Digital brokerage, GCEX (GCEX Group) announces 24/7 FX trading for institutional and professional clients. This mirrors its digital assets offering, which provides 24/7 crypto trading.

Lars Holst, CEO, GCEX explains, “This is a significant announcement and another example of how GCEX is pushing boundaries and leading the way. It is the industry norm for FX shops to be closed at the weekend but we believe this will change and that money should be moving during the weekend, too.”

“Adapting our offering to 24/7 FX trading has been relatively simple as we are already open all hours for crypto trading and are used to providing high levels of service at weekends. I think most of the demand for this will be from payment providers. If people are using credit cards at the weekend, for example, why should the payment providers have to wait until Monday morning to settle the transactions?”

GCEX is regulated by the FCA in the UK and the FSA in Denmark, and recently announced provisional regulatory approval by the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority in Dubai (VARA) to operate as a crypto exchange.

Founded in 2018, GCEX provides a best-of-breed digital asset and FX platform, with partnerships with Tier 1 and trusted liquidity providers, lending counterparties and digital custody institutions. The firm’s ground-breaking innovation comes from integrating all the components, resulting in far more than the sum of its parts. GCEX offers a wide range of products and technology solutions including White Labels.

iwoca, one of Europe’s largest small business lenders, is today announcing that it is more than doubling the maximum size of its core lending product, Flexi-Loan, allowing small business owners to access up to £500,000. The lender is evolving its most popular product, previously capped at £200,000, to meet the growing appetite for high-value loans in the small business sector. 

Demand for larger loans grows    

The decision to increase the loan cap follows iwoca seeing current and new customers applying for higher value loans through COVID-19 government loan schemes: the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) and the Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS). 

In addition, the lender's most recent SME Expert Index, a quarterly survey of UK brokers, showed that demand for loans over £200,000 increased compared with last year, rising by 8 percentage points between Q2 2021 and Q1 2022.

Larger loans will help iwoca cater to the concerns of more small businesses 

The increased loan size allows iwoca to cater for the needs of more small businesses, offering them the opportunity to access finance which meets their individual needs, with some looking to invest for the future and others looking to manage their cash flow in the current challenging economic environment. 

The Q1 2022 SME Expert Index found growing their business was the most common loan purpose for small businesses (43%), followed by ‘managing day-to-day cash flow’ (31%) and ‘bridging occasional cash flow gaps’ (10%). 

Fast access to finance

From today, small businesses will be able to borrow between £1,000 and £500,000, over a period of one day to two years with iwoca’s flexible business loans. With a rapid application process, small businesses will be able to apply for a loan in just five minutes, with money landing in their bank account within 24 hours, in many cases.

Christoph Rieche, Co-Founder and CEO of iwoca, said: “All of our customers and partners tell us that they love the fast decisions we offer them; for amounts of £250,000 we make firm offers in less than a day. However, larger small and medium-sized businesses also told us that our maximum loan amounts were too low for them to be relevant and therefore I am delighted that from today we’ll be upping them to £500,000.

“With loans up to £500,000 we now cover an ever larger portion of the SME market. We serve the smallest micro-business that just got started all the way to established medium-sized enterprises - regardless of which industry they operate. I am proud that we’ve already helped more than 70,000 businesses to access finance over the last 10 years, and we won’t stop innovating to serve them better in the future.”

iwoca was accredited to the Recovery Loan Scheme, having distributed nearly £400 million to small businesses through the Government's Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS). In June 2020 the lender launched iwocaPay – an online buy now pay later invoice checkout to help small businesses get paid. iwoca is reaching 1.8 million businesses across the UK and Germany through its embedded lending technology, which allows businesses to access loans through a range of platforms such as accountancy software apps and digital neo-banks. The company has also recently launched free mental health support for all small businesses in the UK, in partnership with online therapy platform Spill.

AQRU plc, an incubator specialising in decentralised finance (DeFi), announces today that its wholly owned subsidiary, Accru Finance Ltd., has entered into a partnership with Sweden’s paramount crypto company Quickbit eu AB (publ), to bring its yield-generating products to a wider audience. 

Quickbit is Sweden’s leading crypto company, which is dedicated to increasingly integrating cryptocurrency into people’s lives. The company has launched the Quickbit Card, an innovative cryptocurrency debit card that allows everyday purchases to be made with cryptocurrency; and the Quickbit App, which allows the buying, selling and storing of eight cryptocurrencies including BTC, ETH, USDC and ADA, as well as allowing customers to generate returns on their held crypto. 

Accru Finance’s yield-as-a-service API has been seamlessly integrated into the Quickbit App, bringing its customers Accru Finance’s impressive returns from its DeFi products. This partnership continues Accru Finance’s mission to allow retail investors to take advantage of all the opportunities in DeFi. By offering its products to Quickbit’s customers, Accru Finance intends to expand access to its DeFi ecosystem and offer its competitive DeFi yields to an increased customer base. 

Commenting on the partnership, Digby Try, co-founder of AQRU said: “The partnership with Quickbit is a significant milestone for us in our mission to strip the complexity from the crypto universe. We set out to make building a balanced crypto portfolio a reality for all investors and being able to benefit from curated high-yield opportunities is a major part of this. Our partnership with Quickbit enables us to share that vision with a wider audience and continue our path to achieving that goal.” 

Hammad Abuseifan, CEO at Quickbit, said: “Through this partnership with AQRU, we are able to offer our Quickbit App users a DeFi solution that creates more value throughout our ecosystem of crypto products. Our mission to simplify the use of crypto and integrate it into the everyday lives of people by offering safe and easy-to-use products is well in line with the values of AQRU.” 

FNZ, the global wealth management platform, has acquired New Access, a specialized private banking technology firm primarily active in the markets of Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. These markets are key to serving and administering client wealth globally and will support FNZ in delivering on its promise to open up wealth and serve the US$240 trillion global wealth market.

The strategic acquisition of New Access represents a further investment by FNZ into the growing private banking and cross-border wealth sector after a number of customer successes and the acquisition of the Swiss tech innovator Appway in February 2022.

Private banks are under significant pressure to adapt and scale offerings to their existing and new clients but are often constrained by legacy technology, complex delivery models and new regulatory requirements. FNZ is transforming the industry landscape with its full-service, end-to-end wealth platform. Combining cutting-edge technology, infrastructure and investment operations into a single state-of-the-art platform, FNZ enables wealth managers to rapidly deliver personalized services and innovative wealth products.

Today, FNZ administers more than US$1.5 trillion in client assets on its platform for over 20 million clients worldwide and has created significant scale efficiencies that are directly passed on to its customers.

“FNZ’s success has always been based on understanding the needs of our customers and providing them with the solutions they need to grow their business. We are excited that FNZ and New Access are coming together to provide private banks and wealth managers with an unrivalled full-service, end-to-end wealth management platform that will help them deliver significant operational efficiencies and improve the client experience,” said Adrian Durham, CEO, FNZ Group.

“Both our companies have a shared vision to open-up wealth, empowering all people to create wealth through personal investment, aligned with things they care about the most, on their own terms. We are delighted to welcome the talented New Access team into FNZ.”

With its 20-year track record and more than 200 engineers and product experts, New Access has successfully developed innovative and award-winning solutions for more than 60 private banks and wealth management firms.

Vincent Jeunet, CEO of New Access, said: “We are excited to be joining FNZ as we transform the industry and open up wealth together. Combining our solutions and expertise with the global strength, scale and commitment of FNZ to the global private banking market is a great opportunity for New Access and our clients.”

“New Access customers will benefit from FNZ’s significant investment and track record in the private banking sector that will help them to reduce operational complexity, and generate significant efficiencies while freeing them up to focus on their client experience.”

With now more than 200 local FNZ employees, Switzerland will become a key private banking competence centre driving further expansion within this vertical.

Eric May, Founding Partner of BlackFin Capital Partners, added: “Both New Access and FNZ are leaders in their fields and this is an exciting partnership. BlackFin has been proud to work alongside Vincent and the New Access team. Together, we have grown the New Access offering into a full core-to-digital banking suite and positioned the company as an alternative of choice to large incumbent players in the private banking and wealth management sectors in Switzerland and abroad. We believe this combined team and unrivalled solution set will help their customers accelerate their digital transformation. We wish them our best on the next step.”

Today, FNZ operates in 21 countries and partners with over 650 financial institutions and over 8,000 wealth management firms to empower over 20 million people from all wealth segments, including savings and retirement, affluent and ultra/high-net-worth, to create wealth through long-term investment, aligned with things they care about the most, and on their own terms.

Terms of the agreement are not being disclosed. Deloitte, FIG Corporate Finance Advisory acted as exclusive financial advisor to FNZ, while CMS acted as legal adviser, in support of the transaction.

Fairown, a fintech company powering the circular economy by helping banks, brands and retailers offer products as a service, is pleased to announce it won in the ‘Subscriptions Product Development’ category at the Asset Finance Connect Summer Awards 2022. Outstanding individuals and organisations across 23 categories in product financing were recognised at the inaugural event.

Fairown’s goal is to reduce excessive waste through a circular economy. The company’s unique payment platform allows environmentally conscious businesses to offer products for monthly subscriptions and sustainably manage product renewal cycles. Over 50,000 consumers are using Fairown’s subscription service, provided by many leading brands and retailers such as Apple, STIHL, and Komplett.

Hendrik Roosna, CEO at Fairown, said, "It’s an honour to be recognised by Asset Finance Connect and compared to true titans of the financing world. We are proud of the award and excited to help more brands, retailers, and banks shift to a circular economy. Above all, we are happy to extend our sustainable subscription service to new geographies across Europe in the near future.”

Edward Peck, Founder of Asset Finance Connect, commented, “We are delighted to recognise Fairown’s very clever and environmentally friendly product, which came on top in a competitive category with lots of entries. Our judges found Fairown to have a clear and compelling proposition, endorsing the circular economy by providing subscription services and potentially pay-per-use finance on consumer assets. This is already reaching multiple European countries with very strong initial revenue growth. It provides a great opportunity for vendors and financiers seeking new revenue streams and more broadly to fully support the transition to sustainable business models.”

Product subscription is much more than just a payment method. Combined with predictable renewal cycles, it leads to sustainable consumption. As production is the most energy-consuming phase in a product’s life cycle - up to 95% - this model allows companies to reduce the ecological impact. Extending products’ life cycle by several years means less manufacturing of new products and reduces environmental harm.

Roosna added, “This award goes to the joint mission, leadership, and commitment. We want to help brands and retailers become greener and support consumers in making responsible choices. With products-as-a-service offerings, we can collect old products, give them a new life, and reduce our footprint on the environment.”

Fairown has built a complete suite of software and services to manage the entire product life cycle from purchase to renewals conveniently and sustainably. All the tools brands and retailers need are available on Fairown’s platform.

Alvaria, the world leader in enterprise-scale customer experience and workforce engagement management, announced the completion of the acquisition of the Intelligent Analytics Platform from Cicero Inc. The talented Cicero team focused on further advancing their solutions for the contact centre industry, will join Alvaria in connection with the acquisition. The addition of this capability will accelerate how customers understand consumer and employee behaviour to build better workflows with a simpler approach to complex problems with attended robotic process automation (RPA) and desktop analytics.

“It is exciting to complete our first acquisition as Alvaria, adding a skilled team and technology to our already world-class suite of solutions.” Said Jeff Cotten, Alvaria Chief Executive Officer “The Cicero platform will allow some of our largest customers to shave seconds off agent interactions resulting in millions of dollars of savings every year.”

As a powerful extension of the Alvaria Automation and Analytics solutions, Alvaria will incorporate the Intelligent Analytics Platform to further enable organizations to reshape customer and employee experiences. Users will have the ability to analyze agent productivity, tools and application usage, performance and rankings. This information will allow for the automated delivery of relevant, just-in-time information and action requests, all while maintaining compliance and updating customer records.

“We now have a robust RPA offering with both attended and unattended RPA in Alvaria Automate,” said David Funck, Alvaria Chief Technology Officer. “The solution utilizes data from the agent desktop for insights and optimizations. The events can also trigger attended RPA workflows, supporting automated responses and actions across a wide variety of technologies and applications,” David continued, “This is an adaptable framework that is responsive to change – and to top it off, there is no coding required.”

ChainUp Group, a blockchain technology solutions provider, today announced its sponsorship of Morpheus Labs’ Web3 Sandbox Hackathon in Singapore. The event is the year's most prominent blockchain hackathon and will take place from 20 – 28 July 2022 in conjunction with Singapore Blockchain Week, organized by the Blockchain Association Singapore (BAS).

At the same time, the company also announced it has joined the BAS. As part of its mission to promote blockchain adoption and drive industry development, ChainUp is stepping up efforts to build a resilient and robust blockchain ecosystem in Singapore, Asia’s top cryptocurrency hub. In joining BAS, ChainUp will be part of the blockchain community in Singapore to engage other industry players to collectively propel the growth of the industry in the region and beyond.

ChainUp’s investment in the hackathon marks its significant commitment to not only build infrastructure that connects the digital marketplace with Web3 technology but also raise the capacities of the global developer community by engaging promising young talent. The Web3 Sandbox Hackathon will bring together thousands of developers worldwide under a common vision of blockchain utility and promoting the future of Web3 technologies.

“Web3 is undoubtedly the future of digital. As lead sponsor of the Web3 Sandbox Hackathon, we are engaging the community at the grassroots level by championing the success of our upcoming Web3 developers. This hackathon offers a timely opportunity for us to discover inventive solutions to real-life business challenges and uncover new talents to grow together with us. By working with Morpheus Labs and joining the Blockchain Association Singapore, we are showcasing our commitment to invest in and support the blockchain infrastructure development and the building of the wider ecosystem”, said Jeff Mei, Chief Marketing Officer of ChainUp.

The reality of achieving new possibilities with Web3 technologies has become more tangible than ever, as the digital marketplace becomes increasingly interconnected. This hackathon is expected to attract over 1,000 attendees, and more than 500 investors, venture capitalists, and blockchain media personnel. The quest for innovation continues with insights from industry experts and the latest developments in the Web3 space.

“This hackathon is a brilliant showcase of some of the world’s brightest developers in the blockchain. And even more than that, it is also a designated space for innovation that will set the tone for the future of Web3 technologies,” said Morpheus Labs CEO, Chuang Pei Han. “We’re pleased to be supported by ChainUp in this endeavor. Their long-term dedication to supporting ecosystem readiness for the adoption of blockchain resonates deeply with what we’re aiming for with Web 3 Sandbox Hackathon.”

During the Web3 Sandbox Hackathon, ChainUp will also be participating in a panel discussion and industrial sharing to share practical insights into the crucial role of blockchain in Web3 development.

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., a global Fintech leader, has won the 2022 Systems in The City Award for Best Global Proxy Voting Service. The awards are hosted by the financial services consultancy group Goodacre, a recognised leading service and technology supplier to the regulated financial community in the UK. The award recognised Broadridge for its success in leveraging technology to transform both institutional and retail voting, enabling shareholders to vote, take action and be heard.

“Following the number of nominations received, we're pleased that the judging panel has honoured Broadridge with the Best Global Proxy Voting Service Award this year for being the fastest growing provider of global proxy solutions and for significantly advancing corporate governance and the provision of shareholder communications,” said Stephen Pinner, CEO at Goodacre UK. “Broadridge has been a pioneer in leveraging the latest technology to advance corporate governance globally through its proxy voting and shareholder disclosure solutions, consistently innovating and excelling in the market to better enable retail and institutional intermediaries and drive investor engagement.”

Broadridge’s Global Proxy and Corporate Governance Solution Suite continues to evolve as a result of substantial annual investments in retail and institutional voting technology and through local market digital connectivity. These investments have improved meeting information quality by sourcing “golden copy” announcements direct from the issuers, issuers’ agents and CSDs, expanded voting windows allowing more time for investor research teams, and enhanced overall end-to-end shareholder engagement and democracy.

“For years Broadridge has enabled cross-border investors to meet their corporate governance and regulatory obligations by supporting the requirements of the various parties spanning the global investor communications ecosystem and unravelling a disparate chain of financial intermediaries involved in this complex process,” said Demi Derem, General Manager of International Investor Communication Solutions. “In recent years, we have taken a more proactive role in driving overall industry change for the benefit of issuers and investors, collaborating more with local market corporate governance leaders, working together to implement best practices and influence process change. We are proud that our efforts to be an industry partner and trusted leader have been recognised by Systems in The City.”

Adding to its existing market-leading voting and investment communication solutions that provide 100% service and market coverage, in the past 12 months Broadridge has also extended its local market custody offering, encompassing “golden copy” event sourcing and vote execution services. In that period, it has also expanded market deadlines in key financial markets allowing investors more time to form their elections.