Top 20 UK accountancy firm MHA MacIntyre Hudson has appointed Edward Hooper as a director in its corporate finance team.

With more than 10 years’ industry experience, Edward will be responsible for leading the firm’s transaction services offering in London, acting for small and medium-sized businesses both in the UK and overseas. He will report to Robert Kidson, partner and head of the corporate finance team.

Edward has previously been involved in a number of private equity-backed management buy-ins and buy-outs. He has also worked closely with both corporate management and private equity clients on various buy-side and vendor led due diligence assignments.

Robert Kidson, head of the corporate finance team at MHA MacIntyre Hudson, said: “We are very excited about the addition of Edward to the firm. We have established a highly skilled team with the expertise to advise on deals across various business sectors, and Edward’s technical knowledge and experience in transaction services make him a great asset to our team.

“Our corporate finance offering is an important and growing part of MHA MacIntyre Hudson, with an excellent reputation in the market place. Adding someone of Edward’s calibre underlines our commitment to delivering the highest quality of service in that area.”

Business finance company MarketInvoice, has today announced the appointment of Julian Cassen as Senior Business Development Manager. 

CA Technologies today announced a new release of its CA Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution that addresses scalability and performance needs for departmental and geographical expansion. CA PAM 3.0 gives companies the ability to scale their PAM deployments across multiple departments, and provides Managed Service Providers (MSPs) a helpful way to manage multiple instances of the product for their customer base across platforms and infrastructures.

The scalability of a Privileged Access Management solution is critical to ensure organisations can address and control cyber risk coming from trusted users in any environment. As deployments increase to manage and monitor access expand across geographies, departments and hybrid environments, the architectural considerations can cause challenges in aligning infrastructure allocation with operating systems and databases. CA PAM supports these requirements with enhanced features that enable greater control across the diversity of user access points, and has features that make it simple for Security Administrators to extend their enforcement, control and monitoring of users.

Whether privileged access comes in the form of "root," "administrator" and "superuser" accounts, or application, API or service accounts with elevated privilege, effectively managing all points of privileged access becomes even more of a challenge in these dynamic cloud environments. This is not because these environments are inherently unsecure, but because aspects of security (especially with regard to the varied levels of privileged access) are often overlooked.*

New features of CA PAM to reduce cyber risk from trusted users include:

• A new simplified Management Console designed to provide visibility across security-as-a-service and multi-department deployments.
• Enhanced clustering capabilities and concurrent session performance assures large, global enterprises and MSPs consistent policy across clusters and instances.
• Augmented session recording encryption and crypto module enhancements across deployments of all sizes.
• Localization that delivers CA PAM capabilities to the Japanese market. As demand for more integrated, global security solutions grow, CA PAM offers multinational companies the ability to manage a single solution with multiple instances.

Gartner recommends that security and risk management leaders responsible for delivering IAM capabilities “Deploy session recording as soon as possible, because this capability will add accountability and visibility for privileged activity. Include this capability as part of your selection process.”**

“Security should never be a hindrance to growth and business evolution, but an enabler through an intelligent, risk-based approach,” says Mordecai Rosen, senior vice president and general manager of CA Security Business. “The need for privileged access management only grows with more and more digital identities created every day. The key to maturing a PAM solution is to ensure that it can adjust, adapt and scale with your business throughout your journey of digital transformation.”

Bonpay, the cryptocurrency service on a mission to provide worry-free financial freedom to the masses has announced its crowdsale. The platform that enables users to conduct transactions involving ERC20 compatible cryptocurrencies without the presence of third parties will embark on its crowdsale campaign by mid-October 2017.

In order to fulfill its mission, Bonpay has a range of tools in its arsenal, and its revolutionary DLN system is one among them. The system enables any exchange or transaction process to be implemented on demand, swiftly and without any delay. DLN is a flexible mechanism which uses the available resources of its network. With its help, users will be able to exchange or purchase a currency of their choice without giving a thought about the underlying mechanism. The capabilities of DLN system fits Bonpay's motto – "to provide not only financial freedom but also the freedom of worries" perfectly. The platform ensures that all the participants of the deal are satisfied with their experience.

Another step towards the aim is the transparent rates system. This feature will be realized by the DLN implementation and will let users escape sharp exchange movements, avoid hidden conversion fees and execute future transfers reasonably. The transparent rates offered by the system allows only the most favorable ones to be included into the DLN. Any fees charged during the transaction will be paid directly to DLN participants, with Bonpay charging not even a single penny for facilitating such an exchange.

Bonpay takes a serious stand on privacy and security of the platform and its user base. It has a self-controlled data protection system in place, which offers added confidence to users regarding the security of their funds and information. The zero-knowledge system allows users to be the direct owners and managers of their funds and sole holders of private keys.

"Your money, your wallet, your terms"

In order to achieve the platform's goals, the team behind Bonpay has decided to launch the initial token sale. They will be using the proceeds from the campaign to implement new features while improving the existing ones to ensure the financial freedom of its userbase. The team has made a detailed development and implementation roadmap available on its website. Unlike other platforms, Bonpay already has a live service in place, and all the new feature additions and product lines will be built around it.

Bonpay Initial Token Sale

The Bonpay initial token sale, set to go live by mid-October will offer an opportunity for the participants to purchase its native BON tokens. These tokens will be made available to the public and those acquiring them during the sale will be eligible to receive exclusive benefits and bonuses. More information about the token sale is explained in the whitepaper.

The platform will be offering 85% of the total BON tokens to the public. Out of the allocated tokens, 51% will be made available during the upcoming crowdsale. The remaining 34% will be distributed among the community members over a period of time. The sale will last for four weeks, or until the cap of 200,000 ETH is reached. 1 ETH will be exchanged for 500 BON tokens, with an early bird bonus of 20%.

So far, Bonpay team has already gained the support of several partners and investors. The funds raised during the campaign will be used for the implementation of various key features to make full financial freedom possible.

Javvy Technologies, creator of the Javvy Crypto Solution, has launched the company's profile on Fundable. The ultimate cross-platform wallet, with a built-in cryptocurrency exchange, delivers a comprehensive solution to buying, selling, converting, using, and managing all major cryptocurrencies from a single, elegant, and intuitive user interface. Javvy has laid out their vision, comprehensive approach, competitive advantages, next steps, and more on Fundable for those interested in learning more about the company and where they are heading.

Cryptocurrency, a form of digital decentralized currency, was first introduced in 2009 and is becoming increasingly more popular. Users are able to maintain control of their cryptocurrency funds without the need of a traditional financial institution. But, there are challenges. Registering with existing crypto exchanges can be tedious and time-consuming. Current crypto exchanges either limit users to extremely low limits or force users to submit an intrusive and alarming amount of identity verification documents to unproven websites. For reasonable limits, the identity verification process could take weeks or months to complete.

Existing web-based wallets and exchanges are riddled with security gaps and some have been hacked on numerous, documented occasions. In July 2017, Fortune.com released an article that detailed the hack of cryptocurrency trading platform CoinDash. During the company's initial token offering being sold in exchange for the cryptocurrency Ethereum, hackers disrupted the sale and changed the address for sending investments to an address they controlled. The hackers managed to steal over $7 million worth of Ethereum before the company was forced to take emergency actions and stop the sale. Also, according to Yonhap News, hackers hit Bithumb, compromising over 30,000 of the exchanges' customer accounts.

"With registration roadblocks and security issues, to achieve real mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency, the marketplace requires an intuitive solution that combines all the expected features including buying, selling, sending, receiving, managing, and using within a secure, comprehensive solution," says Brandon Elliott, CEO of Javvy Technologies. "The process should be very simple, safe, and secure, so that customers can easily and comfortably start using cryptocurrency. Javvy provides that solution."  

Instead of applying a one-size-fits-all approach, Javvy learns the regulatory requirements of each country in advance and only requires the documentation needed for compliance in the user's country of Citizenship. The company has streamlined the entire registration process and provides rapid identity verification, when needed, so that users can get started with cryptocurrency quickly and easily. Always with an eye on security, Javvy doesn't require customers to store their private keys, banking information, or balances on their server or the cloud; leaving nothing for hackers to steal.

To learn more about the cryptocurrency solution, visit Javvy.com. who wish to explore supporting Javvy's vision to empower everyone with the comprehensive ability to buy, sell, convert, use and manage all the major cryptocurrencies in a single, secure wallet, then please visit the company's profile on Fundable.

Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, today announced Financial Services Cloud for Retail Banking, a new industry application that enables retail banks to deliver the highly personalized, intelligent and connected banking experiences that consumers expect. 

Mambu today announced that New10, ABN AMRO’s newly launched FinTech, has selected the SaaS engine to power a range of small and medium enterprise (SME) lending products in the Netherlands. New10, which aims to provide credit decisions within 15 minutes, went from concept to launch within 10 months, in line with ABN AMRO’s vision of digitisation and innovation.

“New10 combines the best of two worlds: the characteristics of a FinTech with ABN AMRO’s financial knowledge and resources,” says Mark Schröder, Co-Founder and Commercial Director of New10. “We combine extensive experience within the bank with digital skills and innovations from outside as the market is changing rapidly and becomes increasingly digital.”

Fully Cloud-Based

“To bring New10’s fully digital approach to life we took an entrepreneurial approach choosing to work fully in the cloud as it becomes the new norm,” said Jaap Boersma, CTO of New10. “We needed a solution native to that environment which shared the lean and agile attributes of our business.  Mambu offers us scalability, flexibility and speed to market at a fraction of the cost of traditional core systems,” Boersma added.

Commenting on the New10 launch, Eugene Danilkis, CEO of Mambu said: “We believe that ABN AMRO’s approach of launching an independent business that operates like a FinTech is the optimal model for incumbents looking to succeed in a constantly evolving banking environment. They have taken an agile approach and leveraged best-in-class technologies to address an underserved yet potentially high opportunity market.”

“Their approach is also an illustration of how cloud technology can be used to innovate quickly and simply. We are immensely proud to be helping to power this banking revolution,” Danilkis added. 

Implementation Within Four Months

Mambu took a collaborative approach working with the New10 team in order to complete implementation within four months. In a highly regulated environment, Mambu’s partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) which has received Dutch regulatory approval, helped smooth the path to market. New10 launched on 21 September 2017 with a fully digital SME lending platform with plans to broaden the portfolio and potentially expand into new markets.