Moneythor, a digital banking toolkit and data-driven personalisation engine, is one of 8 companies selected globally by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for its inaugural FinTech Business Camp program. 4 of them are foreign companies. Aiming to reclaim the title of Asia’s number one global financial centre, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has embarked in a series of projects with the national government of Japan and the private sector to revitalize Tokyo’s financial sector. FinTech Business Camp Tokyo is a key initiative of this effort designed to bring innovative technologies and international know-how to Japanese institutions during a program from October to November…
Author: Company Announcement
Risk management functions within financial services organizations are primarily concerned with cybersecurity and data-related risks at their firms, according to the EY and Institute of International Finance (IIF) eighth annual global bank risk management survey of Chief Risk Officers (CROs): Restore, rationalize and reinvent: a fundamental shift in the way banks manage risk. Cybersecurity has surged as a concern with respondents, with 77% claiming it is one of the most important risks over the next year, a 22% increase since the 2015 survey. In addition, a majority of the banks surveyed (86%) cited data-related risks (availability, integrity, etc.) as a top emerging…
Prudential Singapore (Prudential) today announced the launch of the PRU Fintegrate Partnership (PRU Fintegrate) which seeks to collaborate with fintech startups in Singapore and globally, and to co-develop digital solutions for customers. This is the first programme of its kind by Prudential globally, and marks a milestone in its continued effort to foster greater innovation in the industry. PRU Fintegrate focuses on building innovative financial solutions, simple interfaces and seamless experiences for customers. These enhancements will be applied across the entire value-chain – from helping customers understand how to bridge their protection gap and to plan better for their financial future,…
BankBazaar.com, India’s leading financial marketplace with 50 Million visits per quarter, raised US$30 Million in a funding round led by Experian, the world’s largest credit rating agency and information management company. BankBazaar’s mission is to help consumers access the right financial product paperless, and its vision is to be the dominant digital marketplace globally enabling paperless access to financial products. Speaking about the investment, Adhil Shetty, CEO, BankBazaar, said: “Experian is a global leader in credit reporting and information management, and we are very excited to have them on board as a part of our investor group which includes Amazon,…
Hitachi Vantara, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. announced its very first Fintech Codeathon, CodeSG, that will take place from 3 – 5 November, 2017, at The Hangar at NUS Enterprise. The 2.5-day codeathon is open to developers, designers, tertiary students and enterprises in the Fintech community in Singapore, who have a passion for creative problem-solving. Hitachi Vantara’s CodeSG aims to build a bridge to the Fintech developer community and establish two-way conversations between Hitachi Vantara and the developers. Participants in teams of five, will be tasked to solve real-time issues and co-create solutions to specific challenges from the financial industry. Projects are…
Many of the world’s poor in developing countries — nearly 2 billion, according to the World Bank — struggle to lift themselves out of poverty simply because they don’t have a bank account or financial services. This is a missed opportunity for the financial services industry that has traditionally focused on the rich and middle class. In fact, developing markets represent the next frontier for economic growth. Mobile wallets can be an effective, alternative solution for unbanked people, but it’s costly and complicated for banks to develop digital financial services for new markets, as well as make them interoperable so that digital money…
Lenddo and Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL), leaders in credit decisioning for emerging markets, today announced they are joining forces. Lenders will use the combined company’s unique platform to provide individuals worldwide with unprecedented, affordable access to convenient financial products. United by the common vision of providing financial inclusion for more than one billion new and underserved individuals across the globe, Lenddo and EFL will together provide a suite of credit scoring and identity verification products to more than 20 emerging markets. “We’re thrilled to join forces with Lenddo and create an undisputed, global category leader in alternative data for credit…
Accuity, the leading provider of financial crime compliance, payments and know-your-customer (KYC) solutions, announced today that it has successfully integrated its financial crime screening solutions with Corda – R3’s financial grade distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform. Accuity’s innovation team, working closely with R3, has developed a solution that enables financial crime screening of customers and transactions on Corda. For financial institutions, this would facilitate financial crime compliance with regulatory requirements of programs such as the EU Fourth Anti Money Laundering Directive, the USA PATRIOT Act, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the MAS Notice 626. Hugh…
Financial technology group ayondo remains on track to be the first FinTech company to be listed in Singapore. It will seek a listing through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) instead of the Reverse Takeover (RTO) as announced in mid-2016. The RTO was brought to an end in September because certain conditions of the Sales Purchase Agreement between the parties could not be fulfilled by ayondo’s contractual partner. Robert Lempka, CEO ayondo group says “The end of the RTO opens up the way for ayondo to pursue an Initial Public Offering (IPO) instead. The preparation work for an RTO and IPO…
DataProm company provides a number of services for e-commerce, such as analysis of goods and product groups, analysis of online customer activity and forecasting of their interests, automatic content optimization, etc. Almost all the company’s services and products are based on unique algorithms and the ability to work with Big Data. Recently DataProm became a member of the prestigious Shen Zhen Big Data Industry Association, which is a huge step in the development of the company. The amount of data and technical capacity that is required in order to store it, grew exponentially as the number of DataProm customers increased.…
Tokio Marine Life Insurance Singapore Ltd. (TMLS), the only Japanese life insurer in Singapore, today launched the first self-learning AI chatbot in Singapore that makes life insurance easier to understand and more accessible for the public. Available 24/7 on popular messaging app Facebook Messenger, the chatbot, named TOMI (for Tokio Marine Insurance), builds on the success of an earlier version released in January when TMLS became the first financial institution in Singapore to launch a chatbot for its financial advisers. The current version is aimed at empowering the public to understand and manage their insurance coverage more independently by providing…
Oracle announced momentum for its open banking initiative, which includes a comprehensive set of PaaS capabilities as well as an open API framework enabling banks and fintechs to collaborate on a common cloud platform. This digital innovation platform for open banking enables the development and deployment of fintech capabilities on a single platform in the public cloud. In today’s marketplace, open banking is no longer an aspirational goal, it is a necessity for any financial institution. Factors such as the global rise of fintechs, increasing pressure from European regulatory bodies and the need to create operational efficiencies have further heightened…
Funding Societies, Singapore’s and Southeast Asia’s leading crowdfunding platform, has announced the launch of its chatbot Miyu. This is the first such chatbot created by a crowdfunding company in Southeast Asia. Miyu works round the clock to answer queries that a business owner or an investor may ask about the products and services offered by Funding Societies. Here comes the interesting story – Miyu was jointly developed by two interns at Funding Societies along with bot platforms meya.ai and api.ai, using machine learning and natural language processing within the span of their internship. The inspiration for the name ‘Miyu’ came…
SAP SE announced a new release of the financial services accelerator for the SAP Hybris Commerce solution, enabling banks and insurance companies to offer customers a faster and easier experience opening checking accounts, applying for loans, obtaining insurance policies and many other services either in person, online or on mobile devices. “Digitalization has turned financial services on its head,” said Matthias Goehler, SAP Hybris* senior vice president and head of Industries. “The industry has changed from one of personal relationships and advice to customers shopping online for the lowest cost option. To engage these price-conscious consumers, banks and insurers need…
Online payment technology service provider Omise announced today that it has been chosen by McDonald’s Thailand to be its exclusive payments gateway for its website, www.mcdonalds.co.th and the McDelivery Thailand mobile app. With consumers growing embrace of online and especially mobile technologies, purchases through digital channels have rapidly increased. The online and mobile transaction has been growing strongly over the past two years. To continue delivering seamless experiences for the growing number of online customers, McDonald’s required a state-of-the-art digital payments platform that could support the company’s present growth and future ambitions. “We continue to raise the bar for our customers with convenience…
RHB Bank Berhad (“RHB”)—Malaysia’s fourth largest fully integrated financial services group—in collaboration with RinggitPlus—Malaysia’s leading comparison website for financial products—today introduced ‘ChatBot’, the first real-time messenger-style platform in Southeast Asia to facilitate personal loan applications. Consumers can now apply for their personal loan at any time of the day via ChatBot on RinggitPlus.com, and obtain the results for eligibility within a day via Short Messaging System (SMS). ChatBot is a platform that enables consumers to apply for RHB Easy-Pinjaman Ekspres via RinggitPlus.com, a financial comparison website. This platform auto populates information provided by consumers and combined with the approval process, reduces application time. “We…
RegTech Canada and Singapore based RegPac Revolution, have signed a co-operation agreement to collaborate on the development of cross-border Regulatory Technology initiatives. For those who are not aware of this recent phenomenon, RegTech (or Regulatory Technology) is the application of technology in Regulation, Compliance and Supervision of regulated entities – an area where Canada and Singapore are both recognised as global leaders. A recent study demonstrated that firms in the financial sector spend between 10% and 15% of their annual revenues on regulatory compliance. As regulation becomes more complex, it becomes harder and harder to manage costs and human error…
On September 1, Humaniq opened an international competition of blockchain projects to improve the lives of the world’s unbanked people by integrating them into the global financial system. Winners will refine their ideas on an all-paid trip to Kenya, then receive support in launching an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and an opportunity to join the Humaniq accelerator. The challenge aims to identify startups that will maximize Humaniq’s humanitarian potential and will become effective business partners on its infrastructure. We invite entrepreneurs, blockchain projects developers, programmers, marketing specialists, and economists to enter the competition in teams or individually. Future directions include…
MoneyMax announced that it has entered into a joint venture with Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed Aucnet to jointly develop Singapore’s first online LIVE B2B e-auction platform The joint venture company ,SG e-Auction, will operate and manage the e-auction platform which allows ASEAN business buyers and sellers to make electronic bids for luxury branded merchandise, and gold and diamond goods. MoneyMax will be the majority shareholder of SG e-Auction with a 51% equity stake while Aucnet will hold the remaining 49% equity stake. Established in 1985, Aucnet is Japan’s leading real-time auction platform company which provides B2B information distribution services. Aucnet’s online…
Asian Business Software Solutions (ABSS) today announced the launch of Financio, a cloud-based automated accounting software for micro and small businesses in Singapore that gives companies access to a secure solution that tracks business finances effortlessly. Developed by ABSS and powered by Microsoft Azure, Financio does not require any accounting knowledge to operate and has been designed to be used by non-accountants. Users can track sales, purchases and miscellaneous transactions through a simplified dashboard, and automatically generate financial reports and tax records or forward transactions to recipients via email and inventory tracking. Through ‘Financio Connect’, businesses are also able to…
