Finance
CFIT Teams With Tech/Banking Giants to Fight Financial Crime
![CFIT Teams With Tech/Banking Giants to Fight Financial Crime CFIT Teams With Tech/Banking Giants to Fight Financial Crime](https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CFIT-ID-verification.jpg)
The Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) has formed an anti-financial crime group.
The U.K.-based group announced the effort Monday (Sept. 2), noting it had recruited several tech and finance giants to its cause, including Amazon Web Services, Mastercard, Lloyds Bank, Revolut and Santander.
Also joining the group are regulators such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), with the goal of finding new ways to protect businesses and consumers from fraud.
“Digital verification is considered a key step in mitigating economic crime,” CFIT said in a news release provided to PYMNTS. “An enhanced digital identity for businesses that can be shared and understood across institutions and sectors would help thwart fraudsters and create a more secure economy.”
The group aims to offer standardized, verified information about a business “that is interoperable with other financial systems for data cross-referencing, enhanced authenticity checks and additional fraud detection tools,” the release added.
Meanwhile, Lloyds Bank, NatWest Bank and Monzo will work together on a proof of concept that tests the impact of a digital corporate ID, “including a reduced scope for accounts to be offered to potential criminals,” CFIT said. A report with recommendations on how British institutions could implement a digital verification solution is expected in March of next year.
In other fraud prevention news, PYMNTS spoke recently with Max Spivakovsky, senior director of strategy and operations, global payments risk management and onboarding at Galileo, about the tightrope banks walk as they provide digital services and payments choices to their end customers while protecting against scammers and cybercriminals.
He said this balancing act requires financial institutions (FIs) to take both proactive and reactive approaches, while also employing technological tools, as they defend themselves while creating a personalized, convenient customer experience.
“The legacy solutions just don’t work anymore,” he told PYMNTS. “Leveraging a single tool used to be the ‘paramount’ strategy of fraud mitigation years ago, but now it’s just not applicable. … The FIs must think about fighting fraud with a holistic perspective.”
The holistic approach can pay dividends while protecting banks from financial losses and harm to their reputation, he said.
“The client experience drives the engagement, and utilization of [banking] apps and programs,” Spivakovsky added.
![](https://newspub.live/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/np-logo.png)
Finance
State oil company’s 'financial strain' compounds Nigeria’s fuel shortage
Weeks of fuel scarcities in Nigeria are compounding a cost-of-living crisis, with the state-run oil company acknowledging “financial strain” was hampering supplies.
Olufemi Soneye, a spokesman for government-controlled Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), blamed the lingering scarcity on financial issues, in a statement at the weekend.
Nigeria, a major African oil producer, often sees sporadic fuel shortages that cause long lines at NNPCL-run petrol stations that sell fuel at cheaper prices than private operators.
“This financial strain has placed considerable pressure on the company and poses a threat to the sustainability of fuel supply,” Soneye said in the statement.
It comes after NNPCL declared a record profit of 3.3 trillion naira (about $2 billion) last month and an initial public denial of its huge debt burden.
As well as vehicles, most households in Nigeria rely on petrol and diesel to power their generators as the public power supply is unreliable and prone to blackouts.
Though an OPEC oil producer, Nigeria imports most of its fuel needs because it has very little working refining capacity.
Africa’s most populous country is already struggling under higher living costs after government reforms to end a fuel subsidy and free the naira currency drove a spike in inflation.
“The fuel scarcity is really hard,” Ismael Abdullai, 36, a delivery bike rider for a food delivery company, told AFP. “We look, but you always have to look harder to see fuel.”
Fuel scarcities have been more frequent since President Bola Tinubu removed the costly fuel subsidies that saw the government pay billions of dollars a year to keep the price of petrol artificially low.
Its price has since more than tripled in some states, with a knock-on effect on food and transport costs.
“The cost of transportation is now very high due to the hike in the price of fuel,” a video editor Hogan Samuel told AFP.
“I spent 1,100 naira ($0.70) to get to the office this morning instead of the usual 750 naira.”
– ‘Long queues’ –
Many stations were shuttered on Monday morning in parts of the commercial capital Lagos. Long lines formed at those that were selling, causing traffic jams.
“We would queue from 6:00 am and still not get fuel until 12:00 or 1:00 pm or 2:00 pm,” Sola Adewusi, a 36-year-old private driver told AFP. “It is because of our leaders, they are bad.”
Drivers looking to save as much as 15,000 naira on a full tank form longer queues at NNPC filling stations where it is sold at the cheapest rate of 560 naira for a litre. But it goes for as much as 950 naira elsewhere.
“Most of us like to buy at NNPC because of the difference in the price between the NNPC and the private fuelling stations,” Abdullai said.
The junior oil minister Heineken Lokpobiri told an energy labour summit in Nigeria’s capital Abuja last week that NNPCL needed to hike the price of petrol it sells to independent marketers, claiming that the current price of 600 naira was fuelling the smuggling of the product out of the country.
“The situation does not make us happy,” a painter Uzochukwu Christian told AFP in Abuja. “Government should help us.”
tba/pma/kjm
Finance
Hedge funds bet against banks, insurance and property, says Goldman Sachs
By Nell Mackenzie
LONDON (Reuters) – Hedge funds continued to take bets against bank and financial stocks in the week to Friday, Goldman Sachs wrote in a note seen by Reuters on Monday, amid reported job cuts and reduced dealmaking.
Financial stocks ended the week as the most net sold sector at Goldman Sachs’ prime brokerage trading desk, which serves global hedge funds, the note said.
Banks, insurance companies, publicly traded property trusts and capital markets firms which allow people to buy and sell bonds and stocks were all sold on a net basis for the fourth straight week.
A short position bets that an asset price will decline in value, whereas a long position expects it to rise.
Europe’s STOXX 600 banking index has risen 1.7% since August 26, whereas the Dow Jones banking index closed Friday up over 2% for the week ahead of Monday’s U.S. holiday.
Financials as a stock sector were sold in six out of the last seven weeks, said the Goldman Sachs note.
The selling was global, led in notional terms by North America, developing markets in Asia and Europe, the note said.
While total deal values globally have risen by about a fifth, the number of mergers and acquisitions deals has fallen by 25% for the year to June 25, LSEG data shows.
Hedge funds carried out modest net buying in consumer finance, said the Goldman Sachs note.
(Reporting by Nell Mackenzie; Editing by Dhara Ranasinghe and Hugh Lawson)
Finance
Validus, a Singapore-based digital SME lending platform, secures $50M debt financing to help enterprises in Indonesia | TechCrunch
![Validus, a Singapore-based digital SME lending platform, secures M debt financing to help enterprises in Indonesia | TechCrunch Validus, a Singapore-based digital SME lending platform, secures M debt financing to help enterprises in Indonesia | TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/GettyImages-173545633.jpg?resize=1200,803)
Validus, a Singapore-based digital lending platform for small and medium businesses, has secured $50 million in debt financing from HSBC under the ASEAN Growth Fund strategy.
Validus will use the proceeds to support the financial inclusion of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Indonesia, addressing the challenges they face in accessing financial resources.
With 64.2 million MSMEs contributing 61% of Indonesia’s GDP, according to Indonesia’s Ministry for Economic Affairs, the potential for growth is immense. These MSMEs employ about 119.6 million people, which is 97% of the total workforce in the country. However, only about 17.5 million MSME players are tapping into the online ecosystem and e-commerce. Indonesian MSMEs face significant challenges in accessing financing, mainly due to commercial banks’ stringent operational, reporting, and collateral requirements, as per a 2017 report by the World Bank. Despite government initiatives, only around 20 percent of bank loans go to MSMEs, the World Bank report said.
Vikas Nahata (Executive Chairman) and Nihkilesh Goel (CEO) co-founded the business in Singapore in 2015. They developed a supply chain-focused lending model that utilized non-traditional data access through partnerships with traditional banks and international institutions. The company has since expanded to include Indonesia (Batumbu), Thailand (Siam Validus), and Vietnam (Validus Vietnam).
“Traditional banks across the SEA region still rely on legacy credit evaluation methods for small businesses, and they are overly reliant on historical financials and real estate-backed collateral,” Goel said. “For a region experiencing GDP growth of 5-6% per annum, small businesses need access to stable and accessible working capital to grow their businesses and contribute to job creation and nation building. This is where Validus plays a major role as the largest digital SME financing provider across ASEAN.”
Its users are MSMEs, who primarily borrow for their short-term working capital needs, Goel told TechCrunch, while lenders include major international institutions (Citi, HSBC, FMO, Credit Saison, OikoCredit) and leading local banks (CIMB Niaga, Bank Mandiri) across Indonesia and Thailand. Goel mentioned that one of its differentiators is over 100 unique partnerships throughout the Southeast Asia region.
“Validus is the largest SME financing marketplace across the South East Asia region by outstanding loan book or monthly loan disbursals where we are currently averaging $150 million of new loan disbursals per month,” Goel said.
In the past three years, the startup has experienced growth in both revenue and net profits.
“Over the last three years, we have grown our consolidated Group revenues at a 69% CAGR and more importantly, our Indonesia business, which is our largest market amongst the four countries we operate in – has been net profit positive since 2022 and a source of positive cash flow for the Group,” Goel told TechCrunch. “Our EBITDA margins are over 50% and at a consolidated Group level we are aiming to be cash flow positive by early next year.”
The company has more than 300 staff across five countries, but it did not disclose how many customers it has.
Its has raised approximately $75 million in total equity funding. Its previous investors include Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, Vertex Growth, FMO, 01Fintech, NongHyup Financial Group, Norinchukin Bank, Aizawa Asset Management, and Lotte F&L.
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