Published
- 03:00 am
Nasdaq, Inc. has announced the availability of proprietary U.S. equity feeds from Equinix's London International Business Exchange(TM) (IBX®) data center - LD4 - located in Slough, U.K. As part of Nasdaq's efforts to bring U.S proprietary equities data to a larger audience, Nasdaq now offers Nasdaq TotalView and Nasdaq Basic from LD4. Nasdaq Basic combines Nasdaq Best Bid and Offer (QBBO), with either Nasdaq Last Sale (NLS), or Nasdaq Last Sale Plus (NLS Plus).
"We continue to focus on working closely with our clients around the world in order to help them gain secure, efficient access to our markets," said Jeff Kimsey, Head of Global Data Products, Nasdaq. "Buy-and sell-side clients based in the U.K. can now access our U.S. data products directly from the exchange through the Equinix LD4 data center."
This new Point of Presence (PoP) will allow firms direct access to U.S. market data from the source, as well as the opportunity to subscribe to core and future U.S. market data products out of LD4. It will also provide these firms with increased opportunity to consume valuable U.S. equity data in a location more convenient to their operational base. Those who already have a network connection to Nasdaq at LD4 can use existing connections in order to receive the U.S. market data feeds, further reducing their costs.
"The financial services ecosystem in London and New York are at the heart of global trading. By providing additional market data to the London-based community via Equinix's LD4 data center, Nasdaq is providing participants with the richest information available to ensure increased business performance," said John Knuff, general manager, financial services, Equinix. "This data can be easily and securely consumed through direct interconnection for rapid and secure connectivity."
According to the Global Interconnection Index, a new market study published by Equinix, London and New York are projected to be the top markets for Interconnection Bandwidth in Europe and the U.S. by 2020. Interconnection Bandwidth is defined as the total capacity provisioned to privately and directly exchange traffic with a diverse set of counterparties and providers at distributed IT exchange points hosted inside carrier neutral colocation data centers. The study also forecasts the banking and insurance segment will be the largest consumer of Interconnection Bandwidth, as digitization is forcing this industry to support new customer engagement models.
- 02:00 am
Family Office Networks announced today the launch of an online technology platform that offers family offices access to alternative investment products. The new Alternative Investments Platform can be accessed at FONALTS.com and is the first phase of Family Office Networks' financial technology platform expansion.
The platform allows family offices to view, list and co-invest in investment opportunities that have been offered to a community of over 10,000 single and multi-family offices. It will include alternative investment products such as private equity, real estate, direct, sponsored and venture backed transactions. Family offices will utilize the new technology to simplify the investment process in private placement transactions and will be able to filter transactions by key parameters such as size, industry, current round and geography.
"The direction the market is going in is clear. More and more transactions are getting done digitally," said Andrew Schneider, Founder and CEO of Family Office Networks. "In the last 18 months we have seen companies such as BlackRock, KKR and UBS invest hundreds of millions of dollars in similar technologies. Our new platform stands out because we have the strongest distribution network of family offices seeking to allocate into alternative investments."
The new family office platform simplifies the investment process and makes it as efficient as possible for families who want to identify and invest in asset managers and other operators. The overall intent is to get more transactions completed online in a community that is open almost exclusively to family offices and accredited investors. In addition, the platform will be accessible by family offices as well as other broker-dealers and financial advisors with significant family office clients. A mobile app is also under development and will be launched later this year.
- 06:00 am
Apex Revenue Technologies and SmartAction have collaborated to develop an advanced phone payment solution that utilizes interactive voice response (IVR) technology powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The new platform is designed to streamline financial conversations, control costs for healthcare providers and make it easier for patients to pay their bills, 24/7.
As the healthcare industry has become more complex, call center volumes have increased. Apex's new IVR offering can easily handle the more repetitive payment transactions, enabling agents to focus on higher-level issues and, ultimately, keep overhead expenses down. With 100 percent conversational, natural language prompts, the platform guides patients through the payment process, helping them make payments when it's most convenient. Call times are also reduced, which is optimal for patients who would rather avoid speaking directly with an agent. AI is at the centerpiece of the technology, enabling quick deployment and continuous learning and improving.
"We know patient preference varies when it comes to how they pay for healthcare, which is why we continually look for ways to offer more choices that elevate the patient experience, always putting them first," said Pat Maurer, president, Apex Revenue Technologies. "The combination of Apex's healthcare expertise and understanding of how patients pay with SmartAction's industry-leading technology in the IVR space allows for a complete solution to help improve patient-provider relationships and payment results. We're thrilled to be able to offer this new platform to our customers."
Other benefits of the new IVR platform include:
- An effortless, natural, self-service experience for customers, thanks to state-of-the-art speech recognition and AI technology that automates conversations
- User data entry errors are handled clearly and gracefully by the application to reduce frustration
- Overall effectiveness is improved as the system continually learns and adapts in real-time
- Can be easily integrated into a provider's existing call flow and with other Apex payment channels – resulting in common reporting, behavioral insight and administrative time-savings for posting payments
- Captures the "voice of the patient" through experience feedback surveys, regardless of channel
- Enables providers to access quarterly analyses on caller engagement and success rates
"We're very proud to partner with Apex to deliver a voice solution that will help them expand their omnichannel payment options," said SmartAction Senior Vice President of Operations Mike Vanca. "When coupled with an online platform like Apex's, our intelligent payment processing solution helps boost success rates and improve customer experiences, which are important metrics for any business."
- 01:00 am
For large maintenance organizations, developing proven and documented business processes is a key challenge. Today that challenge became significantly easier, as SwainSmith announced the release of Synergy™, the first cloud-based process model for enterprise asset management.
Synergy provides a complete set of maintenance business processes that are industry proven and ready to implement. It fills a growing need for systematic documentation of processes, practices, and procedures in asset-intensive industries.
"Many organizations cannot point to a tangible document that defines how maintenance jobs are planned or how storeroom materials are tracked. This lack of documentation creates confusion about who does what or when something should be done, resulting in lost productivity, higher costs, and increased downtime," said Tracy Smith, principal, SwainSmith. "Synergy was designed to solve the documentation problem. It gives maintenance businesses instant access to fully documented processes."
Synergy also solves another common problem for maintenance organizations: the difficulty of determining best practices.
"Documentation alone does not ensure success," explained Smith. "If a process is bad to begin with, documenting and formalizing it just makes things worse. A business must base every process on best practices — practices that industry experience has proven to be effective. Synergy provides that foundation. It has been developed over 20 years to represent industry-proven best practices for asset management."
Because process is so central to asset management, Synergy opens up many opportunities for creating value. It can increase equipment uptime by making maintenance more effective. It can lower costs by reducing overtime and improving the way MRO storerooms are managed. It can reduce insurance premiums and facilitate regulatory compliance by demonstrating good stewardship. What's more, by introducing structure into chaotic maintenance operations, Synergy can improve data quality and boost return on investment on CMMS and EAM software systems.
"Synergy is the perfect complement to an EAM software system," said Smith. "Software is a powerful tool for delivering and analyzing data, but process is what creates the data in the first place. Synergy helps organizations establish disciplined processes so that every asset-related event is recorded in the EAM software system. It also provides direction for configuring the software system. This leads to better information, better reporting, and better decision-making."
In addition to these benefits, Synergy meets all ISO 55001 requirements for an asset management system (a collection of policies and processes that directs a business's asset management activities). This makes it an ideal solution for organizations that are seeking ISO 55001 alignment or certification.
"For a business that wants to align with ISO 55001, Synergy is the only complete solution on the market," said Smith. "It includes a strategic asset management plan (SAMP) and all of the other documentation required by ISO 55001. All you have to do is download the templates and fill in the blanks. It's the quickest and easiest way available to achieve ISO 55001 compliance."
But Synergy's biggest benefit stems from the reason it was designed in the first place: to help maintenance organizations improve and document the way they do business.
"Before Synergy, documentation was a formidable undertaking. A maintenance business had to write processes from scratch, and it had no way of knowing if it was 'doing things right'—if its processes were sound by industry standards," continued Smith. "Synergy changes all of that. With Synergy, a business can instantly download an industry-proven process for every aspect of asset management—from work scheduling to inventory cycle counting to requisitioning materials. The process is already tried, tested, and documented. All the business has to do is tweak the process, if necessary, to fit any unique needs—and then implement it."
Synergy comes in three modules for maintenance, MRO storerooms, and procurement. Each module provides a complete foundation for that business function:
- Process templates
- Roles and responsibilities
- Key performance indicators
- Data conventions
- Coding structures
Modules are hosted in the cloud to give businesses easy deployment and centralized document control.
- 07:00 am
James Higgins has joined the executive team of fast-growing AccessPay as Product Director.
In his previous role as Global Product Manager at BNY Mellon, he was focused on the role of emerging technology in finance and the role of business insight, having previously worked in a number of roles focused on cash management and foreign exchange. With expertise and an interest in innovative technology such as blockchain and machine learning, he will now lead the product and innovation at the Manchester-based fintech.
James joins the newly enlarged Manchester team hot on the heels of AccessPay’s £2m funding injection from Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank earlier in April when the business announced a recruitment drive and further expansion. In his role he is being charged with taking the business forward as it looks to continue its 100% year-on-year financial growth, expand operations beyond the UK and be at the forefront of changes taking place in the financial sector.
A specialist in cloud-based payments technology, with hundreds of UK-based customers and 50 employees, AccessPay has championed the evolution of payments and finance since its establishment five years ago. With the vision to drive positive, innovative, and rapid change in the financial services industry, the business is playing an integral role in future developments of the financial sector.
Accesspay’s software sits between customers and their banks, allowing automation of their payment transactions more quickly and securely through one platform and a range of cash visibility and cash management products. They service a range of clients from corporate to large enterprise including Clifford Thames and The AA.
Anish Kapoor, CEO of AccessPay said: “James brings a wealth of knowledge and innovative thinking to the business and we are delighted to have him on board. James shares the same desire for Manchester being a leader in the exciting future for the finance and payments industry and he will play a key role in helping AccessPay achieve its ambition of growth.
James Higgins, Product Director of AccessPay, said: “I am passionate about the opportunities in leveraging technology to revolutionise financial services and I have joined a team that has a broad spectrum of talented individuals who don’t possess any baggage of how the financial and banking sector has previously operated.
“The entire team sees opportunity in the current landscape and shares real determination and focus to build a team that can offer transformative financial services to business, stealing a march on the banks who are encumbered by complex legacy systems, inflexible operating models and who do not innovate fast enough to keep with customer and business demands.
“We have the opportunity to carve a niche in the new world of technological adoption and the sharing economy. We are in a position to capitalise on the perfect storm of regulatory changes driving open banking, emerging technology tools, and modern day business customers demanding a revolution in the payments and cash management experience.”
- 06:00 am
Standard Chartered Bank (China) Limited ("Standard Chartered China") announced that the Bank had successfully completed mobile wallet collection for Juneyao Airlines, a Shanghai-based carrier operating both domestic and international services.
Li Bing, CFO of Juneyao Airlines said, “We aim to expand internationally as growth in China’s outbound tourism market outpaces domestic tourism. Chinese consumers are more digitally connected and many of our passengers purchase tickets on the websites and mobile applications, or from WeChat accounts. Juneyao Airlines receives payments from multiple channels and has to maintain numerous accounts to see whether the payments and reports have arrived. Standard Chartered mobile wallet solution greatly improves our cash management by simplifying the collection process effectively.”
Jean Lu, Head of Global Banking, CIB China, Standard Chartered China, said, “Digital and mobile payment offers a convenient and instant way of transferring and receiving money. To provide convenience to customers, an increasing number of enterprises, in particular B2C companies like Juneyao Airlines, are taking their business online. At the meantime, they are confronted with an ever-growing list of payment service providers and multiple legal contracts. As such, we’ve launched this solution to offer a single gateway for clients to connect their multiple payment channels and at the same time have the ability to consolidate and report all the receivables in a timely manner.” She added, “Since the launch of this offering earlier this year, many clients from the airline, manufacturing, logistics, FMCG, automotive and education industries have reached us for this solution.”
Established in 2006, Juneyao Airlines Co. Ltd as a POE full service airline has secured the leading position in the specifically market focuses on mid to high end customers for business and leisure purposes. By June 2017, Juneyao and its subsidiary Nine Air has reached a fleet size of 74 and flies over 100 routes, covering over 65 China domestic cities and international cities.
- 01:00 am
CloudMargin, the multi-award winning creator of the world’s first web-based collateral and margin management solution, and DTCC-Euroclear Global Collateral Ltd. (GlobalCollateral), a joint venture of Euroclear and The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), today announced that they have entered into an agreement to connect CloudMargin with GlobalCollateral’s Margin Transit Utility (MTU).
CloudMargin is the first technology provider to join GlobalCollateral’s Partner Program, with MTU integration efforts currently underway. MTU is a comprehensive industry solution that automates and streamlines the processing and settlement of margin and collateral for dealers and buy-side firms. The solution reduces risk and costs for market participants by securely capturing settlement instructions, accelerating processing velocity, improving visibility and consolidating reporting.
Through this partnership, mutual clients logged onto CloudMargin can access full MTU capabilities including automatically sending settlement instructions to their custodians enriched with centrally stored settlement instructions (SSIs) from DTCC’s ALERT database. Users will also receive MTU’s automated intraday settlement status information directly into CloudMargin. This full automation of the collateral lifecycle reduces manual touch points, ensures data accuracy and creates increased transparency into the collateral process.
Ted Leveroni, Chief Commercial Officer at GlobalCollateral, stated: “We welcome CloudMargin to our Partner Program to bring increased efficiencies, accuracy and transparency to the collateral management process. This integration will enable a true end-to-end solution, allowing our mutual clients to streamline and scale up processes at a time of increasing collateral and margin call demands.”
Simon Millington, CloudMargin Head of Product Management, said: “We are very excited about this integration with GlobalCollateral and look forward to bringing great new efficiencies to our respective users. We already have significant interest among our clients and prospects, particularly in this environment where the requirements to post daily Variation Margin have introduced a pressing need for technological solutions and a community of providers available at clients’ fingertips.”
CloudMargin has established an extensive network of approximately 20 exchanges, clearing firms and other technology solution partners, providing an opportunity for clients to create a collateral management solution tailored to their unique needs. The CloudMargin and MTU link is expected to go live in Q4 2017.
- 06:00 am
SmartContract.com, the secure blockchain middleware provider enabling smart contracts to securely connect with external data sources and off-chain payment methods, has today announced that three of the industry’s most respected figures, former RSA Chief Scientist Ari Juels, decentralized consensus expert Andrew Miller, and Ethereum Community Manager Hudson Jameson have joined its Board of Advisors.
SmartContract.com Founder and CEO Sergey Nazarov said: “SmartContract.com and the entire team building the ChainLink Network are proud to incorporate such intelligent thought leaders into our team. We are confident that Ari, Andrew, and Hudson will prove to be invaluable assets as the ChainLink Network is built into the preferred way to connect smart contracts to critical data, APIs and traditional bank to bank payments.”
Ari Juels was previously the Chief Scientist at RSA and is currently a distinguished professor of Computer Science at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute, as well as a Co-Director of IC3, an initiative of faculty members at Cornell University, Cornell Tech, UC Berkeley, UIUC, and Technion. As the former Chief Scientist of RSA, an industry-leading provider of business-driven security solutions, he played a key role in making significant contributions to the field of cybersecurity. Beyond his many contributions to cybersecurity, Juels also produced world-changing contributions to decentralized infrastructure through work such as the Proof of Retrievability paper, which leading decentralized systems like Storj and Filecoin are heavily based on.
Andrew Miller is a well-known authority on decentralized consensus and the creation of highly secure decentralized systems, which has led him to advise a limited number of top-tier decentralized infrastructure initiatives such as Zcash, Tezos, and the ChainLink Network. In addition, Miller is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the prestigious University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an Associate Director of IC3.
Hudson Jameson brings extensive experience in blockchain, digital currency, and finance to SmartContract.com’s Board of Advisors. Jameson serves as the Ethereum Community Manager and is a well-known authority on smart contracts and the Ethereum development roadmap.
In describing SmartContract.com, Hudson has said: “They have been working on this problem since before Ethereum was even a thing and I believe they have the most experience tackling this problem.”
Juels, Miller, and Jameson join blockchain industry leaders Jake Brukhman and Brian Lio on SmartContract.com’s Board of Advisors. Brukhman was previously the CTO at Triton Research, and also launched CoinFund, a blockchain technology research company and crypto-asset investment vehicle. In addition, he serves as the token sale advisor to leading projects like Kik's Kin Token. Brian Lio is CEO of Smith+Crown, a widely accepted leader in blockchain research and analysis of both ongoing token sales and the larger evolution of decentralized technology.
The problem the ChainLink Network seeks to solve is that smart contracts are unable to access any off-chain resources like data feeds, APIs and/or bank payments. This is an inherent limitation in all smart contracts caused by the method in which consensus is reached around a blockchain’s transaction data.
The ChainLink Network will allow smart contracts to securely access the many off-chain resources they need to become truly useful for the majority of financial agreements. The LINK token will give developers the ability to easily pay each ChainLink Node Operator for the unique data, API, and/or off-chain payment capabilities they provide access to. The ChainLink Network provides a way to securely, quickly, and verifiably connect to external data sources, APIs, internal systems, and existing banking infrastructure.
SmartContract.com Founder and CEO Sergey Nazarov said: “The ChainLink Network is proud to offer a solution to the pressing connectivity problem between smart contracts and external data by creating a fully decentralized blockchain middleware that serves as a conduit between smart contracts, data feeds, APIs, bank payments and back office systems, while making it accessible to smart contracts that need these resources via our LINK token.”
Funds raised in the token sale will be distributed as follows: 35% will go to the node operators incentives fund to incentivize node operators to provide key data feeds, APIs, and off-chain payments to smart contracts, 35% will be sold in the public token sale, and 30% will go to the company for continued development.
SmartContract.com has already acquired industry leaders in financial technology as paying customers for its revolutionary blockchain middleware technology. SWIFT, the leading global provider of secure financial messaging services, is working with the company to create its own SWIFT Smart Oracle, which will allow smart contracts on various networks to make payments, send governance instructions, and release collateral with more than 11,000 banks. After completing a successful phase 1 implementation in May, the details of which are set to be announced at the upcoming SIBOS conference, SWIFT has continued to work with SmartContract.com towards a Phase 2 Implementation.
Gartner, one of the world’s largest technology research and advisory firms, has selected SmartContract.com as a 2017 Blockchain Applications Cool Vendor, validating the significant business value that CTOs, CIOs, and Lead Architects have seen in ChainLink’s secure approach to connecting smart contracts with critical external resources.
In addition, SmartContract.com has partnered with IC3 to launch Town Crier, the only method for generating trusted hardware backed (Intel SGX) oracles on production environment.
Sergey Nazarov said: “SmartContract.com is extremely excited by the immense potential created by these critical partnerships with industry leaders like SWIFT, Gartner, and IC3. This momentum validates that ChainLink is already providing value to industry leaders and solidifies our belief in the ability of the network to securely connect smart contracts to the key off-chain resources they need to become useful for the majority of real world use cases.”
- 09:00 am
After two and a half successful years leading Innovate Finance, the UK membership association for global FinTech, Lawrence Wintermeyer has stepped down as Chief Executive.
Lawrence Wintermeyer said: “After two and a half years I have decided to leave Innovate Finance to pursue new opportunities. I would like to thank all of the Innovate Finance members, stakeholders, community, and especially my world-class team, for what has been a breathtaking era for UK FinTech - what our members have achieved is nothing short of outstanding.
It has been an honour and a privilege to serve you knowing together we played our part in making the UK the No.1 FinTech ecosystem in the world.”Lawrence Wintermeyer is stepping down from the end of August 2017, with Charlotte Crosswell taking over as interim CEO during a search for a permanent successor to Lawrence. Charlotte has extensive experience as a CEO, non-executive director and advisor in financial services, both in large institutions (most recently as CEO of NASDAQ NLX) and in leading and advising startups. Charlotte was also a non-executive director of The City UK, and has worked for many years to build strong alliances between government and the commercial sector. Charlotte has been named in Financial News’ Top 100 Women in Finance’ over many years.
- 02:00 am
Pay-back app Tikkie now has more than a million unique users. This landmark comes a little more than a year after its launch by ABN AMRO, in June 2016.
ABN AMRO's Chief Digital Officer Frank Verkerk comments, 'Tikkie was developed as a convenient and friendly tool for asking people to pay you back. We’re proud that Tikkie is so popular that it’s reached the magical landmark of one million users. The reason for its success, we believe, is that it solves a problem that people face every day, one that lacked a simple solution. We also wouldn’t have been able to set this record without the feedback from happy clients. We’ll keep listening to what they want, to add new functionalities and make the app even easier to use.'
Using Tikkie
While Tikkie's users fall into every age group, the app is most popular among 20 to 35-year-olds. The three most popular uses are 1. food and drink 2. buying presents and 3. other leisure events. These are all moments that people share. Tikkie is also becoming popular for day-to-day matters such as grocery shopping. So far this year, an average of 150,000 Tikkies have been sent every week, with an average payment request of 27.50 euros.
Commercial clients
After Tikkie was introduced for consumers in 2016, the first commercial partnership was launched in February 2017: customers of Transavia can now use Tikkie to pay for additional services, for example selecting a seat or booking an extra suitcase. The University of Groningen followed in July, and now offers Tikkie as a payment method for its students' tuition fees. 'We expect Tikkie to grow rapidly in the commercial market,' Verkerk continues. 'Interest in the service is high among companies: they understand that customers will pay more quickly with the convenience that Tikkie offers.'
About Tikkie
Tikkie is a free app for iPhone and Android. Although ABN AMRO was behind the initiative, Tikkie is free for clients of any Dutch bank. The app makes it easy to send payment requests to friends or family members by WhatsApp or SMS text message. Payments go through iDEAL and the payer's own bank. Anyone with a Dutch checking account and a smartphone can use Tikkie. A useful feature is that Tikkie works even if the recipient does not have the app. Tikkie is a startup initiative of ABN AMRO. The app is compliant with ABN AMRO's guidelines and security standards; users' data are carefully protected and are not shared with other companies.
