Napier Extends Availability of Continuum AML Compliance Solution

Napier, a London-based financial crime compliance RegTech, has extended the availability of its Anti Money Laundering (AML) platform, Napier Continuum, through two new service offerings: Napier Continuum Live and Napier Continuum Flow.

Napier Continuum Live is a plug-and-play hosted offering that brings the benefits of the platform’s client screening and transaction monitoring to organisations looking to go live and achieve regulatory compliance as quickly as possible.

Napier Continuum Flow is a headless API service designed for organisations looking to leverage AI-powered financial crime compliance intelligence into their existing infrastructure. Using this solution, organisations can route alerts from Napier’s AI-driven screening and monitoring engines into their existing workflow for case management.

EU Approves Proposal to Regulate ESG Ratings Providers

European Union leaders have agreed on a proposal to regulate ESG ratings providers, requiring them to be registered and monitored by financial authorities.
Under the planned framework jointly backed by the EU’s executive, the European Council, and its parliament, ESG ratings providers must abide by transparency rules that will oblige them to publish the data and methodologies behind their calculations.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) will keep check of the companies.

The regulation is hoped to bring harmony to the fragmented ESG ratings sector, which has been frequently blamed for paving the way for greenwashing. The EU also expects that eventually there will be providers of separate E, S and G ratings.

When the proposal is passed, the EU is be the first major financial authority to bring ESG ratings firms within the orbit of regulators, a move that is also being considered in the UK and US.

Themis Hosts Financial Crime Risk Management Cloud Service in Saudi Arabia

Themis, a financial crime technology company, has extended the reach of its financial crime risk management cloud service by hosting it in Saudi Arabia. The Themis service, situated in Jeddah, is purpose-built to meet the unique demands of the region and ensure it meets regulatory obligations around data sovereignty that require customer data to be held and processed within the region.

Further to availability in Saudi Arabia, Themis says its technology is built in such a way that data can be hosted anywhere in the world and adhere to local jurisdictional regulatory requirements. Additional services are due to be announced during the first quarter.

Azentio Partners Regula to Automate Identity Proofing In Digital Onboarding Solutions

Azentio Software, a Singapore-based technology firm, has made a strategic partnership with Regula, a global developer of forensic devices and identity verification solutions, to improve its digital onboarding solutions. Two Regula solutions, Regula Document Reader SDK and Regula Face SDK, will be integrated with Azentio ONEBanking and Azentio ONECapitalMarkets platforms. Regula Document Reader SDK ensures automated and secure identity proofing, while Regula Face SDK performs biometric verification.

Ihar Kliashchou, chief technology officer at Regula, comments: “We are glad to join forces with Azentio to bolster identity verification in remote onboarding and KYC processes for banks and financial institutions across continents. Financial services are among the most vulnerable industries when it comes to identity fraud.”

Quantexa Partners Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative

Quantexa, a provider of decision intelligence solutions, has announced corporate sponsorship and advisory council membership of the Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative (ATII). The ATII is a US-based non-profit organisation with a mission to fight human trafficking and child exploitation by providing data to advance the prevention, detection, investigation, and reporting mechanisms required to identify potential traffickers and criminal organisations.

Quantexa will provide decision intelligence technology and AI-driven financial crime prevention and detection through training and joint industry engagement, making global human trafficking risk data available to more organisations. Quantexa’s decision intelligence platform enables organisations to automate data ingestion and matching at scale and apply graph analytics to visually identify often hard-to-detect activity related to financial crime. Providing access to a wider set of data points specific to human trafficking will enable investigators to take a more robust approach to anti-human trafficking measures.

Broadridge and Boring Money Collaborate on Consumer Duty Solution for Asset Managers

Boring Money, a financial data and insights business, and Broadridge Financial Solutions have collaborated to help asset managers address the requirements of the UK’s Consumer Duty regulation. The duty applies to all new financial services products, and to all products and services currently available to retail customers. Among others, consumer duty affects regulated firms, and policy makers and regulatory bodies, adding to the burden of firms proposing and selling financial products, and to the information they need to gather, manage and make demonstrable to ensure compliance.

The collaboration brings together Broadridge’s value reporting, fee and performance data, and consulting services with Boring Money’s end investor demographic and perception data, which enables asset managers to better understand and service the retail investors that purchase their funds through intermediaries. The resulting solution gives asset managers and fund boards a holistic view that correlates quantitative and qualitative information regarding fund distribution and regulatory compliance in the UK.

Refinitiv Releases Sub-Saharan Africa Financial Crime Report

Refinitiv, a London Stock Exchange Group business, has released the results of its second financial crime report for Sub-Saharan Africa. This year, the survey highlights trends including low awareness of third-party exposure, high demand for advanced compliance technology, emerging supply chain risks, and lack of digital identity solutions in Know Your Customer protocols.

According to the report, only 28% of respondents have an ultimate beneficial ownership programme, more than 39% lack anti-bribery and corruption controls, and 55% of respondents do not have a cybercrime programme. The report also noted that only 3% of respondents view Environmental, Social, and Governance as a significant theme despite growing regulatory focus on the topic.

Nadim Najjar, managing director, data and analytics, Middle East and Africa, LSEG, comments: “Organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa still lack sound compliance programmes, although the report highlights a strong desire for compliance technology that offers improved data management and analytical capabilities.” The report surveyed risk and compliance professionals and business leaders across 47 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Novata Expands, Streamlines SFDR Reporting Platform

Novata, an ESG data provider to private markets and investors, has enriched and simplified its Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) compliance tools.

The New York-based company said it has made it easier for clients to integrate their SFDR-aligned data with its platform and has created in-platform tools for reporting on the regulation’s Principle Adverse Indicator tests. The service also offers expert guidance and educational resources to clients.

Novata, which was formed in April 2022, said it now has more than 5,300 clients using its data and reporting platform.

Sustainability Reporting Rises Among Russell 1000, S&P 500 Companies

A survey has found a surge in sustainability reporting by large-cap S&P 500 firms and mid-cap Russell 1000 companies.

The survey carried out for corporate sustainability researcher Governance & Accountability Institute (G&A) found that 98 per cent of firms on the S&P 500 – which represent the largest companies on the Russell 1000 – published a sustainability report in 2022 from 96 per cent the year before.

The 2023 Sustainability Reporting in Focus research also found that 90 per cent of mid-caps, which occupy the lower-half of the Russell 1000, had issued such reports, compared with 81 per cent the year before.

Among other findings, alignment with the reporting recommendations of the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) climbed to half of all companies on the Russell 1000 and SASB remained the most-widely used sustainability standard among Russell 1000 companies.

GRI and IFRS to Launch ESG Reporting Research Lab

Sustainability reporting standards organisation GRI is to launch a research framework with the IFRS Foundation in which companies can discuss and collaborate on meeting their ESG disclosure obligations.

The Sustainability Innovation Lab (SIL) will be based in Singapore in the heart of Asia where 81 per cent of reporting companies do so in alignment with the GRI, the organisation said. Its own standards are in line with those of the IFRS Foundation, which recently published its first reporting frameworks via the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

“The goal of the SIL is to support stakeholders and all market participants on their disclosure journeys, guiding them to address disparities in sustainability reporting requirements while supporting the further harmonization of the reporting landscape at the global level,” the GRI said.

The SIL will be launched in Singapore on November 20.