Cloud computing is becoming more prevalent throughout the financial sector but many firms say they are less than halfway to having a firm cloud strategy in place, with controls and security remaining primary concerns.
Temenos has moved into the fund administration business with a €235 million acquisition of Luxembourg-based Multifonds, which counts a number of Tier 1 institutions as users of its fund administration platform.
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Swift has added peer assessment to its Sanctions Testing service. An optional service it will allow financial institutions to compare the performance of their sanctions filters against those of other participating institutions.
Tungsten Bank can now provide banking services in Germany, France and Italy following approval from the UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority
Fenergo has enhanced its Regulatory Rules Engine software, used by investment banks investment banks and capital market firms for client lifecycle. The software enables financial institutions to comply with a range of regulatory frameworks based on a single, out-of-the-box repository of rules.
Nearly two-thirds of Italians will be able to make real-time peer to peer payments using a mobile phone by this summer, according to Massimo Arrighetti, chief executive of Italian payment processor SIA. That’s not the end of SIA’s plans however, as the company focuses on an internationalisation agenda that targets 400 million European current account holders.
Lloyds Bank plans to invest £1 billion in digital banking capability over the next three years, re-investing a third of the savings it hopes to make in its drive to become ‘simpler and more efficient’.
Arising out of developments in standardised messaging, eBAM is one step towards the future of more accessible, safer banking
Limited availability of key skills is seen as a threat to growth prospects by 70% of chief executives in the financial services sector. A global survey by PwC shows that the disruptive impact of new technology and new competition in the sector has created new challenges for employers looking to hire in the months ahead. Concerns centre on the shortage of employees with the right combination of skills, with more than three quarters of executives looking for a broader range of skills when hiring than they did in the past.
Deutsche Bank and Hewlett-Packard have announced a 10-year, multi-billion dollar agreement that will see parts of the bank’s global IT systems rationalised and migrated to HP platforms10
In the Oscar-winning film The Theory of Everything the lead character Stephen Hawking lays out his vision of a single equation that explains all physical aspects of the universe. This rarefied scientific debate has echoes in the more prosaic world of Transaction Cost Analysis in financial markets, where the availability of more granular data coupled with pressure from regulators is driving a whole new wave of research and analysis, says ITG’s Michael Sparkes.
Continuing its policy of offering products that fit across user workflows, Bloomberg has moved in to the transaction reporting space in Europe. The company’s Trade Order Management System has been granted approval by the Financial Conduct Authority to report securities with an ISIN and OTC derivatives as part of the UK’s Approved Reporting Mechanisms regime.
The Financial Conduct Authority plans to conduct a market study of the investment and corporate banking sector to decide if competition in the sector is working properly. It may also look into the asset management later in the year.
Customers are looking for organisations that care about their needs in a way that is personalised, responsible, transparent and – of course – secure. In recognising this, banks are stepping up to the challenge and just as technology is at the heart of this business, so their relationship with IT suppliers is a key component of this value shift.
Online social investment network eToro has moved its core IT infrastructure onto a hybrid cloud system. The platform will allow it to maintain sensitive applications in a private cloud while using a public cloud for others.
Poland’s Idea Bank has launched an experimental branch aimed at corporate clients. The ‘Idea Hub’ bank branch was created to test the idea that innovative bank branches can attract customers and provide a complementary service to online and mobile banking services.
Capital markets firms are losing their intellectual property too easily to competitors, business partners and third parties. Most companies could benefit from a tougher approach to IP, including licencing agreements and more use of patents, according to a new report by analyst firm Aite.
The cyber-attack on Sony Pictures at the end of last year highlighted something that IT and security people in financial services have known for some time – the modern networked environment is far less secure than most people are prepared to admit …
A company’s Net Promoter Score has become an important measure of customer satisfaction. It asks them a simple question: how likely they are to recommend that company to a friend. The responses split the audience into three groups: promoters, passives and detractors. By subtracting the percentage of detractors from the promoters, banks obtain their NPS. NPS has been a valued metric in many consumer-facing industries for several years, but its importance and influence in financial services is growing fast.
Avox, the DTCC’s legal entity reference data subsidiary, has launched a series of web-based application programming interfaces designed to support faster access to data, including legal entity identifiers, legal names, addresses, industry classifications and corporate hierarchies.
Protecting your banking infrastructure from cybercriminals is one of the toughest IT challenges in banking. It keeps getting harder, even though banks are working tirelessly to protect both customers and assets. Attacks are growing in size, and new developments such as the Internet of Things mean attack surfaces are growing, as well as the number of endpoints that can be used to launch attacks.
Lloyds Banking Group is to allow customers to upload images of identification documents required as part on an online account opening application, removing the need to visit a branch.
Initially the new electronic identification and verification checks, which will start to be rolled out to customers from next week, will be available to customers who want to add an additional party to an existing account.
From the early days of internet distribution, New York-based Alacra has been aggregating reference data. Chief executive Steve Goldstein told David Bannister the company’s story
The UK’s Payments Council has selected Swift to build the country’s new central infrastructure platform in preparation for the next phase of SEPA regulation in 2016, through the provision of an automated central infrastructure platform for collection and maintenance of UK-specific SEPA routing data.
Like opening Pandora’s box, the emergence of swap execution facilities in US derivatives markets has brought unexpected consequences and problems as well as benefits. In some cases, asset managers are actively looking to avoid trading on the new platforms and even turning to other asset classes, according to a new report by OpenLink.
London-based Orwell Group, founded in 2005, has launched a pan-European current account called Ipagoo in the UK, France, Spain and Italy. The product aims to take on services provided by traditional banks, using open architecture software and promising consumers greater choice and less hassle.
Top African payments and banking experts to convene in Johannesburg In the face of constant payment changes, Cards and Payments Africa is the place to drive business growth and keep up with the latest trends. Join the traditional players, the emerging disruptors and risk-taking visionaries of payments as you check-in to our destination of innovation […]
Fear of fraud is the main factor slowing the adoption of smartphone-based payments among UK consumers, though a third believes that credit and debit card payments will no longer be the preferred method of payment in 2020.
As many more tech companies begin offering bank-like services, mainstream banks are searching for ways they can fight back
Finland’s central securities depository Euroclear Finland has just completed the first stage of a major project to completely replace its securities processing infrastructure. The CSD says the move is part of its preparations for T2S, the European Central Bank project to harmonise Europe’s post trade infrastructure.
Swiss post-trade specialist SIX Securities Services is planning to establish a central trade repository for derivatives transactions in Switzerland, using the London Stock Exchange’s UnaVista platform. The platform is being built to allow Swiss customers to report under the Swiss Financial Market Infrastructure Act, which is currently in parliamentary consultation.
Technology consultancy Capgemini has formed a global alliance with First Data to develop payment software based on First Data’s VisionPlus and AccessPlus solutions. The pair say that they expect to begin delivering new solutions in the second quarter of this year.
Remember those Microsoft adverts that touted ‘I am a PC’, showing everyday people as happy PC users? What if everyday people could do the same for their finances and say, ‘I am a bank’? What would that bank look like and what services would it offer to meet customer aspirations?
SmartStream Technologies has acquired the assets of IBM’s Algorithmics Collateral solution and will add it to its existing solutions for the automation of the end-to-end post trade lifecycle, rebranding it as TLM Collateral Management. The system provides collateral lifecycle automation for buy- and sell-side institutions, custodians and asset servicers, large and small.
Lebanese commercial bank Al-Mawarid has begun a bank transformation project focused on mobile and online banking using the FusionBanking Essence Digital software from Misys.
Technology hiring is on the up, with employment within the industry forecast set to grow at 2.19% this year, nearly five times faster than the UK average, according to the 2015 Salary Guide from specialist recruiter Robert Half.
Italian banks are preparing for T2S, as Europe seeks to reform its cross-border trading infrastructure and bring down barriers between EU countries. The preparations are driving smaller regional banks to make deals with larger global banks as they prepare for implementation in June.
Swiss private banking group Julius Baer has chosen Temenos for a major core banking system replacement project intended to progressively modernise its front and back office systems globally.
Britain’s banks have reliably serviced the banking needs of millions of customers for more than a hundred years; providing a safe place to store hard-earned cash, mortgages to buy dream homes, and great interest rates to accumulate savings
