January 2011

By Sophie Baker

FRSGlobal, part of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, has incorporated reporting for banks operating in Germany into its global regulatory solution. The application helps to address reporting processing requirements faced by banks operating in Germany, and covers the broad range of financial and transaction reporting requirements they must adhere to.

Oracle has launched two new products designed to help financial institutions to manage their risk and data to overcome the challenges of increased regulatory and complex computational demands of today’s business climate. Oracle Financial Services Data Warehouse is a pre-built, readily deployable FS Data Warehouse, and Oracle Reveleus Liquidity Risk Management will enable institutions to identify and assess liquidity risk.

ID Data Cards has been appointed as electronic money issuer Vincento Payment Solutions' preferred card supplier for its combined online eAccount and prepaid MasterCard solution, Kalixa. The two-year agreement will see ID Data Cards support the company’s expansion plans for the Chip & PIN Kalixa Card into new European markets, providing a complete plastic card solution for all production and fulfilment requirements.

FICO is to provide collections, risk and fraud solutions to Tesco Bank for its banking platforms. Tesco Bank has purchased four FICO decision management solutions – FICO Debt Manager for collections and recovery; FICO PlacementsPlus service for collections agency management; FICO TRIAD Customer Manager and FICO Falcon Fraud Manager. The entire suite will go live in early 2011.

Deutsche Bank has been appointed depositary bank for the sponsored Level 1 American Depositary Receipt program of Nordea Bank AB. Nordea is the largest financial service group in the Nordic and Baltic Sea region, and has approximately ten million customers, 1,400 branch offices and a market cap of €33bn. Nordea’s shares are listed on the NASDAQ OMX exchanges in Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm.

Euroclear Sweden has launched its inaugural service to automate and standardise fund-transaction processing. Fund management firms, fund distributors and transfer agents in Sweden may now benefit from automated fund-transaction order routing between relevant parties and settlement of the cash-related part of the transaction on a straight-through processing (STP) basis at Eurocloear Sweden.

ABN AMRO Clearing has commenced clearing its interbank interest rate swap (IRS) trades through SwapClear. The SwapClear clearing members now stands at 37. ABN AMRO Clearing provides global securities services, and covers 85 of the world’s leading exchanges across Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific.

Experian has enhanced its Delphi for New Business and Delphi for Customer Management suites by the addition of economic forecasts. To be used in conjunction with existing credit data, household characteristics and finance information, each Future Delphi score provides creditors with another variable to consider how changes in the economy over the next 12 months could affect a customer’s ability to meet new and existing credit commitments.

A free online personal finance management application has been launched by Money Dashboard, aimed at time-poor consumers who struggle to keep track of spending and income. The solution is powered by Yodlee, and works by aggregating balances and transactions from multiple online bank accounts brands and credit card brands in one view.

Experian has completed a project stag in the implementation of analytical solutions for retail credit risk management and fraud prevention for Svyaznoy Bank. Experian’s Tallyman software will manage the bank’s portfolio of delinquent accounts.

Import, wholesale, production and service company Motoral-Group has chosen Talend Integration Suite, an open source data integration solution, to migrate product and order-related data securely. The selection follows the expansion of its warehouse base. The Suite is an enterprise data integration solution, designed to support multi-user development and to scale to the highest levels of data volumes and process complexity.

RSA Insurance Group has expanded its use of Innovation Group’s Innovation Symbility desktop triage system, a move which increases automated claims handling across its UK property insurance business. The software, implemented in four call centres around the UK, is used to process property claims throughout RSA’s UK operation.

first direct has become the first UK bank to launch a true transactional, Banking ‘on the go’ App for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The App allows customers to check balances, view the last 20 account transactions, make payments and transfer money between accounts.

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) has announced that it has launched a second Europe-wide stress test for the insurance sector. Conducted in cooperation with the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) and the respective national supervisory authorities, including the Swiss FINMA, it is expected to be launched at the beginning of the second quarter of 2011.

SphereInvest, a global high yield, distressed debt, emerging credit and private equity investment advisory company, has gone live with Formicary and Equinoxe Alternative Investment Services’ ‘Hedge Fund In A Box’ solution. The solution supplies SphereInvest with a stronger grasp of risk exposure and improved visibility, as well as less administrative burden.

Swiss credit card company Swisscard AECS AG has selected Experian to support new customer credit risk and customer management decision making across its growing consumer portfolio in Switzerland. Swisscard AECS AG is a joint venture between Credit Suisse and American Express, and is the only company in Switzerland to offer American Express, MasterCard and Visa from a single source.

Interoute has completed two new high speed connectivity routes directly into the financial hubs of Amsterdam and Milan. Institutions can now benefit from the faster, most direct routes between 24 of Europe’s most significant stock exchanges and multilateral trading facilities (MTF).

NICE Systems has announced new capabilities with NICE SmartCenter’s Interaction Recording, helping contact centres to ensure compliance with the recently updated requirement of the PCI-DSS Council. The new solution helps organisations to meet this mandate by leveraging the company’s real-time desktop analytics for automatically pausing and resuming audio and screen recordings containing sensitive information.

SAP is to acquire security software, identity and access management software, as well as relevant assets including development and consulting resources, from SECUDE. The transaction will see SAP acquire Secure Login and Enterprise Single Sign-On, and will roll these into its product portfolio.

Aspect has launched Aspect(R) Unified IP(R) 7, a platform that powers its unified communications applications for customer contact. The launch provides new functionality that gives contact centres power and control over business workflows, efficient and flexible enterprise-wide administration across multiple locations, high scalability, an intuitive user experience and simplified IT management.

Oracle’s FLEXCUBE Universal Banking System (UBS) has been selected by Banca Transilvania to support double digit operational growth each year, while sustaining profitability. One of Romania’s top five banks, Banca Transilvania will use Oracle’s solution to support all four of its lines – retail banking, SME banking, corporate banking and a healthcare division.

Salesforce.com has acquired Dimdim, a provider of critical real-time communication technologies such as presence, messaging and screen sharing. The acquisition, which was completed for around $31million in cash, net of cash acquired, sees salesforce.com gain real-time communication technologies, as well as a team of developers experienced in building cloud-based collaboration services.

PEER 1 Hosting has launched a hosted Supercomputing cloud service, offering high-performance processing of complex applications and data for financial services businesses. The product enables parallel computation for processing of large volumes of quantitative data quickly. PEER 1 is working with Microsoft’s High Performance Computing team to reduce processing time for customers in a number of verticals, including computation finance, digital content creation, engineering and research.

Endsleigh Insurance Services has implemented CyberSource’s payment processing and payment security solutions. Endsleigh initially chose to work with CyberSource to address PCI-DSS compliance for its online and call centre transactions, but has since outsourced its entire payment management process.

Foregenix has launched a PCI DSS training service to help businesses to become compliant. Foregenix offers a variety of courses aimed at both technical and non-technical members of staff, and will also offer longer, customised and more in-depth assessment training and planning workshops aimed at PCI DSS and technical administrators.

Financial and business adviser Grant Thornton Sweden has chosen Palette to provide an invoice processing solution as the backbone of its internal and hosted electronic invoice management (EIM) service. The advisers provide services in Sweden and internationally, and currently processes around 30,000 invoices per month for over 300 customers.

An all-in-one credit card reader and processing solution has been released to small businesses that use an iPhone 4 by Intuit and mophie. The solution, which combines Intuit’s GoPayment app and merchant account, and mophie’s credit card reader, gives small businesses the ability to get paid quickly on the iPhone 4, and the companies say there are no arbitrary transaction limits that delay them getting their money.

Information Builders and Unisys have launched a joint solution for the British financial services industry, designed to help them meet new compensation time rules. They allow financial institutions to collate data from multiple sources and provide a single view of each customer. The product was developed in response to the latest Financial Services Authority (FSA) rules, which require tighter deadlines for compensation payments.

National Australia Group Europe, in association with Corporate Occupied Solutions, has become the first multi-site business in the UK to achieve BS EN 16001 accreditation. Using GSH Group’s unique approach to energy and facilities management, NAGE used expertise across its Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank network to meet the measurement, auditing and reporting requirements, whilst demonstrating commitment to improving efficiency.