The United States leads in the number of fintech Unicorns globally. That’s per a TradingPlatforms.com analysis of the global unicorn trends. It concludes that America contributes to 81 fintech firms with valuations over $1 billion. That figure gives the U.S. a 51% dominance over the other nations.

“The reasons for this dominance are two-fold: funding and innovation capability, “holds TradingPlatforms’ Edith Reads. She further asserts, “The U.S has more venture capital funding than any other country. This allows entrepreneurs to launch projects without worrying about funding. It also boasts greater innovation capabilities than most countries due to its strong education system that encourages experimentation with ideas and solutions.”

China follows the U.S, a distant second, with 11 startups attaining the unicorn status. Meanwhile, the UK and India have 10 and 9 institutions, respectively. Brazil and Germany tie in the fifth spot with 7 of these each.

New frontiers for fintech unicorns

The sector is recording massive growth in countries like China and India. Others, including Brazil and Malaysia, are also following suit. These two countries jointly host over 380 fintech companies, which means they could be home to the next generation of fintech unicorns.

Brazil has been building its fintech ecosystem. For example, it is working towards boosting market competition and expanding the scope of financial education. Moreover, it is implementing open banking, which could support Brazilian businesses in implementing new technologies.

Malaysia’s huge unbanked and underbanked population provides the ideal environment for fintech firms to thrive. In addition, the country has a high mobile penetration rate, a big boon for companies pursuing fintech opportunities. Some estimates say e-payments companies make up nearly 40% of the country’s fintech industry.

 The full story and statistics can be found here: The US has more Fintech Unicorns than the next 20 Countries Combined

Over nine out of ten (95%) buy-side financial services across the UK, US and Asia are looking to improve their ESG data management, with 80% of firms in total looking to do this within the next year. Additionally, 32% are planning on doing so in the next six months.

These results are among the findings of new research commissioned by Alveo, a leading provider of cloud-based market data management services, which polled executives working for buy-side financial services firms in the UK, US and Asia.

Further findings found that US executives were most confident about a focus on improving ESG data management over the short term, with 36% saying they were looking to improve it over the next six months. Just 28% of respondents in the UK made the same claim. 90% of executives polled across the three territories said they expected their firm’s investment in ESG data management to increase over the next two years, with 57% overall anticipating an over 25% increase in that timeframe.

Almost all firms (98%) are using advanced analytics tools including AI and machine learning in their approach to ESG data management today, although just over a third (35%) are making extensive use of it. Additionally, cost reduction is not high on the list when it comes to ESG priorities, with 39% instead citing data comparability, 37% naming data availability and 37% highlighting data usability among their top two.

For those that do decide to outsource ESG data management capabilities, the favoured models were Data-as-a-Service (31%), where a third party completes the data collection and validation, and hosting of the data collection and validation with the company’s own staff completing the data cleansing.

Neil Sandle, Head of Product Management at Alveo said, “The volume and range of ESG data sets has grown significantly to address different use cases and to supplement gaps in corporate disclosures. This means that investment management firms face a daunting integration task to ensure they have the complete picture. Firms need to ensure not only that their ESG data management is up to scratch, but that also that a clear approach to data ownership and governance is in place to handle future change and evolving business requirements.”

Drawbridge, a premier provider of cybersecurity software and solutions to the alternative investment industry, today announced it has been selected as ‘IT Provider: Cyber Security’ at the 2022 Drawdown Awards.

The Drawdown Awards service provider categories recognize vendors who provide private equity firms with best-in-class solutions and expertise to drive growth.

This is the fourth major industry award for Drawbridge in 2022 as the company was recently named Best Cyber-Security Solution’ at the With Intelligence HFM US Quant Services Awards 2022, Best Firmwide Security Solution’ at the 2022 Private Asset Management Awards and ‘Best Cyber-Security Solution’ at 2022 With Intelligence HFM US Technology Awards.   

“This is an outstanding achievement by our entire team, and we are honoured to be recognized for our work providing cybersecurity software solutions to the private equity industry,” said Jason Elmer, Founder and CEO of Drawbridge. “This win highlights our commitment to delivering exceptional and innovative technology to help our private equity clients meet continually evolving cybersecurity and business goals.”

The news caps a strong first six months in 2022 for the business. It recently announced a new corporate identity reflecting its evolution into a modern technology partner for the alternative investment industry, along with continued global expansion, and a 166% annual increase in its client base. This followed the launch of an Industry Analyst Board (IAB) made up of leaders from within its client base as well as other industry leaders not affiliated with Drawbridge. From a personnel perspective, Drawbridge has made significant gains, with senior appointments across the business-critical areas of software development, client success and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In addition, the company recently welcomed industry titan Edna Conway - a sought-after cybersecurity industry influencer and Security & Risk Officer for Microsoft Azure - to its Board of Directors.

Shard Credit Partners Limited announces the successful first close of its inaugural UK technology-focused venture debt fund, with £16.5 million in commitments from the UK and European institutional investors, alongside UK technology industry entrepreneurs.  The fund will make investments in senior secured loans with equity warrants to venture capital-backed businesses in the B2B SaaS and Fintech sectors located throughout the UK.

Shard Credit Partners Limited’s new fund will target borrowers with annual recurring revenues of at least £2.0 million, that are finding it increasingly difficult to source long-term financing from traditional lenders. The fund will provide flexible venture loan capital in support of sales growth, through increased expenditure on marketing initiatives.  Typical loan sizes will range between £2.0-6.0 million per borrower, with maturities of up to five years.

The fund has already completed two investments with total commitments of £6.5 million ahead of the first close.  This included the fund’s first exit in December 2021, passport, which generated a total gross IRR of 249.2% in just six months (1.8x multiple on invested capital).  The fund aims to complete around 15 investments per annum during the three-year investment period.

Venture debt is becoming increasingly popular with high-growth technology companies globally in recent years.  The asset class is highly developed in the United States, having positively tracked the strong growth in the venture equity market during the last two decades.  The venture lending market is in its infancy in the UK and remains an area that is materially underserved, which has created an opportunity for innovative private credit managers to raise dedicated technology venture debt funds. 

Market demand for venture debt in the UK is being driven on the back of very strong growth in the technology venture capital sector over the past decade, which now comprises approximately 13,000 post-series A technology companies.  This represents a significant addressable market opportunity for specialist UK technology venture debt funds, such as the one launched by Shard Credit Partners Limited.

William Chappel, Head of Venture Debt for Shard Credit Partners Limited, said “We are delighted to hold our first close of the fund and we look forward to continuing to support fast-growth businesses across the software as a service and fintech sectors.  We aim to become the ‘go-to’ debt provider for venture capital-backed high-growth technology businesses in the UK”.

Alastair Brown, Chief Executive of Shard Credit Partners Limited, commented, “The successful launch of our inaugural UK technology venture debt fund, just one year after launching this unique strategy, is a testament to the hard work of everyone that has been involved and is something to be proud of.  It further cements our position as a specialist private credit manager in the UK and continental European direct lending marketplace, successfully investing in strategies having a senior secured risk profile and generating high teens double-digit gross returns for our institutional investor base”.

Shard Credit Partners Limited is currently in advanced discussions with several UK and international institutional investors with regard to participating in subsequent fund close throughout summer 2022.  The target fund size at the final close is £75 million, with a hard cap at £100 million, by June 2023.

Shard Credit Partners Limited has a strong focus on ESG across all its private credit investments and has historically been a strong supporter of female entrepreneurs and firms with meaningful female leadership, ownership, and senior management.  No less than 80% of its investee companies have female board representation and 60% have mixed-sex equity ownership, a direct result of Shard Credit Partners Limited’s implementation of ESG covenants and ESG margin ratchets in its loan agreements and investment documentation as standard.

The funds team at Stephenson Harwood led by Partner Sarah de Ste Croix and supported by Arooj Khan and Hugo Mayes, provided fund formation advice to Shard Credit Partners Limited.  The funds team at BDO, led by Partner Nicoletta Papademetris, and supported by Tina Agnosteva, David Tran and Matt Barr, provided fund tax and structuring services to Shard Credit Partners Limited. 

Nebulon, Inc., the pioneer of cyber-resilient smartInfrastructure, today unveiled Nebulon ImmutableBoot, the newest service in its cyber-resilience portfolio. As the first “reboot-to-recover” ransomware solution for bare metal Linux, ImmutableBoot protects application infrastructure from a ransomware attack or a misconfigured operating environment with a simple server reboot to a known, good operating system version.

User misconfiguration and out-of-date server software often expose server infrastructure to security breaches, such as ransomware attacks. According to a recent report, threat actors continually leverage unpatched software vulnerabilities as their primary ransomware attack vector. IT organisations that are unable to enforce strict, centralised, and consistent patch and configuration management are particularly exposed as device-by-device management can result in misconfiguration, inconsistent patch levels, and server configuration “drift” (i.e., deviation from expected server software configurations). This problem is amplified when managing and maintaining hundreds or thousands of servers, making them vulnerable to undetected malware which may lay dormant within the infrastructure.

Nebulon ImmutableBoot allows operations teams to protect their application infrastructure with immutable, or “frozen,” server software, reverting infected or misconfigured operating systems and application configurations to a known, good version each time the server reboots. In other words, recovery teams simply reboot infected servers to restore a known, good instance of their operating system and application software.

ImmutableBoot is bundled with Nebulon TimeJump^TM, the first and only combined server-storage solution which delivers ransomware recovery in four minutes. TimeJump not only recovers critical application data, but also infected operating systems. Now, with ImmutableBoot, TimeJump can serve a known, good version of the operating system as a part of the near-instant point-in-time rollback of the application infrastructure.

“Any organisation concerned with cyber resilience should make immutability a key consideration when building its protection and recovery strategy,” said Nebulon CEO Siamak Nazari. “With TimeJump and ImmutableBoot, we are addressing protection and recovery for customers’ deep infrastructure, an area which has been previously ignored by the industry.”

Mastercard has launched the Start Path Open Banking global program to engage open banking startups on their path to scale, uncover unique opportunities to co-innovate and power experiences that enable consumer choice. The companies handpicked for this inaugural class – Dapi, Finantier, mmob, Mono and Paywallet – demonstrate strong synergies with Mastercard's tech-driven approach and are committed to putting consumers and small businesses at the centre of where and how their financial data is used to further access services they want and need.

During the three-month program, startups will have an opportunity to leverage Mastercard’s open banking expertise and market insights and learn more about the company’s open banking platforms through wholly-owned subsidiaries Finicity and Aiia. As an early advocate of open banking across the globe, Mastercard has bolstered its open banking capabilities by blending its proprietary technology and expertise with the complementary services of Finicity and Aiia. Mastercard’s market-leading technology platforms, data connectivity and infrastructure, combined with strong data privacy and security principles, provide a global infrastructure that is catalyzing innovation and creating solutions that meet customers where they are.

“Open banking is a natural progression of how Mastercard has always embraced innovation and consumer trust with equal measure, and how we’ve remained a trusted partner for our customers,” said Blake Rosenthal, executive vice president, Fintech & Segment Solutions at Mastercard. “We are thrilled to launch the Start Path Open Banking program and welcome five high-growth startups from around the world to collaborate with us and accelerate open banking innovation.”

From making financial services accessible for all to providing the tools businesses need to build next-generation financial products, the following fast-growing open banking companies have been selected to join the Start Path Open Banking program:

• Dapi (United Arab Emirates) is an open banking payment API that provides an experience for accepting account-to-account payments and tools for enterprise payments operations.
• Finantier (Indonesia) is an open finance platform powering the technical infrastructure for financial inclusion and enabling the next generation of digital and financial services across Southeast Asia.
• mmob (U.K.) seamlessly integrates third-party products into the financial ecosystem via its proprietary tool without coding.
• Mono (Nigeria) enables businesses in Africa to access financial data and process direct bank payments.
• Paywallet (U.S.) helps lenders and other financing providers improve payment certainty by enabling repayments directly from payroll deductions and powering underwriting decisions based on accurate identity, employment and payroll data.

These five companies will join the network of more than 300 startups that have participated in the award-winning Start Path startup engagement program. They will have an opportunity to engage with Mastercard’s ecosystem of banks, merchants, partners and digital players across the globe to deliver and scale open banking solutions. Today, Start Path alumni are entering the public markets, reaching unicorn status and pursuing extended commercial engagements with Mastercard and its customers.

Start Path is a key program within the Mastercard Developers portfolio, a single point of entry for fintech companies in open banking and beyond to access the APIs, services and tools they need to iterate at each stage of their journey, transform bold ideas and achieve scale at a fast pace to bring more people into the digital economy.

Temenos today announced that TS Banking Group, an Iowa-based banking institution, has selected Temenos Banking Services delivered on the Temenos Banking Cloud for a complete front-to-back digital transformation. TS Banking Group will migrate the entirety of its banking operations to Temenos’ leading open platform for composable banking.

Headquartered in Treynor, Iowa, TS Banking Group is a multi-charter bank holding company, with $1.5 billion in banking and fiduciary assets and locations across the Midwest. This partnership will encompass three of TS Banking Group’s brands: TS Bank, The Bank of Tioga and First National Bank and Trust Company. Leading the resurgence in community banking, TS Banking Group reinvests 10% of their net income locally; hosting educational events and partnering with local organizations and nonprofits as part of its mission to IGNITE PROSPERITY®. TS Banking Group will implement Temenos’ pre-composed banking services across the three banks to increase profitability and deliver world-class banking experiences with a local touch.

Leveraging Temenos global expertise and continuous investment in R&D, TS Banking Group will create an open ecosystem by customizing banking services and integrating them with third-party fintech solutions. Temenos Banking Cloud will enable TS Banking Group to increase agility, efficiency, and scalability. The openness of the Temenos platform will enable TS Banking Group to design banking experiences geared specifically to its niche audience of farming communities.

Kevin Forristall, President, TS Banking Group, said: “We chose to partner with Temenos because we believe it is the best possible way for us to serve our employees, clients and communities into the foreseeable future. In the debate between relationship banking and digital banking, we are committed to delivering the best of both for our communities. The Temenos Banking Cloud will provide us with the agility of a challenger bank, and the investment in innovation of the larger banks, in a way we would otherwise be unable to achieve. With this open platform, we will reach new communities that are typically underserved, and provide seamless experiences and support to our local farmers, businesses, families and communities.”

B2Broker is pleased to announce the collaboration of B2Core and Shufti Pro, a premier AI-powered identity verification company. The new partnership will enable us to streamline the identity verification process, making it faster than ever before, and ensure that our clients are always safe while onboarding legitimate new users. B2Core, in tandem with Shufti Pro, will maintain your safety and security!

Shufti Pro, the top KYC provider, offers superior and quick verification. All the user has to do is access the verification tab under the profile settings and upload the ID documents, such as a passport and a selfie. Shufti Pro will then use its patented technology to validate the customer's identification in real-time within seconds. This will aid in the reduction of fraudulent behaviour and the enhancement of the user experience.

Shufti Pro

Shufti Pro is a SaaS firm that provides completely automated KYC solutions to organisations to authenticate their end-users. The firm offers a single API, making it simple for any business to integrate with. In addition, the KYC provider offers a multi-layered risk protection against digital identity fraud, money laundering, and terrorism funding.

Shufti Pro provides a variety of services, including face verification, document verification, video-interview KYC, address verification, 2-factor authentication, consent verification, and biometric sign-in with facial recognition. These services are available in over 230 countries and territories and are available in 150 different languages. Furthermore, Shufti Pro screens persons and corporations against over 1700 watchlists, leaving no opportunity for financial wrongdoing.

Shufti Pro is the only firm in the market that offers both SaaS and on-premises solutions to banks, payment gateways, and other big multinational organizations.

Bottom Line

Thank you for selecting B2Broker as your reliable partner for Forex and cryptocurrency services! We invite you to test out the new KYC integration as we continue to build and expand our offering. It's intended to make your life simpler by facilitating the onboarding process. We are devoted to providing you with the greatest possible experience, and we hope that you will find this additional feature useful in your business interactions. Please contact us if you have any queries or criticism regarding our KYC service.

Nexi S.p.A. (“Nexi”) and Euronext Group (“Euronext”) announce the signing of the sale and purchase of the technology businesses currently powering MTS, Euronext’s leading fixed-income trading platform, and Euronext Securities Milan (formerly called Monte Titoli) by Nexi to Euronext (the “Transaction”).

The purchase price will be paid in cash and amounts to c. €57m, subject to customary closing adjustments.

Nexi, the European PayTech leader, has been a partner of choice of MTS and Euronext Securities Milan for more than 30 years, powering the technology driving MTS and Euronext Securities Milan. The disposal of the capital markets activities resulted from a strategic review of Nexi’s perimeter following the completion of the mergers with Nets and SIA and is in line with its strategy to focus on the core reference markets.  Following the Transaction, Nexi will continue to provide technology services to Euronext under transitional arrangements and other services under related commercial agreements.

This Transaction is a new step in Euronext’s strategy to leverage its integrated value chain as it further enhances Euronext’s technology competencies and capabilities in trading and post-trade. The Transaction will also strengthen the core operations of MTS and Euronext Securities Milan, which joined Euronext in April 2021. With this Transaction, Euronext internalises the core trading platform of MTS and its largest IT contract. It enables Euronext to become more agile and efficient by fully owning the technology powering MTS and Euronext Securities Milan.

The Transaction, which will be realized through Euronext’s subsidiaries MTS and Euronext Securities Milan, is expected to close in the second half of 2022 and is subject to the customary approvals from the competent authorities and completion of the union consultation procedure.

In this transaction, Nexi was assisted by KPMG and Chiomenti as financial and legal advisors.

“This sale, consistent with our strategy following the mergers with SIA and Nets, will allow us to focus further on our core business, digital payments, accelerating our growth in Europe and focusing on the realisation of synergies", said Renato Martini, Digital Banking & Corporate Solutions Director at Nexi.

Stéphane Boujnah, CEO and Chairman of the Managing Board at Euronext said: “The planned acquisition of the technology assets driving MTS and Euronext Securities Milan is a key milestone in the Borsa Italiana Group integration process. At Euronext, owning the intellectual property of our critical operations is at the centre of our strategy, to secure the robustness of our operations and to enable further development and product innovation. We look forward to welcoming the new teams to the Euronext Group.”

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry, announced that its subsidiary, The Depository Trust Company (DTC), successfully processed the U.S. market’s first-ever, fully-automated voluntary reorganization ISO 20022 instruction as part of its new automated Voluntary Reorganization service. With the launch of this new automation, DTCC moves towards completion of its journey to fully automate the corporate actions lifecycle from end to end, helping clients reduce the rising costs and risks associated with the corporate action process.

In recent years, the corporate events process has become increasingly complicated due to the rise in popularity of financial instruments including securitized derivatives and structured equities – both of which are typically backed by other securities or triggered by market conditions. In response to this growth and complexity, firms across the industry have turned to large teams of personnel to specifically oversee and monitor the voluntary instruction process, in part to reduce the risk of costly errors.

Following a robust testing period with Broadridge, a global fintech leader that currently services more than 60 of DTCC’s corporate actions mutual clients, DTCC launched the newly-automated Voluntary Reorganization service. The service provides clients with the enhanced ability to manage and execute corporate action instructions around time-sensitive events in a more streamlined and efficient manner. DTCC processes over 600,000 reorganization instructions each year. 

“This is a major milestone made possible by the partnership and support of Broadridge, our clients, and key stakeholders across the industry,” said Ann Marie Bria, Executive Director, Asset Services Business Management at DTCC. “Having end-to-end automation throughout the corporate actions lifecycle will allow the industry to utilize fixed data formats and a standardized set of rules, creating new efficiencies while reducing risks and costs."

“We are excited to have partnered with DTCC on the launch of their newly automated Voluntary Reorganization service, giving Broadridge the ability to automate the full end-to-end corporate actions lifecycle for users of its global, cloud-hosted, next-generation corporate actions solution by incorporating fully automated and integrated election instructions to DTC in ISO 20022 format,” said Michael Wood, Head of Asset Servicing, Broadridge. “This enhanced service will increase STP rates on voluntary corporate actions, reduce the risk associated with manual errors and provide significant scalability and cost savings for the industry.”