CQG, a leading global provider of high-performance technology solutions for market makers, traders, brokers, commercial hedgers and exchanges, and NUTS Finance, a blockchain development lab, announced today that they have just launched “Optio Research,” a state-of-the-art Web3-based innovation lab focused on developing decentralized cryptocurrency infrastructure and trading solutions for institutional investors. The initiative is the product of a joint strategic investment by CQG and NUTS Finance, designed to bridge the worlds of traditional finance (TradFi) and the fast-growing decentralized finance (DeFi) space, and leverage the expertise and technology both firms and their executives bring to bear.

Leading the newly established Optio are CQG executives Kevin Darby and Benjamin Soong, along with NUTS Finance co-founders Terry Lam and Daniel Tang. CQG CEO Ryan Moroney serves as a strategic advisor and member of the Optio Board of Directors.

Moroney said: “We’re truly excited about the launch of Optio. Positioning ourselves at the forefront of financial technology development has always been an integral part of CQG’s mission, and the company has been carefully cultivating an expansion strategy to serve the growing demand for cryptocurrency as a new asset class for our existing and prospective clients. As more institutional clients move toward Web3 blockchain-driven technology, Optio gives CQG the opportunity to accelerate our footprint and play a leading role in the fast-growing digital asset space. We have worked closely with Terry and Daniel over the past several years and have the utmost confidence in the combined team’s expertise and execution ability to quickly establish Optio Research not only as a hallmark name in DeFi and Web3 but as a reliable partner to the institutional investor community.” 

Lam said: “Over the last few years, we have seen the crypto marketplace develop rapidly. However, it is evident that the workflow and infrastructure for institutional investors are still at a nascent stage. Through Optio, our partnership with CQG and collective experience in derivatives trading technology and Web3 development give us the opportunity to be market leaders in developing a range of solutions that will not only improve the current user experience but also act as a catalyst to accelerate adoption into this emerging asset class by traditional financial institutions.”

Optio Research’s first major project will be announced in the coming weeks.

NICE Actimize, a NICE business, today announced that its AI and cloud-based Essentials anti-money laundering and anti-fraud solutions have been chosen by Target Group, a UK-based provider of business process outsourcing and operational transformation services. Target Group’s objectives include protecting its customers with best-in-class financial crime and compliance technology and services, while benefiting from the operational efficiencies that artificial intelligence and cloud-based solutions offer.

Target Group will also utilize NICE Actimize’s X-Sight Data IQ Clarify Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) workflow solution to facilitate compliance with KYC/Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements by integrating disparate datasets and streamlining the customer identification, due diligence and credit investigation process. X-Sight DataIQ Clarify intelligently orchestrates the aggregation of data from a comprehensive variety of global data sources, returning the intelligence needed to enrich customer profiles.

Leveraging the insights and experience gained from supporting the world's largest financial institutions, NICE Actimize’s Essentials is a cost-effective, easily scalable SaaS platform. NICE Actimize Fraud Essentials, a cloud-based offering that provides industry-leading end-to-end fraud management capabilities, offers real-time fraud detection, cross-channel analysis, and multi-payment coverage, as well as extensive fraud alert and case management capabilities. Fraud Essentials is built to deliver a complete robust suite of fraud operations tools to help detect fraud perpetrated against multiple payment and transaction types.

Target Group will also utilize NICE Actimize’s AML Essentials, a cloud-based offering that is built upon its proven, industry-leading, end-to-end anti-money laundering platform. Target’s Essential AML coverage will include Suspicious Activity Monitoring, Customer Due Diligence, and Watchlist Screening capabilities.

“Target Group will be onboarding our financial institution customer portfolios to the NICE Actimize platform across the entire AML and Fraud customer life cycle to prevent and detect financial crime at each stage of the product lifecycle – during origination, in-life servicing and through to maturity,” said Bethan Rich, Head of Financial Crime, Target Group. “NICE Actimize stood out as the only provider, within a highly competitive RFP process, that could deliver an integrated AML and Fraud management platform with the sophistication and flexibility to meet Target Group’s requirements.”

“NICE Actimize’s cloud and AI-based Essentials and DataIQ capabilities will deliver exceptional performance in support of Target Group’s financial crime requirements,” said Craig Costigan, CEO, NICE Actimize. “By offering a combination of best-in-class technology, managed services and financial crime professional support, NICE Actimize will endeavour to meet Target’s objectives while keeping its customers safe.”

NICE Actimize will also provide an all-inclusive service to Target Group in the cloud with ongoing support for tuning, testing, and system health checks as well as onboarding new client portfolios as Target Group acquires new clients.

Paylink Solutions has announced Ammer Malik as its new Head of Business Development.

Ammer, who has more than 21 years of experience working in the credit and debt sectors, building, leading and maintaining strategic relationships, will help deliver Paylink’s new business development strategy.

Ammer joins Paylink following 14 years at StepChange Debt Charity and the Financial Wellness Group, working across a variety of markets and sectors with the objective of driving awareness and engagement with debt advice services.

Paylink’s Director of Development and Partnerships, Andrew Alder, said: “Ammer boasts a solid understanding of the credit industry and debt management sector.

“He has significant experience of business, product and service development, and we’re delighted to have him onboard.”

Alveo, a leading provider of cloud-based market data management services, has announced the extension of its data operations solution Ops360 including standard integration with QuantLib for advanced analytics.

With the new functionality, any appropriately permissioned business user can simply drag and drop input data sets into functions and set parameters to derive data and kick off the calculation of curves and risk factors. No coding is needed and the process is interactive. Users can add sources, tweak parameters before promoting a given calculation to production and anchoring it in an operational workflow in, for instance, financial modelling, valuation, product control, margin calculation or market risk management.

The capability comes with Alveo’s standard benefits including full transparency into the underlying sources of risk factors, the management of different families of interest rate curve drawing from different baskets of bonds; and the capability to quickly set up proprietary calculations.

Neil Sandle, Head of Product Management Alveo, said “the release of our new, interactive no-code curve building capability follows customer demand. New financial risk factors, changing input sets and calculation parameters but also broader market trends such as benchmark changes require a capability to easily maintain derived data sets such as curves and surfaces.

“The capability to quickly set up and prototype and do ‘what if’ analysis on risk factor creation, using different market data sources, or input sets, against either standard libraries, such as QuantLib, or customer’s own libraries in Python, or other languages, is a major business enabler” he added. 

Mark Hepsworth, CEO Alveo, said “this functionality shows our blend of ultimate flexibility to end users with the rigour and industrial scale of an enterprise solution. Customers can set-up, prototype and manage different sets of derived data sets for different purposes and, using Alveo’s permissions and data governance, easily share those with the wider organisation and include them in business operations. Whether clients use our solution on-prem, in private cloud or via our Data-as-a-Service, Ops360 puts the business user in control”.

Encouraging the meeting, collaboration, and sharing of different experiences between European and African innovative ecosystems to take part in developing new projects and strategic partnerships is the goal of the "AfriConEU Brokerage Event". An initiative promoted by dpixel, the venture incubator of the Sella group, together with AfriConEU, which will take place in Bologna on 2 and 3 November to connect the Digital Innovation Hubs of Europe and Africa and put them in contact with experts, investors, startups, public and private sector companies, academia and institutions.

European and African innovation ecosystems are rapidly spreading and digital innovation hubs are the first drivers of this progressive evolution. Today there are more than 600 Digital Innovation Hubs in the Old Continent that explore multiple industrial sectors, with a strong focus also on sustainability aspects, and as many are estimated in the African continent.

The AfriConEU project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme for Research and Innovation, aims to create the first trans-continental networking academy to support African and European Digital Innovation Hubs for skills development, knowledge sharing and implementation of strategic initiatives through collaboration and growth of new businesses.

The AfriConEU Brokerage Event will host over 200 innovators from 8 countries (Italy, UK, Portugal, Greece, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana and Tanzania) who will meet in Bologna, at BIGBO – the Boost Innovation Garage of Fondazione Carisbo, to strengthen the synergies between the two continents on four major areas of intervention: Agritech, Edtech, Fintech and Technology for Development.

In parallel, the Worldcafe Tables are also planned, a series of live-streaming meetings organized by African digital innovation hubs in which specific issues related to regional ecosystems will be explored.

Neo, the treasury management, payments and FX fintech, has cleared $5 billion through its multi-currency accounts as cross-border payment volumes increase globally. The provider launched its multi-currency account offering for treasurers in June 2020 and cleared $4 billion in the past year. This compares to $1 billion in its first 15 months, reflecting growing demand from clients for a fast, cost-effective and transparent alternative to the traditional banking model.

Three-fifths (58%) of SMEs say they are sending and receiving more cross-border payments now than before the pandemic, according to a recent borderless payments report from Mastercard. 39% said cross-border payments slow down supply chains and 36% said there was no transparency about how much money they lose in foreign exchange and transfers.

The report highlights the persistent problems businesses face when paying suppliers in different countries. The challenge is that working with traditional banks involves limited and incomplete payment information, making it difficult to reconcile payments and delaying the shipment of goods. The high level of fees applied by banks to those payments also hurts SMEs’ competitiveness.

Neo offers a single platform where treasurers can gather all currencies and access their information in one location. Businesses can set up an international account with their own multi-currency International Bank Account Number (IBAN), enabling them to manage cash flows and view trading data, all in one place. Virtual wallets then allow them to organise funds and make and receive payments in more than 30 currencies – all with transparent and competitive pricing.

Neo now works with more than 300 corporates across 28 countries and more than 5,000 banks are connected to its Bank Identification Code (BIC) on the SWIFT network.

Laurent Descout, CEO and Co-Founder of Neo, comments: “We’ve seen a rapid acceleration of volumes in the last 12 months and, in part, this reflects a very notable increase in demand for borderless payments across the market. However, a large portion of our growth is from existing clients and what we’re seeing is businesses experiencing the benefits of moving away from the traditional banking model. It has long been a complex, opaque and often costly process and in order to facilitate the rise in payments, businesses are buying into a more streamlined, integrated approach that can deliver significant cost savings.”

Finsmart is delighted to announce the appointment of Jean-Marc Mercier as Senior Board Advisor.

Jean-Marc recently concluded his 26-year tenure at HSBC, where he was initially responsible for a number of European Syndicate roles before becoming Global Head of Syndicate and then Global Co-Head of Debt Capital Markets. Responsible for the firm’s global franchise, he was involved in numerous debt issuances and other high-profile transactions across the globe and across a variety of issuers and products. His most recent role was Vice Chairman, Capital Markets, where he focused on selected high-value clients and geographies in addition to leading HSBC's Capital Markets Technology strategy globally.

Jean-Marc was a Board member of the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) for 5 years, and its Deputy Chair from May 2018 to July 2022.

Commenting on the appointment, Guillaume Petitgas, CCO, Finsmart, said: “Jean-Marc provides a valuable addition to the Finsmart Advisory Team. The breadth and depth of Jean-Marc’s Capital Markets experience is second to none. He is a real asset to the team as we continue to grow our business.”

Jean-Marc Mercier said: “Primary Capital Markets need effective digital solutions. Finsmart is delivering worthwhile change for bookrunners and issuers, with a technology that really solves a problem. I am delighted to be part of this exciting journey”.

nCino, Inc., a pioneer in cloud banking and digital transformation solutions for the global financial services industry, today announced its partnership with Ashman Bank, a new entrant bank with plans to transform the banking experience for UK property SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), a £90bn^[1] market opportunity. Ashman Bank, which was awarded the UK’s first new banking licence in 2022, has selected nCino’s Bank Operating System^® as its foundational technology for its life cycle property finance solution, from refurbishment right through to development and investment.

Through its digital-first and cloud-based approach to commercial real estate lending, Ashman Bank aims to drive change in an industry where over four-fifths (84%) of SMEs are frustrated by slow decision-making and inflexible credit offerings. By implementing nCino, Ashman Bank will offer products and services that provide the know-how and incentives to create the sustainable properties and practices of tomorrow and make it easier for SMEs to access the right financing for their needs, delivered with speed, automation, and personalisation.

“Partnering with nCino takes us one step closer to being able to transform the banking experience for property SMEs,” Caroline Luxmore, Chief Commercial Officer at Ashman Bank added. “nCino gives us the best and most efficient platform for us to realise our ambitions as a digital-first bank, and we believe that together we can create a meaningful change in the UK real estate market.”

“Ashman Bank is an ambitious new entrant that will provide real estate lending for conscientious businesses in the UK. It is bringing an innovative approach to commercial real estate, and nCino can help the Ashman team execute, grow and adapt as the bank expands,” said Charlie McIver, Managing Director, EMEA at nCino. “We’re proud to be playing a role in Ashman’s launch.”

Ashman plans to launch early in 2023. The senior leadership team boasts extensive experience in the financial services sector, with previous roles across Barclays, HSBC, RBS, Aldermore, Monzo, and Capital One. Its launch builds on the established record of UK new entrant banks, with innovative technology and customer experience at the forefront of all operations.

Ten new members have joined the 2025 Fintech Pledge (pledge2025.org) to help tackle the UK’s cost-of-living crisis. 

They add their capabilities to those of a coalition of UK fintechs and their industry partners who have teamed up to help Britons across the country combat the rising cost of living. 

The 10 new members are (alphabetically):

• Rent reporting platform CreditLadder
• Google Cloud 
• Savings platform Hargreaves Lansdown
• Digital mortgage platform Koodoo
• Financial wellbeing business LOQBOX
• Home deposit builder app Nude 
• Money-saving app Snoop
• Digital savings platform StepLadder
• Digital greener bank Tandem Bank
• The Money Charity

Launched by founding members Zopa Bank and ClearScore in September 2022, the pledge aims to drive 10 million consumer actions by 2025 that build up the financial resilience of UK consumers.

It will achieve this by connecting people to platforms that make savings work harder, improve credit scores, consolidate debt, and lower utility bills.

Today’s expansion also sees The Money Charity coming on board as the pledge's lead Charity Partner. They will co-design and deliver an ambitious programme of their Financial Wellbeing and Financial Education Workshops for people of all ages, reaching those worried about the impact of the fast-changing financial environment. 

Each year, The Money Charity reaches 30,000 people directly through their workshops and webinars, plus many thousands more through their resources, tools and website.

Jaidev Janardana, CEO at Zopa Bank said: “With the UK facing an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis, households need to use every tool at their disposal to build long-term financial resilience. This industry pledge – the first of its kind – will unite a wide variety of companies in one goal of driving positive financial actions for millions living in the UK. We’re delighted to be working with a growing coalition of UK fintechs, their partners, and charities as we begin this journey.” 

Michelle Highman, Chief Executive of The Money Charity, said: "We're pleased to be joining the 2025 Fintech Pledge. For over 25 years, The Money Charity has been helping people of all ages across the UK to increase their financial wellbeing; growing their abilities in managing their money well and their confidence in making the right financial choices for themselves and their families. We're glad to be joining the Pledge as its charity partner and are encouraged to work together with these innovative companies that share our vision of increased financial wellbeing and financial resilience in the years to come. We look forward to their support helping us take our direct delivery further."

Janine Hirt, CEO of Innovate Finance added: “We’re pleased to see UK FinTechs partnering with financial institutions to help Britons through the cost-of-living crisis. It is imperative that the FinTech ecosystem works together to address these issues head on and secure a better future for consumers everywhere. The 2025 Fintech Pledge is a very positive step towards improving financial wellness and inclusion for all."

With one in four adults in financial trouble or at the brink of difficulty (FCA, Oct 2022), the pledge’s ambition is to support circa 20% of the UK population that has been or may be affected by the cost-of-living crisis. 

Progress towards reaching the goal will be reported monthly in a joint dashboard and on the pledge’s landing page.