Published
- 07:00 am
Ingenico ePayments, the online and mobile commerce division of Ingenico Group, announced that it has signed an agreement with Anantara Vacation Club, Asia’s premiere shared vacation ownership programme, to provide online payment acceptance and processing. Launched in 2010, Anantara Vacation Club offers a points based, flexible shared vacation ownership concept for consumers wishing to holiday across Asia and beyond. Ingenico ePayments’ platform enables Anantara Vacation Club to accept a wide range of payment methods and currencies, with the benefits of full transparency and control.
By consolidating payment processing with a single vendor, Anantara Vacation Club can reduce costs related to the acceptance of payments. Ingenico’s payment experts assist Anantara Vacation Club in managing online fraud and PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliance, reducing the burden on Anantara Vacation Club’s own financial department. Because all online payments are captured and processed by Ingenico, the company can provide Anantara Vacation Club with consolidated reporting and data analysis for each of their markets. Ingenico also handles the direct settlement of funds to specific bank accounts for payments, enabling Anantara Vacation Club’s Finance Department to enjoy a seamless reconciliation process.
Club Points Owners at Anantara Vacation Club will benefit from the partnership as well, with the company now able to create a payment experience that reflects its high standards of quality and operation. By providing an increased selection of payment options and currencies, improved card authorisation rates, stringent security measures and automated, recurring payments, Anantara Vacation Club’s five-star customer experience will now be extended to cover the payment process.
"As we are growing our global footprint in a wide variety of markets, we found that we needed a payment service provider that can offer the appropriate local payment methods in each individual market and assist us in the seamless collection of recurring Club Fees. We were looking for a solution that helps us manage the complexities of data protection and offers a secure environment for our customers. Ideally, we wanted a custom-built, integrated interface to enhance the user experience for our guests and offer security surrounding their sensitive data,” said Maurizio Bisicky, Chief Commercial Officer at Anantara Vacation Club.
“With Ingenico ePayments, we found a partner offering the right combination of global reach and local expertise. Furthermore, Ingenico’s full-service model provides a single interface with consolidated reporting and remittance, which reduces the complexity of managing a multi-market eCommerce operation and lets us focus on optimization and growth.”added Howard Leigh, Chief Financial Officer at Anantara Vacation Club.
"The hospitality industry is constantly changing, and the rise of Online Travel Agencies has given hospitality brands an additional incentive to take online sales payments seriously. Anantara Vacation Club has put in place an end-to-end payments solution that will help the company connect with their guests directly, drive revenue, and reduce cost and complexity." said Nick Tubb, General Manager Asia Pacific at Ingenico ePayments.
- 02:00 am
Linedata, the global solutions provider dedicated to the investment management and credit industries, has announced a new version of its market-leading portfolio management system, Linedata Global Hedge, to meet the evolving needs of the global alternative and institutional investment community.
Alternative and institutional managers in all regions are seeking enhanced automation and scalability around the trading process to handle increasing trading volumes resulting from market volatility and the evolution of firms through industry growth and consolidation. The new release brings managers the benefit of improved position based order generation, with more flexible allocation preferences and order methods, as well as enhanced data quality in pre-trade compliance checks such as the ability to download current prices at time of trading new instruments.
Linedata Global Hedge has also added to its broad range of features for different asset classes, including enhanced fixed income functionality, as clients continue to seek alternative means of generating income in a low growth environment. Alongside expanded unit traded bond calculations, the new release also provides enhanced support for emerging market bond conventions, addressing greater investor interest in emerging market debt as an asset class.
The enhancements to Linedata’s platform will also ensure that hedge funds and asset managers using derivatives are equipped to comply with increased reporting and disclosure requirements, for example under the European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), through improvements to swap schedule management and lifecycle tracking. The new release also extends the ability of clients in Asia to meet changing requirements around short position reporting recently updated by the Securities & Futures Commission of Hong Kong, by automatically flagging those positions requiring disclosure.
Ed Gouldstone, Global Head of Product Management, Asset Management, at Linedata, says: “Today’s global managers face an uphill struggle of handling increasing data volumes in an evolving regulatory landscape and challenging economic environment. Remaining flexible is key for firms to successfully navigate these challenges and thrive. This enhanced version of Linedata Global Hedge expands front office capabilities and reinforces our commitment to providing agile technology solutions and services required to continually meet our clients’ needs.”
- 01:00 am
Coastal Credit Union and eight partners are thrilled to announce the launch of Constellation Digital Partners, LLC, a credit union service organization (CUSO), designed to deliver a revolutionary software platform that will transform the future of digital banking for credit unions and members.
Constellation Founder and Coastal Credit Union Chief Information Officer Kristopher Kovacs, realized there was a fundamental problem in modern digital financial services. Despite a recent boom of potential financial technology partners, credit unions cannot access them because of the legacy structure of credit union relationships with current digital banking providers.
The creation of the innovative company and platform are the result of a three-year long research and development effort, which culminated in the filing of a patent in November 2015. Now, Constellation is building out its cloud-based financial services marketplace and platform that will allow credit unions and members to choose which services to use inside of a secure banking experience.
To date, nine partners spanning nationwide and totaling $12 billion in assets, have committed to investing in the platform. The partners are Coastal Credit Union, CFCU Community Credit Union, Meritrust Credit Union, Farmers Insurance Federal Credit Union, Georgia’s Own Credit Union, Affinity Federal Credit Union and Nusenda Credit Union. Combined, the credit unions represent a significant user base of more than 1.1 million members. Constellation is continuing to offer investment opportunities to make ownership of the platform more accessible for a variety of credit unions. The initial credit union investors are being joined by CO-OP Financial Services and CUNA Mutual, who are also investing in the new CUSO.
In addition, the marketplace will create a new service-based economy where interested digital service developers can also get involved and become service providers and partners on the new platform. Developers can create tiles or services, then credit unions can seek out and select services within the marketplace. Seven service provider partners are already on board: Telrock, Connect Financial Software Solutions, Obloco, Corporate One Federal Credit Union, Gro Solutions, Xtensifi, and Insuritas.
“Credit unions have been struggling to provide next-generation services and it’s a disconnect both current and potential members have noticed,” said Kovacs. “Today’s fast-paced digital age calls for new services and we have the answer. Constellation redefines what credit unions offer. It means credit unions finally have the freedom to not only survive, but thrive; to not only compete, but win. We vet the services first, so members can trust they are the best of the best.”
- 02:00 am
Eighty-seven per cent of Singaporeans prefer to make electronic payments, as opposed to using cash (up 11%), representing the highest preference for electronic payments in the region, according to the 2016 Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes survey.
Based on the study, 48 per cent of respondents admitted to having more payment cards in their wallets now, compared to five years ago. The main reasons for not carrying large amounts of cash include an increased habit of using payment cards, mobile wallets and contactless cards. Fifty-two per cent of these respondents also said they believe card usage is safer than cash.
Ooi Huey Tyng, Visa Country Manager for Singapore and Brunei said, “Singapore is a developed market where more than 60 per cent of all transactions are made electronically. However, this means that around 40 per cent of payments in Singapore are still transacted using cash and cheques, presenting a significant opportunity for cash displacement. Certain segments in Singapore, such as hawker centres, food courts and wet markets, are heavily cash-based. Hence, it is important for the industry to work closely together to introduce new digital solutions to convert cash in these segments, so that Singapore can become truly cashless.”
In terms of payment habits and sentiments, 68 per cent of respondents shared that they are using electronic payments, such as mobile devices and wearables, more often and moving away from cash. Sixty-six per cent also said they would like payments to be fully automated, doing away with the physical process of paying for a product or service. Sixty per cent of them are also comfortable with the use of biometrics, such as fingerprinting and face recognition, for payment authentication.
Awareness and usage of contactless payments in Singapore has also increased in the past year. Ninety-one per cent of Singaporeans said they are aware of contactless payments, compared to 87 per cent in 2015. Seventy-one per cent of Singaporeans also said they have used contactless payments, and the remaining 25 per cent said they were keen to use it in the future.
“In Singapore, contactless payments have grown tremendously over the years and, to date, Visa payWave transactions have crossed the seven million milestone per month. Visa payWave transactions now make up half of all Visa transactions, which is a huge achievement for us in Singapore, and we believe this growth will continue as we work with the merchants and banks to expand into new categories that were previously untapped,” Tyng said.
- 03:00 am
Telia Carrier announced today that it has added a new, high capacity route that stretches from Zurich, Switzerland to Strasbourg, France via Basel, Switzerland, providing a shortened path and lower latency between Frankfurt, Germany and Zurich. With the addition of a new PoP and metro fiber in Zurich, the new route provides current and potential customers with routing options that dramatically improve performance for traffic to and from Milan, Italy and Marseilles, France. The combination of a shorter, unique route with added security and diversity gives Telia Carrier’s customers the ability to stay one step ahead of their end-users’ rising expectations.
In Zurich, the global wholesale carrier is seeing heightened demand for high capacity fiber infrastructure and 100G+ services from over-the-top (OTT) content providers and large-scale web hosting companies to meet customer demand. With the addition of a new PoP and additional fiber in Zurich, Telia Carrier can offer a variety of services and routing options to local and international companies looking to connect throughout Europe. The new route provides inherent reliability and hardened security on a unique right-of-way with the fiber buried deep underground. Telia Carrier is offering its full portfolio of services on this route.
“As demand for OTT and cloud-based services continues to rise, service providers will need agile connectivity options for delivering their services. The new network path between Frankfurt and Zurich provides the highest capacity route across a shorter distance available in the region and gives content providers the infrastructure needed to drastically improve latency with a secure connection,” said Christoph Lannert, Regional Sales Director for Telia Carrier. “By delivering a diverse array of options in Zurich and the surrounding region, Telia Carrier empowers its customers to put their customers’ needs at the center of their universe.”
- 04:00 am
Today, OpenLink launched OpenLink Cloud, the world’s first and most comprehensive enterprise Cloud platform for trading and risk management.
- Financial Services firms face typical end of period transaction volume peaks - OpenLink’s scalable Cloud solution allows them to pay for what they use, when they need it, and no more.
- Many financial services firms are struggling to support multiple disparate systems that aren’t all compliant with expanding regulatory requirements around the globe. OpenLink Cloud solution help firms to rationalize their solution portfolio and stay compliant across all asset classes.
- Investment managers are highly cost conscious and high license fees are antithetical to positive EBITDA outcomes. OpenLink’s subscription-based Cloud service helps them save on both their operating and IT budgets.
- Financial institutions are joining the Cloud bandwagon at a fast pace, enjoying the benefits of a secure, fully managed and scalable platform like OpenLink’s derivative risk management and hedge accounting solution.
From conversations with firms as we developed this project, this has the potential to genuinely transform the way many organisations do business. If you’d like to know more, we would be happy to answer any questions or arrange an interview with Scott Rompala, Senior Vice President, Cloud Solutions.
- 03:00 am
Equifax, the consumer and business insights expert, and Castlight, the leading financial capability company, have formed an alliance with Oakbrook Finance, the owners of consumer loan brand Likely Loans, to develop new products for the 2018 Open Banking initiative.
Under Open Banking, bank transaction data will play a crucial role in lending decisions. Lenders will have access to real-time and historic account and transaction information, boosting transparency when reviewing loan applications. Products currently in the pipeline as part of this collaboration will capture bank transaction data and use this to build characteristics of the individual applying for a financial product, providing a clearer picture of a borrower’s financial position and reducing friction in the customer application process.
Jake Ranson, Banking and Financial Institutions Expert at Equifax, said: “Open Banking will radically change the way people assess their finance options and financial companies have a responsibility to ensure a smooth transition into this new environment. Since the start of this year, Oakbrook has been utilising the Castlight Affordability Passport tool with Equifax data integrated, and we look forward to building on our relationship with Castlight to develop products that will help the industry use this new data for the benefit of the end customer.”
Martin Leonard, Chief Operating Officer at Castlight, said: “This alliance is an important step towards offering those with poor or flat credit files the opportunity to access finance. By using information drawn from bank transaction data, lenders such as Oakbrook will have a more accurate view of a person’s financial capabilities and be better placed to assess their risk level, while maintaining a smooth customer experience.”
Tim Waterman, Chief Analysis Officer at Oakbrook Finance, said: “As 2018 fast approaches, we’re preparing for the opportunities created by the Open Banking Initiative. Equifax and Castlight are ahead of the game in the development of Open Banking products that enable lenders to access transaction level data in a seamless way. This is an important alliance for Oakbrook as we continue to work hard to ensure we’re making the most responsible lending decisions for our customers.”
- 02:00 am
Kx Systems (Kx), a subsidiary of First Derivatives (FD) plc and provider of the industry-leading kdb+ time series database, and Vexata, the leader in high performance enterprise storage systems, announced record shattering results in independent testing by the Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC®).
With kdb+ running on Intel x86 multi-core processors using the Vexata Array with NVMe Flash SSDs, the solution set new records in 8 of 17 baseline STAC-M3™ benchmarks (the Antuco suite), and 14 of 24 benchmarks in the STAC-M3 scaling suite (Kanaga). The joint solution was able to achieve 36.8 GB/s of effective application-level throughput in bandwidth-intensive year-high bid tests. The solution also shattered existing records for several read-IO intensive queries like volume-weighted average bid, as well as balanced compute and IO workloads like statistical calculations.*
In the era of Big Fast Data analytics, kdb+ has set industry benchmarks for speed and stability in high performance applications. It is widely used in the financial services industry for trading and risk management platforms and across a range of markets such as manufacturing, pharma, the Industrial Internet of Things, utilities and retail which face similarly demanding data challenges. Kx is also at the forefront of the use of predictive analytics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to drive operational intelligence and provide actionable insights.
The Vexata Array, built on Vexata’s breakthrough Real Time Architecture, enables Enterprises to realize an order of magnitude higher performance and scale from their Database and Analytics platforms. Vexata Arrays can be deployed simply and seamlessly into existing SAN environments and alongside existing storage. The Vexata Array is in production and available in a range of capacities at market leading economics.
Glenn Wright, Systems Architect for Kx added: “These results show the mutual benefits gained by placing the latest technology alongside kdb+. What stood out are the streaming I/O performance results, alongside some very good results for discrete market data set queries. This should be particularly appealing to those customers wishing to consolidate their market data on a single storage device being shared between multiple analytics systems, for example between different business functions or business units of an organization.”
Peter Lankford, Director of STAC, said: "Trading firms designed the STAC-M3 benchmark suite to represent a common set of performance-related challenges in financial time-series analytics. Competition requires capital markets organizations around the world to analyze more data in less time. This combination of Kx software and the Fibre Channel-based Vexata NVMe Flash Array established many new STAC-M3 records while running at large scale. “
Zahid Hussain, CEO of Vexata said: “We are very pleased to be working closely with Kx to provide a compelling high performance solution stack that enterprises can immediately deploy for their stock-ticker Analytics. The STAC-M3 results clearly showcase the unique performance benefits achievable through the Kx-Vexata solution.”
Mark Sykes, COO at Kx said: “Kx’s customers are always looking to increase performance for complex analytics on very large datasets. The approach taken by Vexata allows them to do this without the need for them to invest in a large storage system in order to achieve the results they want, lowering their total cost of ownership.”
- 05:00 am
Torstone Technology, the leading provider of post-trade securities and derivatives processing, today announces plans to expand in Europe with the appointment of Paul Phillips as Head of European Sales, and Paul Mundy as Product Manager, both based at Torstone’s London headquarters.
These senior appointments have been made in response to increased demand among Torstone’s client base who are required to enhance their post-trade processes to meet increasing regulatory requirements in the UK and Europe.
Paul Phillips joins Torstone Technology with over 20 years’ experience in financial services technology, most recently as Head of Strategic Business Development and Key Account Management, EMEA, at Fidelity National Information Services (FIS). Prior to this, Paul held a number of senior roles globally with SmartStream Technologies and DST Systems.
Paul Mundy joins Torstone Technology from Broadridge Financial Solutions, where he was responsible for managed asset servicing solutions. Prior to this, Paul worked at Barclays Investment Bank overseeing asset services operations and technology solutions, and Smartstream Technologies as a senior consultant on corporate actions and reconciliations.
Commenting on the appointments, Brian Collings, CEO, Torstone Technology said: “Expanding our European team is a key part of Torstone’s global strategy. It will enable us to further strengthen our support for UK clients’ post-trade operations, especially as firms prepare for the MiFID II go-live in less than 8 months’ time. We will benefit greatly from Paul Phillips’ extensive market and regulatory knowledge and his business development experience, as well as Paul Mundy’s technical and operational expertise.”
- 05:00 am
Tradeweb Markets, a leading global provider of fixed income, derivatives and ETF marketplaces, announced that BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and Societe Generale are among the latest clients to join Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan in selecting its Approved Publication Arrangement (APA) service.
“We are pleased to see an increasing number of major banks opting to join the Tradeweb APA service. Their commitment provides further assurances that, as part of the largest portion of the off-venue market, their flow business will be aggregated and therefore blended, resulting in a complete view of the reported market activity. We are also working closely with lead Order Management Systems to ensure that the buy-side clients we are engaged with benefit from a seamless and standardized workflow,” said Simon Maisey, MD, global head of business development at Tradeweb.
Eleven leading banks have so far committed to using the Tradeweb APA. The firm launched its APA-early facility in December last year to enable firms to connect and test well ahead of MiFID II implementation. In addition to post-trade reporting solutions, the facility will offer a robust Tradeweb pre-trade transparency service to help market participants determine if they are subject to reporting requirements, as well as meet the pre-trade SI obligation to make quotes public.
“Regulators are providing more clarity around pre-trade reporting obligations, such as ESMA’s recently published RTS regarding the treatment of package orders. We therefore expect that, despite the delay to the SI regime to September 2018, market demand for a holistic reporting solution will continue to accelerate. This is why we remain flexible and continue to update our pre-trade API specification to meet our clients’ changing needs,” Maisey added.
Nick Lovett, Managing Director and Global Markets, Chief Controls Officer at Credit Suisse, said: “Developing an effective and cost-efficient MiFID II implementation plan is a key regulatory priority this year and using this service is one way that we can help meet our reporting requirements under this directive.”
Bradley Bilgore, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, said: “We identified Tradeweb as our strategic partner from the early stages of our search for an efficient and flexible reporting solution. They have created a production-like environment, which is designed to enable comprehensive testing to ensure our compliance with this landmark regulation, while preventing premature information leakage, for our security and for the security of our clients.”
Frédéric Jeanperrin, Head of Market Regulatory Adaptation & Management at Societe Generale, said:“Societe Generale is pleased to join the Tradeweb APA service. Given Tradeweb’s strong track record in delivering comprehensive regulatory compliant solutions, we are confident that their service will be ready well ahead of the MiFID II deadline enabling Societe Generale to meet its reporting requirements on January the 3rd, 2018.”
Tradeweb submitted its application to the FCA to be authorized as an APA as soon as registration opened on 30th January. The firm is also heavily involved with industry discussions and solutions aimed at addressing the ISIN challenge for OTC derivatives, through membership of the DSB Product Committee.
