Equity Trustees has adopted Milestone Group’s pControl Oversight solution to further boost its professional funds governance capability.

“As Australia’s leading provider of Responsible Entity services, we know that to maintain our lead we need to adopt the best solutions to ensure we can adapt to an ever-changing regulatory environment” said Harvey Kalman, Executive General Manager, Corporate Trustee Services (CTS), Equity Trustees.

“Our fund manager clients here and overseas engage us because they can be confident we are constantly looking to invest in way to strengthen our oversight functions and bolster scalability and compliance capabilities. A technology solution with a global pedigree and a market leading reputation is a match for us and our clients globally,” he said. 

pControl Oversight provides a robust fund oversight framework for CTS’ clients and a scalable infrastructure for Equity Trustees to expand its ability to offer oversight services where it is acting as the responsible entity. 

It enables CTS to automate the collection of clients’ fund data from multiple custodian, registry and fund administrator sources, and to select from a library of market standard checks that independently verify both the data and the unit price or product valuation. 

Mr Kalman said: “We’ve experienced significant growth in our trustee services business for fund clients, which includes taking on the responsible entity role for the funds. To support this, and as a part of our strategy of providing market leading oversight services to clients, we wanted to standardise and automate the oversight function to create scale and boost controls across global jurisdictions.”

Geoff Hodge, CEO of Milestone Group added: “We are delighted to add Equity Trustees to our global community of Oversight clients. The global regulatory landscape continues to evolve at a rapid rate, causing firms to place an even higher focus on effective oversight of outsourced operations. Having been pioneers of the automation of oversight, we are able to support Equity Trustees with the broadest jurisdictional coverage and most comprehensive set of standard controls currently available.”

TrackActive, a digital health provider, has entered into a collaboration with reinsurer Gen Re to deliver innovation solutions to their life and health clients in the global insurance market.

The announcement is a significant milestone for TrackActive, who recently completed the Startupbootcamp Insurtech London accelerator program. They have seen rapid adoption of their clinical software in a number of countries over the last two years. TrackActive is a software that helps health professionals to design and deliver musculoskeletal rehabilitation programmes using mobile applications. The platform allows for remote support and monitoring of progress and outcomes.

TrackActive will work with Gen Re to refine the potential of their solution for the insurance industry with the objective of improving engagement and outcomes for consumers.

TrackActive’s CEO and co-founder, Michael Levens, adds “Our goal as a company is to provide innovative products that facilitate and support self management of health, particularly through exercise. Insights from our data, and incorporating elements of artificial intelligence into these products, will be key to this in the future. With this agreement we can work closely with life and health insurers to reach and positively impact the health of large numbers of people.”

Gen Re is one of the leading reinsurers in the world, with a strong focus on health and life insurance. Ross Campbell, Chief Underwriter, Gen Re International Life/Health Research and Development, comments “Collaborations offer a way for insurers to develop digital solutions that will provide their customers with added value. Working with TrackActive underlines Gen Re’s commitment to support innovation that leads to better outcomes for health insurance policyholders when they need our help the most”.

Kurtosys today announced the results of its annual survey, which seeks to find out how marketers at asset management firms are reacting to changes in the digital landscape. The report revealed that almost half (48%) of all respondents believed that regulation would be the most disruptive force to the asset management industry, even more so than the likes of fintech startups and developments in blockchain technology.

Last year, the survey sought to find out exactly what content marketing strategies were popular amongst asset managers in order to display fund information to their investors. This year, Kurtosys wanted to explore how these trends would be affected by the financial world’s increasing compliance issues.

The incoming MiFID II directive, for example, had a significant influence on those surveyed; its requirements for firms to increase the transparency of fund literature and investment research has caused many companies to adopt new strategies, and fast. However only 50% of respondents said that their company has invested in regulatory technology.

Content marketing remains the most popular marketing method for asset managers (63%), with 65% of respondents stating that they expect to increase their investment in the content marketing space in the near future. Social media was considered equal in importance with email campaigns, both, at 42%.

The most important factors for a website’s design are considered to be ease of navigation (71%) and user experience (61%). Many asset managers still use in-house talent to build their websites rather than outsourcing (69%).

An overwhelming 70% of marketers are planning to invest more into the website, displaying the growing interest in the need for asset managers to substantiate the quality of their digital output. Other focuses for investment included security issues (49%), which dwarfed the interest in paying for MarTech or cloud solutions (37%).

Kurtosys CEO, Mash Patel commented: “The survey results reflect the growing influence of content marketing within the finance industry, and precedence placed on user experience. Considering half of the survey respondents have not invested in regulatory technology, it will be interesting to see if increased regulation will make this number increase in future years.”
 

Avaya announced today its communications technologies have helped O-Bank (Wangdao) become Taiwan’s first, all-digital, online-only bank. Supported by Avaya multi-channel Customer Engagement technologies - including Avaya Breeze - O-Bank now solely serves customers located anywhere via mobile, video, voice and other online banking channels.

As a digital bank, O-Bank can expand both the hours of customer service and its geographic reach. Customers conduct transactions with the bank using mobile apps or Web access.

Personalised service will remain a top priority, however, as customers can engage in face-to-face interactions for their banking needs using real-time video and voice. O-Bank already has established the video service centre with advanced technologies and is the first Taiwan bank to provide 24 hour full media with video on customer engagement. Avaya’s unified platform enables O-Bank to quickly and easily allocate internal resources to provide the most appropriate and efficient service, improving the quality and consistency of the customer experience across channels and different lines of business.

Avaya Breeze with the Client SDK enables O-Bank to easily integrate multi-channel communications into its mobile apps and web pages, with the flexibility to support different scenarios for various business processes and to accommodate regulatory requirements. Avaya’s open standard architecture enables integration with O-Bank’s systems, simplifies deployment and helps reduce operating costs.

Quotes

“O-Bank is Taiwan's first digital commercial bank. Our success requires the courage to innovate, but we also need to have advanced technology and quality service partners in which we trust. Avaya solutions provide the characteristics and advantages that meet our needs, allowing us to establish a simple and responsive contact centre integration framework and help us succeed in the digital banking market in Taiwan."

- Lin Tom, Vice President, O-Bank

"The global digital age has come, and China is leading the digital transformation of the financial industry. O-Bank transformation is similar to what we’ve been doing at Avaya- leveraging our legacy of communications industry experience, while innovating with solutions and services for the digital age. Our successful partnership with O-Bank has provided valuable experience for Avaya's transformation and added to our continued confidence."

-Chen Wei, president, Avaya Greater China

Leading cyber-security software specialist ZoneFox has today announced the release of its fully hosted platform. Utilising the exact same roster of intelligent technology designed to help companies protect their data, hunt threats, and remain compliant, ZoneFox can reside remotely in the highly secure ZoneFox cloud. ZoneFox’s platform is the most secure, fast, and cost-effective route for clients to access the award-winning technology, and is available within minutes of the endpoint agents being deployed.

ZoneFox has seen particular demand in the mid-market for its hosted service, where manpower and cyber skills are scarce, but the risks are just as prevalent as they are in enterprise. SMEs host customer data, IP, and other prized assets, making them an attractive target for cyber criminals. Nearly one million SMEs were hit by a cyber attack in the last year and, with its latest release,  ZoneFox will equip SMEs with the progressive technology needed to remain compliant with data laws and legislation.

ZoneFox combats the growing risk of the insider threat, and rapidly identifies and alerts on anomalous or suspicious activity by monitoring user behaviour and data movement, both on and off the network. This includes activity such as file transferring, data loss or theft, writing IP to removable media, tunnelling data through the dark web, ransomware and malware files entering the network and unauthorised or suspicious file access.

Matt Little, CTO, ZoneFox says: “Technology should benefit everyone, not just those with big cyber budgets. The mid-market is a prime target for hackers, but in the face of an ever evolving and sophisticated landscape they lack the manpower or skills in-house to proactively manage and track data as it traverses the network. We’ve sought to eliminate that pain point giving them the confidence they have the visibility they need, but taking away the complexity.”

“ZoneFox breaks the mould for the UEBA industry, putting powerful AI and machine-learning technology directly into the hands of businesses regardless of size. The result is that every business can now access a highly secure, easy to deploy and cost effective solution,” Little continued.

The product has recently been trialled and is now being deployed with existing clients, and is now available to be purchased. This announcement follows rapid growth which the company is seeking to capitalise on  and extend its footprint further and hosted ZoneFox is a strategic cornerstone of this plan as it will enable it to deploy its technology at companies around the globe.

Exscudo, the financial ecosystem which unites cryptocurrency markets and traditional finance is happy to announce the beginning of the bug bounty program. Bug bounty officially started on October, 9. A few weeks earlier the project also launched the EON blockchain public testing (testnet).

Exscudo is developing a number of sophisticated products, including a trading platform, a mobile wallet, a decentralized messenger and a b2b merchant. Therefore, the bug bounty campaign will have several stages, starting with the EON blockchain & node testing.

Bug bounty participants will help Exscudo to improve the EON blockchain and get EONs.  Exscudo devoted 20% of the whole EON emission to the bug bounty rewards that is equal to 480 000 EONs. The reward will depend on the bug’s severity, which will be assessed by the Exscudo team. Terms and conditions of the campaign are described in detail in Exscudo blog. 

Exscudo team wants to encourage more users to participate in the bug bounty campaign. If you happen to find a vulnerability in EON blockchain testnet do not hesitate to report it via help.exscudo.com or simply drop an email to help@exscudo.com.  

KICKICO, the blockchain startup revolutionizing the crowdfunding industry, announces the trade of KICK Tokens on EXMO, one of Russia’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges where KICK will be the first Ethereum-based token to trade.

By now, multiple cryptocurrency exchanges have identified the large demand of KICK tokens. On October 1, the Ethereum-based decentralized exchange EtherDelta has started to trade KICK tokens. According to Coin Market Cap, the price of KICK Token varies, a few days ago it was over $0.26 with KICK token standing at the 70th place among all cryptocurrencies. Due to a successful partnership between KICKICO and HitBTC, KICK tokens will be traded on the HitBTC cryptocurrency exchange from October 22.

Now, one of Russia’s most popular cryptocurrency exchange, EXMO has also seen the potential in KICKICO’s cryptocurrency and agreed to list KICK tokens from October 15. EXMO, launched in 2013 with an international team behind the organization, has been one of the most trending crypto exchanges. As of now, the company has 650,000 registered users from all around the globe. Just in 2017, EXMO managed to increase its user base by 142 percent. The huge surge of users impacted the trading volume of the cryptocurrency exchange: from $192 million in 2014, this number increased to $1.1 billion in 2017.

“We are glad to be partners with EXMO, to be partners with these guys. We are happy to be the first Ethereum token listed on the exchange”, KICKICO said in a statement. “When we thought of adding KICK tokens to different exchanges we thought of EXMO who see the great potential in our token. Now, the market is still developing slowly, however, we believe there will be a major increase in the price of KICK Tokens. EXMO has a very prompt-to action team, so EXMO views every project very carefully which enters their exchange, they care about its users. We know that it is crucial for EXMO to limit their users’ risk as much as possible and that the users should have access only to those investment tools that are at the utmost importance for them. EXMO chooses KICKICO from numerous ICO companies. They share the same vision as us, and they believe in the potential of KICK tokens”, KICKICO continued.

EXMO has also expressed the company’s excitement towards adding KICK tokens to its cryptocurrency exchange platform.

“From the company’s start, EXMO has grown its user base almost 10 times. Through the years of success, not just the number of users and transactions on the platform have increased but, also, the team. We may have achieved a good portion of success and completed many of our objectives but the greatest success is still on the end of the highway”, EXMO said.

KICKICO had a successful token sale behind the organization’s back with raising 84,635 ETH (over $25 million at the current exchange rate). The Initial Coin Offering (ICO), which took place between August 29 and September 16, raised funds from over 10,000 backers attracting tremendous attention from the crypto community. The overwhelming success of the ICO could be clearly seen in the very beginning of the crowdsale: KICKICO has managed to raise more than $12 million in ETH just in the first two hours from the project’s backers. KICK tokens, powering the platform’s ecosystem, has become a hot commodity in the crypto space.

KICKICO seeks to revolutionize the crowdfunding space by eliminating the high fees and low project completion rates by implementing blockchain technology and providing a working platform along with an ecosystem based on the KICK Tokens. “Traditional” crowdfunding platforms also face problems with big corporations using their vast marketing budget to take over the crowdfunding space. KICKICO strives to solve this issue by utilizing the organization’s decentralized 3-in-1 platform where companies can raise funds using various methods, including ICOs, crowdfunding, and crowdinvesting, while both parties are being protected by the Ethereum blockchain’s smart contracts.

•     This Golden Week, Alipay users conducted eight times as many in-store transactions overseas as they did last year.

•     Asia dominated the list of top-ten destinations in terms of transaction volume.

o     Hong Kong topped the list, followed by Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

•     Asia also saw much of the fastest growth in Alipay use from last year. 

o     In Singapore, transaction volumes increased by a factor of 30.

o     In Japan transaction volumes were 16 times last year’s figure, while in Hong Kong andTaiwan volumes were 13 times the 2016 figure.Thailand saw six times the transaction volume of last year.

•     Alipay use also grew substantially in other parts of the world.

o     In Australia, transaction volumes increased 20 times, while New Zealand saw a six-fold increase.

o     Europe, meanwhile, saw volume reach six times last year’s figure. Germany, the UKand France accounted for 40%, 23% and 22% of European transaction volumes, respectively.Italy, where Alipay launched just this April, accounted for a further 5%. 

•     Per capita spend increased by 50% to 1,301 yuan.

•     Unsurprisingly, per-capita spending was much higher than average in destinations outside Asia, particularly in Europe, where users spent an average of 3,150 yuan through Alipay. 

o     Switzerland posted the highest per-capita spend (36,298 yuan (US$5,506)) of any country or region, well over ten times the average for Europe as a whole.

o     The U.S. and Canada (1,648 yuan) and Australia and New Zealand (1,415 yuan) were also above the global average (1,301 yuan).

•     Those born in the 1980s and 1990s accounted for 84% of all users.

•     Users consumed over 1.2 million e-coupons in Alipay. 200,000 of these were consumed in Hong Kong alone.

SunTec, whose technology powers the financial services and is delivered to over 300 million consumers worldwide, today announced the successful validation, verification and deployment of the Xelerate on Demand Service (XoDS) on Microsoft Azure. The verification process began in March 2017 and completed in July 2017.

Banks using Public Cloud services can now deploy the Xelerate on Microsoft Azure, thus taking advantage of increased compute power and application development tools. SunTec is partnering with leading Public Cloud vendors to put banks firmly at the forefront of their customers’ financial management options. Banks can completely move infrastructure into the Public Cloud and be assured their data will be protected around the clock.

The key benefits of using XoDS are:

Customer value redefined – XoDS delivers one complete view of each individual customer. XoDS can be quickly deployed and be connected with third-party technologies such as Machine Learning in a very short time.

IT evolves into profit centers - XoDS significantly reduces a bank’s Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) on the IT infrastructure by paying for what they use. Computing resources are measured at a granular level, allowing users to pay only for the workloads they use. This means resources can be reallocated to build new services based on customer demands.

Truly powerful computing – Microsoft Azure gives banks more computing power to use compared with internal datacenters. More compute enables more scope to use emerging technologies such as Chatbots and Containers. XoDS helps banks scale up as computing needs increase and then scale down again as demands decrease.

Nanda Kumar, SunTec Founder and CEO, said: “We want every bank to have the freedom to use any Public Cloud that they want. The XoDS service delivered with Microsoft allows banks the chance to experiment with IT and test new technologies requested by their customers. The team at SunTec is delighted with the introduction of XoDS and our new partner Microsoft. Our vision is to lead our Financial Services customers on their journey to deliver world-class customer experiences.”