One of the biggest challenges faced by regulated and non-regulated companies is assessing whether or not another business is safe to work with. 

Existing approaches rely on manual research across multiple siloed sources. This is time-consuming and fails to give the holistic risk overview necessary to make an informed decision.

To address this long-standing problem ComplyAdvantage, the leader in financial crime intelligence, today announces the launch of a new Know Your Business (KYB) solution that automates the process, making it faster and easier to manage risk exposure while growing the customer base.

“Business accounts present a tremendous growth opportunity for most companies, but onboarding and monitoring them is hugely time-intensive and inefficient for their analysts. Our new KYB solution provides the data and insights our customers need to make informed decisions much faster and manage their risks more effectively,” said ComplyAdvantage Chief Product Officer Oliver Furniss.

Automated Process

Currently, companies like banks typically spend as much as 14 days conducting the necessary background checks when opening a business account. By automating most of the process, KYB by ComplyAdvantage dramatically reduces the time needed for manual research. 

Once the company creates a new customer profile, KYB automatically checks the name against business registries and fills in all the key information about the business executives.

 Adverse media tools are available to further research high-risk individuals.

“As a digital trade finance platform, automated onboarding and efficient KYB is critical for 40Seas. ComplyAdvantage's KYB solution was really easy to get up and running. With the system we're able to verify our customers in seconds, improving the customer experience and ensuring we can mitigate risk effectively,” said Igor Zaks, Co-Founder and Chief Risk Officer, 40Seas.

Flexible Risk Weightings

Accurately assessing business risk requires companies to research numerous variables ranging from the age and location of the business to its industry vertical and governance. ComplyAdvantage has made it easy for administrators to create a variety of risk profiles andtailor them to their risk policy. 

By providing flexible configuration that can populate and update automatically, ComplyAdvantage relieves analysts of numerous micro-assessments so they can focus their time and effort on overall rating, prioritizing their time and efforts on higher-risk businesses and quickly processing those that are lower-risk, creating efficiencies.

Dynamic Risk Scoring

KYB by ComplyAdvantage features a dynamic risk scoring feature that automates the risk management process whenever changes occur in a business customer's ownership, credit rating, trading amounts, or directorship/governance. Traditionally a manual task, this process often burdens banks and financial institutions with valuable resources and exposes them to potential risks due to missed critical changes in management.

Oliver Furniss emphasized the impact of dynamic risk scoring: "Banks and other companies leveraging Dynamic Risk Scoring significantly enhance the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of their business onboarding operations, bolstering their overall operations and reinforcing the robustness of the financial system."

KYB by ComplyAdvantage is currently available in the United States. Additional regions will be added in 2024.

TS Imagine, the leading global, cross-asset provider of trading, portfolio, and risk management solutions for financial institutions, is pleased to announce the appointment of Christian Dietmann to its EMEA sales team. Based in the company’s London office, Christian will focus primarily on UK sales, reinforcing the growing team's capabilities.

Prior to joining TS Imagine, Christian held a business development position at TP ICAP’s Parameta Solutions' Data and Analytics business. Before that, Christian led Liquidnet Investment Analytics sales in Europe for five years.

Christian brings an attractive mix of sales experience, buy-side client contacts, and international perspective. He has held key roles in Paris, Sydney, and London, in both sell-side and vendor positions. His career journey also includes six years at Bloomberg, where he progressed to Head of Multi-Asset e-Trading.

Andrew Morgan, TS Imagine’s President and Chief Revenue Officer, commented on the news: “We are thrilled to have Christian join during an exciting time for TS Imagine and look forward to working with him as we sell our expanding platform of solutions to hedge funds, asset managers, and banks.”

The timing of Christian's appointment, and the expansion of TS Imagine’s sales team in all regions, coincides with the recent launch of two new, globally available solutions: TS One and RiskSmartX. Christian is the fourth senior sales executive TS Imagine has added this year. His appointment follows that of Stephanie Cheung in APAC, and James Muench and Jake Elkins in the US.

TaxNodes, a crypto tax computation and expert-assisted ITR filing platform today announced complimentary Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) for all eligible customers filing Income Tax Return through their platform. This announcement is an effort by TaxNodes to bring more users into the realm of Web3.0, and show gratitude to Indian taxpayers for staying compliant and filing their taxes on time using the platform. 

This unique initiative on Polygon Labs, a leading blockchain platform presents an exciting opportunity for Indian taxpayers to embrace the future of digital assets and blockchain technology. The complimentary NFT feature serves as a token of gratitude to valued customers where existing TaxNodes users will have priority access to the NFTs. In recognition of the premium customers, goodies and invitations to exclusive upcoming events will also be extended, while NFT holders will enjoy elevated referral bonuses. Eligible users can claim their NFTs from 11th July to 31st  July, which are minted on the Polygon Labs blockchain, by providing their ITR acknowledgement number. As an added incentive, they will receive an immediate 25% discount on their ITR filing for the year 2022-2023 through the TaxNodes platform.

The estimated number of Indian taxpayers eligible to receive these complimentary NFTs is projected to be over 11 Crore this year, encompassing a vast majority of tax-paying individuals. Furthermore, the new customers will receive additional discounts when filing their ITR for the current year, extending to the following year as well. This will encourage all Indian taxpayers to take advantage of this offer and be a part of the growing Web3 ecosystem while ensuring tax compliance.

Commenting on the initiative, Avinash Shekhar, CEO & Founder, TaxNodes, said, "Crypto and Web3 are here to stay. Being a part of this revolution in a compliant manner and making Web3 mainstream, is what we, as TaxNodes, want to encourage. TaxNodes is one of the most secure and accurate platforms for crypto taxation and has seen double-digit growth in the last couple of months. We not only want to thank users for putting their trust in us for their IT computation, we also want to encourage them to be a part of the larger Web3 ecosystem by bringing in the NFT element on the  Polygon blockchain. They will witness first-hand, the value of this NFT and how to use them to avail many benefits and discounts on our platform. I look forward to more customers' participation in this new era of financial freedom and transformation.”

Mr. Sai Krishna V K, Senior Vice President, Polygon Labs said - "We are excited to have TaxNodes utilize the blockchain for meaningful use cases. By introducing Indian taxpayers to NFTs and demonstrating the potential of on-chain experiences. By offering complimentary NFTs, there is a world where people can viscerally see utility and be inspired to explore the crypto world further."

TaxNodes is committed to simplifying the tax filing process and empowering individuals to take control of their financial responsibilities. This initiative not only adds value to their services but also demonstrates their dedication to staying at the forefront of technological advancements. The platform has recently raised  $1.6 million in seed  funding from existing partners.

The UK’s largest independent invoice finance provider, Bibby Financial Services (“BFS”) has appointed Gayle Robertson as Business Development Manager as it continues to drive new business volumes throughout Scotland.

With almost two decades of experience in banking and commercial finance, Gayle joins from Lloyds Banking Group where she spent 19 years supporting SMEs in both operational and sales roles. Her most recent role with the bank was Associate Director Invoice Finance.

Mike Day, Head of Sales for Scotland said: “Attracting someone of Gayle’s calibre and market experience is down to our ambitious growth strategy in Scotland, as well as our client-centric approach to supporting SMEs.

“With funding capability of more than £1.3bn, BFS is in growth mode and we are ready to support Scottish businesses and their advisors. We’re delighted to welcome Gayle to BFS and look forward to growing our support for SMEs with her on-board.”

Prior to joining Lloyds Banking Group, Gayle achieved a BA Honours degree in Psychology with Sociology & Social Policy from Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.

Since joining the bank in 2006, she has supported the growth of around 250 SMEs.

Gayle Robertson commented: “I’m hugely passionate about supporting local businesses and working with valued intermediary partners to improve outcomes for SMEs. I’m delighted to join BFS during this exciting time for the business, and at such important time for SMEs when it is more critical than ever that they can access the working capital they need to grow and thrive.

“BFS has a fantastic culture, flexible products and funding capability to support the Scottish economy. I’m looking forward to meeting clients and intermediary partners over the coming weeks.”

BFS is the UK’s largest independent invoice finance provider and supports nearly 8,500 SME clients globally through its invoice finance and asset finance solutions. In addition, its product range includes Foreign Exchange, Export and Trade Finance, as well as specialist finance for the construction sector.

Gayle joined BFS on 2 May with a remit covering the whole of Scotland.

Iliad Solutions is pleased to announce the general release of its T3 test and certification platform for New Payments Architecture. The solution is used in precertification mode to underpin the Pay.UK Self Validation Testing. The general release is further enhanced to integrate and simulate the back-end systems that Financial Institutions use to interoperate with NPA. This results in a fully automated end-to-end solution.

A seamless testing platform is being offered as an option by Iliad so financial institutions wishing to join NPA can onboard safely, securely and self-certificate in the testing process.

NPA will be the biggest upgrade UK payment systems have seen in a generation. As such Pay.UK’s testing strategy has been meticulously designed to support the programme ensuring that the NPA framework can be validated across the entire ecosystem.

Iliad’s testing option forms part of an ongoing partnership between Pay.UK and Iliad Solutions with both parties previously collaborating on Faster Payments, and Confirmation of Payee (CoP), the name-checking service for UK-based real-time payments.

Anthony Walton, Iliad Solution’s CEO comments: “Pay.UK’s groundbreaking payment initiatives have been created by the strength of its internal capabilities and the expertise provided by its chosen third partner partners like Iliad. For over 25 years, Iliad Solutions has been at the forefront of building, implementing and supporting major payment solutions. This experience has allowed us to develop the most comprehensive and resilient testing solutions available in the world today. We are delighted to be supporting Pay.UK once again.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated innovation and forced insurers to attract market share through digital solutions that drive efficient distribution and create an excellent customer experience. The future for insurers has to be to finally make the shift from push selling to engaging with their customers based on understanding their needs, creating customer learning and new experiences. And a big portion of these interactions along customer journeys will be predominantly digital.

With the theme of "The Future is Now: Digital and Intelligent Upgrade Drives Insurance New Growth", World InsurDigital Summit APAC 2023 focused on the latest developments in digital technology in insurance product R&D, pricing, operation, sales, marketing, loss assessment, claims settlement, etc.. The conference plans from the perspective of the overall and the whole process user experience, solve the problems of experience gaps and user loss, and more comprehensively cover the diverse needs of users. It aims to provide a more professional communication platform for the insurance industry development industry, and strengthen digital collaborative innovation and industrial integration.

Key Topics

• Regulatory & Compliance and Risk in Asia Insurance Market: Opportunities and Challenges

• AI & Data Analytics Speed Up the Transformation for Insurance Ecosystems

• Technological Innovation Enables the Insurance Industry Chain

• Uses Cases of International Insurers: Digital Journey & Data Culture

• The Evolving Digital Insurance Landscape - Redefine Insurance in APAC

• Exploring future digital insurance ecosystems and the platform economy

• AI Center:Enhance Automations with Machine Learning

• Customer data management:Keep up with the everchanging demands of customers across different channels

• Open AI Ecosystems for Insurance - An Revolution in InsurTech

• Customer-first Insurance--the impact & challenges of insurance-as-a-service

• Maximize the Values of Insurance Analytics and AI

• Digital customer: Trends in the time of rapid consumer evolution

• Envisioning the future ready insurance workforce

• Key insurtech trends for 2030 & innovative high-tech adoption

• A Journey to a Successful Digital Transformation

• Data Intelligence Drives Financial Innovation

• Digital Facilitates the Transformation of "Customer-Centered" Management in the Insurance

• Ensuring data privacy: how can insurers maintain their image as trusted data custodians?

• APAC InsurTech Innovation - To be Part of Future​

• Reinventing the Insurance Business with Intelligent Automation

• The new role of insurance agencies and brokers and in the insurance ecosystem development of omni-channel customer approach

• Cloud Migration, a Look at Hybrid Models

• Building Seamless Digital Insurance Experiences

• Using AI to Accelerate Insurance Claims and Operations

• Digital Health Initiatives and its Value for Health Insurance Growth and Profitability

• Challenges Faced while Starting the Automation Journey in the Commercial Insurance Industry and Associated Pathways

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Doorda announces that insurance clients Intelligent AI and Konsileo are using their unique and trusted UK data sets to enable more complete and accurate client profiling.

The UK commercial property insurance sector has faced tough times over the past several years - inflation, valuations, supply chains, Brexit and wider global unrest have all impacted risk measurement processes and premiums.

Whether you are a broker, an underwriting platform or a tier one insurance policy provider, changing risk profiles, controlling levels of risk exposure and analysing huge volumes of insurance data are a constant challenge. Insurance is also an evolving industry that’s learning and embracing digital modernisation.

New technology is already offering great opportunities for new approaches, but this often requires the handling of large amounts of complex data that would drain operational time and cost. It is calculated that insurers have been using less than 10% of available data when making underwriting decisions and it is well known that data is regularly incomplete and unreliable. In property, data provided by landlords is often out of date or inaccurate, even address information is imperfect.

Underlying all ecosystem business is the need to fully understand client profiles in order to sell or negotiate insurance or measure a complete risk picture. Controlling what you can and being prepared in advance to safeguard and secure the best possible outcomes for all parties is nirvana.

Konsileo is a commercial insurance broker, providing bespoke and informed negotiation services for SMEs. They source suitable insurance based on an accurate, complete and detailed view of their clients.

Konsileo uses Doorda data to feed the construct of the most detailed client profiles, including asset and legal entity information, that enables their brokers to select the most appropriate insurance whilst preparing for queries and countering negative objections from underwriters. Konsileo choose data supplied by Doorda because it comes from the official systems of records, such as Companies House, and is up to date.

Meric Stanley, Lead Developer at Konsileo, commented: ‘‘Finding trustworthy data, reliably available when needed, is a huge priority. Our insurance discussions are based on detailed information about specific circumstances, rather than generic scores and Doorda excels in providing the detailed, raw data that is so key to our business.  As a valued business partner, Doorda is always able to answer our questions about the data, their API is always reliable, and they are our first point of call for data.”

Intelligent AI brings together Open Data, Proprietary Data and AI-extracted data to deliver a 360-degree view of risk across commercial property portfolios for property owners and the insurance sector. It offers AI and data analytics solutions that identify, measure, predict and mitigate risk whilst bringing clarity to insurers and commercial property owners through Digital Twin location profiles on 100% of locations within a portfolio.

Intelligent AI recognises that insurers often struggle to gather the data required to have deep risk insight in commercial property underwriting. In combination with other providers and their own technology, they use Doorda to get harmonised and structured data so that they can give a much higher quality service to insurer clients.

Anthony Peake, CEO of Intelligent AI, commented: “As organisations look for (ESG) Environment, Social and Governance data, Doorda is able to address the social aspects by providing a wealth of geo-demographic data as well as proximity information about nearby properties and businesses. They are very good at data on the internal compartmentation and have also helped us in better understanding the makeup of multi-occupancy buildings.”

He added: “Doorda Data always scores highly when compared to other potential sources -the quality is there. We could get some of the data from other suppliers, but we trust Doorda.“

Clifford McDowell, Founder and CEO of Doorda responded
"I’m delighted to be supporting Konsileo and Intelligent AI to create bespoke risk profiles that improve their service to customers. It’s encouraging too that tier-one insurers are also embracing this approach by using some unique Doorda data."

HedgeFlows, a FinTech platform for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has partnered with Travelex to help people plan against volatile exchange rates.

The partnership sees the launch of a secure exchange rate product, enabling UK holidaymakers to secure rates ahead of their holiday and protect travel money against currency fluctuations.

For a small fee, the new product allows foreign exchange to be pre-ordered when customers book, creating a significant additional revenue stream within airline and online travel agent’s bookings flows. By fixing the rate, customers are guaranteed to not lose out if the exchange rate worsens before their trip starts.

Neh Thaker, co-founder of HedgeFlows, said: “Volatile exchange markets present great challenges to consumers and businesses alike and our secure foreign exchange support with Travelex can help facilitate FX with confidence. Financial barriers for overseas trading are a core issue for many businesses in particular, requiring technology and expertise to protect against rising costs and unreliable rates. Our work with Travelex demonstrates that foreign exchange doesn’t need to be costly or hard work, helping people to protect their money.”

Richard Wazacz, CEO, Travelex said: “For too long holiday goers have had to deal with fluctuating exchange rates which put their holiday plans in jeopardy and create a stressful experience. With HedgeFlows we’ve changed that, offering secure exchange services to give customers piece-of-mind so they can focus on their travelling rather than exchanging currency.”

HedgeFlows empowers businesses to better plan and manage their financial needs in any currency. The platform manages risks associated with foreign trade, including fluctuating exchange rates, fraudulent activities and hidden expenses.

Siqi Chen, the former president of Sandbox VR, the brick-and-mortar VR experience franchise, didn’t always have a strong grasp of finance. And it’s something he felt self-conscious about.

“I’ve always thought it was something for ‘real business people’ and I could just go and do what I enjoyed, which is product and engineering,” he told TechCrunch in an email interview. “This is the state of the world for most founders today.”

After countless frustrating experiences with Excel spreadsheets, Chen was spurred to create an alternative. So he started Runway, which aims to replace spreadsheets with “intuitive” financial modelling, planning and reporting workflows.

“Runway is the first strategic management platform for modern, high-growth technology companies,” Chen said. “[It gives] teams a clear and joyful god’s-eye view of their entire business, from finance to HR, sales, marketing, product and growth — enabling them to make better business decisions faster.”

Runway, which connects to existing accounting tools, data warehouses and human resources information systems, allows customers to write formulas and create models that can be incorporated into business plans and scenarios (e.g. a pay bump, hiring new people or increasing marketing spend). With the reporting component, users can build dashboards with live charts, tables, text and even video and content from the web. Meanwhile, Runway’s AI “copilot” allows customers to create scenarios by typing a prompt and letting the system generate business plans based on a model and live data from connected business apps.

“With Runway, customers are able to feel more confident about their business, because the platform helps them save time, understand the business and the impact of decisions more clearly, and gives everyone better context so that they can execute faster,” Chen said. “Making the business more accessible to folks outside of finance helps companies create context over control, giving them a huge competitive advantage.”

Now, is it true that Runway accomplishes all that? Perhaps. But it’s also true that there are other platforms that accomplish — or at least claim to accomplish — much the same thing.

Consider Dougs, which handles a company’s financial statements and generates certified tax filings, connecting bank accounts so that the platform can automatically generate reports and invoices. Elsewhere, there’s Firmbase, which offers a financial planning and analysis platform for startups. Other rivals include Pigment and Mosaic.

Runway seemingly hasn’t had trouble attracting business, though, from customers including Superhuman, Stability AI and Chen’s old stomping ground, Sandbox VR. Chen touts its close partnership with Rippling — “qualified” Rippling customers have priority access so that employee data, payroll, headcount expenses and hiring plans can all be synced automatically.

“We can share that we are growing at more than 10x year-over-year and currently have a pipeline booked out through the end of the year,” Chen said. “Our burn rate is well under $500,000 today.”

That’s impressed investors.

Runway today announced that it raised $27.5 million in a Series A round led by Initialized Capital with participation from angels including Elad Gil and Jason Tan. It brings the company’s total raised to $33.5 million, following a previously undisclosed $5 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

“As a product that helps businesses understand their financials and plan better, we are in the fortunate position of being a counter cyclical product,” Chen said. “Companies are only getting more disciplined financially and that increases the demand for a product like Runway.”

IPC Systems, a leading provider of secure, compliant communications and multi-cloud connectivity solutions for global financial markets, and CryptoStruct, a major low latency cryptocurrency market data and trading solution provider, have joined forces to offer enterprise-grade data to IPC’s Connexus® Crypto ecosystem.

Launched in November 2021, Connexus Crypto is IPC’s flagship solution for cryptocurrency trading, supporting complex trading strategies and mitigating risk. Connexus Crypto, a market-leading arbitrage enabling solution for cryptocurrency trading, allows market participants to buy and sell cryptocurrency simultaneously in different markets. The solution also provides users with low latency connectivity and instant access to the liquidity of several global crypto exchanges. Connexus Crypto is underpinned by the Connexus Cloud platform, a multi-cloud trading ecosystem connecting more than 7,000 global market participants.

CryptoStruct provides an all-in-one trading solution including highly accurate, normalized, low-latency market data from global crypto exchanges and comprehensive tick histories nano-second time-stamped in colocation for all supported markets. The offering gives customers the option to choose between the whole trading solution or market data only. In both cases, customers will benefit from low-latency access to normalized market data in a single format, making it effortless to integrate and scale their business. The integration with Connexus Crypto gives further choice by enabling customers to receive data not only in the cloud but also via the low-latency backbone infrastructure from IPC with access points all over the world. 

“With CryptoStruct joining the IPC ecosystem, our customers will now benefit from a suite of low-latency market data feeds, specifically for the crypto asset class. This is an exciting addition and expansion from our recent announcement with Celoxica, which cements our position as collaborating with best-of-breed providers in the low-latency electronic trading arena,” Alex Walker, VP Global Network Data Sales, IPC Systems. 

“We are thrilled to partner with IPC on the delivery of market data to the Connexus Crypto trading environment. Customers will benefit from our sophisticated feed arbitrage which makes our feed not only ultra-fast but also highly reliable. Furthermore, with the ability to provide a nano-second time-stamped full-depth tick-history, traders and quants will find it very easy to analyze and back-test their trading ideas,” Iain Clarke, Head of Sales, CryptoStruct.