As the cost of living crisis continues to bite over the second half of 2022, fuelled by an inflation rate expected to hit 10% this year according to the Bank of England, consumers need greater flexibility, efficiency and advice on where best to put their money.

It would be wrong to describe fintech as the silver bullet to the host of challenges facing individuals this year. But, by taking a consumer-centric approach and adopting innovation in the sector, businesses will find they can at least ease some of the pressures.   

As such, Reassured, the UK’s largest life insurance broker, today reveals its top five predictions for fintech in the second half of 2022:

1. Insurtech centred on consumer choice

With the cost of living soaring, it is tempting for many consumers to cancel any insurance policies that seemingly offer no short-term benefits. But, as the last two years have proven beyond doubt, the importance of insurance, particularly a life policy, cannot be overstated. 

It is up to brokers to ensure that the highest possible number of people have access to insurance. That means broadening the ways in which a policy can be bought, so, in the second half of 2022, we expect to see a greater number of brokers and insurers adopt digital solutions to complement core telephony-based sales.

It means putting the consumer first, expanding the number of ways through which they can access life insurance, and ultimately giving them a better level of service.

2. Wave goodbye to archaic pensions

With inflation at a 40-year high and the price of energy and food rising rapidly, consumers are having to make difficult decisions about what to prioritise. Investing in a pension is likely to slip down the agenda as the immediate benefits are not quite as visible.

The good news is that the acceleration in technology and the growth of digital pension challengers such as Penfold and PensionBee mean that consumers have far greater, immediate control over their pensions. Digital driven providers can offer greater flexibility so that savers can adjust or even pause contributions seamlessly if they are struggling to manage day-to-day living costs, which is something that the more traditional providers simply can’t match. This greater level of flexibility and control will keep consumers investing in their future in spite of short-term shocks, giving them a more secure future.

3. The changing face of insurance

The era of poorly coded, sluggish technology is over. Consumers have grown used to a level of service, brought on by the pandemic, which is defined by efficiency and ease of use, and the industry as a whole will make significant efforts to match this, by adopting AI, predictive analytics and advanced chatbots over the next year. 47% of consumers now say they are open to parting with their money via a chatbot. As such, developing technology which improves the performance and quality of service, while providing access to insurance quickly, will be a key focus of the industry in the remainder of 2022.

4. Tech to prevent fraud

Fraud losses following unprecedented amounts of financial support given to businesses and individuals over the pandemic were a painful reminder of the importance of adequate KYC checks. In the UK, an estimated £4.9 billion of taxpayers’ money was lost to criminals as a result of poor identity and verification (ID&V) processes. A primary focus for the second half of this year will be how we can stop this from happening again with technology solutions such as ID-Pal and Veriff, especially as the methods employed by fraudsters become increasingly sophisticated.

5. The future of the homebuying journey

Over the pandemic, the property industry adopted digitisation as a means of survival. As well to online communication, advisers embraced digital application tracking, online fact finds and interactive calculators to their list of services.

These benefits are now standard in the industry, but adoption of these services is certainly not the end. Exciting developments, such as Smartr365’s HomeBuyer platform allow customers to scan a QR code or Near-Field Communication (NFC) chip in an estate agent window or on a property search site. Other companies, such as Acre are similarly pushing for greater tech adoption. This will automatically and remotely share their details with a mortgage broker to begin the application process, bringing even greater efficiency and customer-centricity to the process.

James Turnbull, CTO at Reassured, comments:

“Fintech leapt to the challenge at the dawn of the pandemic by allowing essential financial services to continue to operate remotely and with greater efficiency. Now, it’s time for fintech to step up as the cost-of living-crisis intensifies.

“Innovative technologies in all areas of financial services have the power to grant consumers greater flexibility, greater security, and ultimately, greater freedom – all of which will help individuals deal with the toughest effects of rising living costs. But, it’s up to us as financial services providers to grasp these opportunities and lead from the front, by making use of the best of what fintech has to offer in order to put the customer first.”

• 09.06.2022 -- 11:10 am

Nexi,  the European PayTech, and Zuora,  the leading cloud‐based subscription management platform provider, announced a  strategic partnership in the e-commerce sector:  XPay,  the gateway of  Nexi for e‐commerce,  is now powered by payment services from Zuora.  

With Zuora, which powers the full quote to cash and revenue recognition process for more than 1,000 companies worldwide, corporate customers of Nexi's partner banks will be able to offer a subscription payment experience that provides greater flexibility and security:  end customers will be able to pay for digital services online with a credit card, without having to enter their data each time. They will be able to suspend and reactivate a service with maximum convenience, pay for what they consume, and update their data in real-time.  

The partnership will enable  Nexi to expand the range of its e‐commerce services for businesses by integrating a best‐in‐class solution that offers speed and convenience while ensuring maximum security.   

"The partnership with Zuora allows us to strengthen our e‐commerce capabilities which,  according to data from the  Politecnico di  Milano,  has grown by  21 per cent in  2021,  touching  39.4  billion euros,  thanks to the online purchases of  46.1  million  Italian consumers. Our goal is to grow further in this channel, which is increasingly strategic in our country's economy," said Dirk Pinamonti, head of e‐commerce at Nexi.  

"With Zuora’s full quote to cash and revenue recognition capabilities, Nexi is able to provide  Italian subscription‐based companies with an innovative,  reliable and secure tool," commented Paulo Baptista, Zuora AVP EMEA South. 

Louis Taylor has been appointed CEO of the British Business Bank, the UK’s economic development bank, and will take up the role from 1 October. Louis Taylor is currently CEO of UK Export Finance, the UK government's export credit agency.

Louis Taylor joined UK Export Finance in 2015, enjoying a stellar career which saw the department provide its highest level of support for UK exporters in 30 years and end its financial support for overseas fossil fuel projects – all while operating at no net cost to the UK taxpayer.

Before joining UK Export Finance, Louis Taylor had a career in banking and corporate finance, most recently with Standard Chartered Bank where he held positions as Chief Operating Officer for Group Treasury and also as CEO, Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia. His early career included eight years in investment banking for JP Morgan and seven years running strategy and acquisitions for Cookson Group plc and Invensys.

In September 2020, Catherine Lewis La Torre was appointed Interim CEO of the Bank to allow the government to map out the next phase of the Bank’s development before commencing the search for a permanent successor to the CEO. Catherine Lewis La Torre will continue in her post as Interim CEO through to Autumn to ensure an orderly transition.

Welcoming Louis Taylor’s appointment, Lord Smith of Kelvin, Chair, British Business Bank said: “Louis is a highly respected, strategic leader, with more than 30 years banking and corporate finance experience and a strong track record of success. He has successfully led UK Export Finance for more than six years and has made a considerable contribution to the agency since he joined in 2015. I am delighted that he has agreed to take on the role of CEO and look forward to working with him as we support the UK’s economic recovery through the Bank’s debt and equity programmes, launch the Next Generation of Regional Funds, and also continue to address fraud and financial crime in relation to the Covid-19 loan schemes.”

Louis Taylor said: “I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead the British Business Bank, with its well-established support for smaller businesses to start, grow and develop, as well as its important role as the UK’s economic development bank. Continuing to deliver on the government’s agenda for levelling up and driving towards net-zero is an exciting prospect that I look forward to addressing with the Bank’s talented team.”

Lord Smith paid tribute to Catherine Lewis La Torre: “I want to thank Catherine for the commitment and dedication she has given to the role of Interim CEO. She has led the British Business Bank through a period of unprecedented growth and public scrutiny over the past two years. I am working closely with Catherine to define her future role and am delighted that she intends to stay with the Bank.” 

​Post-pandemic payment trends continue to evolve, with German eCommerce consumers now choosing eWallets above long-time favourite open invoicing, while Italian consumers signal strong confidence in the security benefits of PayPal, according to the latest eCommerce Report from European PayTech Nexi Group.

The 2021 eCommerce Report conducts a deep dive into eCommerce data from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, where a collective €493 billion was spent last year.

Key findings include:

• When given a choice, German consumers will almost always opt for e-wallets. 39% prefer this method, compared to 23% who prefer paying by invoice.
• Austria shares this new love for eWallets (25%), favouring simplicity, security and speed.
• Italy markedly prefers PayPal (50%), with 58% citing security as a critical factor in their decision. The second favourite option is debit cards at 19%.
• Danish consumers overwhelmingly prefer credit card payments (51%), but over a third (34%) prefer the simplicity of MobilePay.
• Consumers in Finland still prefer "traditional" transaction technologies like online banking payments (34%) and credit cards (24%), while newer payment methods like PayPal and MobilePay still have ground to make up for.
• Local payment methods, like VIPPS in Norway (23%) and Swish in Sweden (19%), remain popular.

View the full findings in the report here.

"The Nexi European eCommerce Report 2021 shows that while consumers expect their payments to be secure, they still value convenience and simplicity when conducting online transactions," said Omar Haque, Head of Group E-commerce at Nexi Group. "It's likely that consumers now have greater trust in purchasing products online than before the pandemic, which could in fact have helped democratise online purchases across all categories in Europe."

"Understanding what makes consumers abandon a cart, such as not being offered their preferred payment option, is critical to improving sales, and stores that can enhance this aspect of the experience stand to win the most. This new report offers eCommerce businesses deeper insights into consumer behaviours across Europe so they can tailor their offer and grow their business."

A new fast and secure payment solution, GivingPay has been created to simplify the commonly-fragmented donation process for charities of all sizes. 

CommittedGiving, part of the MFS GroupCo, has created a new type of service in response to the charity sector’s feedback calling for a single-contact solution that can seamlessly set up, manage and provide support for donors’ debit and credit card transactions, for both one-off donations and reoccurring Direct Debit donations, and for giving across multiple channels. 

GivingPay incorporates both a debit and credit card merchant facility and operates seamlessly across channels, including online, e-commerce and telephone, to give charities the opportunity to transact and process their card payments easily and in one place, through the CGHub. The hub gives charities total control and visibility of their transactions, where they can view, export, easily reconcile or refund payments 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

Speaking about GivingPay, Scott Gray, chief commercial officer – charity division (CCO) said: 

“The launch of GivingPay finally gives charities the freedom, speed and flexibility they need around their voluntary income – across all channels, from online donations to postal responses. 

“Our ambition was to create a frictionless and cost-effective payment merchant service that will change the way charities manage their donations; while making it a service that understands how your charity uses it, why it is vital for your fundraising or trading, and what to do when you have queries. It’s quick and easy to set up, provides competitive merchant rates and a joined-up payment service relationship – it’s an exciting step forward for charity donations management.”

GivingPay is supported by payment technology provider, Trust Payments, in a partnership that enabled the innovation required for a charity-specific service while operating within a strict financial regulatory framework.

Sarah Abernethy, Business Development Director of Trust Payments, comments:

“We are confident that CommittedGiving is able to offer a truly innovative and specialist payments solution for charities at what is an exciting and challenging time for the industry. We are delighted to be working with and supporting Mosaic FS and CommittedGiving in providing an entire end-to-end solution to power GivingPay’s launch into the payment space.”

Trust Payments and CommittedGiving first started working together in 2013 and are pleased to further enhance the relationship. Over the past nine years, the partnership has supported a number of CommittedGiving’s merchants with e-commerce payments gateway solutions.

Sentinels, a Fenergo company and Europe’s leading intelligent transaction monitoring platform, has been appointed by payments fintech kevin. to handle transaction monitoring compliance. The relationship means kevin. now detects suspicious transactions in real-time while ensuring compliance with local anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.

kevin.’s account-to-account (A2A) payment infrastructure solution, enabled by open banking, allows merchants to receive payments from more than 350 million people with bank accounts within 27 European countries. Currently, over 6000 merchants use kevin.’s payment infrastructure. Its goal is to improve security and convenience for consumers, increase conversion, speed up settlement and lower transaction fees for merchants while bypassing card schemes.

To prevent fraudulent use of its services and meet European AML compliance requirements, kevin. must maintain strong customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, and client risk profiling procedures. These steps ensure that the company can identify suspiciously and deny illegitimate transactions.

Sentinels equip kevin.’s AML officers with a modern tool that enables it to meet its regulatory needs and improve transaction monitoring. For example, rich client data insights built from Know Your Customer (KYC) and transaction data provide kevin. with a deeper understanding of its customers, enabling it to identify suspicious transactions with greater speed, frequency and accuracy.

Joost van Houten, CEO of Sentinels, commented: “It’s a privilege to have another open banking-powered fintech adopt our transaction monitoring solution. We’re committed to helping kevin. continue its commendable ascent unimpeded by the threat of fraud and money laundering, with increased operational efficiency, and in line with Europe’s compliance requirements. It’s a vital role in kevin.’s journey that we’re thrilled to have been chosen to play.”

Mindaugas Gaulia, Head of Compliance at kevin., added: “Following a quick onboarding process, we’ve reaped the benefits of the flexible Sentinels platform. Its rules-based alerts are customizable, and the entire workflow is configurable to suit our business needs and the jurisdictions we serve, reducing the time and effort spent on investigations. kevin. has huge growth ambitions for our bank coverage and A2A payments products, and we see Sentinels as our future one-stop-shop compliance partner.”

kevin. has witnessed a high demand for its services since launching in 2018 and with Sentinels’ support, the company plans to further ride and drive this wave to allow more consumers across the globe to make purchases directly from their bank accounts, cutting out the high costs from the card schemes.

Mambu, the cloud banking platform, has teamed up with Western Union, a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, to integrate its solution into the latter’s next-generation real-time multi-currency digital wallet and digital banking platform in Europe. 

Mambu will enable Western Union to extend the relationship with its customers, and create a new banking experience. With its cloud-native platform, Mambu has 70 million daily users and over 230 banks and financial institutions as customers. 

Built on Mambu, Western Union’s digital banking app WU+ will bring together a range of features that make it easy to move money, manage cards and view transactions. 

Mambu gives Western Union full control to deploy new banking products and services that are easy to configure and integrate with external applications. In a single, native mobile app, customers can create a new account in minutes by selecting a subscription model and start saving and spending instantly. 

The new digital banking offering will help Western Union transform the transactional relationships it has with customers, into closer customer-centric connections. 

Thomas Mazzaferro, Chief Data & Innovation Officer at Western Union, said: “Our ambition is to provide market-leading financial solutions to our customers. By partnering with Mambu we have built our digital banking products and services starting in Europe with Germany and Romania. The Mambu and Western Union team have come together in a truly collaborative partnership accelerating our financial service ambitions while building a product that can scale and is cloud agnostic.”

Western Union connects millions of consumers to their families and loved ones, as well as to the world economy, across more than 200 countries and territories and in over 130 currencies. 

The company has a truly diversified omnichannel offering, bridging the digital and physical worlds with a global retail agent network consisting of hundreds of thousands of locations, combined with one of the largest cross-border, person-to-person digital global networks, reaching billions of bank accounts, as well as millions of digital wallets and cards.

Eugene Danilkis, CEO and co-founder of Mambu, commented: “The industry has reached a tipping point for cloud adoption. Large financial institutions have started a global trend of moving to cloud-native, nimble tech stacks and are becoming part of the ecosystem. Western Union adopted the cloud because they recognised that FIs of the future need to engage their customers with excellent new products. We are looking forward to seeing Western Union wow their customers with modern and secure banking services.”

Apptio, the leading provider of technology business management (TBM) applications, today announced several enhancements to its product portfolio that support organizations adopting a digital-first strategy and improving technology investment decision-making. New features provide key decision-makers with improved visibility and insights into their technology spending and the ability to prioritise investments that deliver the most value to the organization.

The demand for digital and cloud-based services has increased in the last year, but many organizations are still struggling to deliver these services on time and on budget. While a report by PwC found that 60% of C-suite executives identified digital transformation as their most critical growth driver in 2022, a disconnect between team efforts and fragmented technology spend data to make it hard for businesses to prioritize investments for a digital-first strategy. A study by Apptio and Harvard Business Review revealed that while 92% of leaders agreed on insights into the business value of technology to be of high importance, only 62% had confidence in their data.

The latest updates from Apptio enable organizations to accelerate their journeys by improving the ability to act upon data insights, connecting investments to strategy and linking data across an organization’s technology footprint.

Driving Actions Through Data Insights

Modern businesses generate vast amounts of data on their technology infrastructure but driving actions to generate more value from this data poses a challenge for leaders due to time pressures and the complexity of the data. To address this, Apptio has launched a number of new features which empower teams to rapidly uncover and take action on cost-saving opportunities.

• Apptio BI Reports

Creating custom reports and dashboards to show the cost of particular services or actuals versus a plan can be a time-consuming process which holds up action on improving technology investments. To address this challenge, Apptio BI Reports have recently been released as a new feature of Apptio BI. These out-of-the-box reports are created by the Apptio product team and span the entire Apptio portfolio with new reports being released every month. Real-time connection to Apptio data sources and system-generated alerting reduces the time spent on creating and analysing reports and allows IT teams to focus on uncovering and actioning cost-saving opportunities.

• EC2 rightsizing in AWS for ASG and GPU-backed cloud instances

New EC2 rightsizing recommendations give cloud leaders the power to reduce overprovisioning and unnecessary costs due to Auto Scaling Groups and GPU-backed instances in AWS. Automated recommendations cut through the time-consuming process of tracking down and evaluating individual instances, allowing AWS customers to take immediate action on cloud cost-saving opportunities.

• Japanese localisation for Apptio Cloudability

In addition to existing multi-currency capabilities, Apptio Cloudability will now be available in Japanese, supporting users in the market in applying FinOps practices to their cloud investment strategy.

Connecting Investments to Strategy

To optimize technology investments, IT leaders need a full understanding of where their technology spending is fulfilling the needs of the business. To assist with bridging the gap between investment and value, Apptio’s latest improvements to ApptioOne, Cloudability and Targetprocess offer unique insights for key decision-makers that traditional financing tools are not designed to address.

• Integrated Investment Planning

As a new feature in ApptioOne, Integrated Investment Planning (IIP) helps organizations understand the multi-year financial plan associated with their technology investments. This feature covers all investments, both waterfall and agile, and is able to isolate the ‘build’ costs from the ‘run’ costs of these investments. Direct connections to source project portfolio management (PPM) or enterprise agile planning (EAP) systems provide an automated stream of resource allocation and utilization information which can then be compared to the plan for variance analysis and adjustment.

• Cloudability TotalCost

To reap the full benefits of a cloud-first strategy, IT leaders must be able to calculate the cloud’s fully burdened cost. Cloudability TotalCost connects public cloud spending with direct, indirect and shared cloud costs in areas such as labour, observability tools and third-party services to link cloud spending more accurately to value. Chargeback tools allow IT teams to then fully allocate these costs to users, while alerts can be created to flag when costs exceed budgeted thresholds.

• Enhanced team-level tool integration for Apptio Targetprocess

Strengthening the native integration for Apptio Targetprocess with popular team-level agile management tools such as Jira enables portfolio managers (PMs) and business leaders to gain more visibility across multiple teams without impacting existing processes. Seamless data synchronisation across multiple Jira instances allows Apptio Targetprocess to, free up more time for PMs to improve output at a program, portfolio and enterprise level.

• Apptio Targetprocess validation rules

Validation rules in Targetprocess can be created to automatically enforce checkpoints within automated workflows, helping organizations improve data integrity and ensure alignment to company-specific requirements. These rules can be used to verify prerequisites or prevent objects from changing states, supporting the unique governance requirements of complex organizations that can span hundreds of teams.

Improving Investment Decisions with Connected Data

Authoritative, real-time data is vital for empowering teams to make smarter technology investment decisions. Customers using multiple Apptio products will now enjoy a more unified data experience thanks to new features which simplify and accelerate the sharing of data between products.

• Apptio Automated Data Management

Apptio’s new Automated Data Management service facilitates the sharing of data between Apptio applications. As a traditional publish/subscribe service, all products are able to publish new data sets to the service as they become available. At the same time, products can subscribe to the service to be made aware of important data sets for them in real-time. This will first be implanted for the Cost and Plan sides of ApptioOne, where new actuals are ingested by the Plan side as soon as they’re available for quick variance analysis or new plan creation.

• Targetprocess Integration to Automated Data Management

Bringing Apptio Targetprocess data into Automated Data Management simplifies the process of factoring labour demand and capacity decisions made in Targetprocess to ApptioOne’s overall planning and budget tools. This integration will enable near real-time updates on accurate labour capitalization data and the ability to reflect the current demand and capacity. This improves decision-making and helps organizations to accurately plan from sprint to sprint.

“As a digital-first approach is top-of-mind for enterprises globally, it is crucial that key decision-makers are equipped with the best tools to ensure their technology investments are driving business value,” said Jeremy Ung, Chief Engineering Officer at Apptio. “Traditional financial management tools are not suited to the distributed nature of technology across teams that we are seeing in organizations today. Apptio’s latest enhancements to its products offer unique solutions for enabling the shift from a project to product organization by connecting data from all parts of the business, giving full financial visibility into the entire technology footprint and the insights to steer funding based on value delivered. These capabilities give decision-makers the blueprint to accelerate product innovation in a digital-first world.”  

Backbase, the creator of the category-leading Engagement Banking Platform, raised €120 million in growth equity funding from Motive Partners. Having grown organically to over €200 million in revenue, Backbase is now partnering with a Fintech specialist private equity firm, to further strengthen its claim in the Engagement Banking category.

This growth investment values Backbase at €2.5 billion. Motive Partners is a founder-friendly partner, fully supporting Backbase in remaining an independent force and driving the Engagement Banking strategy, by continuing to focus on customer-centric innovation that transforms the financial services industry’s siloed channels and legacy applications.

Most banks struggle with a patchwork of disconnected, point and channel solutions that were never designed to service the customer holistically, leaving behind a raft of broken journeys for their customers. This investment will allow Backbase to double down on its vision for Engagement Banking and accelerate its mission of re-architecting banking around the customer. 

Engagement Banking is a paradigm shift. Rather than stitching these legacy applications together and trying to rework banking around outdated technology, banks and credit unions can instantly leverage the power of a cloud-based engagement banking platform to create frictionless customer journeys across all the stages of the customer lifecycle. From onboarding to servicing, to lending, to expanding share of wallet, this investment supports the growth through product expansion and further growing our sales and marketing operations.

“Today is a major milestone for more than 2,000 Backbasers and 150 customers around the world, to celebrate the incredible progress we made. With this partnership, we’re even better equipped to drive our Engagement Banking vision to the next level. I couldn't be more excited about the opportunities that lie ahead and the positive impact we can make,” Jouk Pleiter, Founder and CEO of Backbase said. “To all our customers, I personally want to restate our long-term commitment to being your independent, long-term partner in innovation. For us, it is still day one."

“For more than a decade, Backbase has shown leadership and innovation in enhancing digital relationships between financial institutions and its customers,” explained Rob Heyvaert, Founder and Managing Partner of Motive Partners. “We’re excited to support Jouk and the Backbase team with this initial fundraise as they continue to expand, grow and build the leading, customer-centric, Engagement Banking Platform globally.”

Neil Cochrane, Partner at Motive Partners commented, “Backbase continues to lead an innovative category underpinning the banking sector, and we believe that together we have a unique growth opportunity to build upon Backbase’s strong foundations. As Backbase continues its growth journey, we’re excited to leverage our team’s depth of expertise alongside Jouk and the team.”

“Backbase’s proven track record of entrepreneurship and organic growth will continue. Our formula is simple: focus on the needs of our customers and empower highly skilled teams to deliver. We’re changing a big industry, which is hard work. Having critical mass and market momentum allows us to stay laser-focused,” Pleiter added. “Together we’re making it happen.”