Shield Joins Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner Program

Specialist RegTech provider Shield has been selected by Microsoft to join its One Commercial Partner (OCP) program, which provides best-of-breed Cloud-based solutions. The partnership means the Shield platform is now available on Microsoft’s App Source and Azure Marketplace.

“With increased remote working and ongoing disruption to many business operations because of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, many firms are looking at their options for maintaining regulatory compliance and surveillance during these challenging times,” says Eran Noam, Global VP of Sales and Marketing at Shield. “As an early supporter of the Microsoft platform in the RegTech sphere, Shield is perfectly placed to help regulated firms meet these needs, as they switch to Microsoft Teams as a key part of their journey towards cloud services.”

ONE Appointed by Maitland to Provide Compliance Technology

ONE regulatory has been appointed by global advisory and family offices firm Maitland to implement R-ONE, a cloud-based compliance technology and workflow tool. ONE group provides fund management solutions including third-party Management Company, Regulatory & Compliance Advisory, Corporate Secretary and Governance Technology solutions to asset, wealth and fund managers through offices in Luxembourg, London and Zurich.

MirrorWeb Joins Microsoft Scale-up Programme

UK-based web archiving and monitoring solutions provider MirrorWeb has been selected to join the Microsoft ScaleUp programme, an initiative that gives a small number of high-growth companies access to Microsoft’s sales, marketing and technical support. To be successful, companies must be start-ups or growth enterprises at the forefront of emerging technologies, and with the potential to tap into newer markets. Fewer than 2% of applications to the program currently succeed.MirrorWeb helps marketing and compliance professionals meet regulatory requirements by capturing immutable records of their digital content and archiving their web and social media channels. Clients include Liontrust Asset Management, Zurich Insurance Group, Tesco Bank, Bank of England and the Treasury.

Wolters Kluwer Updates OneSumX, Signs ING in China

Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting (FRR) business has released an update for its OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting solution to allow clients to meet the Second-Generation People’s Bank of China Enterprise Credit Reference Submission, an update to the country’s credit reference system first launched in January 2020, which makes a broad range of changes to reporting and information collection procedures for personal and enterprise credit data. ING’s China business has chosen OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting to meet the new requirements.

Kyckr to Raise A$10m Through Share Placement

Australian digital verification specialist Kyckr has confirmed plans to raise a further A$10 million (before costs) via a new share placement to institutional and sophisticated investors, woith new shares issued at $0.08 per share. Kyckr will also conduct a Share Purchase Plan (SPP) for an additional A$2m, to allow eligible existing shareholders an opportunity to participate in the raising at the same price. The funds will be used to expand international sales growth. Kyckr recently launched its latest ‘Company Watch’ product, an automated online monitoring service for enterprises, and announced expanded contracts with Commerzbank and Citigroup.

Singapore Introduces ‘Fairness Metrics’ for AI Adoption

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced today that the first phase of its Veritas initiative – a framework for financial institutions to promote the responsible adoption of Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics (AIDA) – will commence with the development of fairness metrics in credit risk scoring and customer marketing. The 25-member consortium will publish a white paper documenting the metrics and release an open-source code to enable financial institutions to adopt the fairness metrics in these two areas by the end of 2020.

EU Issues Warning to Member States Over 5AML

More than half of the EU’s member states have failed to fully implement the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive, according to the European Commission (EC). The authority has sent letters of formal notices to 17 countries – including Cyprus, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain – which it says missed the official implementation deadline of 10 January, 2020. The EC also criticised Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg and Poland for only partial implementation, and warned Luxembourg over its choice to allow firms “unlimited deductability of interest” from their tax bills.

“The Commission regrets that the Member States in question have failed to transpose the Directive in a timely manner and encourages them all to do so urgently, bearing in mind the importance of these rules for the EU’s collective interest,” said the EC in a statement.

West African Development Bank (BOAD) Selects Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX Solution for Risk Management

BOAD, the common development finance institution of the member countries of the West African Monetary Union (WAMU), specifically selected the Asset and Liability Management (ALM), Liquidity Risk, Market Risk, and Credit Risk components of OneSumX for Risk Management, to monitor performance, profitability and capital adequacy (both regulatory and economic). To assist in the bank’s decision making, the solution will also cover the parameters of BOAD’s risk appetite framework. The bank chose the solution with the aim of implementing an integrated approach to risk management and financial planning in order to strengthen its financial governance.

Industry Supports Pre-Cessation LIBOR Fallbacks, Finds ISDA

ISDA has found that a significant majority of practitioners would prefer to include pre-cessation and permanent cessation fallbacks without optionality or flexibility. The feedback comes in response to a consultation launched by ISDA in February which asked whether the 2006 ISDA Definitions should be amended to include fallbacks that would apply to all covered derivatives referencing LIBOR following a permanent cessation of the benchmark or a ‘non-representative’ pre-cessation event, whichever occurs first. ISDA now expects to publish amendments to the 2006 ISDA Definitions to incorporate the fallbacks for new trades in July. A protocol will simultaneously be launched to allow participants to incorporate the revisions into legacy trades if they wish. Both will come into effect before the end of the year.

Kompli-Global and ComplyAdvantage Partner on Financial Crime

ComplyAdvantage has become the latest provider to add to the Kompli-QED remote corporate onboarding platform, in a strategic partnership between the two firms to fight financial crime and money laundering. Kompli-QED is a remote onboarding platform that combines proprietary solutions with best-in-class third party offerings. “ComplyAdvantage significantly enhances the platform with real-time sactions and PEP screening against global enforcement watchlists. This is a tremendous advantage as increasingly criminals get to know the frequency with which static databases are updated and look to exploit the time lag in updating them. ComplyAdvantage also shares our approach to letting Augmented Intelligence (AI) do the heavy lifting,” says ComplyAdvantage CEO Jane Jee.