MarketInvoice inks deal with Germany’s Varengold Bank
Business finance company MarketInvoice has signed an agreement with Varengold Bank AG to provide £45m funding annually on its invoice finance platform. This will fund working capital solutions for businesses across the UK.
Overall, sums advanced to UK businesses from institutional investors via MarketInvoice have increased more than 4-fold since 2014 from £27.8m to £116.3m in 2017. Cumulative funding from institutions stands at £296.2m which represents a quarter (26%) of the total funds advanced to UK businesses.
MarketInvoice has today reached the landmark milestone of providing £1.5b funding to UK businesses. The first £1b was achieved after 5 years of trading in December 2016 and just 10 months later, the company has reached £1.5b. Supporting 18,700 jobs at the businesses MarketInvoice serves, over 70,000 invoices have been funded to help ease cash flow and become an enabler for growth and expansion.
Infosy Finacle selects Niki.ai to offer chat bots to banking customers
Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infosys (NYSE: INFY), today announced its partnership with Niki.ai, a FinTech start-up that offers chat based commerce solutions.
With this partnership, Finacle solution suite will be available with Niki.ai’s chat-based virtual assistant – Niki. This offering will enable banks to offer its customers a virtual banking assistant for shopping products and services.
The joint solution from Finacle and Niki.ai will provide a smart-purchasing chatbot by leveraging natural language processing and machine learning to converse with customers and perform online transactions. The bot will comprehend natural speech text in the context of the customer and will deliver personalised suggestions. The solution will provide banks an opportunity to initiate two-way automated intelligent conversations with customers.
Ping An Securities deploys Finastra technology
Ping An Securities has implemented FusionCapital from Finastra throughout its operations in Greater China.
The business, part of China’s Ping An Group, is now using the flexible Finastra platform to help extend its securities brokerage capabilities on a global scale – meaning it can boost revenues as it enters new markets.
“Legacy systems in China are built around existing domestic regulations and rules but they don’t have the capabilities to help us compete globally,” said Andy Han, Director of Development at Ping An Securities. “Our main goal in seeking an electronic trading platform partner was to find a provider that delivers the flexibility to trade across countries and the adaptability required by changing compliance rules. Finastra holds a strong reputation in handling the complexities of the toughest trading environments so they were the natural choice for us.”
Startupbootcamp graduates, Mespo and Combine, partner to help UK consumers save on energy deals
Mespo, the London based money manager, and Combine, a Barcelona based financial assistant that helps consumers keep track of their bank accounts across Europe, have entered into a partnership to help Combine’s customers get better energy deals in the UK.
Mespo will enable Combine’s UK based customers to check if they have been overcharged by their utility providers and then effortlessly switch customers to a better provider, saving them time and money.
“We are excited to partner with Combine” says Lukas Zoerner, Mespo’s CEO. “Consumers have been ripped off by utility companies for too long and existing switching processes are too burdensome for consumers. Through our partnership, consumers are automatically notified if they have been overcharged and are presented with better alternatives they can effortlessly switch to through Mespo.”
