NextGen Nordics will bring together multiple stakeholders – the banking community, central banks, public authorities and business and commercial beneficiaries – to generate community debate, explore the benefits and offer practical advice on enabling the opportunities of new technologies in the Nordic region. Register for the event here.

Danske Bank Announces Trade AI App

Danske Bank has unveiled plans to digitize its trade finance process through a collaboration with Conpend for the use of its Trade AI application. The application aims to streamline existing processes, improve efficiency and transparency, reduce the likelihood of error, and provide an easily accessible audit trail of end-to-end trade finance transactions.

The application was developed specifically to encourage automation and digitization of the value chain while accepting the current situation in document control. Paper documents, as well as digital documentation, can be scanned and entered into the app, which “reads” the content and checks it against a set of predefined rules.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities automatically verify anti-money laundering, know-your-customer, and sanctions regulations, improving the compliance and document review process for global finance specialists. commerce as well as risk and compliance officers.

“By converting physical documents into digital data, you create the ability to use that data for trade and compliance-related processes,” explained Erik Punt, owner of Danske Bank’s trade finance portfolio.

Punt continued, “We expect to see significant efficiencies after the initial investment in learning the system to capture and qualify data. Through this, the data from the wide range of complex client documents will enable us, together with our Financial Crime Compliance Specialists, to perform different types of analysis. »

SurePay extends its Confirmation of Payee solution to the Nordic countries

SurePay, a payment confirmation company, has announced its expansion into the Nordics with the hiring of new Business Development Manager Steen Álvarez Jacobsen. Álvarez Jacobsen will be responsible for business activity in the Nordic region, having worked with companies such as AltaPay and Valitor.

This news comes after SurePay raised €12.2 million in funding in September 2021. This funding was to support international expansion and the hiring of new business development teams and IT experts to scale technology platform and develop new solutions for customers.

Steen Álvarez Jacobsen commented: “Last year more than six million euros were lost due to billing and CEO fraud in Denmark alone, highlighting the urgent need for beneficiary confirmation. .”

Avarda uses Aiia’s open banking services

Swedish payment service provider Avarda has announced its partnership with Danish open banking service Aiia, a Mastercard company. The move will allow Avarda to enable open banking payments through its white label payment solutions. Additionally, Aiia will activate Avarda’s Buy Now Play Later solution.

Mikael Johansson, CEO of Avarda, said: “The payment industry is growing at a rapid pace and we want to stay on top of these developments at Avarda by providing the most convenient payment solutions the market has to offer merchants. and retailers. We have been looking for open banking opportunities for some time and we are delighted to have launched it with Aiia and Mastercard as they hold a strong position and banking connectivity in the Nordics.

Fellow Finance closes its P2P lending business to become a bank

Finland’s Fellow Finance is following in Zopa’s footsteps, shutting down its P2P lending business to focus exclusively on a new banking operation.

The loan-based peer-to-peer crowdfunding and lending platform is merging with Evli Bank to create Fellow Bank.

Set to open in April as a new digitally-enabled lender, Fellow Finance will offer customers the option to sell their loan portfolios to Fellow Bank and open interest-bearing bank accounts and term deposit accounts as an alternative.

Fellow Finance has provided personal and corporate finance for over €900 million in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic and has served over one million clients.

The companies say they will continue to handle active and current loan investments as normal and that ceasing intermediation does not require any action by customers.

The Finnish company is following the same path as P2P lending pioneer Zopa, which in December announced plans to cut its lending business and buy out the retail portfolio as it focused entirely on its banking arm.

Zopa said customer confidence in P2P investing has been damaged by a small number of companies whose approach has resulted in significant losses for retail investors. He also cited changing regulations that have resulted in higher costs of doing business.