Finance

ID-Pal, the identity verification provider, has been appointed by Lerex Technology, the payment solution provider, to help with its growing identity verification, e-verification, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know your Customer (KYC) requirements. The partnership will see ID-Pal support Lerex Technology with AML compliance and the onboarding of new customers seamlessly across multiple European markets.

Lerex Technology is an E-money as a Service solution provider that enables businesses to offer next-generation payment systems to their customers. The platform’s services include prepaid cards, digital accounts solutions, and access to payment rails such as Faster Payments and SEPA.

To comply with the AML and KYC requirements of these programmes while offering a seamless user experience, Lerex Technology has partnered with ID-Pal for their identity verification needs. The solution performs document verification, facial matching, liveness testing and address e-verification in real-time. It offers industry-leading accuracy with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance built in, all while delivering a frictionless journey for the end user.

Lerex prides itself on leveraging cutting-edge technologies, an easy-to-use API for efficient connectivity and integration, as well as delivering world-class customer service, allowing business payments and consumer challenger banks to come to market quickly and easily.

The speed at which ID-Pal is able to implement the technology across multiple jurisdictions and channels along with its robust architecture were key drivers for the partnership. Lerex partnered with ID-Pal via their API Integration, making the process seamless for the business and their clients.

This partnership will enable Lerex and their clients to prevent fraud at source, simplify their onboarding experience for customers on any device and verify identities in any language or jurisdiction. The solution offers robust compliance, verifying more than 6,000 types of identity documents and cross checking against 200 verified address databases.

Colum Lyons, CEO and Founder of ID-Pal, comments:

“Our partnership with Lerex is very strong and delivers significant benefits to their clients. Our businesses are aligned in the mission to make it easier for businesses to balance meeting compliance requirements with providing a positive experience for customers.”

On the partnership, Richard Ney, CEO of Lerex Technology, said:
“We needed an Identity Verification solution that augmented our focus on advanced technologies and delivering the best experience for our customers. Using ID-Pal makes the compliance and onboarding process seamless for Lerex and our end clients. The results and reports are detailed and clear, allowing us to turn applications around in a timely manner and onboard customers smoothly.”

New hire is a key milestone in Detected’s ambition to revolutionise onboarding in the payments industry

London, 3rd August 2022: Detected, the London-based fintech that provides frictionless global business onboarding, today announces that it has hired Top 100 Women in Fintech, Rebecca Duckworth, as Chief Revenue Officer.

Rebecca joins with over 25 years of experience working in digital transformation across the payments, fintech and software sectors, and most notably spent six years working in Leadership roles at Fiserv, the global fintech and payments company. 

Rebecca has also held senior roles at Intuit, QV Systems and Digital Insight.

Throughout her career, Rebecca has worked at both start-ups and multinationals, and has been responsible for developing and driving strategies around product development, business and market development and sales. At Detected, she will be responsible for enhancing the go to market strategy which will cover everything from marketing to customer relationships, product strategy, sales development, and ultimately, ensuring business growth.

Detected, which was founded in July 2020, utilises a unique algorithm which utilises over 1,700 data sources to create a detailed and accurate profile of any business in the world. It supplements this with information that can be added by the business that is being onboarded. In doing so, Detected enables a frictionless, almost instant, onboarding process. Testament to its success, Detected has already partnered with payments giant, Visa.

 Rebecca Duckworth, Chief Revenue Officer at Detected, comments:

“Throughout my career I have been attracted to businesses that have three key criteria: a strong and supportive company culture; the opportunity to challenge my own skills and grow those of the people around me; have a strong proposition and problem to solve. Detected has all of these in abundance.”

“Detected is not only changing businesses’ operational processes through enabling frictionless onboarding, but also reimagining workplace culture. I am thrilled to be joining the company at such a pivotal moment in its growth and look forward to playing a part in its journey.”

Liam Chennells, Chief Executive Officer at Detected, comments:

“Rebecca is a vastly experienced operator in the Fintech space. Her belief in our product, is a credit to our technology team.”

“It makes me proud that we are attracting such high calibre team members. I am excited to work with and learn from her.”

• Kingswood acquires Hampshire based independent financial advice company, Smith Pearman and Associates

• Follows record levels of revenue and operating profit for 2021

Kingswood Holdings Limited (AIM: KWG), the international, fully integrated wealth and investment management group, today announces that it has exchanged and completed on the acquisition of Smith Pearman and Associates, an independent financial advice company based in Hampshire.

Established for over 35 years, Smith Pearman and Associates look after over 240 clients with over £70m AUA servicing the Surrey and Hampshire region.  They offer tailored services to high net-worth individuals with an existing portfolio, or new investment requirements, based on personal goals and aspirations.

The acquisition follows five UK acquisitions completed by Kingswood since the start of 2022, including Allots Financial Services, a financial advisory firm based in Rotherham; Joseph R Lamb Financial Advisers, a long established advisory business based in Essex; DJ Cooke Life and Pensions, an independent financial planning business servicing clients across South Yorkshire; AiM Independent Financial advisers, an independent financial advice business based in Eastleigh; and Vincent & Co Ltd, a privately owned independent financial adviser firm based in Lincolnshire.

The acquisition also follows a transformational year for Kingswood with record levels of revenue and operating profit in 2021. Revenue reached £149.7m, an increase by 488% compared to 2020, and operating profit increased by £5.5m to £6.3m, reflecting the successful integration of acquisitions in the UK and growth in the US.

David Lawrence, CEO at Kingswood Holdings Limited, commented: “Smith Pearman and Associates has established itself as a reputable, dynamic and client centric business over the past 30 years and we are delighted to have its team of highly skilled professionals join us at Kingswood.

“This deal also reinforces our presence in Hampshire, building on our recent acquisition of AiM Independent and creating a sustainable hub in the region.

“Looking ahead, we maintain a healthy acquisition pipeline and are currently in exclusive due diligence talks for a further seven potential acquisitions. Our near-term target is to build our UK AUM and AUA in excess of £10bn in the U.K. and £14bn globally.

Steve Egginton, Director at Smith Pearman and Associates, commented: “Wishing to build on the success of Smith Pearman and Associates, we are joining the Kingswood group to provide our clients with enhanced levels of financial advice and services for the future. 

“Kingswood’s ethos of putting their clients at the forefront of their service proposition dovetails with our own culture of providing a great service together with excellent advice. We look forward to working with Kingswood to provide a smooth and seamless transition for our clients.”

∙         Created for independent analysts, traders, investors, and business commentators to provide the growing investment community with subscription-led research, insight, and financial information 

∙         Giving financial writers and experts professional-grade publishing tools to design and distribute digital content via email, web, and social channels 

∙         Targets the estimated 300 million individual investors globally, and the existing community of investment professionals both of whom are under-served by the institutional market for investment research and insights 

London, 1 August 2022: Tellimer, the global technology, information and data provider, announces the launch of Scriber, a financial research and insights platform created for independent analysts, traders, investors, subject matter experts and financial commentators, to provide research, insight, and business commentary to the growing investment and trading community.  

Scriber will address the estimated 300 million individual investors globally who trade and invest in a wide range of assets through new real-time trading platforms. These investors are typically highly networked across digital and social channels and are under-served by traditional data and information structures. In addition to improving access for individual investors to investment information, Scriber will also make it easier for market professionals to access a broader range of analysis that is otherwise invisible to them.  

The Scriber platform will offer an opportunity for experts to provide analysis of niche areas of financial investment, which are not covered by mainstream sell-side analysts, to monetise their knowledge. Content creators will be able to distribute newsletters direct to paying subscribers and ensure their insights are discoverable on the web and distributed through via social and professional research networks.  

The Scriber proposition builds on Tellimer’s experience in operating its Insights platform, an investment data and research platform focused on emerging markets and used by some of the world’s largest institutions and governments.   

Scriber has been in open beta-testing since April, during which time the platform has already attracted nearly 500 individual and company creators who are delivering their unique content to some 150,000 of their own subscribers. Today marks the first day that content creators can access the full suite of subscription-management and paywall services to start to build their own subscription businesses.   

Commenting on the launch of Scriber, Tellimer CEO Duncan Wales, said:  

“From ESG to crypto and Gamestop, the shape of the global investment market is changing rapidly. Both retail and market professional investors are badly under-served by established financial information structures.  

“We set up Scriber to build the future infrastructure for the market in financial information and investment insights. One where both professional and semi-professional investors and participants can access the sharpest independent financial expertise, easily.   

“It is a powerful tool that combines the functionality of a professional research creation platform with the superior SEO and capital markets expertise that Tellimer is known for.” 

The semi-professional investment community has expanded rapidly. Retail investor platforms have grown exponentially in recent years, and the independent research market has grown by 125% since 2015 to reach $900 million in 2020. Smartphone technology has put the ability to trade a range of assets, from shares to crypto currencies, into every consumer’s pocket, making the investing world accessible to hundreds of millions of people. The crypto investing platform Coinbase has 98 million certified users, up from circa 20 million in 2018, and share-dealing apps Robinhood and eToro have nearly 45 million registered users between them. 

By contrast, access to a large portion of professional-grade investment analysis and information remains highly inaccessible.  Likewise, investment professionals now have access to less research than previously, at the same time the universe of potential investments is expanding.  Bloomberg, the leading provider of financial information to the professional user community with a 33% market share1, has only 325,000 terminals globally. Similarly, Refinitiv which has 19.4%2 market share has only 190,000 terminals. Scriber will create a controlled means of creating transparency for professional and semi-professional investors alike by distributing analysis from Scriber writers with professional readership demand direct to those professional platforms. New participants, including smaller professional organisations often can’t afford or do not need a Bloomberg or Refinitiv terminal, and even large institutions can be cut off from information and expertise they should be able to access because it is unavailable or hard to find, scattered on social media or in unstructured and undiscoverable forms on the web. 

•         5ire, has received funding from UK-based conglomerate SRAM & MRAM to become the fastest growing blockchain unicorn in India and the only sustainable blockchain unicorn in the world.
•         Brainchild of India-origin founders, Pratik Gauri and Prateek Dwivedi

India, July 15, 2022: 5ire, a fifth generation level 1 blockchain network and the world’s first and only sustainable blockchain, today announced that it has raised $100 million in Series A funding from UK-based conglomerate SRAM & MRAM. This investment makes 5ire the fastest growing blockchain unicorn in India and the only sustainable blockchain unicorn in the world, valued at $1.5 billion. 5ire was founded by Indian-origin entrepreneurs, Pratik Gauri and Prateek Dwivedi, along with web3 financier Vilma Mattila, in August 2021.

5ire raised a funding of $21 million in its seed round at a valuation of $110 million with participation from both private and institutional investors like Alphabit, Marshland Capital, Launchpool Labs, Moonrock Capital, and amongst many other investors. 

The funds raised will be used for business expansion and extending 5ire’s footprint across three continents including Asia, North America and Europe, with India as the hub of operations and core area of focus. 5ire will continue to invest in strengthening its blockchain further and work towards ensuring this decentralised technology benefits a larger base globally. Additionally, 5ire aims to hire the best talent in the industry across functions like product, engineering, marketing etc.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Sailesh Lachu Hiranandani, Chairman of the SRAM & MRAM group, said, “We have great confidence in moving forward with investments in sustainable technologies. As a scientist, I have always believed in finding better ways to do things, and 5ire is committed to finding solutions for the 17 UN Sustainability Development Goals. We are assured in the abilities of the leadership team at 5ire and wish them all the very best.”

Pratik Gauri, CEO and Founder of 5ire said, “We are on a mission to embed sustainability into blockchain and shift the current paradigm from ‘for-profit’ to ‘for-benefit’. The 5ire team has worked round-the-clock to develop a platform that combines both technology and processes for the benefit of humankind. Becoming the world’s first and only sustainable unicorn born out of India, in just 11 months, is testimony that we are on the right path. We are humbled by the trust shown in 5ire by the SRAM & MRAM group and thrilled to find a partner who also wants to promote the transition of the world from the 4th Industrial Revolution to the 5th Industrial Revolution.”

5ire is a blockchain ecosystem that brings forth Sustainability, Technology & Innovation to build the 5th industrial revolution (5IR). The mission of the 5ire ecosystem is to embed the for-benefit paradigm at the heart of blockchain, by highly incentivizing practices that align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), therefore facilitating the transition from the 4IR to 5IR. 5ire empowers decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and working groups to help accelerate the implementation of the UN’s 17 SDG goals. It assures openness, unity of purpose, and inclusivity. Thus, shaping the ethics of business and collaborations toward sustainability while providing a cross-chain environment as well as advanced governance and rewarding mechanisms for participants.

A leading restructuring expert is urging businesses struggling to meet financial repayments to seek help before the cash runs out, following the release of the latest Official Government insolvency statistics for June 2022.

Colin Haig is Head of Restructuring at Azets, the UK’s largest regional accounting firm, and recently completed a two-year stint as Leader of the UK’s Restructuring trade association, R3.

He believes new restructuring procedures introduced under the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (CIGA 2020) can present much better outcomes amid a growing number of liquidations.

Colin said: “Government insolvency statistics published over the past six months show liquidations peaking and almost no company voluntary arrangements (CVAs) – and very few administrations. This is not good as liquidations are an end-of-life process.

“Most at-risk are businesses that are extensively geared or have fixed rate deals coming to an end, with protective covid measures being withdrawn coupled with the increased cost-of-living and ongoing supply chain issues slowing economic recovery. It’s also apparent the investor community is becoming more cautious.” 

Insolvency statistics for June 2022 show 1,691 registered company insolvencies, 40% higher than June 2021 (1,207) and 15% higher than pre-pandemic levels (1,467 in June 2019). 

There were 1,456 Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidations (CVLs), 30% higher than in June 2021 and 44% higher than June 2019. There were 3.6 times as many compulsory liquidations in June 2022 as in June 2021.

Colin Haig says companies on LIBOR plus interest rates have been immediately impacted by the Bank of England’s latest interest rates hike to 1.25% but says more companies and jobs can be saved if business leaders act early.

He said: “The impact of rising interest rates on UK businesses is going to be seismic, with liquidations already peaking before the Bank of England raised interest rates to 1.25% and a likelihood they will keep rising.

“The challenges facing businesses are significant and whilst nobody can magic away what’s coming, more businesses and jobs can be saved using these new procedures.

“Insolvency inevitably means some creditors will lose money – that is the downside of a market economy – however, where a business can be salvaged via a pre-pack administration, a restructuring plan, or a CVA, jobs will be saved and there will be a revitalised entity to trade with on the other side.”

He added: “The UK is blessed with a highly regulated and skilled population of restructuring advisors, armed with brand new tools – but with a lead time of at least 12 weeks, it’s critical to take swift and decisive action early and not wait until the bank account is empty.

“It is incumbent on business leaders to consult as early as possible, and on advisors to use the new procedures as imaginatively as possible, preserving value and keeping people in jobs that might otherwise be in jeopardy.”

Atul Verma, Senior Payments Architect, Icon Solutions

 By: Atul Verma, Senior Payments Architect, Icon Solutions

Although IT resiliency has long been a common theme and practice for financial institutions, the rapid digitalisation of financial services is underscoring its importance.

Over time, the financial system has become progressively more connected and in turn the risk of operational disruption more acute. As a result of threats to financial stability, resiliency has become a key focus for regulators. Most recently, in the EU and UK, the introduction of new rules will soon require financial institutions to take a more prescriptive approach to operational resiliency, by understanding how they provide their business to their clients, including operational risks and how prepared they are to manage them when disruption strikes. 

The problem for banks is that while modernising payments architecture is operationally disruptive, it is key to meeting growing customer needs. Equally, outsourcing services or relying on third-party providers can enable agility but it also has the potential to create Service Level Agreement (SLA) challenges. And although API convergence, Open Banking, and 24×7 system availability are opportunities to embrace innovation and connect with customers, they demand higher levels of IT resilience than ever before.

 As banks lift and shift the legacy systems and applications that process payments to respond to the demands of the digital economy, what are the key considerations when it comes to their resiliency frameworks?

Developing a payments strategy

Before embarking on a digital transformation programme, banks need to really understand the tapestry of their existing payment systems and how any changes could impact resilience. This requires a clear vision and roadmap for legacy payment applications. While developing a strategy can be a tricky equation, as challenges around cost and complexity will mean tactical changes along the way, having a clear roadmap in place from the outset will make it easier for banks to analyse, estimate and mitigate risks.

Determining ‘High Availability’ requirements

Functional and non-functional requirements are usually documented very well during the design and development phase of a payment application. Operational ones, on the other hand, tend to receive less attention. Considering all incumbent banks and financial institutions have legacy systems, BaU operations and support processes in place, it is very important to consider the ‘as-is’ functions and inputs from these areas. In fact, a very well captured operational requirement is a key driver for ensuring ‘high availability’.

Designing a highly available payments system requires an assessment of all interfacing applications, their complexity and affinity with the business. This in turn helps to determine SLAs. As payment processing systems are highly modular in design, it also helps to assess the requirements for each application and then categorise them into a critical graph to define the highly available environment that is needed. This in turn makes it possible to fine-tune the payment application and set the priority of execution and further processing, for example: Order Management → Payment Execution → Gateway → Scheme. 

Governance and risk management

In the wake of the pandemic, banks are building flexibility into their products and services to adapt quickly to changing customer needs and market dynamics. This is moving resiliency beyond the traditional parameters of fault-tolerance, technical failure and fail-overs, to include processes and people. It is also emphasising the important role technical authorities play in ascertaining the resiliency of payments applications before they move into production. Every business needs IT to support its goals, and the design and development of payments applications must be aligned with overall strategy.

Furthermore, payments have high risk areas which should be understood, assessed, monitored and communicated to Governance boards early in the design phase. Any unidentified risk may affect the operational resiliency of the application, so regular assessment of actions and controls should also be carried out, and a strategy in place for any known and / or accepted gaps.

Service and incident management

Banks’ payments processing environments are a complex patchwork of systems and integrated applications.  Some of which are operated outside of a bank’s own network, usually through a cloud service or third-party vendor. When any critical application is hosted on a shared resource or server, capacity planning is an important tool to avoid critical issues caused due to a lack or misconfiguration of resources. Having SLAs in place with such third parties is therefore paramount for maintaining quality of service.

Incident management is another key consideration. Payment applications are always designed with high availability, usually with ‘zero’ RTO and RPO requirements, and so incident management plays a crucial role in fixing production issues. Although banks have traditionally focused incident monitoring on infrastructure health, monitoring and alerts must be enabled at the application, transaction, infrastructure, and network level of the payments stream. This is particularly important for low latency applications to meet the requirements of the UK’s Faster Payments Service (FPS), and other real-time payment schemes around the world. It can also provide valuable insight into trends over time which can be used to proactively avoid SLA breaches and incidents in the future.

Kerv, the next-generation, customer-first cloud & digital transformation services provider, has today announced the acquisition of the Communications Compliance Practice business of TDS Global Holdings, to significantly enhance its capabilities in FCA regulated compliance services. The acquisition will take the total Kerv business to over £60m turnover and more than 500 staff and create the leading compliance technology practice serving the UK’s Tier 1 banking and financial services sector.

The rebranded Kerv Communications Compliance Practice provides mission-critical communications compliance services to major global financial services organisations including 50% of the Tier 1 UK banks with 140,000 channels of compliance recording and more than 3 billion captured calls under management globally.

The business employs 40 staff based in Europe, Asia and North America with headquarters in London and a 24-hour global service operations centre in Cardiff. With annual turnover exceeding £10 million, the Practice is continuing to win new customers at pace, achieving a growth rate of 20% in the last financial year and forecasting to exceed that growth in the current period.

The acquisition will strengthen Kerv’s existing proposition and capabilities around all aspects of compliance. The existing leadership of the Communications Compliance Practice, including CEO Brad Gorton, and Head of Strategy Paul Wilson, will join Kerv in senior roles, working closely alongside the management team at Kerv Collaborate, which already has a strong presence in the banking and financial services market. In addition, Kerv plans to retain all staff in the Practice and will continue to invest in the business to build on its growth trajectory and global presence.

The Communications Compliance Practice brings key core technology capabilities to Kerv and is a top-tier partner for the leading global compliance vendors including Verint (winning both European Compliance Partner of the Year and Deal of the Year awards) and NICE.   The Practice enables its clients to ensure and assure compliance across all channels, including mobile, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Symphony together with social media and messaging platforms, all delivered as a cloud manged service.

“Across all Kerv’s practices we have a strong focus on helping our customers transform their business by migrating to and then transforming in the cloud. As we approach our second anniversary, this acquisition is another significant milestone in the development of the group,” commented Kerv Executive Chair, Alastair Mills. “With the compliance world relatively slow to migrate to the cloud compared to other sectors, this is a transformation that is now happening at pace and Kerv is well placed to capitalise on this significant market trend.”

Managing Director of the new Kerv Communications Compliance Practice, Brad Gorton, added: “We’re so excited to be joining the team at Kerv for the next stage of our journey. The opportunity to build on our global cloud capabilities, to extend our digital services and to accelerate investment in our automation, monitoring and proprietary technology by leveraging Kerv’s capabilities is fantastic for us and our customers. Bringing the rest of the Kerv group’s portfolio to our customers and providing our compliance expertise to the Kerv client base will help us accelerate our own growth even further.”

London, 12 July 2022: Tradeteq, the technology provider for illiquid credit distribution, has launched Tradeteq Access Lite, the first ever marketplace for buy-side investors to participate in the secondary trading of trade finance assets.  

More than 40 members of the Trade Finance Distribution Initiative (TFDi), the industry-led group that sets the standards for global trade finance distribution, including leading asset managers, have already signed up to the platform. Participation is now open to credit funds, enabling them to capitalise on the growing multi-trillion-dollar trade finance asset class.  

Trade finance is a low-risk asset class based on the tangible flow of physical goods, making it less susceptible to volatility. The asset class is projected to reach $10 trillion by 2027 but the lack of a secondary market has so far restricted access to a small number of investors due to the need to repackage portfolio risk.  

Tradeteq Access Lite is the latest step in Tradeteq’s mission to turn trade finance into a liquid asset class. Investment managers get free access to a continuous deal flow from selected bank and non-bank originators and can manage the full end-to-end trading lifecycle. This includes instant notification of deals and the ability to match specific deal criteria, negotiate terms and execute trades.  

Investment managers also get free membership to the TFDi, enabling them to collaborate with the world’s largest network of trade finance originators, along many of the leading credit insurers, asset managers and institutional investors.   

Tradeteq’s platform complies with the ISO27001 and SOC 2 security standards, GDPR controls and other global security, safety and data protection requirements. Users fully own and control the collection, usage and distribution of their information and data.  

The lack of a secondary trading market has left many corporates underserved when it comes to funding, contributing to a trade finance gap – the shortfall between supply and demand – which is estimated at $1.7 trillion. By distributing trade finance assets to capital markets, banks can increase their net interest income, free up their balance sheets and do more with less.  

Nils Behling, Co-Founder and CFO at Tradeteq, comments: “Trade finance offers tangible benefits to investors looking for alternative assets – particularly in today’s volatile climate. It’s low-risk and offers yield pick-up and uncorrelated assets that pay above commercial risk spread. The big obstacle has been lack of access but Tradeteq Access Lite is a crucial step towards democratising the market, enabling investors to tap into its full potential.”