Join business leaders at a two-day event in London aimed at highlighting how wealth and asset managers can implement and get the best out of digital technology through agile working and innovative leadership. 

Experts from some of Europe’s top investment management companies will gather to share their experiences of digital transformation and how they use data in new ways to make more intelligent decisions and expand marketing reach. 

The event is split into two days (7^th and 8^th February) with day one comprising a series of workshops followed by a day of keynote presentations, roundtable debates and facilitated panel discussions. Expert speakers include Peter Sayburn, founder and CEO of Market Gravity, who will host an interactive workshop on how to use digital technology to create a highly compelling client offering, putting customers and principles over products. He will share insights on how to build platforms and processes to ensure customers of all age groups love interacting with your organisation, and design products and services that are meaningful and relevant to your audience’s needs. 

Peter is an entrepreneur, investor and author who has worked with some of the world’s foremost wealth and asset management businesses. He is passionate in the belief that if large companies are to live and grow in the digital age they must create a culture of innovation and embrace new digital technologies to stay ahead in the competitive marketplace. 

Peter says: "Digital technology is bringing new and exciting opportunities to the wealth and asset management sector and now is the time for businesses to embrace the technology and implement new ways of working to engage with customers. 

“This event brings together experts to share knowledge, experience and predictions on what’s coming up and highlights how new business models and cultures can improve operations and increase profitability, while meeting customer needs. I’m delighted to be presenting alongside leading innovators and trailblazers within digital transformation and look forward to some lively discussions.” 

Jodie Paula Cohen, head of content at Event Creation Network, organised the event and says: “It’s important for the wealth and asset management sector to recognise the potential of digital transformation, technology and agile working to ensure customers are engaged, serviced well and enjoy their experience. A Fidelity report showed that managers who deploy digital technology have 40 per cent more assets under management than those who don’t, so to stay relevant, digital has to be an integral part of their offering. This event aims to inform attendees of the opportunities and offer techniques to put into practice within their organisations to make the most of digital technology.” 

The event will run over two days. Workshops take place on Tuesday 7^th February at 45 Moorfields, and the second day of presentations on Wednesday 8^th are held at 200 Aldersgate, St Paul’s. 

As well as Peter Sayburn, speakers include Stephen Ingledew (formerly with Standard Life) and Mary Harper from Standard Life, Billy Burnside from Aviva Investors and Sasha Dabliz from Rothschild Private Wealth. 

Market Gravity was founded in 2009 by Peter Sayburn and Gideon Hyde. They founded the company to help big businesses transform ideas into breakthrough propositions and inject an entrepreneurial spirit into corporate environments.

Fenergo, the leading provider of Client Lifecycle Management solutions for investment, corporate and private banks, has today announced significant enhancements to its module for Margin Requirements for Non-Centrally Cleared OTC Derivatives.

Fenergo Margin Requirements is an advanced, rules-based compliance solution designed to help financial institutions meet the varying degrees of regulatory demands of Margin Requirements across the world. The solution combines rules, workflow processes and data requirements designed in partnership with the banking community.

Margin Requirements for Non-Centrally Cleared OTC Derivatives regulation aims to reduce systemic risk in the non-centrally cleared OTC derivatives markets by ensuring appropriate collateral is available to offset any losses caused by a counterparty default. However, it is anticipated that this latest compliance requirement will pose significant regulatory and operational challenges for financial institutions striving to implement solutions against tight regulatory deadlines.

According to Laura Glynn, Fenergo’s Global Regulatory Affairs Manager, “From a client management compliance perspective, there are three core operational challenges facing financial institutions in meeting the Margin Requirement obligation. The first one comes down to identifying and classifying the client population in-scope for this regulation. The second involves determining the data and documentation required to evidence the compliance demand. Given the fact that the regulation necessitates changes to existing trade documentation, the third challenge involves orchestrating a regulatory client outreach process to collect new or outstanding data and documentation from clients. On top of this, global banks need to ensure compliance with all the different and staggered deadlines across the world, as well as understanding the equivalence determination (yet to be decided)”.

The regulatory obligation, which has been implemented in the USA, Canada and Japan for initial margin obligations since September 2016, will introduce a requirement for variation margin for these countries in March 2017. The final European RTS entered into force on the 4^thJanuary. Phase 1 requirements will apply variation margin and initial margin from February 4^th, 2017, with variation margin applicable for all other entities from the March 1^st, 2017. Meanwhile, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia are forging ahead with a March 1^st, 2017, regulatory commencement date for Margin Requirements, with Switzerland likely to commence at some point during the first quarter of 2017.

Fenergo has been working closely with its community of banking clients to put in place a solution that meets the demands of Margin Requirements rules from the outset. The firm’s team of regulatory analysts have been actively tracking the regulations on a global basis and translating them into an automated solution that will ease the operational and regulatory burden it may pose.

By automating this process, Fenergo Margin Requirements is designed to make complying with Derivative Margin obligations (in addition to a wide range of regulatory requirements), as efficient and effective as possible, speeding up the time it takes to achieve compliance, onboard clients / new products and improve client satisfaction and overall time to revenue.

Xignite, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based financial data application programming interface (APIs), has expanded its leadership team adding two senior financial services executives, Ryan Burdick, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Sales and Marla Sofer, Senior Director, Strategic Business Development. The company also announced that it has opened an office in the New York financial district to serve Xignite's East Coast activities and hired market data industry veteran Dina Xu as its first New York-based sales director.

Xignite is leveraging capital raised in a Series C funding to further scale its sales and marketing efforts in order to fuel the company's continued global growth in financial services technology. The company is looking to add upward of 20 employees globally in 2017.

"Ryan, Marla and Dina bring incredible financial services technology experience that will help us tremendously in educating the capital markets industry about the challenges and opportunities they face as they prepare to migrate their market data infrastructure to the public cloud," said Stephane Dubois, Xignite CEO and Founder."

Ryan Burdick joins the company as Senior Vice President, Sales and will be based in New York. Burdick brings over fifteen years of expertise in financial information technology and has led several companies through rapid growth and profitability. At Xignite, he will be responsible for the worldwide sales team and partners, as well as continue to build on Xignite's record 2016 results and rapid expansion in Asia. Prior to Xignite Burdick served as Head of Client Management North America for Markit, leading a team responsible for managing the company's enterprise software clients. Prior to Markit he was Vice President at S&P Capital IQ responsible for building partnerships and alliances to grow sales for the company's large portfolio of complex enterprise data and analytics solutions.  Burdick also has held senior sales positions at Standard and Poor's. He graduated from St. Lawrence University Canton, NY.

Marla Sofer has been appointed Senior Director, Strategic Business Development. She will be responsible for managing key partners, redistribution clients and special marketing initiatives, including the #FinTech API Ecosystem. Sofer joins Xignite from Lending Club where she was Head of Third-Party Monitoring and Oversight. Prior to Lending Club, she was a founding member of the team that launched the Global Provider Strategy function at BlackRock responsible for developing and executing BlackRock's operating strategy for selecting, managing, and partnering with global banks, index licensors, and market data providers. Previously she was at J.P. Morgan responsible for servicing asset management and institutional clients. She holds an MBA in Business Strategy and International Business from Rutgers University and a BA in Sociology and Hebrew from the University of Texas at Austin. 

Dina Xu joins Xignite as Director of Global Sales Director. Based in New York, Xu brings 14 years' experience from S&P Capital IQ where she helped to build the company's business in Asia and North America, opening Capital IQ's first office in China.  

Since the announcement of Donald Trump’s election and the firestorm created by his impromptu tweets, major city banks and trading houses have rushed to install sophisticated banking-compliant Twitter monitoring services to gain an advantage over their competitors.

Unpredictable tweets by a world leader mean major companies, banks and traders require an early warning system to prevent the destruction of share prices - that’s where products and services such as those offered by Market EarlyBird are taking off.

“Trump is cavalier and unpredictable. He might tweet something that raises the prospects of a US company with UK suppliers; he might tweet something that is viewed positively for international trade or he might tweet something that will have a negative effect on global security. Any of these actions could have a significant impact on global markets including the UK,” says Danny Watkins, CEO at Market EarlyBird.

“Although we launched back in 2014, the last six months has seen an exponential growth as banks and traders grapple to pre-empt the market uncertainty that accompanies Trump’s move into Office. Events such as Brexit and the US election each saw a surge in demand, and Trump’s continuing determination to “speak direct to the people” has highlighted the need for traders to get tweets first hand.”

Critical to banks’ use of Twitter is the prevention of secret messages (think LIBOR fixing) or outgoing tweets, but also the guarantee of confidentiality. The challenge then becomes the sheer volume of tweets to be monitored.

EarlyBird’s software analyses the form, style, and content of tweets as well as sender reputation to identify financially-relevant tweets. Key stories are curated as they emerge, ensuring breaking financial news is relayed to those trading or covering equities instantly, whilst retweet velocity is also monitored to quickly notify users if a tweet is about to go viral, even if they are not actively looking at EarlyBird.

Market traders and financial bodies must now be on their toes to react to whatever the new US President throws at the economy and globally trading companies. With the upcoming French elections showing an early lead for Marine Le Pen and continuing uncertainty about Brexit, financial institutions must be prepared as best they can to take on the ever-evolving face of global markets.

The Wall Street Blockchain Alliance (WSBA), a non-profit trade association, has announced that OTC Exchange Network (OTCXN) has joined the organization as a corporate member.  OTCXN is utilizing blockchain technologies and smart contracts for its peer-to-peer trading network, which will launch initially for the global foreign exchange market.

OTCXN’s trading platform leverages proprietary blockchain and smart contracts technology to provide transparency and operational controls to enable safe and secure trading directly between counterparties, even if they are not known to one another.  No longer will counterparties be required to establish credit arrangements with Prime Brokers – a process that can take as long as eighteen months to complete – in order to participate in the FX marketplace.

Ron Quaranta, Chairman and Founder, WSBA states: “We are delighted to have OTC Exchange Network join the Alliance. OTCXN’s innovative use of blockchain technology throughout the entire lifecycle of a transaction helps facilitate discussions outside of post trade settlement and clearing, and showcases its utility for a number of markets currently evaluating the technology.  We are looking forward to OTCXN’s contributions to a number of WSBA member activities and involvement in our focused working groups.”

Rosario M. Ingargiola, CEO and Founder, OTC Exchange Network adds: “With WSBA serving as a neutral, unbiased steward of education and cooperation between Wall Street firms, we look forward to meeting like-minded individuals from investors to practitioners to regulators, and playing a part in broadening their horizons regarding the utility of blockchain technology.”

Ohpen announced today that it has gained approval from the regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), to carry out its regulated activities. The approval enables Ohpen to provide its software and outsourcing services to asset managers, banks and insurance companies in the United Kingdom (UK) under its new British company, Ohpen Operations UK Ltd. “The FCA authorisation allows us to deliver an alternative for financial services companies to digitalise and outsource their entire investments and savings accounts operations,” says Angelique Schouten, Ohpen UK’s CEO.

International expansion Ohpen’s “Bank-out-of-the-box” solution
Ohpen provides both incumbent financial services companies and new market entrants with a “bank-out-of-the-box” solution to fully outsource their operations. Founded in Amsterdam in 2009, Ohpen currently services five of the largest financial services companies in the Netherlands, administrating billions of assets under administration. The move to the UK marks the company’s first overseas operation as part of its international expansion strategy.

“We made it our focus to innovate in the core banking space to enable asset managers, banks and insurance companies to outsource their entire IT-infrastructure, software, back office operations and customer contact centre,” explains Schouten. 

Drawing on their expertise as former retail bankers, the founding team redesigned all processes and built the service from scratch resulting in a “bank-out-of-the-box” solution that is digital- and API-first.

UK: hardly any online fully digitalised capabilities
Ohpen aims to present a fully-digital alternative to the market that is dominated by just a few providers traditionally designed around a paper-based customer experience.

“We are very excited that the FCA has granted Ohpen its full authorisation. I think it says a lot about Ohpen as a business, having gained its FCA authorisation within little over half a year of applying for it. We are poised to challenge the mostly inert core FinTech & outsourcing market with a fresh, innovative, bold and colourful alternative,” concludes Schouten.

Ohpen established their UK office close to the Silicon Roundabout in 2016, with plans to significantly expand the local team over the next two years.

Hellenic Bank, the second largest bank in Cyprus, have chosen Backbase, the market leader in omni-channel digital banking, to provide the architecture for its next iteration of banking systems. Hellenic Bank began operating in 1976 and has since become one of the largest banking and financial institutions in the region, with a network of over 60 branches and 7 Billion Assets under Management.

Backbase was chosen on its expertise in helping financial institutions to embark on their digital transformation by enhancing the omni-channel customer experience. Hellenic Bank’s next generation of omni-channel architecture will have the ability to provide flexible and cohesive customer-experiences across its channels - starting with the public domain landing pages and web content projects, followed by mobile banking.

It was imperative that the new digital platform did not make any concessions on the customer-user experience. With a stronghold on the current market in Cyprus, Hellenic Bank needed a financial technology platform that would act as a key enabler to not only stay relevant with the customer, but to also ensure a seamless customer journey.

“Omni-channel banking is the next frontier that banks around the world must adapt to and implement in their own offerings.” Stated Jouk Pleiter, CEO of Backbase, “It’s great to work with Hellenic Bank to develop their digital channels and provide the flexibility and user-experience needed to support their growing customer base.”

Natasha Kyprianides, Head of Digital Banking and Innovation at Hellenic Bank said “We have selected Backbase because they are widely acknowledged by the industry as leaders in developing omni-channel banking solutions; and in creating a seamless experience. Our digital strategy aims to ensure that the user journey remains consistent as we strive to build strong relationships with our customers. We’re excited that we will be benefiting from a transformative platform that delivers the latest technology at every point of contact.” 

UBS AG, the Swiss global financial services company, renewed its Finance Operations services contract with HCL Technologies (HCL), a leading global IT services company, announced HCL. HCL will continue to deliver key Finance Operations services to UBS AG, supporting cost transparency and continuous improvements to the operating model of its finance department for the next three and half years.

HCL has been working with UBS AG since 2012, providing integrated process and technology management in an end-to-end global shared services model. Processes being handled by HCL include the completion of financial reports for multiple regulators; in addition to data management, operational and general accounting functions are delivered, managed via HCL’s Enterprise Function-as-a-Service (EFaaS) model. As an important partner, HCL will further invest in developing Proof of Concepts (POC) for robotics use cases to deliver efficiency gains through the automation of mutually selected business processes within UBS AG’s Finance department.

Todd Tuckner, Group Controller and Chief Accounting Officer, UBS AG, said: “Our continued engagement with HCL is important in supporting our drive to continuously improve our finance function by delivering efficient, effective and well-controlled products and services to our stakeholders.  By streamlining regulatory reporting tasks and exploring new ways to further optimize and potentially automate manual processes, HCL understands and helps us to deliver on our strategic priorities.”

Rahul Singh, President and Global Head – Financial Services, HCL Technologies, said: “The financial services industry is amongst the most heavily regulated in the world, with auditing and reporting requirements that create a major drain on resources. As a result, it is vital that financial services firms can streamline their business processes and improve productivity through automation. With our unique combination of deep domain knowledge and technical expertise, we are thrilled to support UBS AG, as it continues to strive towards achieving greater efficiency gains.”

HCL has deep domain expertise & several years of experience in delivering business process services, with core expertise in process design, simplification & harmonization, digitalization & automation, and agile transition & transformation.

HCE Ticket Wallet Service and Ticketing App enable secure transition from physical to virtual smart cards within existing infrastructure

Rambus Ecebs today announced a comprehensive mobile ticketing product suite leveraging Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology to securely load virtual smart cards onto smart phones for the public transport industry. From the back office to the consumer, this solution includes an HCE Ticket Wallet Service and Ticketing App that enables transport operators to easily and securely transition from physical to virtual smart cards while maintaining compatibility with their existing smart infrastructure.

“The era of smart phones is redefining public transport, providing ease-of-use, security and convenience to travel seamlessly from train to bus to ferry to toll,” said Russell McCullagh, managing director at Rambus Ecebs. “By leveraging HCE technology, which has been proven in high volume for mobile payments, this solution delivers secure mobile ticketing to NFC-enabled smart phones across all mobile network providers. With this, travelers can securely select, purchase, download and use a ticket, anytime and anywhere, on a mobile device.” 

HCE Ticketing Solution Overview

This solution combines the smart ticketing platform developed by Rambus Ecebs with the HCE cloud-based payments technology developed by Rambus Bell ID. The comprehensive suite includes the HCE Ticket Wallet Service, which securely provisions and manages a virtual smart card to store tickets on the phone, and a configurable HCE Ticketing App, which provides consumers with an interface to purchase, fulfill and manage tickets. As well, the Ticketing App helps collect valuable traveler data and analytics for transport operators to optimize ticket offers, pricing, staffing and routes. 

The HCE Ticketing App is fully integrated with Rambus Ecebs’ suite of smart ticketing products and features a flexible interface with a complete set of APIs ready to connect with third-party solutions.

The app enables travelers to load smart tickets to their phone at ticket vending machines. By adding Remote Ticket Download (RTD) software, which complements the app, smart tickets can be delivered immediately to a smart phone without needing to physically go to a ticket machine. Future plans for the Ticketing App include additional value-added services such as account-based ticketing, integrated journey planning, real-time updates and third-party offers. Additionally, both the HCE Ticket Wallet Service and Ticketing App can be deployed with existing ITSO-based infrastructure, the UK interoperable open ticketing specification.

HCE in Transport

HCE offers the security of a smart card on a mobile device without relying on access to a secure element (SE). This is achieved through secure cloud storage of valuable account credentials, rather than the SE in a phone, enabling a broad adoption across NFC-enabled smart phones and mobile network operators.

When applied to transport, HCE enables operators to offer the mobile ticketing experience travelers have come to want and expect by providing a mobile app to securely store and use tickets directly on their mobile devices. Rather than storing tickets on traditional plastic smart cards, they are stored on a virtual smart card in a secured app that can then be used to tap through gates to travel.  

Availability

The solution is available for pilot programs today, with HCE mobile ticketing trials expected to commence in the second half of 2017.

Saxo Bank, the online multi-asset trading and investment specialist, today announces that it is collaborating with Autochartist to make automated technical analysis tools and live trade signals available to clients directly in the SaxoTraderGO platform.

“With the deep integration of Autochartist we further enhance the analysis tools available to clients. There is no need to open other browsers, run applications or third-party setups. The deep integration works seamlessly across devices and makes technical analysis and live trade signals actionable right at the clients’ fingertips,” said Kim Cramer Larsson, Platform Manager & Technical Analyst, Saxo Bank.

Adding to this, Ilan Azbel, CEO, Autochartist said,

“Saxo’s collaboration with Autochartist is an example of how a forward thinking broker uses technical analysis to provide simple, meaningful and actionable content to its clients. The level of integration is unprecedented in the industry by fully integrating content into the entire trading experience of its client; from position open, to setting exit levels. Such deep consideration for the clients’ well-being is what makes Saxo a leader in the industry,”

Autochartist’s advanced algorithms constantly monitor global markets and deliver live trade signals through a wide range of parameters based on technical analysis. 

Each trade signal presents a simple overview of the underlying analysis and an automatically calculated entry price, take-profit target and stop loss that clients can trade directly in the platform as opportunities occur in the market.

“Digesting the market for trade signals using technical analysis is usually a time consuming process and requires in-depth knowledge. This new tool lets technology do the work automatically and enables clients to cover and analyse the market across asset classes with much greater efficiency.  Autochartist provides the analysis and live signals enabling clients to make independent, well-informed decisions as trading opportunities occur,” said Kim Cramer Larsson, Saxo Bank.

The depth of the integration allows clients to apply highly customizable filters to hone in on opportunities aligned with their preferred asset classes and trading strategies, as well as alerting clients to important market events on their preferred assets.

“Clients with experience in technical analysis can use the feature to cover more instruments and streamline time consuming market research. Whereas clients less familiar with technical analysis can leverage AutoChartist to further enhance their trading strategies by including the technical element in the decision-making process,” said Kim Cramer Larsson, Saxo Bank.

As further testament to Saxo Bank’s global presence the new Autochartist feature will be made available in more than 20 different languages as it is rolled out in all markets in the coming weeks. 

Autochartist covers more than 50 currency pairs, 200 stocks, the biggest indices, as well as the major commodities and is free to all Saxo clients. The feature will also be available to white label clients.