Don’t be confused with these terms as they only have one common idea, and that is to earn a profit! However, some investors almost always end up committing mistakes in the beginning. Since investments belong to a larger scale, you may focus first in trading so that you could easily understand it.

When we say traders, they are the ones who are into buying and selling goods, currencies or even stocks. They may be transacting using their own capital or using others’, whether a single proprietorship, partnership or a company. You can check the link and reviews about nextmarkets, stock exchange experts, money market and the likes for more information about trading to get more idea about this.

Traders can be vulnerable, most especially those who are just on their initial stage. Therefore, it is a must that a beginner trader should consider all the necessary factors in order to avoid committing the same common mistakes. And what are those general trading mistakes or flaws? You may try considering and understanding the following:

1. Failure to study the business project itself and just believing on hearsays, suggestions or proposals

As a beginner trader, you owe yourself everything. Whether you succeed or fail, there is no other person to be blamed for or to be proud of but you. It is your decision that can make or break your business because you’ve certainly relied on what you have studied, researched, and gathered about the business trading that you are handling.

As a start-up trader, you need to do a post-trading analysis to be able to determine your next move. Otherwise, you’d be left hanging, losing and crying over your lost capital. Do not dare to follow the advice from random people around you as some may be giving you the right advice because they are really concerned about your business, while some may be there to mess it up with how you manage your business. So if you will not primarily consider this aspect, you know what will happen to all your trading transactions.

2. Failure to focus on the positive side and failure to prepare for the negative ones

This component is sometimes being ignored by most beginners in the trading venture. You may be willing to take the risks, but you may also not be prepared to do so. Why? The business know-how may be present, but the guts do not exist. You must be mentally and emotionally prepared as a trader. You should be firm and certain of all your decisions. Emotional trading must be avoided at all times and be aware of its consequences in the business.

3. Failure to use a trading journal and completely learning at least one or two trading methods

When you are initiating a new business journey, you should be taking note of all the details, whether you are earning and so on. In that way, you would know what to change, remove, replace or retain on the methods that you are using or applying for future reference. Don’t rely on just remembering things when needed, but a good reminder is the one that you have absolute knowledge and experience. When there is something to decide now, you can go back and check what you’ve done in the past in any similar situation. It may look like a diary, but it is really helpful.

On the other hand, you can only refine gold by putting it on fire. You may fail several times, but take the chance of redefining and remolding your trading strategy instead of always looking and applying a new one. You may come up with the right trading strategy which is applicable to what you need by doing the trial and error experiment. Practice makes things perfect after all.

4. Failure to adapt the changing markets and business strategies

In business, you may also hear of the terms such as old school, traditional, obsolete, outdated, outworn, and stodgy. These words may be referred to the business techniques, strategies, and methods that are being used and applied. Unfortunately, the business deals of today’s world are far beyond what these traders have done before. For this reason, beginner traders must be open to new and advanced business marketing procedures and all. This will save the entire business from losing its target clients, affiliates and even investors. Thus, you will rest assured that your business is secured and stable.

5. Failure to expect the unexpected

A beginner trader should bear in mind that in the trading world, all things might occur or happen. Of course, you are expecting for continuous profits, more clients and even business expansions. However, as a trader, you should be realistic and expect worse case scenarios so that you can prepare and plan for the right move to take in case these business mishaps happen. Your venture in the business world will not always be rainbows and butterflies, so you must have an alternative action for every scenario that may happen. Also, in business, it is advisable to have more sources, investments or other methods for unexpected events or losses. This will help you in making the business to recover or rise again after every fall.

6. Failure to understand that difference between the long-term and short-term perspective

Beginner traders should be aware of the differences between the long-term and short-term perspective so that you would know how to deal with things in every situation. There are some factors that are beyond your control such as fortuitous events that can affect your business. Therefore, you need to make stable and suitable back-up plans for that just in case anything happens.

7. Failure to analyze the trading performance at the right time

In business, it is not advantageous to analyze the performance of your business on a daily basis since each day is different from other days. As a beginner trader, you should focus on doing your best method each day and gather all the necessary data in a long-term range before you compare its performance to become more competitive, stable, feasible and profitable.

8. Failure to know your competitors

A trader must be aware not only of how he runs the trading business, how it goes, or how it gets more clients or affiliates but also of how his trading competitors manage their own businesses. Your competitors play a vital role in your business, and knowing how to deal with your competitors will give you an advantage. That is why we have this saying that goes like this, “If you cannot beat them, join them.” Instead of getting more enemies, it would be wiser to turn them into your allies. Get involved with a fair play in a healthy kind of competition.

There are still lots of quotations, sayings, and words of wisdom that you can best relate with as far as successes and failures are concerned. Still, you should not rely on words to make your business succeed. Do the legwork and use the right strategies to manage your business.

For an insight into Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), Finance Monthly connected with the Managing Partner of zeb - Bertrand Lavayssiere.

The rise of service-based platforms

Improving cost-income ratios by 15% or more is becoming a necessity for most financial institutions looking to win through in the new age of banking. Moving operations to a service-based model such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) and business-process-as-a-service (BPaaS) can help achieve this goal and free up the business to focus on its customers. Platform banking or as it is otherwise known as Appisation of banking IT systems, combine the advantages of outsourcing with the power of automation, ubiquitous access and virtually unlimited scalability. Yet the answer lies not just with technology, but with the business strategy. To achieve true simplification, banks must be prepared to critically rethink their business models and seek close alignment with the capabilities of these new platforms. Is now the right moment to move your business to the cloud?

Most banks are ill-prepared for the transformation ahead. Their bespoke structures, having developed gradually over time, are dogged by complexity. Bloated product portfolios, error-prone manual processes and antiquated IT architecture not only drive up the cost of operations, they severely limit agility. Consequently, implementing complex regulatory requirements such as BCBS 239 or GDPR, building fully automated end-to-end digital processes and integrating the latest products offered by FinTechs, is both cumbersome and costly.The effort required ties up banks’ capacities and prevents their top management from focusing on truly value-generating business issues.

Revolution not evolution needed

Doing away with this complexity that has developed over decades is not easy through a process of gradual evolution. More often, banks need to make a clean start. They need to critically reappraise their business and operating models, focusing on the parts that truly matter and radically simplifying the rest – streamlining product portfolios and outsourcing or standardising processes and IT systems.

This radical step involves a substantial revamping of existing process and IT structures. Here, we find that banks increasingly rely on the ready-made, standardised software and process solutions offered by external providers. Banks see these solutions as a fast-track to cutting complexity in terms of reduced resource consumption and shorter implementation times. They hope to benefit from reduced costs due to economies of scale in development and operations. Often, they also see these external solutions as a gateway to standards and market innovation.

Banks have several options open to them for integrating external solutions into their operating models. In practice however, banks often adopt a variety of approaches in different parts of their process and IT landscape.

One option is to adopt cloud-based service models such as ‘software-as-a-service’ (SaaS) and ‘business-process-as-a-service’ (BPaaS). This option has become popular thanks to a wave of technological innovations collectively known as ‘cloud computing’. But it is also the notion of ‘service’ – in the sense of a highly automated bundle of software programs and/or process functionalities – which makes this concept particularly interesting for banks striving for simplification. We believe that this option is of overriding importance for the future of banking. In other words, we have entered the world of ‘banking-as-a-service’.

How does the notion of ‘banking-as-a-service’ compare to traditional forms of outsourcing? The key distinction is the degree of standardisation and automation. Typical traditional outsourcing arrangements are highly customised to the needs of the client. Moreover, they are usually characterised by transfers of staff and technology infrastructure from the client to the provider, who may provide their services from a low-wage country, while the existing processes and technology structures are often retained.

By contrast, service-based models are built from the outset with standardisation and automation in mind. They are characterised by modular building blocks containing standardised pieces of business logic, for the most part executed by software with only limited human intervention. The result is straight-through processing (STP) rates of 90% or more for processes that are amenable to standardisation.

In the past, this type of standardisation would typically lead to unacceptable limitations with respect to business requirements for all but the simplest scenarios. But modern software architectures increasingly allow for ‘long-tail’ customisation – producing an additional variant of a banking product, service or business process, at virtually no extra cost. What used to be an exception, handled by a human agent, can simply be implemented as yet another process variation, handled autonomously by the software. In the world of banking-as-a-service, software no longer merely supports the business processes executed by humans: It becomes the process itself. We are witnessing the gradual transformation from software-leveraged processes to process-leveraged software.

Smart alignment

Reaping the full benefits of service models such as SaaS and BPaaS is a question of smart alignment to the capabilities and standards of the underlying platforms. Banks will inevitably discover some downsides to banking-as-a-service after they make the shift – some limitations and ‘gaps’ compared to traditional models. But the key questions are: Are those limitations relevant from the point of view of customers? And are they significant in terms of their impact on the bottom line or regulatory compliance?

These questions transform the topic of banking-as-a-service from a purely technological issue to a strategic issue. At the end of the day, it comes down to business strategy: Which products and services contribute to the bottom line? Which processes promote the overall excellence of the organisation? Do customers really value hand-tailored offerings? And are they willing to pay the required premium?

Far reaching decisions

Understanding which aspects of your business are truly differentiating and which can be standardised is a good foundation for throwing excessive luggage overboard before engaging in a large-scale transformation exercise. Ideally, the examination of technological options should already be part of the strategic discussion taking place at CEO level. Its consequences will likely require some far-reaching decisions.

Zac Cohen, General Manager at Trulioo, discusses the key considerations for businesses before engaging in commerce in high-risk countries.

Doing business internationally is a complicated undertaking. Aside from the standard logistical challenges associated with doing business globally, organisations have to factor in considerations specific to different regions and countries. These considerations may include factors such as legislative, political, currency and transparency challenges.

Nevertheless, globalisation is storming ahead and businesses must be prepared to look beyond their domestic surroundings if they are to remain competitive in our global marketplace. International trade secretary Liam Fox has endorsed a move for UK-based businesses to adopt a more international focus, highlighting the importance of global competitiveness. Consequently, UK businesses are feeling the pressure to ramp up their efforts to target a more international consumer base. As if this wasn’t enough for international businesses and investors to grapple with, further complications and difficulties are liable to arise when doing business with “high risk” countries.

1. Fraud and Corruption

A recent study by the World Bank estimated that an extra 10 per cent is added to the cost of doing business internationally as a direct result of bribery and corruption.¹ Considering the immense amount of international trade, this figure is significant. The danger of doing business with countries considered to be “high risk” – defined by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as any country with weak measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing – is the heightened potential of inviting transactions that are either fraudulent or otherwise corrupt.¹ The following considerations should be carefully observed before entering into any commercial dealings with a country considered to be high-risk.

2. Enhanced Due Diligence

As a result of the 4^th Anti Money Laundering (AMLD4) directive, developed by the European Union, businesses have to adopt a risk-based outlook. The AMLD4 specifies that EU-based businesses must collect relevant official documents directly from official sources like government registers and public documents, rather than from the organisation in question. If a potential trading partner is located in a high-risk country, or serves an industry that has a higher than normal risk of money laundering, then that partner must conduct Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) on the business entity. This Enhanced Due Diligence process involves additional searches that must be carried out by any firm seeking to do business with this kind of organisation. These searches may include parameters such as the location of the organisation, the purpose of the transaction, the payment method and the expected origin of the payment.

3. Ultimate Beneficial Owners

AMLD4 also outlines the need to discover the ultimate beneficial owner of a business, whether they are customers, partners, suppliers or connected to you in another business relationship.

According to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF),

Beneficial owner refers to the natural person(s) who ultimately owns or controls a customer and/or the natural person on whose behalf a transaction is being conducted. It also includes those persons who exercise ultimate effective control over a legal person or arrangement.

This is important as businesses need to understand who they are dealing with when physical verification is not a practical option. Difficulties could arise when verifying UBOs in high-risk countries as some national jurisdictions impose secrecy policies which block access to verification documentation. This problem is compounded when checking UBOs against international sanction and watch lists as there are more than 200 lists, which vary in scale and uniformity.

4. Virtual Identification

However, verification can still be successful. Many are now turning to software that helps businesses to perform the necessary diligence checks. We gave a lot of consideration to the specific complexities of working with high-risk countries when developing our Global Gateway platform. Programmes such as these are designed to allow companies to perform the Enhanced Due Diligence, Know Your Business and Know your Customer checks that are required when doing business internationally, particularly with high-risk countries. Compliance with the various pieces of legislation on this topic should be at the forefront when implementing the necessary verification checks.

Across the world, markets are becoming increasingly more open, paving the way to a truly global economy. If companies can get to grips with the key due diligence requirements, this is a move that will ultimately benefit the global consumer and customers alike.

The arrival of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is less than a week away. However, many businesses are still not prepared for the legislation shake-up that could see huge sanctions imposed for non-compliance. Experts at UK based IT support solutions company, TSG, explain for Finance Monthly what the key considerations are when it comes to the finance sector.

If your business is unprepared for GDPR, you are not alone. A Populus survey conducted only this year revealed that 60% of UK businesses do not consider themselves “GDPR ready”. It’s definitely not too late to put measures in place to ensure compliance with the regulation. Following the introduction of GDPR on 25^th May, complying with GDPR will be a continuous journey.

What are the key areas you should be considering in light of the looming GDPR deadline?

Cyber-security tops the list

In this digital world, we produce, store and disseminate huge amounts of data. And a significant portion of that will be Personally Identifiable Information (PII); this is the data that matters under GDPR.

Even if, as a business, you don’t store customers’ sensitive data, you’ll still store the data of your employees. Therefore, all businesses must put measures in place to safeguard that digitally-stored data.

Encrypt everything

Arguably the most valuable cyber-security tool at your disposal is encryption. Not only is it a robust way to keep your data inaccessible to cyber criminals, it’s the only method that’s explicitly mentioned multiple times in the GDPR. Should any PII data you hold fall into the wrong hands – whether deliberately or accidentally – encryption will render it unintelligible. Encryption can operate at a file, folder, device or even server level, offering the level of protection most suited to your business needs.

Review your policies and processes

The GDPR requires you to implement policies that detail how you intend to process personal data and how you will safeguard that data. It also states that data controllers – that’s your business – must “adopt internal policies and implement measures which meet in particular the principles of data protection by design and data protection by default.” All new policies, whether specifically related to GDPR or not, must be compiled with a ‘privacy by design’ model. Existing policies, including your data protection policy, privacy policy and training policy should also be reviewed in light of GDPR.

Don’t forget subject access requests

Much of the coverage of GDPR has focused on two areas: data breaches and the potentially eye-watering fines. An area that’s arguably been overlooked is complying with subject access requests. Individuals can request access to the data you hold on them, verify that you’re processing it legally and, in some cases,, request erasure of their data – also known as the ‘right to be forgotten’. Under GDPR you’ll have only a month to respond to these requests, otherwise you’ll be at risk of non-compliance. More guidance on this can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) GDPR guide.

Don’t forget your reporting obligations either

Another element that’s received significantly less coverage is your reporting requirements. In the event of a data breach, businesses must report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) within 72 hours of discovery. It’s especially important to note this, as failing to meet this obligation could be considered a bigger breach of the GDPR than the data leak itself. Both Uber and Equifax have come under fire in the past year for covering up breaches, reporting them late and keeping the extent of the breaches under wraps.

A good example to follow is Twitter. Following the discovery of a bug that stored users’ passwords in plain text – which is a bigger deal than it sounds – Twitter not only reported on the breach, but immediately informed its users of the bug, what caused it and the potential repercussions, and advised customers on how to keep their data safe. The second element of this is critical to GDPR too – if the breach poses a risk to individuals’ “rights and freedoms”, the victims of the breach must be informed too.

The key takeaway

The GDPR wasn’t created to punish businesses or to catch them out, but rather to empower individuals and consumers. Whilst there has been a lot of confusion around exactly what has been required for businesses, it’s clear that cyber-security is imperative, as is clueing up on your reporting and response obligations. It’s important to note that simply experiencing a cyber-attack or data breach won’t automatically result in financial punishment; the GDPR clearly states that, should you prove you put in place measures to protect your PII data, you won’t be hit with the most severe fines.

They make it seem so easy to just jump into the foreign exchange industry and begin trading. But there are actually plenty of considerations to make. Steve Plant, the CEO of WhichFX, has compiled a list of the dirty tricks of the FX industry to be aware of when planning currency transactions.

As an international small business owner, I am all too familiar with the complexities of the foreign exchange landscape. When trying to arrange a foreign exchange (FX) transaction, initial dealings with banks are often frustrating due to poor rates and high commission, which are often particularly unfair to smaller businesses. As such, many turn to brokers to secure more fruitful deals. This can often be overwhelming, however, as different brokers offer varying rates, commissions, and hidden costs.

It can be difficult to cut through this cacophony of brokers, who often solicit unwanted quotes once you’re on their books as they’re hungry for your business. They may appear good on paper but when it comes to initiating the transaction the rates and spread have completely changed. This is thanks to the inaccessible nature of the FX marketplace, perhaps cultivated by banks and brokers so they can hold a monopoly on foreign transactions.

Banks take advantage of the trust placed in them to provide good value and competitive services, making high profits off small businesses’ FX transactions, giving you rates that differ vastly from live interbank rates.

Brokers offer honeymoon rates to attract new customers but then slowly increase the spread (the profit the broker makes on each transaction at the clients’ expense) once a relationship has been established.

Some brokers refuse to use new services that drive down the spread, reducing their profits but maximising the value for clients.

Aggressive sales techniques keep you trapped in the honeypot. Brokers call clients with unsolicited sales calls, often creating a sense of panic by suggesting now is the best time to conduct a transaction as rates are about to take a turn for the worse in the very short future.

Broker comparison sites are misleading by only comparing rates, putting advertisers at the top of their lists, and omitting commission and hidden fees.

SMEs should avoid banks, turning instead to brokers, but beware, and tread the ground of the FX landscape carefully. Frequently shop around to take advantage of honeymoon rates to try and find the best deals.

In my own experience, I often found it frustrating trying to find the best deal and ended up spending countless hours consulting brokers, distracting me from other aspects of my import/export businesses. As a result, I founded WhichFX.

WhichFX is the first live broker comparison site and puts brokers in competition with each other to bid on FX requests, driving down the spread and giving SMEs quotes as close as possible to the live interbank rate. Rather than spending hours on the phone haggling with brokers, WhichFX provides you with a live quote in 15 minutes.

Due to the progressive nature of the WhichFX platform, some brokers have refused to sign up to it as they want to maximise their profits, even though this means their customers would get better FX deals. This illustrates the established FX industry as self-serving and unwilling provide small businesses with the best foreign exchange deals possible.

By Zak Goldberg

Much like any new venture with a business, it’s a smart idea to first fully assess a number of key financial considerations with your international expansion, to make sure it’s the right move for your company.

International expansion can bring a wealth of benefits including: increased sales, more exposure for your brand, opportunities to work in other niches and much more. So, before you start making your first steps abroad, think about some of the following to get your finances in order:

The Cost of your Expansion

The first place to look is at the possible expenses incurred from your expansion. This might cover a variety of areas like:

• Time and staffing dedicated to researching and scouting overseas locations and markets
• The costs of purchasing a new headquarters
• Travel time between your current and new location
• General staff recruitment, training and provisions
• Machinery, tech and facilities for your new site(s)
• A new fleet of vehicles for your logistics

The next step here is simply be realistic about whether or not a full-scale overseas expansion is something your business can afford.

Potential Sales Revenue

When researching the location for your expansion, you will have probably looked at aspects like how receptive the markets are to your products or services. As well as this, you should use this information to inform the potential revenue you could expect from successfully working in this new country. Having a clearer idea of the possible ROI at stake could also help you determine how quickly you could recover financially from your expansion investment.

Extra Overseas Operational Costs

You’ll already appreciate just how much you need to manage and think about for your overall domestic operations and ultimately the same will apply for any locations you set up and start running overseas. You can’t simply double the typical costs of this though as you might also need to pay for local staffing or external support in areas like:

• Translation work on your company’s website, products, branding
• Networking and understanding the cultural nuances of the country
• International supply chains to support your company
• Sourcing materials and goods for any manufacturing
• The general work carried-out on and off-site

Additional Support

After you’ve done some initial planning, you may also want to look into how you can source additional funds to support this. The bigger your cash reserves the better placed you’ll be to facilitate your growth and there are several different ways you could go about this.

You might want to look at securing a business loan from a bank or lender, or pitch your expansion ideas to your investors to see if they put forward more capital for this. Anything you can gain financially, whether large or small, can be incredibly valuable.Final Thoughts

Once you have taken the above into consideration you should then be in a better place to go ahead with your expansion. A final piece of advice here would be to make sure you regularly report and reassess your financial situation, as there might be instances or circumstances where you need to spend more than you first thought. This way you can move money around to support the different areas of your company that may need it.

About the Author:

Zak Goldberg is a Law & Business Graduate from the University of Leeds who has chosen to follow his aspirations of becoming a full-time published writer, offering his expertise on FinTech and business economics.