Synechron, Inc, the global financial services consulting and technology services provider, has today announced that Charles Bokman has joined the company as the new Head of the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. Bokman brings almost 20 years of project management, systems integration and outsourcing advisory experience in the financial services sector. He is based in Singapore and will report to Synechron’s CEO, Faisal Husain.

Charles “Chuck” Bokman spent most of his consulting career with PwC, where he served in the financial services practice in strategy and operations consulting. He also has had stints with IBM, Capco, and most recently, Accenture. He brings a strong base of contacts among both Swiss and Singaporean private banks to build Synechron’s presence across the Asian market. Chuck will use his experience in business development practice-building and creating high-performing teams to support the growth plans for Synechron in the APAC region. He will also be tasked with the expansion of Synechron’s global business consulting team, which is expected to reach 300 consultants in 2018.

“Synechron continues to expand its global presence and Chuck’s contribution will help further cement our brand as a leader in the industry. As Synechron continues to grow, we look forward to welcoming new clients to our businesses supported by Chuck’s’ outstanding skills and experience,” said Faisal Husain, Co-founder and CEO of Synechron.

Chuck Bokman said: “Financial services continues to be a key growing sector within the APAC region, and Synechron is perfectly placed to take advantage of that. Technology and disruption are driving the development of the sector in Asia, and Synechron is a natural partner for financial services businesses that are looking to evolve their operations to embrace these opportunities. I’m looking forward to driving Synechron’s plans for growth in the market.”.

LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, the global information solution provider, has retained the Best Financial Crime Intelligence and Research Data award for a fourth consecutive year at the Compliance Register Platinum Awards 2017. The firm also secured the Best Regtech Solution in Financial Crime & Sanctions Compliance, to make it a double win.

The Compliance Register Platinum Awards, which took place last night (30^th November, 2017), is now in its 14^th year, and celebrates the achievements of individuals and organisations in the field of compliance and regulation operating within the financial services industry. 

This is the fourth year running that LexisNexis Risk Solutions has secured the Best Financial Crime Intelligence and Research Data. The accolade is testament to LexisNexis® WorldCompliance™ Data, an expansive database of risk information which helps financial institutions to identify potential relationship risks in their customer base, such as money laundering, terrorist financing, corruption and human trafficking.

Dean Curtis, Managing Director at LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, commented:

“The Compliance Register Platinum Awards independently brings together the best in the industry to celebrate the successes and achievements of the last twelve months. To secure a double win at the awards is a credit to both our loyal customers who help us to deliver to current and future market needs and the whole team at LexisNexis Risk Solutions who continuously strive to develop innovative technologies to identify and manage relationship risk.”

The Best Regtech Solution was secured due to the LexisNexis® Bridger Insight® XG platform. Utilised by businesses globally, Bridger Insight XG helps customers to conduct due diligence, meet regulatory obligations and combat financial crime via a single platform. 

Curtis, continued: “This accolade recognises our commitment to helping organisations around the globe to combat financial crime. It is an honour to receive this recognition and we look forward to celebrating further success, both for LexisNexis Risk Solutions and the industry as a whole in our fight against illicit activities.”

Red Herring announced last week that it has named Path Solutions, the international specialist provider of Sharia-based financial software and services, to its Top 100 Global Winners list. This honor follows Path Solutions’ selection as a Red Herring’s Top 100 Asia Award Winner in 2017.

Red Herring’s Top 100 Global Winners list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising companies across their respective industries. Red Herring was among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, and eBay would change the way we live and work. Path Solutions’ inclusion in the Top 100 Global Winners of Red Herring secured its place as the first Arab IT company to appear on this prestigious list. 

“The Islamic banking world has gone a long way in the past ten years, embracing technologies which add security, compliance and other features to its offering”, said Alex Vieux, Publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “The leading institution in that space, Path Solutions has managed to recruit high level talents from the best tech companies to serve the cause of one billion people customer base. The results are so compelling that Red Herring included Path Solutions within the Red Herring Top 100 Global Winners and granted it the award. They will make the world a better place”.

iMAL, the advanced and functionally-rich core banking platform designed and developed by Path Solutions is based on Service Orientated Architecture (SOA), and supports open banking through open APIs and web services. The platform can be deployed on a scalable, multi-server open architecture. It is a complete front-to-back single platform of services encompassing an omni-channel that supports electronic delivery channels such as mobile, internet, kiosk, and branchless banking right through to settlement, general ledger and other back-office services. This is delivered in a fully open but integrated, reliable and cost-effective environment. Path Solutions’ total commitment to open standards enables its clients to benefit from the latest technology advances ensuring business agility, continuity, data integrity and availability, and low downtime delivering a significant and immediate ROI.

“Let me express how honored and appreciative we are at Path Solutions to be selected by Red Herring for this distinction”, commented Mohammed Kateeb, the company’s Group Chairman & CEO. “We could not have reached this monumental milestone without the support of all of our team members, and our incredible client partners. Thank you for being a part of our success, we couldn’t ask for a better community to work with”.

Red Herring’s independent panel of experts evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as innovation capabilities, corporate strategy, and market penetration. This assessment of potential is complemented by a review of their track record and positioning relative to their peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of advocacy for the most promising business models from around the world. The trophies were presented to global winners during a ceremony held in Pasadena, California, USA. 

Path Solutions provides cutting-edge software solutions and services to the burgeoning Islamic economy, in addition to a wide range of IT consulting and advisory services to world-class financial institutions including financial regulatory authorities, central banks, investment banks, financing companies, asset managers and microfinance institutions. Path Solutions engages with key industry stakeholders as well as regulatory authorities to help enhance the role of Islamic finance with the utilization of modern Sharia-compliant technologies, so that Islamic financial institutions could operate successfully in a dynamic environment while fully adhering to Islamic principles.

Yolt, the money app owned by ING, has reached 100,000 registered app users in less than six months of Open Beta in the UK. 

Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting business is proud to be a sponsor of this week’s RiskMinds International conference taking place in Amsterdam. This five day conference will be attended by more than 650 risk professionals from the financial industry. The conference, now in its 24^th year, will include presentations from Wolters Kluwer’s experts across a range of risk and regulatory topics and the firm will also have senior experts on hand at its prominent stand during the course of the event.

Joost Roelin, Director of Market Management, Regulatory Reporting, for Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting business, will chair the Risk Management in the FinTech Era stream.

The conference will also include a presentation from Jeroen Van Doorsselaere, Vice President of Global Product Management, Finance & Risk, for Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting business. During the presentation Van Doorsselaere will examine how International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 9 has driven a new mind-set centered upon disciplined numbers and economic forecasting. He will look back at how the standard has evolved since its inception, exploring tactical and strategic approaches to the standard. He will also examine the knock-on effect it will have on the way other IFRS standards will be implemented.

The conference will include presentations from major regulatory bodies including The Bank of England, The European Central Bank, The Federal Reserve Board and The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority. Banks speaking at the event include Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Scotiabank, RBS, Mizuho International, Morgan Stanley, Nordea, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse and UBS.

In the past few months leading financial services firms from across the world have implemented Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX solution for Regulatory Reporting, Risk and Finance (including IFRS 9 solutions). Major financial services providers that have publicly announced their use of Wolters Kluwer in the past year include Nordea, BBVA, CIBC, Equitable Bank, LGT, Australia’s Queensland Treasury Corporation and The Swedish Export Credit Corporation.

BroadSoft, Inc. (NASDAQ:BSFT) a global market leader in cloud business software for unified communication as a service (UCaaS), and provider of collaboration and contact center as a service (CCaaS), and toplink, operator of one of the largest cloud telephone systems in Germany, announce a new cloud solution for medium-sized and large enterprises. This makes toplink one of the first providers in the German market to offer the entire BroadSoft Business suite on the cloud platform BroadCloud to existing and new customers. It provides companies with a fast and flexible communication infrastructure from the cloud, with which they can connect offices in more than 50 countries.

BroadSoft and toplink have collaborated on a package for medium-sized and large companies. It includes solutions for unified communication, team collaboration and contact center. With these applications, companies have all aspects of high-end corporate communication at their disposal.  The solutions can be quickly and easily implemented into existing cloud and offer hybrid solutions to integrate and preserve investments in on-premise solutions.

"The BroadSoft Business cloud calling, collaboration and customer engagement applications can deliver a solution that is fully able to replace premise PBXs for medium-sized and large enterprise. No other provider in Germany currently covers the entire spectrum of the BroadSoft Business suite on BroadCloud," said Marco Meier, regional vice president, sales, BroadSoft.  International offices in more than 50 countries can also be connected to the digital corporate world through toplink's new offering. This possibility promotes the exchange of information within the company, reduces internal telephone costs and increases data security.

Within the framework of the offering, toplink offers a service that allows an immediate use of the platform that is managed and operated by BroadSoft. This approach allows customers to use a complete and secure cloud infrastructure quickly, flexibly and easily. Companies will be always up to date with the latest technological developments and can thus save on operating and development resources.

Helmut Neumann, Product Manager UCC at toplink: "BroadSoft's cloud services and toplink complement each other perfectly. BroadSoft enables us to offer our existing and new customers even more collaboration opportunities and help them to leverage them for their own benefit." Finally, both partners believe that better collaboration solutions enable  business workers, teams and departments to improve productivity, promotes the exchange of ideas and innovation.

First Data Corporation (NYSE: FDC), a global leader in commerce-enabling technology and solutions, today announced the successful completion of its acquisition of BluePay Holdings, Inc. from BluePay’s current owners including TA Associates and BluePay management.

The Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) and Nasdaq have officially signed an agreement to transform Tadawul's post-trade technology infrastructure, which includes registry, depository and risk management technologies. In addition to the post-trade area, Nasdaq will continue to support the existing trading and market surveillance technology at Tadawul.

The new post-trade technology, will replace Tadawul's current registry, depository, clearing and settlement solution, which was implemented in 2001. In addition to introducing a new central counterparty clearing solution, this transformation will enable both Tadawul and market participants to introduce new asset classes to the market and offer new services to the investors. Furthermore, these changes will increase efficiency, effectiveness and further growth of the market, supported by a modern flexible and efficient technology that reduces risks in the post-trade area in compliance with international best practices and standards.

This transformation is expected to be complete during second half of 2020.

"We are very keen on investing in cutting-edge technologies to offer a fast and efficient Post Trade platform," said Eng. Khalid Abdullah Al-Hussan, CEO, The Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul). "This crucial step goes hand in hand with all the market enhancements we have undertaken to integrate securities trading in Saudi Arabia with global equity markets and enhance post trade infrastructure and efficiency for local and foreign investors."

"The ambition of Tadawul to become an innovative, world-leading exchange company is not only admirable but inspiring to our industry," said Adena Friedman, President and CEO, Nasdaq. "By addressing the demand to overhaul, modernize and evolve its post-trade infrastructure, this demonstrates a clear vision by Tadawul to attract capital - both domestic and foreign - and present Riyadh as a major financial destination with best-in-class technology operating at its core. As a long-term partner, we are proud to be supporting Tadawul in their ambitious efforts and incredibly bright future." 

Nasdaq's market infrastructure technologies, including trading, real-time risk, index, clearing, CSD and market surveillance systems are operated in more than 100 marketplaces, regulators, clearinghouses and central securities depositories across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean.

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