• 09.07.2022 -- 12:00 pm

Global loss figures published by ORX, the world’s largest operational risk association, reveal a decline in total gross loss across the banking community. This is despite the challenging environment created by both external threats, including geopolitics, cyber risk, the economy, and internal developments, particularly as the industry moves to digitalise.    

In 2021, 85,585 operational risk loss events were submitted totalling €20.3bn in the gross loss. 

The report trends reveal: 

• Lower total gross loss - Overall, the total gross loss has decreased year on year since 2016, with an average decrease of €2bn per year, and a drop of €10bn total gross loss between 2016 and 2021. Gross loss as a percentage of income has decreased over the years since 2016 - the lowest value is seen in 2021 at 1.5% 
• Higher total number of events - annual loss frequency did increase in 2021 with 30,136 more loss events submitted than in the previous year and 16,351 more events submitted in 2021 than in 2016. However, some of this upward trend can be attributed to regional idiosyncrasies with event reporting in Latin American countries linked to Employee Practices & Workplace Safety 
   
• Size of average risk loss event - The average size of an operational risk loss event in 2021 was €236,717 (the largest annual average in the past six years was €436,487 in 2016)
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• Percentage of total gross loss by top ten largest loss events - Over the last six years, the percentage of the top ten largest loss events ranged between 20-40% of the total gross loss. In 2021 the ten largest losses accounted for €5.9bn or 29% of the total gross loss.  

Banking business lines experienced the largest proportion of total gross loss in 2021 (57%), while Trading & Investment business lines incurred 22%, Corporate level losses 14% and other business lines the remaining 8% (figures rounded). 

Steve Bishop, Research & Information Director at ORX comments, “This year we’ve seen the continued trend of lower gross loss, although we have seen the increase in the number of events reported. Given the levels of change facing global banks and the turbulent external environment, it will be interesting to see if the reduction in gross loss continues through 2022. 

“Next year’s results may well reflect the impact from the Ukraine conflict, particularly related to cyber security and economic turbulence linked with global security and supply issues.” 

Coronavirus pandemic 

The onset of the pandemic has altered the operational risk landscape and the risk profiles of financial institutions.   

ORX began tagging coronavirus-related losses in 2020 and since then 60% of ORX banking members have submitted related loss events with a total event gross loss of €3.4bn. 568 coronavirus events were reported during the period to the end of 2021 with a median gross loss of €136K. 

The latest report from ORX shows that losses tailed off as the world has returned to a more normal state and longer-term changes required have become part of business as usual (e.g., changes to the workplace and supporting a hybrid working environment). 

External fraud 

There was a significant spike in losses last year, with losses for 2020 reaching €5.5bn, more than double the figure seen in 2019. This increase shows the impact the pandemic had on the risk profiles of banks. However, external fraud losses have now reduced, and the number is in-line with previous years at €2.4bn. 

Conduct risk 

In 2021, conduct risk remained a key concern for financial institutions and an area of strong regulatory focus, not least because this risk type can cause large losses to financial institutions.  

10,582 conduct events were reported in 2021, amounting to €4.4bn gross loss.  

AQRU plc, an incubator specialising in decentralised finance (DeFi),  announces today that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Accru Finance Ltd., has launched AQRU  Trend, a high-return cryptocurrency investment strategy designed to enable retail investors to diversify, capture market upside, limit market downside, and access the competitive returns available in the cryptocurrency market. 

While there are a number of cryptocurrency investment platforms available to enable investors to build and manage their investment portfolios, most of these solutions require retail investors to manually build and manage their investment portfolios. This process is not only challenging for many people who are only just starting to familiarise themselves with DeFi, but it can also result in investors missing out on potential investment opportunities. 

As a result, Accru Finance has launched AQRU Trend, a solution that actively tracks market movements and uses an algorithm that automatically assesses a weighted basket of ten leading cryptocurrencies – excluding stablecoins, security tokens, and tokens constituting specified investments – based on a number of factors such as price momentum and volatility of each coin. 

Using all this market information, AQRU Trend’s algorithm automatically adjusts the cryptocurrency basket to maximise customers’ potential returns while maintaining reasonable levels of risk. For example, if data suggests that the value of cryptocurrencies in the basket is likely to fall, AQRU Trend automatically reduces the weightings of the cryptocurrencies in the basket in exchange for USD Coin (USDC), a cryptocurrency designed to track the value of the  US dollar. By doing this, AQRU Trend can reduce the risk for customers, while still offering investors the opportunity to generate a yield of up to 3%.  

As well as balancing the investment portfolio in response to expected market changes, AQRU  Trend’s weighted basket is adjusted weekly to maximise customers’ potential returns. 

AQRU Trend is part of Accru Finance’s efforts to expand its service offering to enable retail and institutional investors to take advantage of all the opportunities available in DeFi. As part of these efforts, Accru Finance recently launched AQRU Exchange, an easy-to-use, cost-effective and secure cryptocurrency exchange platform that enables users to easily exchange their fiat currency, such as EUR and GBP, and existing crypto assets to other cryptocurrencies. 

Unlike other exchange platforms in the market, AQRU Exchange provides clear and transparent information about the fees and exchange rates typically incurred by investors in digital assets. Indeed, AQRU Exchange users are only required to pay a single one-off fee of  0.35% on the entire exchange value, and the exchange rates provided are on par with the rates usually offered to institutional investors. All fiat bank transfers in and out of the solution are free. 

Both AQRU Trend and AQRU Exchange are available on AQRU.io, Accru Finance’s easy-to-use and secure cryptocurrency trading platform. 

Philip Blows, CEO of AQRU, commented: “With the launch of AQRU Trend and AQRU  Exchange, Accru Finance is strengthening its presence in the DeFi sector by expanding its current portfolio beyond yield products. This enables investors to take a balanced portfolio approach to the opportunities available in the decentralised markets, without having to worry about taking on excessive levels of risk or hidden transaction fees. We are delighted to see  how Accru Finance is continuing to deliver on its commitment to developing solutions to ensure  our customers can experience DeFi at its fullest.” 

Kamelia Gankova, Managing Director of Accru Finance, commented: “Accru Finance is rapidly becoming a one-stop-shop for all consumers’ DeFi needs. The launch of AQRU Trend gives our customers instant access to a diverse cryptocurrency portfolio, carefully selected by our experienced team. The system will allow our customers to enjoy market rises, but by transferring their cryptocurrency into USDC, it also works to protect them from market volatility.  AQRU Trend and AQRU Exchange demonstrate Accru Finance’s continuing commitment to  bringing consumers the competitive returns available in DeFi.”

Banking Circle, the tech-first Payments Bank, is shifting the dial in the virtual assets market with a ground-breaking new service for Banks and Payments businesses. By adding USDC stablecoins to its payment rails for payment acceptance, processing and settlement, Banking Circle is delivering an easy-to-implement solution that cuts out the need for significant IT or financial investment for businesses that want to get into the web3 market. It is a key step in democratising global finance.

“Digital assets are likely to be the ‘leveller’ for the global economy in years to come with the potential to remove the friction that is inherent in conventional currencies”, explained Mishal Ruparel, Head of Virtual Asset Services, Banking Circle. “It’s critical, therefore, that Banks and Payments providers have the ability to process certain types of cryptocurrencies in the same way they do fiat currencies. With an already established reputation as an innovator in payments, it’s a natural next step for Banking Circle to add stablecoins.

“We already have client demand for paying out in cryptocurrency, which they want to do in a way that is trustworthy and lower risk. We will, therefore, provide the facility to convert fiat to stablecoins in USDC, giving financial institutions the ability to send funds in stablecoin easily and with full regulatory compliance.”

Banking Circle’s choice of asset-backed stablecoins for its move into the web3 market reflects their stability against fiat currencies, giving Banks and Payments providers the ability to facilitate payments outside traditional bank rails. The reconciliation, speed and cost advantages are significant. With connections to crypto liquidity providers such as Coinbase, Banking Circle will act as a bridge between fiat bank accounts and stablecoins which offer faster settlement than fiat transactions without any of the correspondent bank and network fees.

“Banking Circle is committed to delivering payments solutions that are fit for purpose and future-proofed”, added Mishal Ruparel. “This latest addition to our payment rails is an important step as we grow our super-correspondent banking network, giving Banks and Payments businesses the ability to step outside the traditional correspondent banking model and extend their offerings.”

• 08.07.2022 -- 09:35 am

Phundex provides a digital solution to finding innovative ideas, digitally facilitating the investment due diligence process, and then administers and reports on management, investors, and regulators' investments. With the current processes required to find, make and manage informed investments being hugely inefficient, finding first-to-market opportunities, ensuring data integrity, effective communication, and getting the mundane tasks of reporting right are all common pain points:

1. There is an unlimited supply of quality ideas and a ready supply of capital in the market, but many quality investment opportunities cannot find the right willing audience. Phundex provides an end-to-end first-to-market platform to access innovative and traditional investment ideas.

2. Complex inputs need to be processed to evaluate and validate if an idea is "investor-ready". Evaluating to make informed decisions requires input from many different subject matter experts. Phundex validates and values ventures through a proprietary verification and validation process. We plan to develop our current process into an AI analytics platform, risk profiling and recommendation engine.

3. The due diligence process has complex and confidential interdependencies, with mistakes costing time and money, leading to poor decision-making and lost opportunities. Phundex provides a single data spine that digitally flows required information between counterparties.

4. Cross-border investing, and the complexity of regulatory obligations makes management reporting a significant risk to all parties. Regulation and compliance is in Phundex's DNA, ensuring digital, compliant administration and regulatory reporting of ALL types of investment instruments. The Phundex Vision is to de-risk the origination, investment, administration and regulatory reporting of any investment instrument (bond, SPV, fund etc.) through the digitalization of ALL essential activities in any investment lifecycle. 

Marble, the free platform that makes it easy and rewarding to manage all your insurance in one place, today announced that they launched an integration with Gemini, a leading cryptocurrency platform, to offer the ability to redeem Marble points (Marbles) for cryptocurrency. Marble members will now be able to cash out their Marbles for Bitcoin and Ethereum via a Gemini account.

Marble believes policyholders should have a modern way to take control and keep track of all of their insurance policies through a single, secure application. By linking their auto, home, renter, life, and pet policies in just seconds, Marble members start earning rewards on their insurance — a first in the industry. Members can also earn rewards by taking monthly actions in their wallets, referring friends, and more.

“Insurance customers of all ages are ready for something different from the trillion-dollar insurance industry. Every month it seems like there are more commercials and sponsorships from insurers big and small; meanwhile, average Americans’ insurance rates are jumping as much as 12%. We built Marble for the 92 million insurance customers in America who want to put some of that money back in their pockets,” said Stuart Winchester, founder & CEO at Marble. “Our mandate is to listen to our members and build the tools they need to take back control of their insurance. In conversation with Marble members, it was clear they wanted a cryptocurrency-based rewards offer, and one they could trust. We’re thrilled to be working with Gemini to deliver on this.”

In addition to the cryptocurrency option, Marble members are able to cash in their Marbles in the form of gift cards — including from Amazon, Target, and Uber — and charitable donations.

Since the launch of Marble’s public beta in April 2021, tens of thousands of members have used Marble to organize all of their insurance, no matter what type or brand; monitor rates and trends; learn more about their coverage; and, for the first time ever with insurance, earn rewards just for protecting what they love. With a five-star rating in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, Marble members now have all of their insurance information available at their fingertips via the Marble mobile app.

In addition to offering a convenient digital wallet and rewards program for insurance, Marble also makes shopping and comparing policies easy and transparent. With Marble, members can get instant, unbiased insight into competitive policies — allowing members to shop for and purchase the best policy and rate personalized to them.

Marble will be adding new rewards options in the coming months, alongside major feature launches that will bring proactive risk monitoring and mitigation into the Marble ecosystem.

Seedrs, the leading private investment platform with over £1.9BN investments to date, has chosen Form3, the leading cloud-native payment technology provider, and LHV UK, a banking services provider to over 200 fintech companies, to enable it to access UK Faster Payments and SEPA Instant Payments in Europe, to augment its customer offering.

The new payment capability will support Seedrs’ efforts to make it easier and faster for retail investors to invest in innovative, fast-growth European businesses. The integration of Form3 will provide Seedrs’ users with real-time payments for account funding – the next step in its business development.

Charlie James, Seedrs’ Head of Finance & Business Intelligence, commented: “As a leading private investment platform, we need partners that can provide payments and services that make investing on our platform seamless, transparent and quick to support. In Form3 and LHV UK, we’ve found agile and reliable collaborators who can help Seedrs expand its UK and European offering.”

The new collaboration is underpinned by Form3’s cloud-API technology and LHV UK’s banking infrastructure and regulatory expertise to provide Seedrs with real-time payments for account funding and reconciliation services, safely adhering to banking regulations. This will greatly benefit Seedrs’ businesses and the investors who support them.

Julian Colls, Form3’s Chief Customer Officer, said: “Form3 provides cloud-based payments solutions to benefit everyone from tier-one banks to the thriving startup investor space. This is part of our drive to reimagine payments technology, ensuring all companies - established or new - can have access to best-in-class services. Working with Seedrs, in partnership with LHV UK, further supports our UK and European market expansion.”

Andres Kitter, Deputy CEO of LHV UK, said: “Seedrs is one of the most reputable fintechs, having launched in the UK ten years ago. They continue to democratise equity crowdfunding across the UK and Europe, and LHV UK, in partnership with Form3, is thrilled to support their continued expansion. We are uniquely positioned to provide multi-currency CASS account infrastructure and access to real-time payment schemes across multiple jurisdictions. We shall do our best to assist Seedrs with their ambition of building the best global private equity marketplace.”

The new payment collaboration is due to go live in August.

Neon, a fintech company and digital bank focused on improving the lives of working Brazilians, today announced the appointment of André Madeira as the company’s new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Madeira brings extensive knowledge in engineering to the role, along with expertise in building scalable products for the masses from his stints at Google, Snap, and Coinbase. Madeira will spearhead the effort of transforming Neon into a technology-driven financial product powerhouse, beginning with a remote-worker recruiting effort to build his team with the world’s best tech talent, regardless of location.

Madeira successfully sold his AI-powered fintech startup Meemo last year to Coinbase where he recently oversaw crypto-related consumer-facing data products. He has also built a career building and leading large engineering and data efforts and teams for over a decade at Google Search and Snap, creating scalable and highly personalized products that impact billions of people daily. He will now focus on helping Neon reach new potential with its growing customer base.

Neon’s mission is to decrease inequality in Brazil, where the gap between the wealthy and the low-income population has been persistently large.

“People's relationship with money is quite emotional, especially on the low end of the income spectrum. Building trust through fair, understandable, and useful financial products is key to creating a loyal bridge between consumers and products and services,” says André Madeira, Neon’s new CTO. “I was captivated by Neon’s mission and impressed by its commitment to using technology to provide equitable offerings for the underbanked in Brazil while striving to deliver a first-class customer experience that has been reserved only for the wealthy.”

Neon plans to invest heavily in areas like large-scale data engineering, data science, distributed systems, and machine learning to create products that significantly improve and personalize the customer experience. The appointment of Madeira and the goal to structure the team in a more globally distributed way not only has Neon thinking about technology differently is motivating the company to embrace a modern tech mindset.

“In order to succeed in this increasingly competitive market, all areas of technology such as engineering, data, product, and design must work extremely well together,” emphasizes Madeira. Traditionally in Brazil, and in the financial industry more specifically, the interplay between these areas is a constant challenge as a company grows. I am committed to ensuring all these fronts work seamlessly together to promote scalable value creation with repeatable innovation at Neon.

“Additionally, I'm excited to have the opportunity to build a product with such an incredible purpose - reducing inequality in Brazil - this is why Neon really caught my attention. I was also impressed with the excellent professionals that make up the Neon technology team.”

Embracing its remote-first work strategy, Neon plans to continue to hire in Brazil and expand the talent pool worldwide to add to its 1,800 employees.

“One of my immediate goals is to transform Neon into a global leader in technology by bringing world-class talent into the company, no matter where they are,” says Madeira who was highly successful in attracting top talent while at Snap and in founding Meemo.

“I am ecstatic with André’s arrival. All of us at Neon believe his international experience and technical excellence in building joyful products for hundreds of millions of people will be a crucial asset to the company. I look forward to partnering with him on building a world-class team at Neon,” says Pedro Conrade, founder and CEO of Neon.

Recently, Neon also hired another U.S.-based C-level executive who is based in Silicon Valley - Koji Pereira, Chief Design Officer. Pereira was most recently a senior product design manager at Twitter after stints at Google and Lyft.

India’s first listed fintech company, Infibeam Avenues Ltd has formally unveiled today the CCAvenue Mobile App - The world's most advanced omni-channel payment platform with the revolutionary TapPay solution. CCAvenue TapPay seeks to tap into the Rs 27 billion PoS market in India.

The senior officials of the National Payments Council of India (NPCI -the parent entity of RuPay), Visa and MasterCard, as well as financial analysts, banks and industry experts, witnessed the launch of CCAvenue TapPay, on Thursday. The event was held at the Mumbai Cricket Association in the Bandra Kurla Complex.

“An increase in digital payment usage is truly possible when there are adequate methods and touchpoints. The SoftPOS solution from CCAvenue is a step in that direction and I congratulate them on this launch. I’m sure as the solution reaches merchants across the country, it will induce repeat and sticky consumer behaviour of tapping to pay.” said Mr. Sandeep Ghosh, Group Country Manager, India & South Asia, Visa.

Mrs. Praveena Rai, COO, National Payments Council of India (NPCI) commented: “Deep digital payments merchant acceptance is a critical requirement for India. We are very happy to witness the emergence of exciting new technologies in the Fintech landscape that enable this. These innovations herald in a new era of payments and will address key issues being faced on the acquiring side.”

The CCAvenue Mobile App with TapPay feature promises to be a game-changer in the Indian market as it will convert any NFC-enabled Android phone into a smart PoS terminal. This will enable any small business or entrepreneur in the country to accept digital payments easily, quickly and securely.

CCAvenue TapPay, India’s first pin-on-glass solution will provide a valuable shot in the arm to our national efforts to grow digital payments and reduce the economy's dependency on cash, thereby giving a further boost to our Hon. Prime Minister’s ‘Digital India’ vision. It offers an excellent opportunity for micro-merchants in growing their businesses through the medium of contactless payments.

Infibeam Avenues has meticulously developed this low-cost payment acceptance solution that provides last-mile support to Indian eCommerce. This initiative aims to accelerate the adoption of digital payments among millions of underserved MSMEs across the country. This innovative solution will revolutionize the way smaller businesses receive payments and create a demarcated shift in their tendency to deal in cash as they accept contactless digital payments securely.

Mr. Vishwas Patel, Executive Director, Infibeam Avenues Ltd stated: “Infibeam Avenues is excited to leverage CCAvenue TapPay, India’s first pin-on-glass solution to overcome challenges faced by micro-entrepreneurs and smaller businesses in the remotest parts of the country, where cost and connectivity are major factors. Our next-gen technology offers a seamless mode of transacting that enables a customer to pay by simply tapping their credit or debit card on the merchant’s NFC-enabled smartphone. We are proud to have launched the world’s most advanced omni-channel app at the event. The CCAvenue mobile app allows businesses to accept payments securely and conveniently via the widest range of modes including payment links, QR codes, Smart PoS, website, IVRS and even through the merchant’s own app.”

As per a recent report by Deloitte’s 2022 Global TMT, India to have 1 billion smartphone users by 2026 and Internet‐enabled devices in the rural market will also get a push with the government’s plan to fiberize all villages by 2025 under the BharatNet programme. The report also mentions that India has 1.2 billion mobile subscribers in 2021, of which about 750 million are smartphone users.

“With 5G spectrum auctions on the way, and ever-rising smartphone penetration along with cheaper internet rates, it is a perfect breeding and nurturing ground for Smart PoS technology, which will further increase the use of cashless transaction adoption across the country,” said Mr. Vishal Mehta, Managing Director, Infibeam Avenues Ltd.

The current high-speed internet 4G is already a perfect booster for CCAvenue Mobile App’s advanced omni-channel payment platform with its new built-in CCAvenue TapPay feature; after 5G spectrum allocation, CCAvenue TapPay would be set to capture the lion’s share of the PoS market.

CCAvenue TapPay is anticipated to augment the revenue stream and become a key growth driver for Infibeam Avenues Ltd. Existing merchants and customers will find the onboarding process smooth and seamless as no further KYC is required, while they get instant access to these revolutionary technologies.

Monica Eaton-Cardone, Founder of Chargebacks911, says: “One of the main reasons why first-party fraud is growing is because there are not enough insights and intelligence provided to decision-makers during the chargeback process - this feedback is crucial. Banks are forced to make decisions without enough information, and merchants don’t have the time, connections, or expertise in-house to defend themselves when this type of fraud occurs.”

Sandeep Menon, Chief Technology Officer at Chargebacks911, adds: “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you set a goal and remain focused. With the growth in eCommerce and omni-channels, keeping pace with the evolution of merchant data sources requires a dynamic approach and out-of-the-box thinking. Today’s merchant faces new challenges, requires consolidation options, and demands an agile framework that alleviates technical resources and constraints. To achieve this requires immense domain expertise and unparalleled innovation - I’m very proud of our team and it’s great to highlight this back-end achievement, which isn’t often acknowledged.”