Since 2019, Utimaco has been led by its current CEO, Stefan Auerbach. “We are all incredibly proud to have reached this stage of our journey. We are now a global company on a very rapid growth trajectory, but more importantly the cybersecurity marketplace knows the name Utimaco,” says Stefan Auerbach, CEO of Utimaco. “We have become a mark of trust throughout the world, and when companies are looking to create or improve upon security solutions, they know that we have everything they need and will always be on the cutting edge of security technology.”

He added: “We are able to achieve this because of the work of Horst Görtz, not just in setting up the company, but establishing a culture that we strive to continue to this day, of a great team spirit, and an innovative strength that has always been alive in Utimaco.”

LMS, the UK's leading conveyancing services provider, has today announced the launch of its latest iteration of confirmly, its law firm identity-checking technology. The new and improved version sees a vastly increased number of law firms covered by the technology, allowing more searches to return data automatically and reduce the amount of time firms need to wait before transferring funds. 

LMS confirmly technology uses LMS Panel Link and specialist data, as well as gathering trusted third-party data, to reduce the risk associated with money transfers throughout the conveyancing journey. LMS responded to feedback from law firms who wanted more readily available data to reduce the number of cases going through manual checks and speed up the process for even more transactions. To do so, it has engaged with a wider set of additional firms, including commercial firms and property developers that were not yet part of the LMS panel, to widen market access and reduce the need for manual referrals.  

These manual checks are now only needed in 3-4% of cases as the innovation increases the number of firms that can be automatically verified in real-time, resulting in better customer experience all around.  

The technology still has a referral option to ensure the whole market is covered and allow LMS to cater for those searching much more niche or specialist law firms, including those referred by integrators. In these cases, LMS conducts an appropriate level of due diligence, including contacting the firm directly to provide the firm conducting the search with the assurance they need. 

confirmly search results now include further information on recent updates, including bank account details, account name or number and sort code changes in the past six months, usually a sign of fraud risk. 

These enhanced capabilities come at the perfect time as the market experiences rising financial crime rates and increasingly sophisticated method employed by fraudsters.  

Travis Scholes, Commercial Director at LMS, said:  

“confirmly is already trusted by many firms to provide an indispensable safety net when it comes to protecting themselves against fraud, but we recognise the need for even more data to be readily available. That is the only way to reduce the amount of manual checks needed and drive further efficiencies and acting on this feedback is crucial for customer experience.  

“Our new features provide full transparency and protect firms from any suspicious activations while keeping the manual referral option for those more niche firms on whom it is difficult to access sufficient data. As financial crimes become more sophisticated, checking bank details is not an area to skimp on in the conveyancing process, but confirmly allows us to ensure checks are efficient without compromising on how thorough and reliable they are.”  

“At LMS, we keep our customers’ needs at heart and we continue expanding and perfecting our services to ensure their needs are addressed.” 

Scott Bozinis, CEO at InfoTrack adds: 

“Since launching with confirmly over a year ago it’s been great to see our customers benefit from LMS’ innovative technology. We are pleased to provide all of our customers with access to confirmly’s new and improved features, providing them with extra security and mitigation against fraud.  

We’re excited to continue to work with LMS both on confirmly and further integrations, delivering an enhanced service to our customers through collaboration.” 

The UK lost £1.2 billion to fraud in 2022, with three million scams taking place, according to new data from banking and finance industry group UK Finance.

The Annual Fraud Report detailed losses of over £2,300 every minute, with 78 per cent of cases occurring online, targeting unsuspecting Brits.

Despite this, the banking and finance industry was said to have prevented a further £1.2 billion of unauthorised fraud, with the total number of cases down by four per cent and the value of losses down eight per cent compared to 2021.

Wayne Johnson, CEO and co-founder of Encompass Corporation, commented: “Technology is a key factor in protecting the wider public and businesses against financial crime, and reducing the rate of economic crime overall.

“Leveraging the latest in technology solutions, such as dynamic Know Your Customer (KYC) process automation, for example, can significantly increase the effectiveness of KYC processes and overall compliance by ensuring access to the most complete and up-to-date information, while also helping to identify risk faster."

“The Government has already outlined positive strategies, with the Economic Crime Plan 2 and the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill introduced to protect the UK from the impact of financial crime, and these efforts go hand-in-hand with assistance from the regulator. The wider industry and policymakers must work to promote innovation and take a proactive approach to tackling this ongoing issue if we are to see tangible outcomes,” Johnson added.

David Postings, Chief Executive at UK Finance, said: “Fraud has a devastating impact on victims and over £1.2 billion was stolen by criminals last year. The banking and finance sector is at the forefront of efforts to tackle this criminal activity. The sector spends billions on detection and prevention and also refunds people who have fallen victim, even if the fraud originated outside the banking system.

“Our data also makes clear just how much fraud emanates from online platforms and through telecommunications. The Government’s new fraud strategy rightly says we need to focus on stopping it at source and that these other sectors need to do far more to tackle the problem they are facilitating.”

The news comes following the Home Office’s introduction of the Failure To Prevent Fraud Offence, brought in to improve protection of businesses and consumers as part of the Government’s ongoing efforts to reduce financial crime in the UK.

Learning Partnership Agreement between Aman Academy and AlHuda Centre of Islamic Banking and Economics (CIBE) has been inked. The Agreement was signed by Mr. Muhammad Zubair Mughal, CEO of AlHuda-CIBE and Mr. Osama Hegazy, Talent Development Manager of Aman Academy Egypt.

According to the Learning Partnership Agreement, both organizations made a joint commitment to cooperate in order to continue strengthening Egypt's financial market potential for Islamic banking and finance, as well as to offer Technical and Shariah advisory, training, and other services. This agreement will prove to be a tremendous step forward for Islamic banking and finance in African nations, allowing Aman Academy Egypt to fully capitalize on AlHuda-CIBE's competence in the areas of Shariah advisory and consultancy, capacity building, and learning.

AlHuda Center of Islamic Banking and Finance, acknowledges that Islamic banking and finance is rapidly evolving in African countries, and views the Learning Partnership Agreement as a vital step in promoting Islamic banking and finance growth. The agreement will nurture the Islamic finance industry by providing the solutions to bolster the alternative sustainable and emerging financial system in Africa. The agreement will nurture the Islamic finance industry with a new service.

Muhammad Zubair Mughal, said that these moments are very rejoicing when AlHuda CIBE and Aman Academy enter in joint collaboration, we will pool our expertise and resources to achieve the optimum goal of promotion of Islamic finance in Africa. This step will surely benefit Islamic banking and finance in the financial industry. He further added that we will not only be confined to the only agreement rather this relation will be extended to other stakeholders of Islamic finance industry.

He added that according to this agreement, both organizations will work together for the improvement of the awareness regarding Islamic finance in the region. He further said that both organizations will also work to strengthen the abilities to provide technical and Shariah advisory, research, training and other related services. He said that AlHuda CIBE is keeping an eye on Islamic finance industry of African countries. Furthermore, AlHuda CIBE and Aman Academy will mutually conduct training workshops on Islamic banking and finance by mutual consent.

Calastone, the largest global funds network, has released a whitepaper on the practical application of tokenisation in asset management; the whitepaper includes an analysis of the current state of play, the different approaches to tokenisation, the regulatory landscape and considerations for the long-term application of the technology.

Tokenisation is not only being widely discussed across the asset management industry but is a fast-emerging reality. An Autumn 2022 survey of institutional investors by BNY Mellon revealed 97% of respondents agreed that tokenisation ‘will revolutionise asset management’.

Early adopters fail to address existing issues in the current transaction chain

Although several industry players have dipped their toes into tokenisation, there are clear limitations to current approaches which seek to simply tokenise units of funds, for example. Tokenising units only serves to add a tokenised layer to an otherwise traditional fund, continuing to perpetuate its core inefficiencies. This approach fails to consider the long-term benefits of tokenisation and its potential to transform the asset management industry as we know it today.

Tokenisation is a means, not the end

Currently, the asset management industry is plagued by unwieldly manual processes and high costs which prevent asset managers from meeting customers’ evolving expectations and needs. To truly transform the process of investing, the industry needs to think about tokenisation not as a new technology, but as a transformative tool to create a frictionless digital marketplace for asset management; this can only be achieved by tokenising the underlying assets of funds, not just the units.

Changing the fundamental structure of a fund by tokenising at the asset level brings the entire value chain onto a common and digital Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform, thereby increasing efficiency by facilitating real-time flow of data and enabling new levels of collaboration between liquidity partners, custodians, investment managers and distributors.

Adam Belding, Chief Technology Officer at Calastone, said: “The current efforts of industry players are a good start and show recognition that tokenisation is beneficial in asset management. Ultimately, however, approaches which do not utilise tokenisation at the asset level will not affect real change long-term as they fail to address fundamental issues with the underlying structure.”

“Calastone’s tokenisation model, which leverages the technologies from our Distributed Market Infrastructure (DMI), is currently being piloted with several global asset managers. The asset-level, platform-based model is the first of its kind and brings both data and processes underpinning a fund into the same environment, creating an integrated and seamless value chain that is significantly lower in cost.”

Asset managers, with the support of regulators, need to prioritise tokenising underlying assets to bring their business and their customers into a new era: one in which the benefits of digitised investing will be fully felt by all for the first time through a new tokenised investment vehicle.

Murex, the global leader in trading, risk and processing solutions for capital markets, is pleased to announce that Boubyan Bank, a leading Kuwait-based Islamic financial institution, is implementing MX.3 for Islamic Finance for its Sharia-compliant treasury activity using MXGO.

MXGO is a packaged, tailored treasury and trading solution based on MX.3 and designed by Murex for fast-growing local banks. Total cost of ownership is reduced through accelerated delivery. MXGO can be delivered on-premises, on the cloud or via a fully managed SaaS approach and leverages a long history of successful treasury implementations.

Boubyan shortlisted and selected the MX.3 integrating platform after a competitive process to identify the best fit for the bank.

Boubyan, which transitioned from its core banking system to run its treasury and capital markets activity, benefits from a front-to-back-to-risk solution that will facilitate delivery of new products to clients. Products covered include FX spot, forward Waad, FX swap, profit rate swaps, cross currency swaps and sukuks. The scope also includes collateral management, value at risk, accounting and hedge accounting.

“The implementation enables Boubyan to increase product offerings and pursue a robust growth strategy,” said Treasurer Adel Al Mutairi. “It is very much in line with our desire to maintain market leadership in innovation.”

Murex Managing Partner and Co-founder Phillipe Helou explained that MXGO will help Boubyan achieve fast, seamless implementation.

“Boubyan joins several prominent financial institutions in Kuwait that have chosen MX.3, and the latest dynamic local bank to use MXGO to achieve implementation,” said Philippe Helou. “We are pleased by the collaboration and look forward to a long, fruitful partnership.”

Boubyan Bank is a leading Islamic bank based in Kuwait, renowned for its excellence and dedication to customer service and its market leadership in innovation. Boubyan provides retail banking, corporate banking and wealth management services in accordance with provisions of the Noble Islamic Sharia.

The banking group is further comprised of four subsidiaries providing banking, investment and asset management, takaful insurance and property management activities.

Horizon Software (Horizon), a global provider of electronic trading solutions and algorithmic technology for the global capital markets, announces today that Arqaam Capital, one of the leading trading members on both the ADX and DFM in the UAE, will use Horizon Electronic Market Making solutions for Arqaam Capital’s newly created market making desk.

Arqaam will leverage Horizon’s existing connectivity to ADX and DFM (amongst the other 80 exchanges worldwide it is connected to) to perform market-making on Stocks, Derivatives, and ETFs in the Middle East region.

Horizon’ market-making solution is used by more than 50 market makers across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.  It provides a multi-asset class, low latency, and fully automated market-making solution, including pricing, risk management, and auto-hedging features.

Veselin Tilev, Head of Market Making at Arqaam, expressed: “We are very pleased to partner with Horizon Software, the leading provider of market making and algo trading technology. The partnership will provide us with the flexibility, scalability, and performance required to solidify Arqaam Capital as the leading market maker and liquidity provider in a highly competitive and regulated market. This will allow Arqaam Capital to offer a wider range of electronic trading products, diversify our revenue streams, and deliver high-quality services to our clients.”

Gerald Blondel, MENA Sales Director at Horizon Software, added: “It is an honour for us to be selected by Arqaam Capital, a well-established and respected financial services provider in the emerging markets, with strong electronic trading competence, vision and ambition. We look forward to successfully developing their market-making capabilities with them in the region. Currently, we are in use by three market makers in the UAE, and we will continue to establish a stronger presence in MENA and grow our support team in Dubai.”

"Most of the data businesses use today comes from outside the secure boundaries of the organisation and lacks the integrity metadata needed to prove origin, provenance and authenticity. RKVST is a game-changer for organisations that need to validate and authenticate data to make informed decisions. Think how a doctored photo could lead media to mistakenly report false information, or how incorrect data could lead a bank or its customers to lose significant money. RKVST Instaproof offers a simple, user-friendly drag and drop process to instantly verify the authenticity of any file, eliminating the time-wasting, expensive and error-prone processes employed today. It quickly and simply gives organisations the information they need to decide what data to trust and the confidence they require to make critical decisions based on that data."

Edgardo Torres-Caballero, Chief Revenue Officer at Tuum said: “The cloud is the future of core banking, something we’ve been championing for a long time. Its capacity to ease scale, security and performance is unmatched – not forgetting how significantly it can cut operational costs and risks, thereby maximising the ROI of core banking migration projects.

 

Partnering with the world-leading cloud infrastructure provider was a no-brainer for us. Now, our customers can benefit from deployment times that are a matter of weeks, not months - all on a trusted, well-known platform. We look forward to a long partnership with AWS and its help in meeting the strong demand we’re experiencing for next-generation core banking solutions.”