Category Archives: Sales Management

2020 has been the year of change, including EMTs

2020 has been nothing short of eventful and full of change. But whilst we’ve all been adapting to a new way of living and working, another change has crept up on us, in less than a month – European MiFID Template (EMT) 1.0 is moving to EMT 3.0.

Before we dive straight into how to prepare for this, let’s take a step back and remind ourselves of what this means and why it’s important.

The European MiFID Template was designed by the financial industry in response to requirements introduced by MiFID II. It enables manufacturers of financial products to provide all necessary information to distributors in a standardised format. The first version of the EMT was drafted by the European Working Group. Today, Financial Data Exchange (FinDatEx) coordinates its maintenance and development.

On 10 December 2019, FinDatEx endorsed a third … Read the rest

2020 in review: Top core banking stories

Sometimes it can feel like the smallest hiccup can set back a core banking deal or implementation by months.

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that a year of cuts, digital investments, and shake-ups will have had an effect on the number and size of core banking deals we saw this year.

Despite this there have been several vendors keen to show that things are business as usual. They have talked up their abilities to complete implementations completely remotely.

Here are some of the more eyebrow-raising core banking stories from this year (in no particular order).

US banks debut cloud-based Finastra Phoenix platform

In July, two US-based banks became the first to deploy Finastra’s Fusion Phoenix core banking solution in the cloud.

Florida-based Commerce National Bank & Trust and Washington-based Commencement Bank are accessing the Finastra platform via a … Read the rest

2020 review: A year which saw fintechs cut jobs, pay & business arms

Despite banks’ top executives insisting that COVID-19 is “not a crisis in banking or a financial crisis”, a number of fintechs have still been tested – some to the brink of collapse.

Alternative lenders struggled through long accreditation processes and dried up reserves, before eventually taking on loans which carry the potential risk of high default rates.

Neobanks could no longer rely on interchange fees as a main source of income, prompting a number of them to pivot and focus on alternative revenue streams.

Payments firms whose customers are largely made up of shops and restaurants have experienced serious drops in volume.

But not all fintechs have struggled. Payments firms like Stripe, Fast and Checkout.com have seen their valuations soar because of their strong e-commerce customer bases.

Trading platforms also benefitted from the volatily. In March, Robinhood made $60 million – triple what it made in March 2019.

FinTech Futures… Read the rest

2020 review: 10 largest regulatory fines this year

Watchdogs the world over haven’t slacked in 2020, despite the tumultuous nature of the year. Banks have been brought up on historical abuses and failures just like any year.

Some hefty penalties have hit headlines this year, punishing a range of indiscretions including market manipulation and money laundering.

Here are the largest regulatory penalties announced this year.

10. Commerzbank fined £37.8 million by FCA for AML failings

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Commerzbank’s London branch £37.8 million anti-money laundering (AML) issues between 2012 and 2017.

The regulator states that while Commerzbank London was aware of these weaknesses, it “failed to take reasonable and effective steps” to fix them despite the FCA raising its concerns with the bank.

The FCA adds that the weaknesses persisted during a time where the watchdog was publishing guidance on steps firms could take to reduce … Read the rest

Denmark to join Eurosystem’s Target2 payment platform

Denmark’s central bank has applied to join the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Target2 payment system, the Eurosystem’s new real-time gross settlement system (RTGS).

T2 would then include the Danish krone by November 2025. Danmarks Nationalbank has also expressed interest in joining Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) within the same time frame.

The inclusion of the Danish krone in the Eurosystem’s payment platforms will enable market participants in Denmark to use T2 and TIPS services and to settle payments in both euro and Danish krone.

T2 and TIPS services support transactions in different currencies, as is the case for the current Target2-Securities (T2S) system.

Securities settlement in Danish krone has been available on the T2S platform since October 2018. With the participation of Danmarks Nationalbank, payments in Danish krone will also be possible in TIPS and T2.

The connection to TIPS … Read the rest