Delve into The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 9 November 2023 for the latest partnerships, appointments and funding updates.
Appointments
Tassat, the B2B private blockchain-based payments platform for banks, appoints Zain Saidin as its new CEO. Saidin assumes the CEO position after serving as chief operating officer of Tassat since February 2023. Kevin R. Greene will continue his role at Tassat as the chairman of the board of directors.
Zodia Markets, the institution-first digital asset exchange and brokerage platform backed by Standard Chartered, names Ayad Butt as head of sales and trading for Africa and Middle East. Butt will be based in Abu Dhabi. He was most recently running his own ADGM registered Crypto Derivatives trading business, 5 Lanes.
Blockchain protection company Coincover welcomes Pablo Pinillos, formerly the CFO at Bitrise as CFO, while Yoann Lewkowitz, who has held key positions at Symmetry Investments, Credit Suisse and LendInvest, takes the reins as head of legal. The appointments are to strengthen Coincover’s legal and finance departments as it continues to grow.
The Bank of London names Frankie Woodhead as chief product officer. He will oversee product vision, development and delivery across the UK Bank and Group. Woodhead joins the bank with 15 years of senior leadership experience across business, corporate and retail banking in global tier one financial services at Barclays and cloud-native digital banking technology provider 10x Banking.
Global digital transformation consultancy Kin + Carta has appointed Katie Franzen to its financial services practice as VP of business development, as part of an ongoing strategy to grow its financial services practice. Franzen’s remit includes building out and growing the consultancy’s financial services portfolio and bringing her expertise to a strategic, targeted approach in this sector. She joins from Accenture.
Partnerships
Transfero, an international financial solutions company, deploys Finery Markets’ FM Liquidity Match to offer institutional customers an over-the-counter cryptocurrency trading experience. The adoption of FM Liquidity Match enable Transfero to leverage global OTC crypto liquidity and a fully automated trading process to deliver products and services in the South American market.
Spendesk, the spend management solution for SMBs, has integrated with TravelPerk, the global travel management platform. Through this integration, companies can now book their business travel with TravelPerk and manage their travel expenses seamlessly within Spendesk, leading to ‘improved time management, simplified processes, and better budget control’.
Digital ID verification company IDVerse (previously known as OCR Labs Global) has joined the Mastercard Engage partner program to offer a fully automated identity verification solution to Mastercard customers. IDVerse’s technology enables Mastercard to reach a wider range of connected devices by reducing AI technology bias towards newer devices and operating systems.
Funding and investments
Eilla AI, a generative AI platform designed to assist M&A, venture capital and private equity professionals with financial research, analysis and document creation, has raised $1.5million in seed funding as it looks to grow the team and scale the company and its offering. The funding round was led by Eleven Ventures and supported by Fuel Ventures.
Industrial Thought, a group of companies focused on accelerating the future of wealth management, has invested £250,000 in Ammonite, developers of hybrid financial advice technology. As a result of the investment, Ammonite can speed up the pace of its development.
Monument has completed its Series B funding round, raising more than $50million. It follows Monument’s strategic partnership with Dubai Investments earlier in the year, which saw the company acquire almost nine per cent equity of the bank. Monument says it “remains committed to serving the overlooked ‘mass affluent’ segment in the UK, and eventually beyond the UK”.
