold production from various mining interests through production, minting at Scottsdale Mint, and the final delivery to GoldCrypto-appointed vault storage. For more information on Key Capital Corporation, visit: https://keycapitalgroup.com

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