Middle and Back Office Solutions Insights

In 1987, the then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher telephoned Canadian property developer Paul Reichman asking him to develop London’s derelict docklands into a glittering new financial centre. The urban myth is that Reichman, who already boasted similar successes in New York and elsewhere, looked at a small-scale map of London and deduced... read more

Barclays has run into problems when project managing end-to-end system upgrades, according to Martin King, head of process transformation for risk, finance and technology at the UK bank. "Where we have had our fingers burned in the past is where we have tried to interface things like bots with many, many strategic systems across an... read more

US-based Ripple is ramping up its instant liquidity capabilities in a bid to stand out in the increasingly competitive cross-border payments sphere, and has been on an acquisition spree to build back end capabilities.  “We’ve been ramping up our efforts around On-Demand Liquidity,” says Amir Sarhangi, vice president of... read more

Ripple customers looking to utilise the firm’s on-demand liquidity capabilities are not impacted by fluctuations in the company’s crypto asset, XRP, according to its global head of banking, Marjan Delatinne. “[T]he technology is designed to cater for the requirements needed for high volume low value payments, so the exposure on... read more

This year we have asked market participants to select who they believe to be the leaders in the payments and paytech industries, and votes flooded in across the board.  Payments has become a fast moving vehicle, driven by regulation, market forces and technological advances. New players are emerging while incumbents look to reinvent... read more

An analysis of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Mutual Evaluation Reports and country AML rankings shows a number of trends for 2019 in the fight against money laundering. While some countries continue to show a high-risk score on the independent Basel AML Index, the US, Canada and the UK, remained virtually unchanged in the middle of the... read more

When asked what the ‘next big disruptor’ within payments will be, over one-third of businesses surveyed by Western Union Business Solutions, in partnership with bobsguide, pointed to AI and machine learning. The latter is perhaps unsurprising when we consider that financial services companies will spend $11bn on AI in 2020, according to... read more

A recent report by PwC stated that “the urgent need for business and technology modernisation poses the greatest threat to the global insurance industry over the next two to three years”. Consultancy firms have a habit of drafting frightening summaries of the dangers that await insurers who fail to react to emerging market trends. And... read more

Following the launch of its expenses management tool last week James Gibson, senior product owner of Revolut confirms the bank is pivoting more to the business banking sector. “We see a lot of potential and opportunity for businesses in the UK and the rest of Europe. It’s of huge strategic importance to us,” he says. ... read more