ChargeAfter, the embedded lending platform for point-of-sale financing announced that Citi Retail Services, one of North America's largest and most experienced retail payments and credit solution providers, selected ChargeAfter as a technology provider for its Citi Pay® products, including Citi Pay® Credit and Citi Pay® Installment Loan.    

Citi Retail Services' collaboration with ChargeAfter gives participating online merchants the ability to seamlessly integrate Citi Pay products, which include a digital-only credit card and monthly installment loan, into their point-of-sale experience. Citi Pay products give customers flexibility in their budgets and put them in control of how they want to finance their purchases.

ChargeAfter's Lending Hub for banks bridges the gap between merchants and lending banks by streamlining the complex process from product creation and management to the deployment and distribution of lending products. The Lending Hub for banks also enables swift merchant onboarding and integration for bank lending partners, allowing them to offer various financing options to merchants and their customers at scale.

"We are excited to join forces with Citi Retail Services, leveraging elements of ChargeAfter's Lending Hub to empower and support the Citi Pay family of digital payment products to meet the evolving demands of the merchant community. This collaboration is an affirmation of the capabilities of our Lending Hub for leading payment providers," commented Meidad Sharon, founder and Chief Executive Officer of ChargeAfter. "Our nimble, cutting-edge technology and rapid go-to-market tools for banks position us to support Citi Retail Services in expanding its Citi Pay products and enhance the customer experience at checkout."

"Our collaboration with ChargeAfter enables us to quickly and seamlessly embed Citi Pay products into our merchant partners' point-of-sale, which furthers Citi's more than 30-year commitment to providing merchants and consumers with the secure and flexible payment options they desire," said Terry O'Neil, Head of Connected Commerce and Strategic Growth Initiatives for Citi Retail Services.

Artificial Labs, the leading algorithmic underwriting insurtech, is delighted to announce the completion of an £8M Series A+ funding round. The investment was led by Europe’s premier publicly listed fintech fund, Augmentum Fintech, with participation from existing investors MS&AD Ventures and FOMCAP IV.

In August 2023, Artificial announced its ground-breaking Smart Follow collaboration with insurer Apollo, which has since gone live in the London Market for several lines of business including Marine Hull, General Aviation and Marine Cargo.

The company unveiled its new broker tool, Contract Builder, to the market through its strategic partnership with Lockton in the UK in late 2023 and Placing Platform Limited in January 2024, making significant strides in the Lloyd’s of London market. Implementation with several other large London Market brokers is ongoing. The tool can be easily tailored to brokers’ requirements and generates configurable, structured and Lloyd’s Blueprint Two-compliant contracts.

Since its successful Series A funding round in June 2022, Artificial has achieved several significant milestones. The company has rapidly grown its team and bolstered its leadership with the appointments of Ascot founder Martin Reith as Chairman in 2022 and, in 2023, Deana Murfitt as Chief Operating Officer and Jen Tan as Head of Portfolio Strategy.

The latest funding round will allow Artificial to further its position as a leader in algorithmic underwriting and excel towards its vision of a digital insurance market through product development and continued expansion. It will also enable the acceleration of the development and deployment of innovative AI tools that Artificial is delivering to its brokers and underwriter partners.

David King, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Artificial, commented:

“Our latest funding round is a testament to the exciting work we’re doing at Artificial. We are thrilled to have the expertise and support of the Augmentum team and our committed existing investors on this next phase of our journey.

“This round of funding will enable us to accelerate our growth and continue to innovate in the algorithmic and augmented space. In 2024 we will further the development of our underwriting platform, exciting AI solutions and our Contract Builder product, which is already seeing great traction in the market.”

Reginald de Wasseige, Principal at Augmentum Fintech, said:

“We are delighted to lead Artificial’s latest investment round. We firmly believe that the era of algorithmic underwriting will redefine market dynamics in the insurance space. As more sophisticated 'smart follow' underwriters enter the London Market, we will see a significant transformation in the process of underwriting risk.

"The most adept lead underwriters, equipped with substantial auto-follow capacity, are poised to become highly sought-after by brokers seeking to place business. We look forward to working with David, Johnny and the entire Artificial team for this next phase of their journey. Our investment is a testament to our confidence in their vision and execution capabilities.”

Aro, the UK’s go-to embedded finance partner for brands, has today announced a partnership with Equifax Limited to deliver a new credit card and loan solution for Equifax Marketplace. The solution enables consumers to compare credit cards, secured loan,s and personal loan products simply and find a financial product that suits their needs from the panel of lenders.  

Aro’s data-driven matching platform enhances the chances of customers obtaining the financing they seek via machine learning models. Aro can offer the best possible credit options to its customers from over 70 of the UK’s leading lenders, matching consumers with the most appropriate lending products.

Through soft credit searches, which will not impact consumers’ credit scores, the new partnership with Aro will empower Equifax customers with greater transparency and choice, while promoting a competitive lending environment. This refreshed solution allows individuals to compare a variety of credit products easily; including personal loans and credit cards, tailoring their financial decisions to their specific needs, preferences, and current situations.

By simplifying the comparison process, Equifax encourages responsible borrowing. It assists consumers in making better-informed decisions taking into account the current economic climate as well as their long-term financial goals in a single, seamless marketplace solution.

Emma Steeley, Chief Executive Officer at Aro, explains: "Our new partnership with Equifax will continue to promote financial empowerment and create a transformative experience for more consumers. We’re pleased to be supporting Equifax to embrace innovation, transparency and data-driven insights, which will bridge the gap between lenders and borrowers to drive forward financial inclusion. Our mission is to redefine the lending landscape, ensuring that the power of our personal credit matching technology benefits everyone on their journey towards financial prosperity.”

William Napier, Product and Marketing Director for Consumer Solutions at Equifax UK, said: “Delivering the best value to our customers and empowering them to make the best possible financial decisions is at the heart of everything we do. A partnership with Aro felt like a natural progression for Equifax to deliver a better user experience for our customers. ”

Leading European Regulatory Technology (RegTech) scale-up Salv has broken new ground by becoming the first technology firm in Europe to secure a regulator-awarded licence to operate as a ‘Closed Service KYC Utility’ service provider. 

The licence, granted five years after the standards and regulations were established by the Data State Inspectorate of Latvia in 2019, paves the way for financial institutions to collaborate whenever criminal activity is identified or suspected. By alerting their peers when financial crime is detected, firms can take action to limit or prevent it from escalating across the financial services ecosystem.

To become a trusted, licensed supplier of financial services intelligence data exchange services, Salv was required to prove corporate due diligence and demonstrate ISO/IEC 27001 certification, the highest levels of security, data protection and compliance. The licence will enable financial institutions to leverage Salv’s Bridge platform to help combat financial crime.

In 2023, customers of the four largest commercial banks in Latvia were defrauded of funds amounting to €12.7 million, while the amount of prevented cases reached €9.2 million, according to the data compiled by the Financial Industry Association. Also, more than €5.6 million were obtained illegally as a result of investment fraud €5.5 million as a result of telephone fraud, where customers have approved payments from their accounts. Compared to the previous year, 2023 also saw an 84% rise in investment fraud cases reported by financial institutions in Latvia, indicating a rapid rise in financial crime.

“Collaboration between financial institutions is beneficial for all, but it requires confidence in the security of the process and compliance with a range of regulatory requirements before it can be put into practice. We therefore congratulate all those involved for the work they have done to ensure that the opportunity is realised in practice,” commented Laima Letiņa, Advisor to the Finance Latvia Association. “Salv is the first regulatory technology company to meet the high quality standard and has obtained the Closed Shared KYC Utility licence issued by the State Data Inspectorate, which will enable the Latvian financial sector to fight money laundering more effectively.”

According to Bruno Puriņš, Salv Market lead in Latvia: “In securing this licence and exceeding the challenging security and regulatory requirements set by the Latvian Data State Inspectorate, Salv has proven that our solutions are fit for purpose and our organisation is trustworthy and robust. We are proud to have excelled under independent scrutiny. Our success in gaining this licence assures both current and future clients – in the Baltic States and more broadly across Europe – that it is now possible for the financial services community to unite against financial crime.”

Edgars Pastars, Senior Associate at Baltics legal advisory firm ZAB COBALT, said: “The use of collaborative customer intelligence tools to fight financial crime have been discussed globally for many years. Despite its modest stature, Latvia is at the forefront of innovation and has pioneered the development of standards and regulations that have transformed this concept into reality. We are proud to have advised the Latvian authorities and financial institutions during the initial licence creation process in 2019, and subsequently to have supported Salv in their pursuit of securing the licence.”

Clearwater Analytics, a leading provider of SaaS-based investment management, accounting, reporting, and analytics solutions, today announced the appointment of Keith Viverito as Managing Director, EMEA. With over 20 years of experience in high-growth companies serving financial markets, Viverito brings a strong track record of delivering exceptional results and a passion for people and customer success to Clearwater.

Prior to joining Clearwater, Viverito served as a Managing Director at BlackRock, leading Business Development for the Aladdin Business across EMEA. In his new role, Viverito will be responsible for accelerating Clearwater’s global expansion and strengthening its go-to-market strategy. His strategic vision, dynamic leadership, and unwavering commitment to colleague and customer success align well with Clearwater’s existing team and culture.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Keith to the leadership team,” said Sandeep Sahai, CEO at Clearwater Analytics. “Keith has a deep understanding of our industry and is a perfect fit to lead Clearwater’s expansion internationally. While he started his career in North America, he has spent over a decade in Europe and brings a unique perspective to our team. We look forward to his contributions as we expand globally, foster innovation across our comprehensive suite of product offerings, and achieve long-term success in EMEA and APAC.”

“I am honored to join Clearwater at this important time for our international business as we transition into our next phase of growth and accelerate our expansion across EMEA and APAC,” said Viverito. “The success the Company has already achieved with significant wins across these markets where Clearwater displaced legacy competitors provides a very strong foundation for growth. I look forward to partnering with the Company’s strong leadership on the ground in London, Paris, Edinburgh and Frankfurt, which will enable us to move quickly.”

Viverito has held executive and senior leadership roles at IHS Markit, FactSet, Thomson Reuters, and Tradeweb, with a focus on International Markets. Viverito holds a B.A. in Economics from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from DePaul University Chicago.

“Generative AI has provided a huge boost to threat actors’ productivity levels: these tools are relatively low cost, easily accessed, and can be used to create highly convincing synthesized media such as face swaps or other forms of deepfakes that can easily fool the human eye as well as less advanced biometric solutions. This only serves to heighten the need for highly secure remote identity verification,” says Andrew Newell, Chief Scientific Officer, iProov.  

“While the data in our report highlights that face swaps are currently the deepfake of choice for threat actors, we don’t know what’s next. The only way to stay one step ahead is to constantly monitor and identify their attacks, the attack frequency, who they’re targeting, the methods they’re using, and form a set of hypotheses as to what motivates them.”

• A significant increase in packaged AI imagery tools deployed which make it far easier and quicker to launch an attack and this is only expected to advance. 
• There was a 672% increase from H1 2023 to H2 2023 in the use of deepfake media such as face swaps being deployed alongside metadata spoofing tools. Presentation and digital injection attacks may have different levels of impact, but they can pose a significant threat when combined with traditional cyber attack tools like metadata manipulation.  

The EY organization today announces an alliance between MoneyLion Inc., a leading enterprise and consumer FinTech company, and Ernst & Young LLP (EY US), to help drive innovation and growth within the banking sector.

The Alliance leverages MoneyLion's embedded finance platform to help enhance the technological capabilities of traditional banking institutions. By doing so, the Alliance aims to simplify and streamline the transition into the digital realm, assist these institutions in overcoming the challenges of an increasingly fragmented financial landscape and help facilitate their ability to offer a wide range of financial services to consumers through an efficient, user-friendly digital platform.

With MoneyLion's embedded marketplace infrastructure and technology, data insights and content solutions combined with EY US teams' existing core-banking modernization offerings and Nexus for Banking Platform, the Alliance is designed to provide a comprehensive suite of FinTech solutions to help scale acquisition strategies and service models as well as foster organic growth and engagement within financial institutions' customer base.

Nikhil Lele, Financial Services Consumer Banking Leader and EY-MoneyLion Alliance Leader, Ernst & Young LLP, says:

"We are thrilled about the EY-MoneyLion Alliance's potential to transform the banking and financial services industry. Our Alliance brings together deep experience of EY US in technology integration with cutting-edge solutions from MoneyLion, launching a new enterprise strategy for the industry. This will help empower smaller or more traditional banks to scale rapidly and profitably with integrated digital financial solutions."

Dee Choubey, Founder and CEO of MoneyLion, says:

"Our Alliance with EY US represents not only a stride in innovation but a continued commitment to transforming the banking and financial services industry. With the combined strength of MoneyLion's technology and experience, we are setting a new standard for what banks and financial institutions can achieve and helping them change the way they engage with and cater to the evolving needs of today's digital consumer. This marks the beginning of a more adaptive, responsive and customer-focused banking experience, where technology and human-centricity go hand-in-hand to create a seamless financial experience for every user."

Papaya Global, the workforce payments fintech, invested two years and 864,000 engineering work hours building the first end-to-end workforce platform that executes worker payments.

This investment comes to a head with Papaya's Super Bowl debut.

"Payroll companies without embedded payments and AI technology, will simply not survive," says Zvika Liblich, Chief Strategy Officer at Papaya Global. "We believe that customers will demand solutions that cover them end-to-end, from payroll calculation to payment execution on one platform, and will support any employment model in any currency worldwide."

Papaya's AI-powered payroll validation engine enables the management of all types of workers and paying them in local currencies in any location, providing native connectivity with existing payroll systems. Thanks to these capabilities, global organizations can now scale their workforce, while protected by Papaya's full compliance and liability.

Papaya is making its first Super Bowl appearance, bringing ping-pong to football's main event. Its 30-second "Small balls. Big Game" ad features multiple self-bouncing ping-pong balls, showcasing Papaya's game-changing AI-powered workforce payments platform.

The creative team includes Emmy Award winner Matt McCarron, Webby and Cannes Award winner Jonathan Vingiano, and Super Bowl ads veteran Alon Seifert. The spot was directed by Rob Leggatt and shot by Billions cinematographer Jake Polonsky. This is the first Super Bowl ad by McCann Tech.

Liberis, the leading global embedded finance platform, today announced a partnership with Alloy, the identity risk management company behind over 500 of the world's leading banks and fintechs. The partnership will enable Liberis to leverage Alloy's platform to fast-track its global growth, and simplify the merchant experience by integrating automated compliance verifications into the funding application process. Additionally, it will facilitate the creation of custom, white-labeled onboarding experiences for partners.

"We're excited to partner with Alloy to help us achieve our global growth goals," said Alexis Alexander, Chief Legal & Compliance Officer of Liberis. "Alloy's platform will allow us to enter new markets quickly, optimise our merchants' fully digitalised application for funding and scale to meet our partners' demand, while also maintaining our high standards for compliance."

Alloy's platform provides Liberis with access and integrations to a global network of over 190 data sources that help streamline KYC, KYB, and AML processes while also preventing financial crime.. This will enable Liberis to onboard merchants in new markets quickly and efficiently.

"We are thrilled to be partnering with Liberis to add them to our growing list of global clients," said Tommy Nicholas, CEO at Alloy. "Alloy is designed to help businesses take control of fraud, credit, and compliance risk, while growing with the clearest picture of their customers. We're confident that our partnership will help Liberis achieve its goals and provide its merchants with a seamless onboarding experience."

The collaboration between Liberis and Alloy will streamline the funding application process for merchants, minimizing the paperwork involved. Most merchants will experience a smooth and seamless application process, with compliance verifications happening behind the scenes. In cases where further documentation is necessary, Liberis will offer a bespoke, white-label experience that aligns with the needs and standards of both merchants and their partners.

"We hold ourselves to high standards on compliance, and we know it's very important to our partners," said Alexander. "But adding compliance checks can mean friction in the application journey. Using Alloy, we will be able to reduce this for most customers, whilst never compromising on a fully compliant process".

Liberis is committed to growing in a scalable way. By partnering with Alloy, Liberis can reduce the engineering resources required to support its international expansion and meet its compliance requirements. This allows Liberis to focus resources on its core mission of providing merchants with the funding they need to grow and thrive through their partners.

bolttech Insurance, the Hong Kong general insurance arm of international insurtech bolttech, has launched MyTravel, a comprehensive travel coverage plan for customers, their families, pets and belongings.  The product is available exclusively through FWD's online insurance platform, a direct-to-customer platform providing a faster and smoother insurance experience.

MyTravel distinguishes itself by covering customers for changes in travel dates or trip cancellations for any reason. This benefit is offered in the MyTravel Superior plan, providing reimbursement for up to HKD25,000, subject to a cap at 50% of the applicable public transportation and accommodation charges. Additionally, under MyTravel, customers will be reimbursed for the costs of a missed event, such as a concert, in cases where insured members experience sickness or accidents.  This coverage extends up to HKD3,000 and HKD15,000 under the Premium and Superior plans respectively.

"With many of us having exciting travel plans ahead, we are delighted to give our customers peace of mind with bolttech Insurance's MyTravel product, offering coverage benefits for travel reimbursements and medical coverage. Whether you are travelling for leisure or business, MyTravel is the perfect plan to protect against the many risks of travel," said Alister Musgrave, Regional General Manager, Hong Kong & Taiwan, bolttech. 

Paul Tse, Chief Marketing and Digital Officer, FWD Hong Kong and Macau, said, "At FWD, we're committed to changing the way people feel about insurance by consistently developing digitally-enabled and customer-led insurance products and services. MyTravel exemplifies our commitment to presenting an innovative product that caters to customers' growing protection needs and enhances the experience of purchasing insurance online. We look forward to supporting more people to celebrate living by traveling with MyTravel."

MyTravel covers a broad range of age groups from 60 days to 80 years of age. All insured members can enjoy the same medical expenses limit of up to HKD1,500,000, along with access to 24-hour worldwide emergency assistance services. This ensures comprehensive protection for the entire family during vacations. MyTravel also includes special pet coverage, such as emergency pet boarding in the event of travel delay at HKD500 per day under the Premium and Superior plans.

MyTravel safeguards personal items such as mobile devices or laptops in the event of theft or robbery during travel. Any loss of sports equipment, including ski gear, is protected with the MyTravel Premium and Superior plans for up to HKD5,000 per item.