SEBA Bank AG, a leading crypto bank in Switzerland having a suite of fully regulated banking services, officially opened its Hong Kong office for its subsidiary, SEBA (Hong Kong) Limited (“SEBA Hong Kong”).

SEBA Bank has a strong conviction for Hong Kong to become its first strategic location in APAC through its subsidiary. With the growing demand in APAC for crypto, Hong Kong has a supportive crypto licensing framework that provides a valuable base to capture the business potential in the region. SEBA Hong Kong’s initial activities will focus on consultancy services and market research, as well as engaging strategic partners for its head office in Switzerland.

Franz Bergmueller, CEO of SEBA Bank, commented, “We are proud to strengthen our presence in the APAC market with the opening of the new office of SEBA Hong Kong. With a considerable pedigree as an international financial centre, as well as a supportive regulatory approach to cryptocurrencies, Hong Kong is cementing its position as a global leader in cryptocurrencies. This office, and our deeply talented SEBA Hong Kong executive team, led by our managing director Ludovic Shum, provides a valuable strategic base that will enable us to cater effectively to the rapidly growing demand for crypto in the APAC region.”

SEBA Bank is a leading crypto bank. From its global headquarter in Switzerland, SEBA Bank provides a suite of fully regulated banking and investment services, including trading, structured products, bank accounts, cards, credit, staking, and crypto and NFT custody. SEBA Bank’s stringent security and deposit protection policy make it a secure, transparent and trusted crypto custodian in Switzerland. Client assets are held securely in segregated accounts, off the balance sheet, ensuring that assets are always available for client withdrawal.

Ludovic Shum, Managing Director at SEBA Hong Kong, commented, “The opening of our Hong Kong office is critical to our ambition in the region. By strengthening our presence in a key international financial centre, we are proud to form part of the crypto ecosystem and to contribute towards the development of the virtual/digital assets space in Hong Kong and the region.”

Open banking provider Yapily has teamed up with the embedded insurance platform Certua to make it easier, quicker, and cheaper for people to apply for and manage their life insurance coverage in the UK.

Despite rising levels of financial vulnerability and the need for a safety net, a significant life insurance protection gap exists in the UK. In a 2020 Financial Lives survey by the FCA, over half of the people (53%) admitted to not having any protection products in place.

Together, Certua and Yapily are making it easier for people to access life insurance coverage that is suited to their needs, reduce time spent on admin during the risk assessment process, and save money by ensuring individuals aren’t under or over-insured.

Using Yapily’s platform, with the customer’s consent Certua can fetch individual bank account information such as annual income and expenses to automatically assess a person’s financial position. Certua then feeds this information into its open banking-powered cover calculator to provide more accurate and personalised insurance policy recommendations. Individuals can receive point-in-time recommendations in minutes, without having to engage with lengthy data-gathering and advice processes when applying for life insurance coverage.

Helped by the FCA’s recent amendment to open banking’s 90-day consent rule, Yapily is also enabling Certua to continuously monitor and assess every customers’ protection needs throughout their lifetime. This ensures that coverage can be adapted to meet an individual’s changing circumstances, with many people that do have coverage currently stuck on rigid fixed benefit and fixed-term products.

Certua is also working with Yapily to explore the use of open banking data in underwriting, eliminating burdensome administrative tasks when it comes to referrals, saving insurance companies both time and money. The partnership will see an exciting roadmap of solutions added as both partners continue to expand their product suites.

Luke Bewley, Founding team and Director of Growth, Certua, commented:
“There is a colossal market failure in the life insurance industry today. Certua are investing in and working hard to develop embedded solutions which improve the model for the entire value chain, most importantly the end customer. Yapily enables us to dramatically innovate in the life insurance space and we are excited to see the impact of this on businesses and consumers together, now and in the future.”

Stefano Vaccino, Founder and CEO, Yapily, added: “Embedded insurance and open banking: two disruptive movements that, together, have the power to make financial services better, simpler, and more accessible for millions of people. It’s exciting to be working with Certua in this space and accelerating towards an open economy that works for everyone. I look forward to watching our partnership grow and enabling Certua to deliver the power of open banking to its customers.”

nCino, a pioneer in cloud banking and digital transformation solutions for the global financial services industry, today announced that it has appointed William (Bill) Spruill to its Board of Directors.

"Bill is a dynamic and entrepreneurial executive and we are proud to welcome him to the nCino board," said Pierre Naudé, Chairman and CEO of nCino. "As one of North Carolina’s most prominent tech founders with deep data expertise and a strong background in enterprise software, Bill’s experience and perspective will be invaluable to nCino as we continue to scale globally."

Spruill is the co-founder and former CEO of Global Data Consortium (GDC), a leading provider and industry expert in global electronic identity verification. During his tenure as CEO, he oversaw the formation of more than 50 enterprise channel relationships and established a cohort of more than 120 data suppliers creating a unique and successful consortium business model to deliver high-quality identity data in near real-time for over 70 countries. Earlier this year, GDC was acquired by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) for $300 million making it one of the largest minority founder exits in the enterprise technology sector in U.S. history.

Spruill joins Pam Kilday, former head of operations of Truist Financial; Steven Collins, former EVP & CFO of ExactTarget; Jon Doyle, member of the board of directors of, and current vice chairman, senior managing principal and head of the financial services group at, Piper Sandler; Jeffrey Horing, managing director at Insight Partners; William Ruh, president of Cairn Capital Management; Spencer Lake, former vice chairman of global banking and markets at HSBC; and Pierre Naudé, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of nCino, on nCino's Board of Directors.

Thought Machine, the cloud-native banking technology company, today announces it is powering Trust Bank, the first of Singapore’s cloud-native digital banks. Trust is a rapidly growing digital-only bank with an exceptional user experience built in the cloud.

Leveraging Thought Machine’s technology, Trust has designed a world-class solution with an intuitive customer experience combining best-in-market rewards with a suite of products. At launch, this includes a credit card, savings account and family personal accident insurance.

Using Vault Core, Thought Machine’s core banking platform, Trust scaled rapidly following its launch on 1 September 2022. The bank acquired 100,000 customers in its first 10 days and its community grew to more than 300,000 customers within its first two months. The flexibility of Vault Core supports this rapid scaling and will enable Trust to build further products and features quickly while leveraging real-time data and analytics.

Vault Core is a highly configurable platform – uniquely positioned to support large-scale banks undertaking core transformation, and for smaller banks and fintechs launching new propositions to the market.

Rajay Rai, Chief Information Officer, Trust Bank, says: “We have been working collaboratively with Thought Machine to test, deploy and deliver a transparent banking service which we are truly proud of. Vault Core is the foundational platform for us to build and grow the first of Singapore’s new wave of digital banks. We look forward to building on our joint success and delivering even greater levels of customer experience and innovation.”

Nick Wilde, Managing Director of Asia Pacific, Thought Machine, says: “We are proud to be working on this exciting new project with Trust Bank. Trust has already delivered a compelling proposition to the market, and we’re excited to work alongside its team to expand and grow the service further. It’s clear that Trust, powered by Thought Machine technology, has the vision and ambition needed to create a digital bank that greatly enhances Singapore’s banking landscape – and gains huge market share.”

Thought Machine’s client list now includes Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered Bank, Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia, HD Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, Lunar, and Atom bank, among others around the world. The company has raised more than $500m in funding and has headquarters in London, with regional headquarters in Singapore, New York and Sydney.

Investment management firm JM Finn has slimmed down its data centre infrastructure from twenty-four to just six equipment racks by migrating legacy datacentres to the Nutanix Cloud Platform. The migration has resulted in an impressive 75% reduction with major implications for both power and cooling requirements as well as the company’s long-term carbon footprint.

Since its inception in 1946, the investment management company has grown steadily to boast both a multi-billion pound investment portfolio and an enviable reputation for individual client-focused financial investment services recognised as amongst the best in the world. With a clear focus on the provision of high-quality investment management services to a diverse client base, JM Finn was keen to embrace cloud computing as part of its transformation plans to make the company’s IT more agile, cost effective and easier to manage.

Choosing a suitable platform was relatively straightforward as JM Finn had previously used the Nutanix Cloud Platform to, first, replace a key legacy storage resource then rapidly host a company-wide EUC application to support working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic. The solution offered hypervisor neutrality which meant JM Finn had the option to simply migrate most of its existing VMware VMs rather than immediately switch everything over to the AHV hypervisor.

Commenting on the migration, Jon Cosson, Head of IT and CISO, JM Finn, said: “Having successfully switched a workforce of over 300 onto remote working in under a week we knew just what the Nutanix Cloud Platform was capable of doing and how easy it was to manage. Over just two weekends we relocated both our primary and secondary datacentres, but that’s not all. By migrating all of our legacy servers and applications to the Nutanix Cloud Platform we were able to reduce the overall rack footprint by 75% and realise tangible benefits in terms of operational costs and environmental impact.”

Following an extensive needs analysis, Cosson and the team came up with a design which has enabled JM Finn to slim down its data centre infrastructure from twenty-four to just six equipment racks. Performance gains have been widely reported and running costs significantly lowered, which has enabled JM Finn to halve the number of staff needed to support the new infrastructure with those displaced moved into other roles to find ways of better exploiting the new technology.

The required equipment was quickly ordered and installed first in a brand new primary datacentre in Suffolk then at a secondary site in Hampshire to provide additional backup and disaster recovery capabilities. Once working, migration was scheduled to take place over successive bank holiday weekends to mitigate against any disruption although, in practice the process proved trouble-free.

“It all went remarkably smoothly,” commented Cosson. “There was no loss of service and no complaints which have to be a first for a project like this which could, so easily, have gone off the rails and caused real headaches for the business. It’s hats off to Nutanix and its partners for making it so seamless and we’re very pleased with the results and the high level of support both during and after the process.”

Looking ahead, JM Finn plans to take full advantage of the company’s new private cloud to further drive down operational costs and maximise the value of the company’s investment. Alongside ongoing work to identify workloads suitable for moving to the Nutanix AHV hypervisor several projects are planned, including the migration of legacy IBM systems over the next few months.