Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 3 December 2018
National Australia Bank Selects AWS as its Long Term Strategic Cloud Provider
Amazon Web Services announced that National Australia Bank (NAB) has selected AWS as a long term strategic cloud provider, with a goal of migrating more than 300 applications, including some core banking systems, to AWS by the end of 2019.
NAB is adopting a cloud-first strategy using AWS compute, storage, database, and analytics capabilities to build new services to deliver better financial outcomes for its nine million customers around the globe. For enhanced security, NAB deployed Amazon GuardDuty, a fully managed intelligent threat detection service that continuously monitors account activity for malicious or unauthorized behavior, to help protect all of its AWS workloads and safeguard customers’ data in the cloud.
With over 300 AWS certifications achieved, NAB operates a robust cloud-enablement training program for its employees that gives them the opportunity to quickly ramp up on AWS technologies and develop skills that will enable them to innovate digital experiences for customers. NAB is building a data lake on AWS using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Athena to ingest, analyze, and take action on customer preferences gleaned from petabytes of satisfaction data in minutes rather than months. The organization is also developing three new strategic platforms on AWS—NAB Services Cloud, NAB Data Hub, and NAB Discovery Cloud—that will allow teams across NAB to innovate at a faster rate, mine, and monetize data more effectively, and improve productivity with a clear line of sight into the customer experience. In addition, NAB is looking to Amazon Connect — a cloud-based contact center service — as a platform for contact center migration to power customer conversations and deliver on NAB’s vision to provide exceptional customer service.
Mambu Supports PostFinance’s Marketplace Lending Growth
Mambu, a SaaS banking engine announced it is powering Lendico Switzerland AG, helping the Swiss marketplace lender bring its digital alternative to traditional small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) financing to the Swiss market.
Lendico Switzerland AG, a company of PostFinance, provides new investment opportunities to private and institutional investors. Since its launch in 2016, the lender has quickly established itself as one of the market leaders in Swiss SME financing.
“In Switzerland, the demand from SMEs for loan products, end-to-end digital customer experiences as well as rapid decisioning and disbursement is going unmet,” said Myriam Reinle, CEO of Lendico Switzerland. “We wanted to both address the market demands and grow our business geographically through a fully-automated, lean and flexible business model. We chose a cloud-native approach to achieve this goal instead of building a new technology stack or replicating what existed in other operations.”
“In Mambu we found a partner that not only provided business agility but seamlessly integrated with our current systems. The API-driven solution puts us in full control of our technology, enabling us to change, develop and introduce new products quickly, with the luxury of knowing we can scale operations without significant investment in time or resources. This frees us up to focus our attention on designing, building and evolving elements of our technical stack that truly differentiate us from our competitors,” added Reinle.
Digital money transfer service Azimo expands its European operations with new Amsterdam office
European digital money transfer service Azimo announced it has officially launched its service in Poland. This widens the company’s reach across Europe, as it continues to grow its market share across the continent.
Customers in Poland will now be able to send money to any of the 180 countries and 80 currencies supported by Azimo’s global money transfer platform, with a service that is significantly cheaper than other players.
Since launching in 2012, Azimo has expanded its service to every continent. The company now reaches more than 5 billion potential customers worldwide via a wide variety of payout methods, including bank deposits, cash pick-up and mobile wallets.
Azimo’s advantages in speed, price and ease of use have resulted in sustained top-line annual growth above 100%. The service now has more than a million registered customers and over $1 billion in annualised sending volume.
Chinese Fintech company Paytend opens European HQ in Lithuania
Paytend Technology, a Chinese company developing and selling financial services software, has announced choosing Vilnius, Lithuania, for its European headquarters.
The company plans to hire up to 50 highly qualified professionals in the fields of sales marketing, compliance, product development and customer support in the following 3 years.
One of the main reasons why the company, which will operate in Lithuania via subsidiary Paytend Europe, chose Lithuania was the country’s favourable and flexible regulatory environment.
“Obtaining an electronic money institution license from the Bank of Lithuania was a straightforward, transparent and efficient process,” Junqing Li, CEO of Paytend Europe, say. “As newcomers, we found the required support starting from the initial phase. Lithuania has proven to be the right choice for our European headquarters.”
In Europe, the company seeks to expand its business and provide low-cost and efficient digital banking services for clients with needs of Cross-Border Remittance, Card Issuance and Acquiring.
