To address recent regulatory changes, SNB Capital has chosen global Fintech leader, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR), to help build its local securities lending and borrowing business. As the largest broker and asset manager by market share in 2022 and a leading custodian in Saudi Arabia, SNB Capital will leverage Broadridge’s Securities Finance and Collateral Management (SFCM) solution to grow the coverage of its Securities Services offering on local assets.

“Broadridge is excited to grow its strong partnership with SNB Capital as we jointly continue to bring more value to SNB Capital’s clients with a new securities lending & borrowing service offering, across multi-custody principal and agency trading models.” said Darren Crowther, Head of Securities Finance and Collateral Management, Broadridge. “Global markets are increasingly complex with greater numbers of potential revenue streams across the business. Broadridge’s SFCM solution enables firms to start up rapidly, capture securities finance growth opportunities whilst integrating seamlessly with other internal or external systems, to help them meet their regulatory obligations, and streamline their operations.”

“SNB Capital is perfectly positioned to satisfy strong demand for securities lending and borrowing across Saudi Arabia,” says Loai Bafaqeeh, Head of Securities Division, SNB Capital. “With Broadridge, and their SFCM solution- our joint efforts will provide global SBL expertise, an end-to-end platform with the required trading, operations and connectivity, and the capacity to rapidly bring this product to market based on the updated regulatory and market structure provided by Saudi Exchange and Securities Depository Centre (Edaa).”

SNB Capital is expanding its financial markets footprint, with the recent approval of market-making rules, as well as the 2022 green light for the amended Securities Borrowing and Lending Regulations which was finalised last year by the Saudi Exchange & Edaa. This aligns the Saudi market with international best practices, allowing innovative forward-looking institutions, like SNB Capital, to drive the creation of client-driven securities lending and borrowing programs. As early adopters to these new regulations and the opportunities they bring, SNB Capital is implementing SFCM- Broadridge’s full lifecycle agency and principal securities lending solution- to deliver all aspects, front-to back, of borrowing and lending trading and operational needs, with scalability for the future as they continue to expand.

Broadridge’s SFCM is a functionally rich, front-to-back SaaS solution for securities finance, used widely across the global buy- and sell-side securities lending, repo, and collateral trading markets. SFCM has given firms the ability to improve their existing securities finance businesses and expand into new global markets and opportunities, with a core foundation that is fully scalable for business growth.

London-based, green fintech ekko is gearing up for a year of sustained growth. Today, the company revealed a series of unique product updates, and has opened up its service to employers, banks and payment providers for the first time. These exciting announcements come ahead of the imminent announcement of the company’s expert advisory board. 

ekko offers embedded sustainability for the digital economy. The start-up’s award-winning technology combines real-time carbon tracking, carbon offsetting, reforestation and plastic waste removal with banking and payment services into one multichannel and simple-to-deploy solution. For the first time, ekko’s service is now available to employers, banks and payment providers around the globe, whereas previously, it has only been available to consumers. 

ekko has announced today that it has launched an expanded product suite, which includes the ‘ekko API’ for any payment provider or bank in the world to use the real-time impact technology and ‘ekko incentives’, an employee benefit platform to empower teams to live more sustainably. The new solutions will enable businesses and individuals across a multitude of sectors and geographies to embed sustainability into every transaction. In doing so, the company is spearheading the use of financial services in the battle to tackle climate change. 

Backed by a founding team of respected banking and fintech industry experts, ekko has a strong purpose: to use the reach of financial services to empower people and businesses to start their sustainability journey. ekko’s partnerships already include giving access to UEFA Champions League football clubs with PAYFAN, and household name businesses.  

As part of its commitment to everyday environmental empowerment, ekko remains a member of the Mastercard Priceless Planet Coalition. The global platform is helping to unite corporate sustainability efforts while encouraging businesses and users to take collective action on climate goals. In particular, the forest restoration model is dedicated to the planting of 100 million trees and regrowing forests in geographies with the greatest global need.

CEO and Co-Founder, Oli Cook, said: “ekko’s vision is to empower more people to have the ability to reduce their impact on the environment. We have opened-up our technology to any employer, bank, card, or payment provider meaning thousands of organisations can now deliver tangible and measurable impact with their colleagues and customers.

“The financial services industry has the potential to be a gateway to green for many, and we plan on making 2023 the year when this gateway fully opens. Our powerful technology allows employers and banks to customise the solution to meet their ESG goals, including on-the-ground partnerships with businesses such as Prevented Ocean Plastic who save and recycle plastic bottles before they hit our oceans.”

3rd CIS Islamic Banking and Finance Forum will be held in Tashkent -Uzbekistan on March 14, 2023, with the theme to explore the untapped potential of Islamic Finance market of CIS countries and to adopt the latest trends, address the challenges and discover the new opportunities in Islamic financial industry of Central Asia. AlHuda CIBE is organizing the 3rd CIS Forum with the support of Uzbekistan Banking Association (UBA). The forum will cover a variety of topics including Islamic finance, financial inclusion, FinTech, Takaful, and Sukuk investment opportunities in Central Asia and CIS region.

The CIS region has significant potential for Islamic banking and finance industry which needs to be untapped. The main objectives of the forum include recognizing significant developments in Islamic Financial Infrastructure of Central Asia and linkages of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Islamic Finance industry with the international financial market. The event is open to the public with a very nominal entrance fee. For a decade, AlHuda CIBE has been organizing international events in different parts of the world to provide a platform to global think-tanks for exchange of ideas, networking and promotion of institutional services for social impact.

Muhammad Zubair Mughal, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AlHuda CIBE - UAE said that Islamic finance is the fastest growing sector in CIS countries, Islamic finance is not only developing its roots in Muslim countries but many non-Muslim countries are getting benefit from it. Among the CIS countries, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are well-developed in this concept whereas Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are developing in the same way slowly but steadily.  AlHuda CIBE is committed to provide state of the art specialized services for consultancy and advisory, capacity building, research and product development, events and workshops globally with commitment, dedication, and aspiration all over the world.

The Forum will be followed by a Two days post-event workshop on “Innovate Approach of Islamic Banking & Finance” on March 15 -16, 2023. To learn more please visit: https://alhudacibe.com/cis2023/

SEON’s new report, which was released today, paints a worrying picture for both businesses and everyday individuals around online fraud. The publication, entitled ‘Fraud Trends 2023: What They Really Mean for Fraudsters and Your Business’, highlights that fraud is not only on the rise across the internet, but that online fraudsters are now targeting higher amounts of money, and doing so in an increasingly sophisticated manner. 

As the report explains, this rise is being underpinned by the advent of powerful AI modules and online fraud tools, which are lowering the barriers to entry around this issue, and enabling fraudsters to conduct more sophisticated fraud attempts in an increasingly cost-effective manner. Similarly, the continued downturn in the broader economy is pushing more people towards committing online fraud, at a time when it can be least afforded. 

The good news is that modern fraud prevention solutions such as SEON can mitigate this threat before it grows any further. The company’s platform also utilizes AI technologies, including whitebox and blackbox machine learning modules. Increasingly, SEON’s whitebox and blackbox machine learning modules are relied on to tackle the problem, and have experienced usage increases of over 30% and 46% respectively since September 2022. 

Fresh on the back of its exciting acquisition of Complytron, SEON’s new report provides businesses with important insights, which could be crucial to staying safe on the internet over the next twelve months. Alongside documenting some of the key fraud trends it has noticed on its platform, the publication emphasizes the need for further collaboration between fraud prevention experts.

Speaking on the new report, Tamas Kadar, CEO and co-founder of SEON commented: “Our new publication highlights the evolving nature of fraud on the internet. Clearly, fraud is growing around the world, and those committing these acts are becoming more brazen and refined in their approach. If we’re not careful, nascent technologies, such as AI could be leveraged by fraudsters even more dangerously in the future.

“We are left with a situation where it is truly best to ‘fight fire with fire’. The use of anti-fraud machine learning solutions has now become imperative in the fight to tackle modern day fraud, and early research indicates that fraud managers are already beginning to rely on these systems to tackle the problems they face. Thankfully, with this approach, companies can greatly reduce the fraud risk to their business, and their customers.”

London-based fintech firm kennek has raised a $4.5 million pre-seed funding round.

The company has developed an end-to-end operating system designed to streamline the operations for lenders, credit investors, corporates, and servicers in the alternative credit sector.

In its first year of trading, kennek has already hired 20 fulltime staff, and launched a plug-and-play operating system that caters for a broad variety of lenders and credit products. The company’s UK operation has already secured commercial wins with clients operating the areas of SME loans, R&D credit and Commercial Real Estate.

kennek was founded in 2021 by Thibault Lancksweert, Edmund Parsons and Xavier De Pauw, to solve two major pain points: operational scalability for lenders and investors; and more efficient funding of credits. The funding round was led by Dutch Founders Fund, ffVC and Plug and Play Ventures.

De Pauw, who previously worked in structured finance at Merrill Lynch and built challenger bank MeDirect, has first-hand experience with the challenges faced by lenders in the capital markets.

With decades of experience in the credit sector, the kennek founders could see many operational pain points and challenges facing lenders. The alternative lending industry is still largely run on manual workflows and with data living in spreadsheets.

As a result of these outdated processes, lenders are not cost-efficient and struggle to access funding from institutional investors who require reliable and connected data, and robust and scalable processes. This insight became the foundation of kennek, a vertically integrated SaaS that solves these multiple pain points all at once.

The ultimate goal of kennek is to make scalable and robust lending infrastructure accessible to everyone in order to facilitate more funding to flow to the real economy.

kennek is working with existing lenders and banks, but also with new lenders that can be launched efficiently with kennek’s complete lender-in-a-box. As such, kennek plays the role of lender incubator offering credit expertise, the full operating system and access to institutional funding.

Corporates also use kennek to offer embedded credit and to manage their receivables financing.

Laurens Groenendijk of Dutch Founders Fund said: "De Pauw, Lancksweert and Parsons bring such varied and necessary experience together to address the inefficiencies of lending,"

"The uniquely designed product and lending rails that kennek is creating will make it much easier for lenders worldwide to launch, operate and scale,” he added.

Xavier De Pauw, co-founder and CEO of kennek said:

“Our goal is to create a single point of truth for all stakeholders in the lending value chain,”

“This will help drive capital from institutional investors to the real economy, such as SMEs, property developers, and corporates.”

Temenos has received validation on its ambitious Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions reduction targets with approval from the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi).

The SBTi validated Temenos’ commitment to reducing absolute scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions 50 per cent by 2030 from a 2019 base year. This target is aligned with keeping global warming to no more than 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels, the most ambitious reduction goal of the Paris Agreement.

This commitment underpins Temenos’ strategy to integrate ESG into its operations and product offering and to become a net zero organization by 2050, across its global operations and value chain, while helping clients transform into smart, inclusive and sustainable organizations.

Since both operational Scope 1 and 2 and value chain Scope 3 emissions are covered by this science-based target, Temenos’ Scope 3 target is also considered ambitious, exceeding the minimum ambition for the 2°C pathway under the Absolute Contraction Approach, in the target year of 2030.

SBTi defines and promotes best practices in science-based target setting to prevent the most damaging effects of climate change and independently assesses companies’ targets. Temenos is one of 2218 companies with an officially validated target, to reduce its emissions in line with climate science. SBTi is a collaboration between Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Kalliopi Chioti, Chief ESG and Marketing Officer, Temenos, commented: "We are proud to join the world’s top businesses in this race towards a net-zero economy because we believe that climate change is not only one of the greatest risks facing the planet, but also one of the greatest opportunities for sustainable innovation. Our focus on ESG is a key part of our business strategy. We believe ESG and digital transformation belong together, and so our mission is to help clients digitally transform with an open cloud platform that also empowers the transition to a low-carbon global economy.”

Temenos has proven its commitment to transparency on climate, by disclosing and achieving top scores in the DJSI and CDP, aligning its strategy with the Task Force of Climate-Related Financial Disclosures guidelines and developing tools such as the Temenos Carbon Emission Calculator on the back of the Temenos Banking Cloud, enabling banks to track progress toward their sustainability targets.

An overview of Temenos’ environmental roadmap towards a net zero economy and more information about the company’s ESG achievements are available here.

As the cost of living crisis continues, new research from Europe’s leading open banking platform, Tink, paints a stark picture of financial realities in the UK. 

Findings reveal almost half (46%) of people in the UK are ‘only just managing’, where they expect their income not to cover their essential spending in the future. A further one in four  (23%) are identified as ‘financially vulnerable’, with their current income already no longer covering their essential spending.

Based on the findings, this represents an estimated 37 million Brits who are currently either experiencing or expecting to face financial distress – highlighting the critical role of banks in supporting people with their finances during these unprecedented times.

Many ‘only just managing’ fear the worst is yet to come

The research set out to understand how those who are ‘only just managing’ are currently coping with the rising cost of living. It also explores what many fear is around the corner as rising costs and challenging times for the economy mean that their income may soon no longer cover their essential spending. 

The cost of living crisis already has many people resorting to measures that mitigate their situation. A quarter (25%) of those defined as ‘only just managing’ have sold possessions to make money and 27% have used their savings to cover living expenses.

Meanwhile, findings suggest that one in five (19%) people ‘only just managing’ expect to skip meals or make use of a food bank in the future, and one in ten (12%) expect to miss a rent or mortgage payment as their financial situation worsens. A third (31%) also believe they will need to use credit cards more frequently, whilst one in five (20%) expect to make greater use of deferred payment options in the future.

Brits trying their best to budget

Many Brits may be worried about how to get through the coming months, but findings suggest they’re doing what they can to proactively manage their finances. Almost three in four (72%) of those considered ‘only just managing’ believe they have a clear view of their finances, and two-thirds (65%) say they try to keep on top of their expenditure but struggle to keep up with constant price increases.

However, the findings show that many are not able to make the most of the digital tools that could help them. Almost half (48%) of the ‘only just managing’ say they are using basic online banking tools, suggesting banks have an opportunity to educate people about more sophisticated digital tools to help them budget better. 

Meanwhile, one in four (24%) of the ‘only just managing’ still prefer to manage their finances manually. Here, banks can find ways to support these customers and build their confidence in transitioning to managing their finances digitally, while highlighting the benefits of personalised financial tools.

Banks: the opportunities and expectations

There is a clear appetite among consumers for products, services and tools that will help them improve their finances, as over half (55%) of those ‘only just managing’ agree banks should provide financial support to customers during the cost of living crisis.

For instance, over one in five (22%) of those ‘only just managing’ would like their bank to actively show them which providers have better deals and where savings can be made. A similar amount (22%) would also like their financial providers to suggest where they could be spending less each month.

With the UK’s Current Account Switching Service (CASS) reporting a record quarter for bank account switching, it’s clear more people than ever are willing to move their money for a better deal. The current economic context provides both an opportunity and a challenge for banks. Tink’s research reveals over a third (35%) of those ‘only just managing’ would switch banks to one that provided them with tailored financial support, and a further 44% would jump ship to a bank that provided recommendations on where they could save on spending

Tasha Chouhan, UK & IE Banking Lead at Tink, commented on the research: “There is a clear opportunity to offer more support to struggling Brits as we deal with the biggest drop in income witnessed for decades. With the success of open banking, banks are today in the best possible position to embrace data-driven technology to develop tailored support, tools and communications. This will enable people to better manage their finances during difficult economic times, while improving customer engagement and shoring up long-term loyalty.”

Corserv, a company that empowers banks and fintechs with payment card issuing programs, announced that Anil Goyal has been appointed as the new CEO of the company. Former CEO, Jerry Craft will now serve as Chairman of Corserv and will continue to be actively involved in strategic decision-making and leadership for the company.

Goyal co-founded Corserv in 2009 with Craft and others. He was named President of the company in 2020. He will work closely with the management team to drive the company’s strategy to be a leading provider of advanced card issuing technology and services to financial institutions and fintechs. He has deep expertise in the payment card industry across multiple areas. Alongside Goyal, Corserv’s management team members have vast experience in the industry and have been in top leadership positions in banking, processing, payment technology and program management.

Goyal previously held senior management positions at top credit card issuers, including Bank of America and Citibank, and provided strategic and analytic consulting services to American Express. Goyal also managed SunTrust Bank’s credit card program that was launched by First National Bank of Omaha. Goyal earned a Ph.D. in Decision Sciences and M.S. in Operations Research from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as well as a B.Tech. (Honors) from the Indian Institute of Technology.

“Our vision is to provide a best-in-class payment card issuing platform with end-to-end digital capabilities from processing, compliance, servicing and analytics. With deep expertise of our team and our impressive growth to date, we are well on our way to achieve that vision,” said Goyal. “I’m thrilled and honored to be working alongside the most capable team in the industry to offer innovative payment card issuing technology and program management to our clients.”

“Anil Goyal has been dedicated to Corserv and committed to providing forward-thinking, payment-issuing solutions for financial institutions and fintechs,” said Jerry Craft, Chairman of Corserv. “I’m confident that Anil will excel in this role and I’m excited to see what the future holds for Corserv under Anil's leadership.”

Corserv’s priority is to continue to invest in technology to build new and innovative solutions to provide the best customer experience for evolving needs of its clients. The company provides successful credit card issuing programs to financial institutions and fintechs. Corserv’s payment card solutions are designed to improve every step of the payment card issuing process.

Cohesity has announced the 7.0 software release of Cohesity Data Cloud. The release provides customers with enhanced cyber resiliency capabilities to help protect and secure data against cyberattacks. 

Cohesity is announcing its 7.0 software release as cyberattacks continue to become more sophisticated in nature and customers require a comprehensive cyber resilience strategy to ensure their business stays up and running. Organisations are seeking to improve their data security and management posture by focusing on a data-centric approach to cyber resilience, including data immutability, data isolation (or cyber vaulting), and near-instant recovery at scale. Cohesity addresses the challenges of today’s threat landscape and the need to recover rapidly and confidently.

With Cohesity 7.0, organisations can strengthen cyber resilience by: 

• Hardening privileged access: Hardened access controls for Cohesity Data Cloud enables even tighter control and management of privileged administrative accounts and protection of access credentials. These controls further increase the difficulty of threat actors tampering with backup data. New innovative differentiators, like split key capabilities, require multiple people to authenticate for some privileged access to administrative controls. No single administrator has the ability to unilaterally issue privileged commands, thereby helping to protect data from malicious threat actors.

• Accelerating ransomware recovery for files and objects: Cohesity, which provides unified file and object services on its platform, is also advancing cyber resilience capabilities with Cohesity SmartFiles. New powerful data lifecycle features are designed to reduce the attack surface for data exfiltration by ensuring data is not retained for longer than necessary, and custom security policies help further secure unstructured data from unauthorised access and attacks. This new release will also introduce new capabilities for analysing and visualising data utilisation on third party NAS systems. These data insights will help enterprise organisations move data to SmartFiles for secure long-term retention and data immutability, while optimising costs, scale, and performance for their most critical applications.

• Reducing attack surface through expanded platform and workload support: To help organisations further reduce their attack surface by consolidating multiple point products, 7.0 adds support for AWS GovCloud for target data and metadata protection. Additional storage targets for long-term retention, and support for local backup on third-party platforms including Lenovo SR645, HPE DL360 and DL380, Cisco UCS C220M6 AFC and C240 M6, and Dell 740XD for private cloud deployments.

“Organisations are facing significant challenges with managing and securing their data estate across cloud and on-premises, with ransomware and data theft as their number one concern. Protecting and securing data starts before an attack and provides organisations with the ability to mitigate damage from an attack and quickly recover, with minimal impact to the business.” said Chris Kent, vice president, Product and Solutions Marketing, Cohesity. “Cohesity Data Cloud 7.0 adds a new layer of protection and recovery to organisations’ most critical data. We are seeing continual threats facing our customers from external and internal malicious actors, and with these latest enhancements, customers can face these challenges from the start.”

As data volumes rapidly grow, simplicity and efficiency in managing, protecting, and recovering unstructured and disparate data can help enable faster recovery from outages and malicious attacks. Extended coverage allows organisations to simplify data resiliency with a platform that scales to support their diverse heterogeneous environments.

“As the threat of cyber attack persists, one of our top priorities at Path Forward IT is upleveling our cyber resilience and assurance to ensure our data and systems are well-guarded against threats like ransomware,” said Adam Brock, senior director, Backup and Recovery at Path Forward IT. “Cohesity 7.0 will help us bridge end-to-end protection with capabilities that allow for rapid recovery and business continuity so our customers can resume business as usual in the event of cyber attack.”

“Companies are looking for simple and effective ways to improve data security and support cyber resilience goals. Given the rapid increase in the number of crippling ransomware attacks, it’s imperative that enterprises not only have strong protection against external threats, but also prioritize internal vulnerabilities as well,” said Senior Strategist and Analyst, Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group “With Cohesity’s 7.0 software release, Cohesity’s split key and KMS auto-failover capabilities are some of the many cyber resilience solutions Cohesity is adding to its portfolio to provide its customers and partners with a comprehensive strategy to protect data against cyberattacks.”