Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 12 June 2018
Swedish central bank opens consultation on instant payments
An infrastructure for the settlement of instant payments will become an increasingly important element of the payment landscape. The Riksbank therefore invites participants in the RIX system, and other interested parties, to give their views on possible changes to the Riksbank’s range of settlement services.
The payments landscape in Sweden and in other jurisdictions is undergoing a transformation. One aspect is the increased use of real-time payments, or instant payments (i.e. a payment that can be executed 24 hours a day 365 days per year). An instant payment is characterised by an immediate, or almost immediate, settlement between participating institutions, where the payment is credited to the payee’s account and confirmed to the payer within a few seconds after the initiation of the payment.
One of the Riksbank’s objectives is to promote a safe and efficient payments system. As it can be assumed that more payments – and in larger values – in the future will be made as instant payments, this payment method will grow in systemic importance. Hence, a safe and cost-efficient infrastructure for the settlement of instant payments will become an increasingly important element of the payment landscape. In this context, the Riksbank has taken note that the Eurosystem will launch the Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) platform later in 2018 and that TIPS will have the technical capacity to settle payments in non-euro currencies. Hence, the Riksbank is specifically interested in how the market views an arrangement whereby settlement of instant payments in Swedish kronor is made available on the TIPS platform.
Nucleus Software launches mobile-based lending platform for microfinance
Nucleus Software, a provider of lending and transaction banking solutions to the global financial services industry, announced the launch of the latest in its line of advanced mobile lending solutions.
FinnOne Neo mFin is designed to help micro lenders provide easy, fast and digitized access to micro credit, anytime, anywhere. According to KPMG, the microfinance industry has played a vital role in promoting financial inclusion in India. It has recorded growth of 27% CAGR over the last few years and is expected to grow at this rate over the next 5 years. Technology provides a number of significant opportunities for the microfinance sector, including in making it easier to access credit services while also dramatically lowering the cost of providing the credit. With the launch of FinnOne Neo mFin, Nucleus Software aims to make the benefits of advanced technology available to the microfinance sector.
Nucleus FinnOne Neo mFin, a specialized microfinance solution, is designed to ensure that microfinance companies can perform paperless data sourcing, real time application submission, instant verification, and provide credit grading on a single mobile application. The solution helps microfinance companies make loan decisions faster, while streamlining customer on-boarding and reducing operating costs. FinnOne Neo mFin has a wide range of unique features including the pre-population of application data, seamless integration with credit bureaus, support for group lending, geo tagging, image capture/upload and role based dash-boards. The solution makes full use of India digital stack to deliver an end to end digital lending experience.
Eigen Technologies raises £13m
Eigen Technologies, the research-led artificial intelligence company for finance, law, and professional services, has completed a £13m ($17.5m) Series A funding round co-led by Goldman Sachs Principal Strategic Investments (PSI) and Temasek.
The Series A proceeds will be used to fund the expansion of the business in London, New York, and other global markets, including Asia and the Americas. Eigen will also use the funds to support a substantial additional investment in research and development.
Eigen’s flexible NLP technology addresses the challenges of unstructured qualitative data. Eigen automates the classification and extraction of this data from documents and other text sources with market-leading accuracy rates. This information is then converted it into easily analyzable structured data in a fraction of the time and manual effort required by traditional methods. By giving its clients a comprehensive understanding of their qualitative data, Eigen enables them to make better decisions on everything from complex financial regulation to due diligence.
Eigen’s technology has been used for tasks as diverse as calculating risk-weighted assets to making fast, accurate decisions about whether to bid on asset portfolios.
Eigen was founded in 2014 and now has a team of 50 people based in London and New York. Its NLP technology is used by clients across the financial, legal, and professional services sectors on a range of use cases. Since winning Linklaters as its first client in 2015, Eigen has expanded its list of clients to include, among others, Goldman Sachs, Linklaters, Evercore, and ING.
