Ripple is delighted to announce the addition of a new board member, Marjan Delatinne, who will join us as the Sales Director for Europe. Delatinne will lead our sales efforts for financial institutions in Europe. She will sell Ripple’s commercial blockchain solution to banks looking to offer more competitive cross-border payment services and to join Ripple’s growing global network.

Delatinne joins us from SWIFT where she worked for ten years, most recently in charge of selling their Global Payments Innovation (gpi) offering. She also led EMEA customer engagement for SWIFT gpi. Prior to SWIFT, she worked at Euroclear and the Bank of New York Mellon. With more than two decades of experience in sales leadership roles, Marjan has gained valuable insights into the financial industry and payment infrastructures globally that will be a huge asset to the team.

We spoke with Marjan to learn more about her experience and what she is looking forward to most at Ripple.

What initially interested you about Ripple?

My previous experiences convinced me that the financial industry is in dire need of technology that facilitates faster payments. The industry is looking for modern payments solutions which are built on the latest technology, not outdated infrastructure. Ripple understands how banks function and has adapted to serve them, whereas the incumbents have lost touch with what banks and banks’ customers really want.

I was also compelled by Ripple’s vision of the Internet of Value – a future in which money moves instantly, inexpensively and transparently. It is such an important initiative to move money the way information already moves, and I want to help facilitate it.

What about your new role is most exciting to you? What do you think will be the most challenging aspect of your new role?

What I find most exciting about this role will also be the most challenging: creating a critical mass for a  network, where banks around the world are utilizing Ripple for cross-border payments. It’s a large, ambitious project to take on. Of the blockchain companies in the market, Ripple stands apart with the most advanced blockchain solutions, real customers already moving money, and an extraordinarily talented team. I think we have the key ingredients to make it happen. The journey itself will be exciting and demanding, but I believe we will win, and once this is accomplished we will have revolutionized the payments industry.

SWIFT’s gpi is seen as a competitive play with Ripple – coming from the SWIFT gpi department, do you view them as competitors?

This is an interesting question; we can answer this by putting ourselves in our bank customers’ shoes. The financial industry is composed of a variety of players, differing in size, organizational models, technological restrictions, etc. which creates different needs. SWIFT gpi aims to improve the existing infrastructure that banks have already implemented for some.

On the other hand, I believe that Ripple is offering a completely new and transformative solution by combining the messaging rail with the real time settlement of a payment transaction. This is offering a way for banks to create a better user experience that hasn’t been possible before. Ripple’s goal is to help banks be successful and SWIFT is a bank owned organisation. So I don’t see us as competing against SWIFT.

What do you think the future of payments and fintech will look like?

Nobody knows for certain how the future of payments will pan out, but my hope is that Ripple’s vision for the Internet of Value becomes a reality. When we make that happen, it will have far-reaching economic and social impact on the world.

Launching on 11th April, the programme will support one individual per academic year with an £8K stipend to support studies. The fintech sector is one of the UK’s fastest growing sectors, adding more than £6.6 billion into the local economy and attracting more than £500 million of investment. Its continued success is closely connected to access to talent, in the short- as well as long-term.

Thomson Reuters has launched QA Point, a cloud-based application that enables asset managers to utilize quantitative approaches in making investing decisions, designed to assist in creating increased productivity, better results, and accelerated internal collaboration among investment professionals. QA Point utilizes a point-and-click interface and access to Thomson Reuters content, all with fast performance. 

The bank has relied on the Avaloq Banking Suite for processing its securities transactions and for fund administration since 2006. It benefits from the modularity of the Avaloq Banking Suite, which enables the seamless implementation of functional enhancements.

The Avaloq Portfolio Management module is to be added to the portfolio management system currently used at Zürcher Kantonalbank. The bank is also planning to use the Avaloq Wealth Advisory module for investment advisory services for third parties.

“We have enjoyed very successful collaboration with Avaloq over the past ten years,” says Regina Kleeb, Head of Programme Management for Investments and Pensions at Zürcher Kantonalbank. “By expanding the use of the Avaloq Banking Suite to include the Portfolio Management module, we will benefit from a much more integrated processing platform and greater process efficiency. We can also broaden our business opportunities with the Wealth Advisory module for third parties – an important factor when faced with the constantly changing needs of clients in the intensely competitive financial sector.”

Jürg Hunziker, Group Chief Markets Officer and Deputy CEO of Avaloq, believes “modularity is a significant advantage of the Avaloq Banking Suite. We can integrate additional functionality at Zürcher Kantonalbank by building on the Avaloq Banking Suite already used. We are delighted that we are expanding and developing our collaboration with Zürcher Kantonalbank, and are confident that we are helping to make client advisory even better with our services.”

essDOCS reported about its acquisition of TridentGLOBAL Pty Ltd. TridentGLOBAL is a leading export management solution with a customer-base across Australia and the USA.

TridentGLOBAL provides exporters and traders a comprehensive solution to the challenges they encounter in managing complex international trade processes. The platform offers modules for contract management, shipment management, bookings management, compliance, document management, as well as supply chain management for the metals and minerals, agribusiness, seafood and manufacturing industries.

“TridentGLOBAL has an enormous depth of trade and digitization expertise and the most comprehensive export management solution available. With 75 people across 10 countries and 4 continents, we will be able to deliver TridentGLOBAL in a more local and personal way to our global customer-base” said Carman Rossi, TridentGLOBAL Founder.

The acquisition furthers essDOCS’ commitment to its DocPrep offering, and underscores its commitment to digitizing creation of document processes.

“Combining the TridentGLOBAL Export Management solution with the CargoDocs eDocs platform provides an end-to-end digital solution and a compelling offering for our existing and new customers alike” said Shaun Collins, Co-General Manager & Head of Sales.

Based in Adelaide, Australia, TridentGLOBAL will operate as essDOCS Australia going forward, however the well-established solution brand-name will remain. 

“Acquisitions are an increasingly important strategy for essDOCS. With TridentGLOBAL, we increase our expertise, team and solution mix, enabling the group to provide a greater toolset to our customers”, said Alexander Goulandris, essDOCS CEO. “Joining together with TridentGLOBAL enhances our ability to meet the expanding needs of our clients, while also delivering value to our shareholders. I am delighted to welcome the Australia team into the fold.” 
 

Today Nasdaq, Inc. revealed a new agreement with Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) to upgrade the technological infrastructure of Hong Kong's main derivatives market, including trading, clearing and real-time risk management technologies. The agreement also extends the existing relationship for an additional five years. HKEX and Nasdaq have been technology partners since 1994. 

Under the agreement with HKEX, Nasdaq will deliver a new multi-asset trading technology engine (Nasdaq Multi Matching Engine), a state-of-the-art multi-asset derivatives clearing engine and a real-time risk management solution (Nasdaq Clearing Engine and Nasdaq Real-Time Risk), which will increase performance, speed, flexibility and resiliency of trading and clearing. Further, the new platform will address the sophisticated risk management and stress testing needs of today's CCPs and exchanges to manage risk of financial derivatives such as equity, FX, commodities and fixed income asset classes, all under the new Nasdaq Financial Framework architecture. The upgrade is expected to be completed in the second half of 2018. 

"We have been able to provide superior capability and very reliable market infrastructure, high priorities at HKEX, with the Nasdaq technology we use in our derivatives market," said Richard Leung, HKEX's Co-Head of IT.  "We look forward to completing our upgrade smoothly and receiving continued high quality technical support from Nasdaq." 

"Nasdaq is proud of the technology partnership that has existed between our respective organizations for nearly 25 years," said Lars Ottersgård, Executive Vice President and Head of Market Technology, Nasdaq. "HKEX is one of the global capital markets' true innovators who are committed to the continuous introduction of new technologies to bolster and strengthen the product and services offerings for their clients and partners, along with a rigorous focus on shaping the future of our industry. We are thrilled to support HKEX on this journey and further our relationship in the years to come." 

The architecture that HKEX's derivatives market will run on, the Nasdaq Financial Framework, is designed to ensure openness, flexibility and the capability of supporting HKEX's requirements. The solution comprises of a number of seamlessly integrated Business Applications across the trade lifecycle that leverage a single, operational hub. For post-trade operations, the Nasdaq Clearing business application is fully integrated with the Nasdaq Matching Engine, which will allow HKEX to benefit from a more harmonised approach. Additionally, the Nasdaq Financial Framework is built to accommodate continuous change, which allows seamless integration with other third-party trading and post-trade systems, thus supporting a reduction of the total cost of ownership (TCO). 

Nasdaq's exchange technology, including trading, clearing, CSD and market surveillance systems, is in operation in over 100 marketplaces across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. 

WoraPay, the mobile service provider that allows customers to beat the queue when ordering food and drinks, has integrated Masterpass, the global digital payment service from Mastercard.

Masterpass, will allow users of WoraPay’s mobile wallet WioPay to pay with a secure, one-click payment. Masterpass stores all payment information, including card details from Mastercard and other payment networks, in one convenient, secure place. The partnership was established through the Startupbootcamp FinTech programme, where WoraPay was mentored by Mastercard employees. Lloyds Banking Group staff are among the first to use the service following the partnership established also through the Startupbootcamp FinTech programme. 

WoraPay’s service allows customers to buy food and drink and pay in advance with their mobile. This means customers can order their morning coffee or tea whilst travelling to the office. Customers are notified when the order is ready and they can simply collect it en route to their desk, avoiding waiting times and improving the customer journey. With Masterpass, this journey is now even quicker.

Vaidas Adomauskas, CEO and co-founder of WoraPay said: “We are very excited to improve the payment experience for our clients providing them with the opportunity to use Masterpass.  For example, Lloyds Banking Group staff using the WoraPay service could save up to 75,000 hours per year; the equivalent of over 10,700 working days that would otherwise be spent waiting in line to pay. We are also seeing that the caterer is experiencing an uplift of 5% in total sales as customers return to vendors that improve their overall experience. We are sure that the integration of Masterpass will add to this success.”

Scott Abrahams, SVP, Business Development, Mastercard commented: “Thousands of busy office workers can now benefit from the speed and simplicity of paying with Masterpass. We’ve been able to work together with WoraPay to solve this customer pain point – waiting in line to order and pay. We mentored WoraPay through the Startupbootcamp FinTech programme and it’s a great example of how larger players in the market can work with innovative FinTech companies to benefit consumers.” 

WoraPay customers who store their payment details on Masterpass can use the service seamlessly at 340,000 other retailers across the world. WoraPay’s mobile order, shop and pay service is being used by caterers serving other financial institutions, as well as high street brands, who will also have the possibility to use Masterpass.

Francisco Lorca, MD for Startupbootcamp FinTech London program added: “WoraPay’s partnerships with Lloyds Banking Group and now Mastercard are great examples of how FinTech startups can add real value to financial services offered by incumbents. We are thrilled that our program is a great catalyst to enable these partnerships to happen.”

A survey of 1000 UK SMEs, commissioned by cloud accountancy software Pandle, has uncovered that six out of ten UK SMEs are confident in the government's ability to negotiate trade deals, and over one in three think that brexit will positively impact their business.

In light of the recent triggering of Article 50, almost half (47%) of UK SMEs feel that they’re being rushed to prepare for Brexit, however 56% stated that the government is doing enough to support them. Similar findings have been published in The SME Growth Tracker report, which highlighted SMEs’ growing confidence - with businesses now forecasting a 2.3% rise in revenue growth.

While the majority of SMEs are confident in the UK government's ability to negotiate trade deals, over four in ten (41%) are concerned that importing will become more difficult post-Brexit and that the deadlines set won’t be met. This issue will become a focal point in the negotiations as SMEs make up 99% of the businesses in every main sector in the UK and one in three (32%) small businesses are involved in overseas trade as importers and/or exporters, with the vast majority of these businesses trading with the EU single market.

“It’s important that the Brexit negotiators keep SMEs top of mind during the talks,” said Lee Murphy, owner of Pandle. “SMEs are the lifeblood of the UK and Brexit could easily make or break some of these businesses, especially when considering the tariffs that the EU may place on imports and exports.”

Today Crawford & Company, the world's largest publicly listed independent provider of claims management solutions to insurance companies and self-insured entities, reported the appointment of Kieran Rigby as president of international, encompassing the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions. 

Rigby was previously CEO of GAB Robins UK until Crawford acquired the company in 2014. Since then, Rigby served as CEO Crawford Europe and Latin America. In his new role, he assumes additional responsibility for the Asia-Pacific and United Kingdom regions, and he will serve as a member of Crawford's Global Executive Management team (GEM). 

"I'm confident Kieran is the right person for this role," said Harsha V. Agadi, president and chief executive officer. "His character promotes both innovation and inspiration, and with his proven track record of leadership and success, I believe he'll continue to grow our company and build for the future. I look forward to the new ideas and fresh focus he'll bring to Crawford's leadership team."

Rigby, who will be based in London, will report directly to Andrew Robinson, global chief operating officer, and will be responsible for growing the business, continuing to strengthen Crawford's global capabilities and realigning the company's operating model for further efficiency and profitability across the company's international businesses.

"Crawford's global presence, strength and breadth of capabilities is unmatched by others in the marketplace," Robinson said. "We are excited to have Kieran lead, grow and further develop our operations, as well as pursue new and innovative ways to serve our clients.  I look forward to working with Kieran as we realize these ambitions." Rigby's appointment follows the resignation of Ian V. Muress, CEO international, after 16 years of dedicated and loyal service to the company.

"We would like to thank Ian for the contribution he has made to the business and for his commitment to our clients," said Agadi.  "We wish him well as he moves to the next stage of his career."

"It is a great honor to be given this opportunity," said Rigby. "This is an exciting time for Crawford & Company. It is also a time to critically examine all parts of our operations to grow our revenue and presence in the marketplace - a marketplace that is rapidly changing and requiring our constant innovation."

Throughout his career, Rigby has served in senior leadership positions in claims and loss adjusting, and he's also active in the industry, holding excellent professional qualifications, including Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute, Chartered Insurance Practitioner, Fellow of Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters and past president of the Federation of European Loss Adjusting Associations.

The Central Bank of Iceland has chosen SIA - European hitech company, leader in payment infrastructures and services - to implement and support the new realtime gross settlement system and the new instant payment platform. 

These technology infrastructures developed by SIA, planned to go live in 2018, will replace CBI’s current mainframe-based real-time solutions for high and low-value payment systems, which have been operating since 2001. SIA will use its wholly-owned subsidiary Perago, based in Pretoria (South Africa), specialized in central bank solutions.

Central Bank of Iceland manages all interbank payments in the country. Despite the small population, it processes a quite significant daily volume of transactions: up to 1 million payments with a peak of 160,000 per hour. CBI has decided to move towards a more strategic, modern and cost effective infrastructure.

CBI will be able to benefit from seamless integration among Perago’s RTGS, Instant Payment and Payhub solutions. Furthermore, CBI will differentiate itself from standard models that traditionally split high and low-value payments, byimplementing a new model based on a single system which processes each type of payment (Bank to Bank, P2P or B2B) in a different way, while ensuring that all transactions can be exchanged using a single domestic message standard. This new approach puts CBI at the forefront of the payment system infrastructure evolution.

Guðmundur Kr. Tómasson, Director of Financial Market Infrastructure at Central Bank of Iceland, said CBI decided to accept the bid from SIA after thorough consideration: “We look forward to using SIA’s systems, which will also enable us to cooperate closer with our Nordic neighbors in this field.”

“We are honored to have signed this agreement with Central Bank of Iceland, confirming us as leading provider for central banks in the Nordic region after Sweden, Norway and Denmark – commented Massimo Arrighetti, CEO of SIA – With CBI, the number of central banks in the world which have decided to use SIA’s state-of-the-art technologies to develop their own payment infrastructures has risen to 15, across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Oceania. We are also very pleased to implement for the first time an instant payment system completely managed by a central bank”.