Below Finance Monthly hears from Adam Rice, VP Product Development, Centage Corporation, who touches on the need to expand budgets and care3fully account for said upgrades.

For many businesses, the third quarter is budget season. It’s a busy time for the finance team, as they meet with department heads and general managers to predict what the coming 18 months will look like for the business. As preoccupied as they are, I think they would be wise to take the time to upgrade to a cloud-based planning platform sooner rather than later. Why? Because in the end they will save themselves time, work more efficiently and achieve better results. Specifically, a cloud-based platform will enable the organization to move to a solid financial plan with a rolling forecast, updated on a monthly basis. And when you think about it, a rolling forecast is far more accurate than a budget created in July 2019 that attempts to paint a picture of what December 2020 will look like.

If changing horses in the middle of the race sounds daunting to you, consider all of the circumstances small to midsize companies face in today’s business environment.

SMBs Need to Step-Up to Global Challenges

SMBs have long been the backbone of the American economy and we count on them for job growth. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses employ 58.9 million people, accounting for 47.5% of the country’s total employee workforce.

Technology has fostered competition from all over the globe. Manufacturers are competing with countries where labor costs are low, as are retailers that are now competing head-to-head with ecommerce sites that offer international delivery. For example, the Alibaba Group, which owns AliExpress, earned over $30 billion in sales in a single day in 2018.

This kind of competition means that SMB leadership teams need to make better decisions faster. What is the impact of opening a new sales office in the Northeast, or applying for a loan to expand manufacturing capabilities on the P&L? What happens if we assume 20% sales growth but we only realize 17.5%? Business managers need to see the cause and effects of their decisions on the company’s financial statements - a feat that’s nearly impossible using a spreadsheet.

On the other hand, a cloud-based system allows financial teams to do what-if scenario planning quickly and easily. As with all things cloud-based that include intelligent APIs, it’s simple to connect multiple data sources together and then overlay analytics and data visualization to make smarter decisions.

Streamlined Implementation and Upgrades

SMBs have limited IT resources and they need to be extremely selective as to which platforms to purchase as a result. Investing in a project that ultimately fails can have devastating consequences, potentially threatening a company’s viability.

Cloud-based solutions tackle these challenges in multiple ways. For instance, many offer out-of-the-box workflows for financial reporting, forecasting, scenario validation and so on, which means implementation is streamlined. Upgrades happen automatically, which means IT resources are spared and end users get to automatically take advantage of new features and functionality. This is a critical consideration as many platforms are beginning to add artificial intelligence and machine learning to key tasks, such as compliance.

Scaling is also much easier, as native cloud-based platforms can scale up and down as a business grows or as seasonality affects demand.

Inherent Agility

Cloud-based systems often act like data warehouses, centralizing multiple data sources and tracking a wide variety of KPIs and metrics. This is critical functionality for business managers seeking to connect the dots and assess the cause and effect of their business decisions. And if the data is always on, meaning it’s pushed to the platform automatically, managers have up-to-the-minute insight into the health of the business.

Many platforms come with data visualization tools or dashboards that allow users to slice and dice information in myriad ways. The benefit here is that it allows all managers to view the data in ways that are meaningful to them. For example, the head of sales can monitor the key metrics that they care about with a higher degree of accuracy, and most importantly, drill down into the data to uncover the source of anomalies.

In fact, the data visualization tools allow the financial team to provide data-driven answers to the tough questions that CEOs, boards and leadership teams ask daily.

SMBs are on growth paths; increasing the size of their market share is always a top priority. As the business grows, and as planning becomes more complex, well designed cloud-based platforms can handle the complexity. These platforms let financial teams see into the future, test the impact of multiple scenarios and ultimately make faster decisions with confidence. They’re also far more likely to adapt to evolving business needs and goals. So while it may take a bit of work to transition this budget season, it will be time well spent.

Investment portfolios are equivalent to financial badges of honor that investors wear with pride! Any investors should have a diverse and dynamic portfolio not only to show that you can handle almost every type of investments as an investor but to have a pretty wide net of investments that have different rates of profits and loss. In fact, since diversity is what you’re aiming for your investment portfolio, why not add bitcoins in the mix?

Understandably, the reception of bitcoins can be a hit or miss when it comes to public opinion—and in terms of investments, diversity can be a good goal for every investor to achieve. In this case, why should bitcoins be included in an investment portfolio for the sake of diversity?

Experts Trust Bitcoin

Bitcoin is one of the world’s most popular forms of cryptocurrencies. The currency, also known as ‘cryptocurrency’, has been a subject of trust and distrust among modern financial experts, including well-known economists from Yale, Aleh Tsyvinski and Yukun Liu. Their research shows that for those investing in bitcoins for their portfolios, it should have a holding of at least 6% for optimal construction on your portfolio.

Other bitcoin experts such as Wences Casares, Chamath Palihapitiya, and John McAfee also offered their own brands of expertise on the cryptocurrency, with all three of them, among others, predicting the rising value of bitcoin in the coming years. With that in mind, the trust that numerous experts have can be essential for your consideration in including bitcoins in your investment portfolio.

Bitcoin is a Viable Option for Investments

Countries like the Philippines, US, Venezuela, Turkey, Italy, India, South Africa, Nigeria, and Argentina are currently some of the many countries that have been undergoing major economic issues, with Venezuela being a massive casualty with an inflation rate of over 25,000%. Because of the various issues that are plaguing these countries, many of them are now looking at bitcoin as a reliable alternative for people to use for future transactions since their national money has virtually no value.

This is something to consider if you’re planning to invest in different companies from different countries, or rather if you’ve already invested in international companies. While it can be a good opportunity for investors to add to their portfolio nonetheless, one can never be too sure about the economic structure of such.

Bitcoins Have a Steady Rise in the Market

One thing that’s good about bitcoins is its steady rise in the market. As of September 2018, Bitcoin has been up 2.82% in a 24-hour period, marking its slow, yet steady rise in the cryptocurrency market.

This is a great thing to consider when you’re looking for diversitySet featured image in your investment portfolio as not only can this ensure (though not always) greater chances for profit for investors, this can also make a great addition to your investment portfolio as a whole.

Investing in Bitcoin is a Challenge

All in all, investing in Bitcoin can be a challenge to many investors. Every investor taking the leap must always be up-to-date with current affairs, trends, and news that can affect the crypto world, not to mention having to study up on cryptocurrency as a whole.

Key Takeaway

When it comes to diversity of an investment portfolio, there are a lot of other things to consider. With these three factors in mind, getting to buy bitcoins, as well as buying tether and other forms of cryptocurrencies, for your investment portfolio can be a great opportunity nonetheless as you, as an investor, can get the chance to relish in the benefits that the cryptocurrency can provide, whether it be for diversification for your portfolio, other forms of investments, or for maximum profit on your end!

We speak with thought leader Andrew Morris - a wealth transfer expert who’s dedicated his career to helping clients plan, grow and protect their assets. For over 25 years now, he’s been passionate about helping families with setting up charitable remainder trusts and assisting families with special needs to secure their future through the use of insurance. As a Social Security Analysts, Andrew helps clients maximise and understand their Social Security benefits to optimise their retirement planning.

What trends are you seeing in the current insurance landscape and how do you intend to keep up with these?

The current trend I see in the industry is the tremendous need for an alternative form of guaranteed lifetime income in addition to social security for the aging baby boomer population. Since many major corporations no longer offer a defined benefit type pension plan, many retirees are looking for ways to have a guaranteed lifetime income stream which can only be offered through insurance companies and their living income benefit riders. The recent DOL (Dept. of Labor) legislation regarding the fiduciary rule has made the return of guaranteed lifetime benefit riders popular again, since many companies have now lowered fees and have simplified the benefits to adhere to the new rules.

Another trend that I see in the insurance industry is the need to make sure that older whole life policies are upgraded to make sure that the aging 76 million baby boomer population has adequate life insurance coverage. With the increase in American retirees living longer and the standard life expectancy numbers increasing from age 78 to age 85, life insurance mortality tables had to be updated a few years ago to reflect these longer life expectancy rates. This increase in the mortality tables has left many old policies old and ‘underinsured’. Clients can now enjoy receiving larger coverage increased face values for old permanent life policies for a lower cost or the same amount due to the recent change in mortality tables. The only way I can keep up with the amount of new service for these older policies and aging clients is through the use of technology.

What is the biggest challenge the US insurance sector faces today? What would be your solution?

The biggest challenge the insurance industry faces today is technology and the ability for insurance companies that are considered old and antiquated to keep up by updating their systems for servicing and cybersecurity. As a result, I anticipate that there will be further consolidation within the insurance industry over the next couple of years. With the baby boomer population turning 65 at a daily rate of 10,000 per day, it is an enormous number to keep up with. So, the companies that are not up to speed technology wise will fall by the waste side and will be acquired by larger insurance companies.

The only solution for companies that are currently behind in their technology would be to establish a new strategic alliance or joint venture, where they partner up with a third-party vendor and potentially outsource the work. Very few insurers have all the resources they need to become truly cutting edge. Technological advances are changing business and operating models, which is challenging to an industry that is accustomed to slow evolution.

What do you find businesses commonly fail to consider when it comes to insurance?

Businesses commonly fail to consider the fact that that they are ‘underinsured’ in relation to price. Many businesses will value good price as opposed to the proper amount of insurance for their business. Having a good insurance adviser or consultant can help business owners who are underinsuring themselves to start saving them money. Insurance is one of the most important needs for a small business, yet it is something that many owners skimp on. People don’t reevaluate their insurance needs as their companies grow and numerous small businesses don’t have business interruption insurance in addition to property and casualty coverage, even though it is something that can put their companies and livelihoods at risk. I think that it is vital for company owners to consider and be mindful of the damaging impact that an emergency incident can have if your business is not properly insured.

Below Graeme Dillane, manager, financial services, InterSystems, offers insight into best practices in the financial services industry, highlighting where current weaknesses lie and how they can overcome.

Increasing trade volumes and periods of high market volatility create technology challenges for financial services firms. This is especially true for sell-side firms, which can experience extremely high transaction volumes, since they partition already high volumes of incoming orders into an even greater number of smaller orders for execution. At the same time, they must support a high number of concurrent analytic queries to provide order status, risk management, surveillance and other information for clients.

This requirement for multi-workload processing at high scale, coupled with the highest levels of performance and reliability, has historically been difficult to satisfy. Compounding the challenge, transaction volumes grow not only incrementally and within expectations, but can also spike due to unexpected world events.

A critical component of a sell-side firm’s technology infrastructure is its transaction management and analytics platform. The platform must be reliable and highly available. A failure, or even a slowdown of the platform, can have severe consequences as it can take many hours to rebuild order state and resume normal operations after a failure. In the meantime, the firm’s ability to process additional trades and provide order status is compromised and financial losses mount.

To successfully handle growth and volatility without performance or availability issues, the platform must balance transactional workloads with the concurrent analytic demands of downstream applications at scale. Financial services organisations, particularly sell-side firms, must process millions of messages per second, while simultaneously supporting thousands of analytic queries from hundreds of systems that must report on the state of orders while performing other queries.

Currently, in-memory databases are widely used, primarily due to their ability to support high-performance data-insert operations and analytic workload processing. However, in-memory databases alone are not an ideal platform for transaction management and analytics for several reasons:

• Limited ability to concurrently process transactional and analytic workloads at scale. In-memory databases are not designed to support multi-workload processing at high scale. As a result, as volumes increase, at some point both the transaction processing and the analytic queries will slow or stall.
• Scale limitations - Since the data in an in-memory database is stored in main memory, the working data set is limited by the available amount of memory. This creates risk when transaction volumes spike, compromising the ability to process new orders once the available RAM is filled.
• High costs - Since servers have hard memory limits, scaling in-memory databases beyond these limits requires purchasing and procuring additional nodes – to sustain normal operations plus headroom for unexpected volatility - increasing overall costs.
• System downtime - Since the data is stored in-memory, if the database server fails, the data that is resident in-memory on that server is lost.

Finding a Solution

So, given these challenges, how can financial services organisations find a solution that enables them to simultaneously process transactional and analytic workloads at high scale?

The answer comes in the form of the Hybrid Transaction/Analytical Processing (HTAP) database.

Traditionally, online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP) workloads have been handled independently, by separate databases. However, operating separate databases creates complexity and latency because data must be moved from the OLTP environment to the OLAP environment for analysis. This has led to the development of a new kind of database which can process both OLTP and OLAP workloads in a single environment without having to copy the transactional data for analysis. HTAP databases are being used in multiple industries for their ability to uncover new insights, create new revenue opportunities and improve situational awareness and overall business agility for organisations.

The best HTAP database platforms deliver the performance of an in-memory database with the persistence and reliability of a traditional operational database. They are optimised to accommodate high transactional workloads and a high volume of analytic queries on the transactional data concurrently, without incident or performance degradation, even during periods of market volatility.

They have a comprehensive, multi-model database management system (DBMS) that delivers fast transactional and analytic performance without sacrificing scalability, reliability or security. They can handle relational, object-oriented, document, key-value, hierarchical, and multi-dimensional data objects in a common, persistent storage tier.

Moreover, the best of these embody features that make them attractive for mission-critical, high-performance transaction management and analytics applications. These include:

High-performance for transactional workloads with built-in persistence – The ideal scenario is to find a data platform that includes a high-performance database that provides transactional performance equal to, or greater than, in-memory databases along with built-in persistence at scale.

Data is not lost when a machine is turned off, eliminating the need for database recovery or re-building efforts. By using an efficient, multi-dimensional data model with sparse storage techniques, data access and updates are accomplished faster, using fewer resources and less disk capacity.

High-performance for analytic workloads – Seek out solutions that provide a range of analytic capabilities, including full SQL support, enabling you to use their existing SQL-based applications with few or no changes. Since the database stores data in efficient multidimensional structures, SQL applications achieve better performance than traditional relational databases.

Consistent high-performance for concurrent transactional and analytic workloads at scale - Ideally, solutions should provide the highest levels of performance for both transactional and analytic workloads concurrently, at high scale, without compromising performance for either type of workload. Since rising order volumes increase both the transactional and analytic workloads on the system, a data platform must scale to handle such workloads without experiencing performance or availability issues.

Positive Prospects

This article has highlighted that many financial services organisations are, for a variety of reasons, currently crying out for ways in which they can simultaneously process transactional and analytic workloads at high scale. Fortunately, help is now at hand. Thanks to the latest breed of data platforms for high-performance transaction management and analytics applications, both transaction processing and analytic queries are supported concurrently, at very high scale, with built-in durability and with the highest levels of reliability – and at a low total cost of ownership.

Legacy systems are preventing nearly two thirds (64%) of US commercial banks from developing Fintech applications, research commissioned by Fintech provider Fraedom has revealed.

Interestingly, 82% of the respondents that highlighted this concern were shareholders. Over half of those polled also noted a lack of expertise within banks as an important concern (56%), just ahead of limited resources (53%).

The study included decision-makers in commercial banks including shareholders and senior managers as well as middle managers.

Commercial banks outsourcing services to a Fintech provider is clearly a trend on the rise, with only 22% of US banks revealing that they do not outsource any payment services compared to 30% of their UK counterparts.

Kyle Ferguson, CEO, Fraedom, said: “This research highlights that legacy systems are standing in the way of US commercial banks developing Fintech applications. This in turn is resulting in certain services such as commercial card and expenses being outsourced by more than three quarters of banks. It is now recognised that Fintech firms can help banks overcome these technical issues and benefit from previously untapped revenue-making opportunities.”

The research also discovered a growing inclination among commercial banks to partner with Fintech firms. The main reason for this shift is to help bring new products to market faster, as recognised by 94% of respondents.

The second most popular reason given for partnering with a Fintech was that to attract ‘new customer segments’ supported by 82% of respondents, followed by 76% who said it was to help ‘differentiate themselves from competitors’.

“US banks are beginning to see the rewards of partnering with a Fintech provider, especially when helping to bring products to market faster.” Ferguson added: “Established Fintech firms can understand the technical challenges that banks are struggling to cope with in local markets and provide an easy yet very effective solution while often differentiating them from their customers.”

(Source: Fraedom)

Research carried out by Altodigital has revealed that two third (66%) of SMB IT executives admit that that they have significant IT challenges within their business. In comparison, an overwhelming 97% of those IT bosses working in larger organisations indicated having ongoing issues, suggesting very different attitudes to technology between small and larger firms.

The research also explored the differing priorities of these two business types and found that ‘maintaining existing IT infrastructure’ was a top priority for 40% of corporates while 32% unsurprisingly outlining ‘security and compliance’ as a top concern. It was also interesting to note that 25% of respondents listed ‘finding skilled staff’ as a big worry.

In terms of SMB organisations, 26% of IT executives listed ‘security and compliance’ as a major concern while budgetary constraints was close behind with 23%, something that was scarcely acknowledged by corporate respondents.

The poll organised by the office technology solutions provider, Altodigital was formed of two individual studies, one that polled 100 IT decision makers from corporate UK companies with over 500 employees while the second survey included firms with less than 500 employees.

Alistair Millar, Group Marketing Manager at Altodigital said: “It is worrying that such a high proportion of SMB IT Executives feel they do not have any IT issues, because it is likely that they are missing a trick, especially when the issue or security and compliance is something that requires continual upgrades in technology.”

The survey also indicated cultural differences when it came to technology, with 58% of SMBs revealing that they simply didn’t see the need for a bring your own devices policy whereas 72% corporates listed it as a major concern. These contrasting opinions were also clear when it came to discussing print policies, an overwhelming 78% of SMB IT managers admitted that they had no policy in place while 57% of corporates said that they review their print strategy every year or less.

Within these results, a quarter of respondents in large firms said that their printing plan was reviewed more frequently than every six months and 15% reported once a year.

“It is very surprising to see that a large majority of SMBs fail to have a print policy in place because managed print services are widely known to provide benefits for both small and large enterprises. SMBs must consider what services might help improve business efficiency and productivity on a regular basis, this point is clearly understood by large corporations who regularly review operations such as their print strategy on a regular basis,” added Millar.

(Source: AltoDigital)

Against the backdrop of transformative technologies and the latest regulations, Graham Lloyd, Director and Industry Principal of Financial Services at Pegasystems, identifies for Finance Monthly what types of challenges financial services will have to navigate in their journey through 2018.

Successful social media – The growing discrediting of social media content and its practices comes at an awkward time for banks. The last thing they need is association with anything that could contribute more mistrust to their profile, but they cannot afford to ignore a powerful channel with such reach and strong links to here-and-now impact. It will be interesting to see how banks learn to handle social media with success.

Evolving customer engagement – Social media is just one element of customer engagement and there are far bigger issues on the horizon – digestibility, cost and effectiveness. Data mining is now so huge and its outputs so great that we should perhaps be referring to ‘big insights’ as there are so many of them. For most players, the problem is how to work out which insights to leverage within whatever time and budget constraints prevail.

Time to tackle trade finance – With trade finance risk-weighting kicking in properly in March 2019, we are entering the home straight for finalising the necessary business changes. Most players will presumably look to offset some of the costs of introducing capital requirements in this hitherto largely unweighted portfolio by seeking greater productivity/process efficiencies.

The truth is out about challengers! – Thus far, challengers and Fintechs have been portrayed as somewhere between a benediction and a panacea. The great generic USP – “we’re not a traditional bank” – has helped them weather all sorts of issues from low take-up to sub-optimal IT to almost-but-not-quite products, with scarcely a hard question asked. But the honeymoon period may be drawing to a close, and even in combination, they have still to take any serious market share away from big/traditional banks.

Possibilities of PSD2 – In the final run up to PSD2, there are sizeable revenue opportunities for a bank positioning itself as the ‘destination of choice’ for PISPs (Payment Initiation Service Providers). These new players will gravitate towards the banks offering a higher service standard and the least hassle, as the effects will flow through to the PISPs’ own customers and their expectations of security, certainty and convenience. Banks stand to recapture not only some of their own lost transactions, but also some which have flowed out of their competitors.

New report from national law firm Mills & Reeve highlights the defiant ambition of the mid-market despite serious challenges, and demands for sustainable growth finance.

Mid-market businesses remain ambitious and confident in their growth prospects despite an unstable economic landscape, the impact of Brexit and an unsupportive funding environment, according to new research from national law firm Mills & Reeve.

The study, ‘Defying Gravity’ - based on the opinions of 500 leaders of medium-sized businesses in the UK – reveals that 83% of mid-market businesses plan to increase turnover in this financial year (2017/2018) by an average of 22%, and two thirds of leaders aiming to grow (62%) are willing to bet their house on meeting this target. This is not unrealistic, with the new research also revealing that two thirds (66%) of medium-sized businesses grew turnover last year, at an impressive average of 20%.

However, mid-market businesses face serious challenges to growth. Three fifths (59%) of mid-market business leaders do not believe that the economy is strong and stable. Two thirds (64%) of mid-market boards are concerned that there is now a real risk of recession, and that economic uncertainty will disproportionately affect the mid-market (66%).

With single market access “critical” for three fifths (60%) of mid-market businesses, Brexit looms large on leaders’ list of concerns. Three in five (61%) mid-market leaders are concerned that the UK failing to reach an agreement with the EU would cause “significant damage” to their business, and 60% are concerned that regions outside London will be disproportionately affected by Brexit. More than half (55%) of leaders are concerned that implementation of Brexit is a serious threat to their ability to recruit both specialist and low-cost talent.

The external funding needed to supercharge growth is also found to be lacking: almost three in five mid-market leaders (58%) say that their company can’t achieve its growth potential without better long-term finance options. More than half (56%) of business leaders stated that mid-market finance is not “fit for purpose”, with two thirds (63%) believing that the UK funding environment is great for start-ups, but not for mid-market firms.

Claire Clarke, managing partner at Mills & Reeve, comments: “Despite very real challenges, it is encouraging to see mid-market leaders remaining defiantly ambitious about growth, determined to beat market conditions and to hold their position as the driving force of the British economy.

“But these businesses are being hindered in their efforts to realise their ambitions. Accessing growth finance suited to mid-market needs is a significant challenge, and the unstable economic and political landscape is causing some businesses to refrain from making the investment necessary to grow.”

The findings are released today ahead of a series of reports from Mills & Reeve championing the mid-market and exploring the current challenges faced by business leaders.

The research goes on to reveal a perceived lack of support from Government, with two thirds (65%) of medium-sized business leaders frustrated that the Government “keeps presenting obstacles to mid-market growth”. Three-quarters (74%) cite a lack of targeted policy support, with 61% concerned that Brexit will distract Government from supporting regional development and infrastructure.

Jayne Hussey, head of mid-market at Mills & Reeve, adds: “The mid-market is the unsung powerhouse of the UK economy, and we are hopeful that medium-sized businesses can continue to overcome the barriers to growth formed by uncertainty. The events of the recent past may have rocked the nation’s confidence, but the resilience, strength and ambition of mid-market business leaders appears to remain intact.”

(Source: Mills & Reeve)

This weekend, Barclays and Cabinet Office-backed security initiative Cyber Security Challenge UK, hosted an immersive competition to test the skills of thirty cyber enthusiasts. The competition required contestants to adopt the role of interns at a fictitious cyber security firm, who had to defend their company from a cyber-attack, triggered by an insider, all while their superiors were on a team-building canoeing adventure.

The competition is the last of 2017’s Cyber Security Challenge UK face-to-face competitions to unearth the UK’s hidden cyber talent and place these individuals in public and private sector cyber security roles to fill the critical cyber security skills gap. Not only does cyber security offer an exciting and varied career, but a lucrative one too – with roles averaging over £60,000 per year after training.

The competition took place in national heritage site and grand country house, Radbroke Hall, which is also the current site of Barclays’ Technology Centre. In the scenario, the ‘interns’, who were staffing a fictitious security firm called ‘Research4U’, had to spring into action after a hacking group launched a large-scale cyber-attack on the company, stealing confidential technology, source code and client data. The story saw hackers demand a ransom of £10m to prevent releasing the data to the press.

Competitors had to infiltrate and stop the fictional hacker group in order to destroy the leaked information before it could be released to the ‘press’. Leading cyber specialists from Barclays and other leading industry organisations assessed the contestants on their vulnerability assessment, reconnaissance, attack strategies and espionage skills in order to rank their performance and suitability for careers in the industry.

The winning team was team Wormhole: Carolyn Yates, Isabel Whistlecroft, Kajusz Dykiel, Peter Campbell and Waldo Woch.

The eightcontestants that have qualified for next month’s Masterclass grand finale were: Cameron Howes, Asher Caswell, Tom Brook, Vlad Ellis, Mohammed Rahman, David Young, Rajiv Shah and Isabel Whistlecroft. They will join the previous F2F winners from earlier in the year at Masterclass where they will compete against each other and have the opportunity to network with industry experts, in addition to winning career-enhancing prizes including degree scholarships, training courses, technology and gadgets and industry memberships.

The competition mirrors recent high profile attacks, such as WannaCry, where hackers held organisations to ransom across the globe. With the Public Accounts Committee revealing earlier this year that the Government’s ability to protect Britain from high-level cyber-attacks is undermined by a skills shortage, the need to find individuals with cyber skills has never been greater.

Troels Oerting, Barclays Group Chief Security Officer (CSO) and Group Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) said: “The best way to learn about cyber security is to engage in realistic scenarios, such as the competition that we’ve just hosted. Saturday’s event created a scenario that really tested a candidate’s ability to perform under pressure, think strategically, work as a team and display leadership skills. A career in cyber security requires various skills, including the ability to second-guess hackers and make critical decisions quickly. It was very encouraging to see students so immersed in solving the challenge we set them, and I wish all the candidates the very best in their careers.”

Nigel Harrison, acting Chief Executive of Cyber Security Challenge UK said: “This year’s scenarios have been varied in nature in order to demonstrate the range of cyber threats that this nation faces as well as the sheer breadth of sectors that need cyber security professionals – from banking and finance, to automotive and even retail. Sponsors, like Barclays make this possible and, in turn, help to open the door to dozens more careers. I would like to encourage any budding cyber security specialist, or ‘white hat hackers’, to consider applying for our competitions. The nation faces a growing cyber security threat, so we are in real need of talent that can keep organisations, and the public, secure. Why not Challenge Yourself today?”

(Source: Cyber Security Challenge UK)

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the run on Northern Rock, leading to a more widespread financial crisis, with a number of banks bailed out by governments in the UK and around the world. A decade later, large established banks face new threats on several fronts.

As challenger banks and disruptive technology companies increasingly eat away at the services traditionally offered by the banks, the situation is exacerbated by the incoming regulatory changes of the Open Banking initiative.  When the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) comes into force in January 2018, banks will be required to open up their customer data to third parties. Customers will be able to directly compare the offering of their traditional bank with those of competitors.

Pini Yakuel, CEO of Optimove, which studies the science behind customer engagement, comments: “The past ten years have in some senses been defined by the aftermath of the financial crisis, but the next ten years will be defined by technology disruption that changes how banks interact with their customers forever.

“The disruption coming with the Open Banking initiative is huge for customer engagement. Customers will be able to compare the value that each financial services company offers them quickly and easily.

“We know already that eight out of ten millennials are happy to switch banks for better rewards[1]. The move to make the industry more transparent will allow individuals to compare these rewards like-for-like and switch to companies that provide them. Banks now have a real fight on their hands to retain a generation of smartphone-empowered, brand-agnostic consumers.

“Understanding behaviours, preferences and needs more clearly is key to developing the kind of emotionally intelligent communication with customers that makes them feel comfortable with their bank and helps them to make good financial decisions. Those banks who can offer something back at each stage of their relationship with each customer will set themselves apart under the intense scrutiny of Open Banking.

“To keep ahead of their competitors, they will need to tailor services to support customers more effectively, offering real value that appeals to each customer personally. Artificial Intelligence and automation tools which reveal what value looks like to each customer will be the secret weapon to help banks succeed in this environment.”

(Source: Optimove)

Late payments are an even bigger challenge for those medium-sized companies, with 94% of businesses employing over 50 people reporting that the issue is causing cashflow problems for them. This is according to new figures from Ultimate Finance.

In partnership with BDRC Continental, Ultimate Finance conducted research into the impact of late payments on the SME sector.

Other stats to be revealed by the research include:

• Overall, 81% of SMEs state late payments are an issue for them
• 51% of SMEs believe their business would run smoother if they had fewer late payments
• 82% of SMEs have up to £25k in late payments
• This rises for medium-sized companies which have an average of over £30k in late payments

Late payments within the sector are an increasingly public issue, with the main political parties vowing to stamp out the problem with legislation such as late payment reporting.

Ultimate Finance however, say that this sort of legislation can be incredibly divisive, and recognise that businesses of all sizes have their own cashflow issues. The company is now calling for the business community to come together and find its own solution.

Anthony Persse, Director of Strategy at Ultimate Finance commented: “We know that late payments can have a huge impact on small businesses. It is without a doubt, one of the biggest challenges faced by UK companies. However, there is a deep misconception that it is an exclusively small business issue which is simply untrue.

“This is leading to rules such as late payment reporting, which is creating an ‘us and them’ situation, when we should be seeking a workable long term solution. This is not just a case of the bigger boys picking on the smaller guys; cashflow and supply chain management affects every organisation, and should be tackled by the community coming together to support one another.”

The impact of government intervention has also been questioned by SMEs themselves. In research by BACS, 38% of small business owners questioned were unconvinced legislation would be helpful.

Ultimate Finance, which works with thousands of SMEs across the UK, believes that the business community needs to look at the way cashflow challenges affect companies of every size, and create an initiative or code of conduct that supports businesses holistically.

“We have taken a look at the numbers,” Persse says. “Many SMEs have significant late payment debt and it’s clear that something must be done. But current methods to help aren’t doing the job; just look at the bank referral scheme which is being evaluated for effectiveness.

“The issue is that politicians keep coming up with one-size fits all ideas and trying to dictate to businesses. Both SMEs and corporates are full of intelligent people who understand the challenges better than anyone.

They should be the ones to create the solution, with support from government and the wider industry – not the other way around.”

(Source: Ultimate Finance)

Life is about to get tougher for money launderers. One of the new government’s first tasks will be to approve draft regulations to implement EU 4MLD[i]. These new regulations, with their more rigorous approach, apply to banks and other relevant persons[ii]. One of the major changes is the need to thoroughly search for adverse information on potential and existing customers and to evidence this has been done. Carrying out Customer Due Diligence (CDD) manually on entities which are abroad is particularly demanding.

Today RegTech company Kompli-Global launched Kompli-IQ™, a unique search platform with the technology and expertise to meet these challenges.

Kompli-Global CEO Jane Jee, who is also a barrister, says: "Companies will be questioning how they can comply efficiently and cost effectively with the new legislation, particularly the new level of searching/monitoring. The starting point has to be to want to tackle money laundering because it is the right thing to do."

Searching for adverse information has become far more difficult given the explosion of information on the web, which makes it almost impossible to hold this amount of data in structured databases. The alternative, manual searching of the web, is very time consuming and often hit and miss with important information regularly overlooked or hidden from researchers. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to judiciously search the World Wide Web and directories invisible to many search engines, such as Google, produces quicker, more accurate results allowing the records found to be saved and future searches scheduled, so the bots can do all the hard work leaving the researcher to simply view any new results found.

To access this information Kompli-Global has developed Kompli-IQTM - a multi-lingual, licensed software as a service (SaaS) search platform. Using proprietary machine learning technology, Kompli-IQTM interrogates a wide variety of global data sources on the web for published adverse information on individuals and entities.

A company's or individual's name will be cross referenced against hundreds of search terms such as: court, fine, bribery or scam. Kompli-IQTM filters the data and search results are rapidly assessed, ranked and sorted. Additionally, these searches can be carried out in the right foreign language where the individual or company has associations outside of the home jurisdiction. Kompli-IQTM forms a key weapon in enabling companies to accept the vast majority of customers who do not present a risk quickly and easily.

"In today's world, it is virtually impossible to conduct the required searches without harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI). If you try it will be expensive, inefficient and inconsistent. Above all, adverse information will be missed," explains Jane.

The new Regulations introduce a more rigorous approach to Customer Due Diligence and Enhanced Due Diligence and have broadened the scope of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs)[iii] to include those living in the UK (previously excluded) and their relatives/close associates. Add to this the need to check against sanctions lists and establish the beneficial ownership of companies and it is clear that there is a considerable increase in the amount of work involved.

"To address this, in addition to licensing Kompli-IQTM, Kompli-Global offers Due Diligence reports tailored to our clients’ specific requirements based upon their risk based policies. To compile these reports Kompli-Global interrogates multiple data sources and draws on the local expertise of its extensive advisory community in 66 countries covering 158 regions. With this level of input Kompli-Global can provide the most in-depth information on which companies can base their risk based decisions and, importantly, provide the audit trail that a Regulator will demand," explains Jane.

"RegTech and human expertise can be a powerful defence against money laundering and Kompli-Global is harnessing the power of both - it's the right thing to do," she concludes.

(Source: Kompli-Global)