Our free FinTech roundup offers items about the latest SEC whistleblower, Clearwater Analytics, Northern Trust, and CLS.
FIS Ventures to Fund ‘Flutterwave’
Financial technology specialist vendor FIS reports that its new “corporate venture investment division” FIS Ventures has launched “an effort to invest a target of $150 million in promising fintech startups over the next three years.”
The first FIS Ventures investment is in Flutterwave, a Lagos, Nigeria and San Francisco-based fintech startup focusing on business-to-business (b-to-b) payment infrastructures, according to a FIS statement.
In general, FIS Ventures will invest in “early to growth-stage fintech startups with a focus on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, digital enablement and automation, data and analytics, security and privacy, distributed ledger technology, and financial inclusion,” the vendor says.
In addition to making capital investments, FIS Ventures will “actively partner with these companies, providing proprietary access as appropriate to FIS’s global reach and scale, operating expertise, diverse customers and channel partners to help fulfill their long-term growth ambition.”
Latest SEC Whistleblower Awarded $18 Million
SEC headquarters
This particular whistleblower helped investors “recover millions of dollars in losses,” says Jane Norberg, chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, in a prepared statement. “This whistleblower stepped forward and helped the agency better protect Main Street investors,” Norberg adds.
Since the first whistleblower in 2012, the SEC has awarded more than $448 million to 81 individuals.
“All payments are made out of an investor protection fund established by Congress that is financed entirely through monetary sanctions paid to the SEC by securities law violators,” according to the SEC. Eligibility is based upon “original, timely, and credible information that leads to a successful enforcement action,” according to the regulator.
The amount of the whistleblower awards ranges from “10 percent to 30 percent of the money collected when the monetary sanctions exceed $1 million,” officials say.
Clearwater Analytics Picks a New CTO
Boise, Idaho-based Clearwater Analytics, founded in 2004, reports that Warren Barkley has joined as chief technology officer (CTO). He will oversee all technical aspects of the company, the vendor says in a statement.
Warren has held “influential roles at Amazon, Microsoft, and SMART Technologies, and has been instrumental in the technological trajectories of those organizations and their offerings,” Clearwater notes. He also holds more than 60 “worldwide patents in networking, wireless, communications, and machine learning,” the statement adds.
Warren Barkley
“We are thrilled to have Warren join Clearwater. He is the kind of industry leader that enables us to evolve and improve at an exponential rate,” Sandeep Sahai, CEO at Clearwater Analytics, says in a prepared statement. “I know our clients, future clients, and employees will all benefit from his leadership.” James Price, Clearwater’s former CTO, will now become the company’s chief quality officer, per Clearwater.
Clearwater clients include American Family Insurance, Arch Capital, Aureum Re, Cisco, CopperPoint Mutual Company, C.V. Starr & Co., Facebook, JPMorgan, Knights of Columbus Insurance, Oracle, Selective Insurance, Sirius Group, Sompo International, Starbucks, Unum Group, WellCare Health Plans, Wilton Re., among others, the vendor specifies.
Northern Trust Bolsters Its ESG Analytics
Northern Trust is offering improved analytical capabilities to help firms bolster their oversight of environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk exposures, officials say.
“The ESG Analytics Summary, prepared by Northern Trust’s Investment Risk and Analytical Services group, provides investors with periodic snapshot analysis across their equity and corporate bond portfolios — setting out investment ‘scores’ against a range of ESG factors, United Nation’s (UN) Global Compact principles and business activity flags,” according to Northern Trust.
The detailed analysis helps investors track “changes in a fund’s ESG profile over time, compare results on an absolute and relative basis, and compare asset managers’ scores against each other,” officials say. “These insights are generated by combining Northern Trust’s extensive global custody asset information with data provided in partnership with information services provider IdealRatings.”
Institutions can use the results to support their governance and oversight objectives, according to Northern Trust.
The San Francisco-based IdealRatings offers database solutions for equities, REITs, and fixed income to global investment managers and asset owners, officials say.
New CLS Head of Product from Droit
Keith Tippell
CLS, a market infrastructure provider that specializes in FX settlement, processing and data, reports that Keith Tippell has been named its new head of product.
Tippell will be responsible for “overseeing CLS’s existing product suite and all new product development in the settlement and processing business lines,” CLS officials say in a statement.
Tippell has “over 20 years of experience in the financial technology sector, much of which has focused on FX and OTC derivatives trade processing and G20 regulatory change,” per the statement, and he joins from Droit Financial Technologies, where he was head of business development for Europe and Asia Pacific.
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