BMW invites startups to join Innovation Lab
BMW Group UK has announced the launch of the BMW Innovation Lab 2018. The new programme builds upon the success of the inaugural Lab in 2016, which saw four out of five incubated startups succeed in building ongoing relationships with the company’s UK commercial operations.
The BMW Innovation Lab 2018 will also see the company add a new intrapreneur programme to inspire, shape and realise innovative ideas from the 1,300-strong workforce operating across the BMW Group’s three commercial divisions in the UK – BMW (UK) Ltd, BMW Group Financial Services (GB) Ltd, and business mobility solutions provider, Alphabet (GB) Ltd. The intrapreneur programme will help staff contribute ideas to help deliver new and improved services to customers.
Capco opens Stockholm office
Capco, a leading management and technology consultancy focused on the financial services industry, is pleased to announce the opening of its office in Stockholm, Sweden, which forms part of its growth strategy and is in response to an increasing demand for its services in the Nordic region.
Technology and disruptive innovations are increasing at an unprecedented pace in the Nordics due to the acceleration in regional growth, and as new technologies are being created in the region. As a result, the financial services industry needs to stay ahead of these trends to meet customer expectations. As a leading management and technology consultancy dedicated to the financial services industry, Capco is seeing strong demand for its services from leading local banks and financial institutions in the region, and Capco’s industry experience will be highly beneficial to Nordic companies.
Atlas Finance to use Nucleus Lending Analytics
Nucleus Software, a leading lending and transaction banking solutions provider, today announced that Atlas Finance, a micro-finance company in South Africa, has chosen Nucleus Lending Analytics to help them leverage the insights provided by their data to make faster, more informed lending decisions.
Established in 1994, Atlas Finance serves 500,000 customers through a network of over 160 branches in South Africa. The company’s goal is to become the most trusted and preferred provider of personal loans; to help customers achieve their goals by providing them with loans responsibly, building their trust by serving them with dignity, respect and sincerity. Atlas Finance was looking for a means to reduce their non-performing loans, through the use of a sophisticated lending analytics solution to complement their Score Card needs. This would enable them to make data driven decisions seamlessly throughout the lending value chain. The company needed a dynamic solution in order to process loan applications in real-time, while also easily integrating into their technology landscape.
OCBC Bank launches transactional API for Giro set-up
OCBC Bank has scored another first by rolling out a transactional API that – when integrated with a third-party website or app – allows a GIRO facility to be set up instantly.
APIs are tools and protocols used to build software applications and specify how these applications interact with each other. Apart from the GIRO API, OCBC Bank released 4 other transactional APIs, bringing the total number developed by its in-house team on its open API platform, Connect2OCBC, to 43. The bank had been the first bank in Southeast Asia to launch an open API platform, in May 2016.
The GIRO API makes it easy to set up a GIRO facility involving OCBC Bank accounts and third-party billing organisations. This can be done right from the third-party website or app which will make for a hassle-free experience for consumers who wish to use GIRO to pay their telecommunications and utilities bills, or insurance premiums, to name a few.
