Kech has experience in finance, infrastructure, blockchain, and standardisation gained through a variety of leadership positions held over the past 25 years. In his role as GLEIF CEO, he will be pivotal in driving further adoption of the LEI and verifiable LEI (vLEI).

Dessa Glasser, chair of the GLEIF board of directors, says: “Alexandre Kech’s mission is clear, to enable GLEIF to realise its full potential and create sustainable value for the whole Global LEI System, including partners, employees, and LEI stakeholders everywhere.”

Paying tribute to GLEIF’s outgoing CEO, Stephan Wolf, she adds: “On behalf of the GLEIF board of directors, I would like to sincerely thank Stephan Wolf for his ten years of dedicated service as CEO. Under his leadership, GLEIF has established a global trust network that enables legal entities and their business partners to demonstrate ownership and relationships transparently. It has also made enormous strides while continuing to innovate fearlessly, particularly in the digital space with the introduction of the vLEI.”

Commenting on his upcoming role at GLEIF, Kech says: “The potential of the LEI to enhance private and public sector efficiencies, strengthen regulatory oversight, and expand economic inclusion increases exponentially with the integration of digital technologies. I look forward to enhancing both the reach and the impact of the LEI and vLEI.”

Prior to joining GLEIF, Kech was executive board member and business head of digital securities at SDX, a SIX company, where he was instrumental in driving growth and implementing strategic initiatives that enhanced business performance. He has specialised in finance at BNY Mellon, payments and securities infrastructure and standards at SWIFT, blockchain and digital assets at Onchain Custodian (ONC), and most recently, at Citi Ventures.

He is also involved in industry and standardisation initiatives as the convenor of ISO TC 68 / SC8 / WG3, which produced the ISO 24165 Digital Token Identifier (DTI) and is a member of the DTI Foundation Product Advisory Committee. He also recently served as co-chair of the Global Digital Finance (GDF) custody working group.

The post Alexandre Kech Steps Up to Role of GLEIF CEO as Stephan Wolf Steps Down appeared first on A-Team.

In parallel, the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) are set to issue calls for candidates for their respective stakeholder groups within the first quarter of 2024.

Thanking the outgoing SMSG, ESMA chair Verena Ross, noted the importance of a balanced representation of stakeholder views within the group, particularly emphasising the need for voices from consumers, users of financial services, financial sector employees, and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Candidates interested in joining the SMSG should submit their applications by the end of 18 March 2024. Details for application submission are available on ESMA’s official website. The selection process will culminate with ESMA’s Board of Supervisors making the final decision on the SMSG’s composition in May 2024. The appointed members will commence their four-year term on 1 July 2024.

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In a post on LinkedIn, Wolf writes: “After a decade of incredible experiences and achievements, I have decided not to seek another term as CEO. The decision to step down comes with a sense of fulfillment and confidence in the exceptional team we’ve built. Our board of directors and I have carefully considered this transition, and we believe it aligns with the successful maturation of GLEIF.” He adds: “Rest assured, my commitment to the cause of Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) remains unwavering.”

The selection of a new CEO is the sole responsibility of the board of directors, which has started the process of identifying and engaging a new CEO. The board expects the process will be concluded within the next few months.

Its adoption and use have been eased by the implementation of validation agents, essentially banks and financial institutions that obtain an LEI for clients as they are onboarded or during a client refresh, and an ongoing programme of collaboration with data vendors that include the LEI in their feeds, and mapping services to other widely used identifiers such as the ISIN, BIC and MIC.

As well as these and more initiatives to encourage use of the LEI, Wolf notes the potential of the digital or verifiable LEI (vLEI) to open new possibilities and avenues for growth.

He concludes: “As we enter 2024, GLEIF stands strong, and our teams are fully committed to navigating the exciting opportunities ahead. Looking forward, we see tremendous potential in the upcoming phases of LEI adoption. Initiatives such as LEIs in cross-border payments, the US Financial Data Transparency Act, and the integration of LEIs/vLEIs in international trade and supply chains present exciting prospects. The team is steadfast in its commitment to capitalise on these opportunities and drive further success.”

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The RegTech Insight Awards recognise both established solution providers and innovative newcomers providing RegTech solutions that have successfully improved firms’ ability to effectively respond to evolving and ever more complex regulatory requirements across the global financial services industry.

This year, the awards included more than 30 categories ranging from Best Regulatory Intelligence Solution to Best Solution for Digital Transformation in Regulatory Compliance, Best Compliance as a Service Solution, Best Trade Surveillance Solution, Best Solution for Regulatory Change Management, Best ESG Regulatory Solution, Best Solution for Institutional Crypto-Assets, and more.

An editor’s recognition award for RegTech Industry Professional of the Year was presented to Matt Smith, CEO at SteelEye.

Delaney said: “Congratulations to the well-deserved winners of this year’s A-Team Group RegTech Insight Awards – Europe, it was a hard-fought and highly-competitive contest in a rapidly growing market.”

Thank you to all the vendors that entered the awards, our RegTech Insight community that voted for its preferred solutions, and our independent, expert advisory board that worked in collaboration with A-Team’s editorial team to select the winners.

If you would like your company to be considered for future RegTech Insight Awards in Europe, the US or APAC, click here,  where you can either enter your details to be notified when we open for nominations, or submit your entry if we are already open for nominations.

A complete list of winners can be found below.

• Best Regulatory Intelligence Solution – RegHub.ESG
• RegTech Industry Professional of the Year – Matt Smith, CEO, SteelEye
• Best Solution for Digital Transformation in Regulatory Compliance – AML Partners
• Best Compliance as a Service Solution – ComplyPortal
• Best Solution for Basel IV – ElysianNXt
• Best Transaction Reporting Solution – eflow Global
• Best Trade Surveillance Solution – Eventus
• Best Solution for Sell-Side Regulatory Compliance – Gresham Technologies
• Best Know Your Customer Solution – KYC Portal
• Best Solution for Buy-Side Regulatory Compliance – Moody’s Analytics
• Best Solution for Regulatory Change Management – MCO MyComplianceOffice
• Best Regulatory Consultancy – Europe – Novatus Advisory
• Best Solution for Managing Financial Crime – ORACLE
• Best Solution for Sanctions Management – Refinitiv, an LSEG business
• Best Solution for Tax Compliance – Regnology
• Best Regulatory Reporting Solution – S&P Global Market Intelligence
• Best ESG Regulatory Solution – SIX
• Best e-Comms Surveillance Solution – SteelEye
• Best Regulatory Data Solution – Bloomberg
• Best Solution for Institutional Crypto-Assets – MAP S.Platis
• Best Solution for FRTB – Alveo
• Best Analytics Solution to Address Capital Requirements/Liquidity Risk – Cassini Systems
• Best Solution for Benchmark Regulation – Rimes
• Best Solution for Managing Operational Risk – Salt Communications
• Best Solution for EMIR – ACA Group
• Best Solution for Stress Testing – Adenza
• Best Solution for DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) – AQMetrics
• Best Client On-Boarding Solution – Fenergo
• Best RegTech Start Up – FinCrime Dynamics
• Best Cloud-Based Solution for Regulatory Compliance – InsiderList
• Best Solution for Records Retention – ION
• Best Solution for Managing Conduct Risk – NICE Actimize
• Best Data Privacy Solution – Solidatus
• Best AI Solution for Regulatory Compliance – Solidus Labs

The post A-Team Group Names Winners of RegTech Insight Awards – Europe 2023 appeared first on A-Team.

Txtsmarter will use the unspecified funds to expand its services in the US and European enterprise markets, to enable companies in highly regulated industries to respond to increasing oversight from supervisory agencies. New CEO Green is a former CEO of Ring Access and Basys Automation Systems, and has 26 years of direct venture capital experience, with many investments in high-growth technology and business services.

“This funding round has been paramount in growing our development team,” says Green, “and providing additional features based on our future roadmap to expand our services in the enterprise market.” He adds that global regulatory agencies have been focused on financial institutions in recent months, levying billions of dollars of fines for missing texts and WhatsApp messages. “[Our] unique solution empowers companies to achieve eComms compliance in near real- time across an ever-shifting landscape of communication channels.”

Txtsmarter recently announced the ability to not only capture all communications in real-time but extend that functionality to pull in historic WhatsApp messages from activated devices as well, in response to comments the FCA made in issue 68 of its Market Watch newsletter, which outlined the regulator’s concerns that requirements for market abuse surveillance were still not being fully met.

The post Txtsmarter Completes Series A, Names Green as New CEO appeared first on A-Team.

Founded in 2018, Shield uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural programming language (NPL) to identify market abuse and conduct issues. Its platform monitors all electronic communications channels used by regulated entities, allowing firms to deal with issues swiftly and efficiently. The company will use the funds to open an office in New York, and add to its sales resource to expand in Europe and the Asia Pacific region.

The Shield platform collects and securely stores applicable from e-comms channels including voice, video, shared files and metadata, enriches and structures the data, then analyses it using machine learning and NPL. It then connects with the structured data to find any relevant discussions or other communications centred on the financial marketplace (mentions of company names, stock prices, etc.)

The Shield platform also provides surveillance and e-discovery tools to search Zoom and other online meeting channels for specific content (words, phrases and complex combinations of language). Compliance officers can search this analysed data for specific terms or phrases, grouping investigations and all relevant data from other channels (correlated with phone calls, emails, chats, etc.) as a package for specific investigations – whether internal, a request by the firm’s legal team or in response to a regulator’s request for information.

The solution alerts the Compliance/Surveillance team to any flagged content within online meeting sessions, utilising behavioural detection models for Market Abuse, Employee Conduct and Information Handling (such as insider information and the sharing of sensitive information without permission, etc).

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Tractiv’s technology allows financial firms to track data usage to ensure 100% compliance against license agreements, effectively removing the audit clause from data agreements. Consumer firms are able to trace and understand data usage by license number, which can be used as a report to show compliance, while producers are able to see that usage in parallel avoiding the need to bring in their audit teams. In the same way, financial firms’ data usage or transmission can be ‘proven’ with Tractiv’s immutable ledger to ensure data is bought, sold, or used in compliance with regulatory frameworks such as GDPR and Dodd Frank.

The solution also helps data suppliers track usage of their services within client organisations, affording them greater control over their intellectual property and commercial licensing arrangements. Its cloud-native solution can be integrated with data vendor solutions to provide immutable distribution and tracking to show how data is used internally at a client site or after it leaves a vendor’s environment.

The Tractiv solution operates in a similar way to blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT), providing secure, low-latency data transmission with instant reporting and analytics of usage, as well as transparency with no restrictions on data type or size. Says Tractiv CEO Drew Orsinger: “This solution provides quick, low-cost and direct access to data usage forensics, and can be up and running in hours. Tractiv solves a universal challenge in how data vendors distribute, track, and trace their data once a partner starts using it.”

Almeida adds: “Tractiv’s ledgering technology enables information sources to gain control over distribution and fully realise the value of their content. Providing transparency into data usage brings efficiency to the enforcement of content licensing agreements, allowing organisations to safeguard their IP while unlocking new monetisation opportunities.”

Tom Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters and Tractiv investor says, “During my 19 years at Reuters we searched high and low for a technology solution that could support the largescale distribution of real-time and static content with granular permissioning, full audit trail and low latency. The Tractiv platform offers multimedia publishers the ability to achieve full value for their content by ensuring their service only reaches entitled customers.”

Tractiv’s primary customers are fintechs, major banks and wealth management firms looking for a more accurate understanding of data usage for business intelligence, compliance, and security. By having immediate insights into how data is being used via a centralised and immutable ledger, financial institutions can make more informed and timely decisions about how to maximise the value of the data. While Tractiv is looking initially to address the reference data ecosystem, its platform works to increase the value of any proprietary data or show compliance to license agreements and regulatory schemas.

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Clare’s appointment follows the recruitment in January of Shahmeem Purdasy as senior executive and general counsel, and in March of Barbara Patow as senior advisor. Purdasy has worked in financial crime for 20 years, having advised the UK government on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the EU and the UK financial crime regimes.

Patow has held senior leadership roles at HSBC in the Financial Crime and Compliance Divisions, including Global Head of AML and Global Head of FCC for Global Banking and Markets. She was also the Head of Correspondent Banking and Chief Operating Officer for the Global Liquidity and Cash Management business developing and implementing FCC control frameworks.

Plenitude helps clients meet their regulatory obligations and reduce their financial crime risk exposure by providing deep subject matter expertise, advisory and transformation services. Plenitude also improves the productivity of compliance divisions through the use of technology to automate and streamline compliance workflows.

According to Plenitude managing director and founder Alan Paterson, the new additions join a team of experienced practitioners and ex-regulators that help firms address financial crime risk, through advisory, transformation services and RegTech subscription products. “Financial institutions need to demonstrate to regulators they are meeting their FCC obligations which RegSight helps our clients do,” Paterson says. “Failure to do so can lead to enforcement action, fines, reputational risk and loss of investor confidence.”

Launched in February 2021, RegSight helps firms identify and keep track of their obligations and also identify potential gaps in their policy framework. Steve Rowland, product manager for RegSight, says firms often use sub optimal solutions such as Excel to create and maintain a obligations register to keep track of their regulatory obligations. However this makes it difficult, complex and expensive to set up and maintain.

Plenitude’s RegSight service provides an online register of major jurisdictions globally, allowing firms to identify their obligations under specific financial crime regulations, and to monitor and benchmark their responses to those obligations. Plenitude’s Compass, meanwhile, is a directory of country risk that can be used to identify nations that have higher risk of financial crime, based on a scoring system.

The post Financial Crime Specialist Plenitude Consulting Ramps Up Executive Team appeared first on A-Team.

The latest round, completed in December, brings SteelEye’s total raise for 2020 to $17 million, following an earlier raise led by Fidelity International Strategic Ventures (FISV) alongside existing investor Illuminate Financial. According to CEO Matt Smith, subsequent to that round, SteelEye had planned a Series B round for late 2021 or early 2022, and had no specific plans for a second raise in 2020. Following conversations with SteelEye about the Series B, Beacon opted to lead the second 2020 round, based on SteelEye’s model and the potential of the regtech marketplace, which is estimated to reach $21.73 billion by 2027.

Ed Mullen, founder of Beacon, is joining the SteelEye board following the new investment. Says Mullen: “SteelEye has a unique value proposition, combining communications oversight, trade surveillance and regulatory reporting on a single platform. There is great potential in the U.S. for a service that simplifies compliance for financial firms, and we are delighted to support SteelEye as they enter this market.” In addition to its interest in financial technology – the company recently led a funding for KYC platform Encompass – Beacon specialises in helping European companies expand into North America.

SteelEye delivers a SaaS-based platform that allows banks, brokers, and asset managers to simplify their compliance processes across various EU, UK and now U.S., market regulations. The SteelEye platform reduces the complexity and cost of financial compliance by providing a range of regulatory tools that support effortless compliance management, allowing compliance teams to improve efficiencies, reporting accuracy and overall transparency, from a single platform.

Smith says “The U.S. and Canadian markets are crying out for a new way to oversee their conduct and trading activity. Our technology is a huge opportunity for firms needing to reduce the complexity and cost of compliance, which in some cases represents as much as 10% of a firm’s non-interest expenses. There is a clear demand for technology that improves compliance accuracy while simplifying processes in the North American market.”

Dodd-Frank, for example, initiated a variety of additional regulatory requirements for financial firms to improve accountability and transparency. Adhering to this legislation more than ten years after its introduction continues to be a challenge many firms are seeking to address.

Another driver, according to SteelEye, for entering the U.S. market is not only the growing demand for cloud-based compliance and regulatory oversight technology, but also the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic has inundated compliance teams with investigations and, consequently, created an urgent need to explore new monitoring measures for regulated employees to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements while working from home. This operational barrier has been compounded further by ongoing regulatory pressures and soaring trading volumes, intense volatility, market uncertainty and a large increase in e-communications caused by the pandemic.

The post SteelEye Eyes North American Expansion with Beacon-Led Funding Round appeared first on A-Team.

The latest round – raising an undisclosed amount – continues a series of outside investments that have raised around £9 million for the company. These include:

• almost £3.3 million of research and development grants from Scottish Enterprise;
• a £1.7 million private investment package that included £600,000 from Scottish Investment Bank (SIB), the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise, to fund expansion of its Glasgow development team and customer service operations;
• a £450,000 Regional Selective Assistance and Training Aid support grant, to help fund the opening of its Glasgow office; and
• a further £3.6m investment round that included £1.8 million from SIB as well as funding from private sector investors.

The latest founding round follows the addition of several new clients over the past 12 months, adding to a client list that includes Santander and Nordic KYC utility Invidem, as well as key partners such as Accuity. Encompass has also added more than 70 staff members across all existing locations in the past year, and expanded its global footprint to include Singapore, the US, Serbia and Sweden.

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