Category: Finance

Lloyds Banking Group will monitor its Workday HR software to help it select the lowest performing staff who could be cut as part of its latest cull, according to union. A…

The number of UK banks reporting productivity gains from artificial intelligence (AI) has doubled as projects move from pilots to production. According to Lloyds Banking Group’s latest Financial institutions sentiment survey,…

Scottish Widows has moved 3.8 million customer accounts and pension data from multiple legacy systems to a cloud-based platform from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). It worked with the Indian supplier’s subsidiary…

The use of open banking services in the UK has increased by a third in the past 12 months as it becomes “part of everyday life”, according to an industry authority….

Asked for his advice as to whether it’s a smart idea to switch from being an IT leader to running your own company, Nassib Chamoun has some advice for potential poachers turned…

As a youngster, Simon Goodyear believed there was nothing that couldn’t be solved with technology, and he is now applying this belief to his role at Redwood Bank. Goodyear, who heads…

Banco Santander will introduce a mandatory artificial intelligence (AI) training programme for all its staff next year, as part of its plan to make the technology part of its DNA. The…

The UK’s National Savings and Investments (NS&I) bank is replacing its legacy core banking system as part of a wider digital transformation project. The legacy platform, which has been provided through…

“Technology people just look at the problem differently,” says Kirsty Roth, chief operations and technology officer at Thomson Reuters. “They think about how the business can use technology to solve the…

More investment in businesses led by women and ethnic minorities could increase the UK equity market by 13%, according to research. Government-led initiative Investing in Women Code found that though its…

Monzo’s recent £21m fine over customer verification failures highlights the cyber security and privacy shortcomings of popular personal finance apps and the importance of good cyber hygiene, experts have said.  The…

The UAE has leapfrogged the UK in the latest fintech market rankings, following a $2bn investment by Abu Dhabi’s MGX in cryptocurrency exchange Binance. This is the first time the UK…

The Bank of England has completed the replacement of the UK financial system’s “beating heart”, and is making good progress in its goal of providing “silent operations”. Its replacement of the…

Travelex is replacing multiple legacy core supply chain systems with an off-the-shelf alternative, as it seeks to complete its transition to the cloud. Meanwhile, as part of its wider transformation, its in-house…

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has shut down 1,600 websites and 50 finance apps through the use of data and technology, as well as collaboration with big tech firms. With fintech…

AIB is embedding artificial intelligence (AI) into business tools throughout the bank for 10,000 staff to free up their time for higher value work. As well as using AI in conjunction…

Zopa will tap into the tech ecosystem in Manchester through a regional office that could eventually house 500 staff. The announcement comes days after the launch of the challenger bank’s current…

Santander’s proposed acquisition of TSB would require customer accounts to be migrated from the in-house developed system of its current owner to that of its acquirer, just a few years after…

Artificial intelligence (AI) agents at the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) have company logins, and will soon have access to their own email accounts. According to The Wall Street Journal,…

ING Bank is currently amid multiple projects to improve its operations through the use of agentic artificial intelligence (AI). Projects around using the technology in transaction monitoring, customer due diligence and…

When Chris Loake joined Hiscox in November 2023 as the company’s group information officer, the insurance firm had already begun on a journey to pilot using the artificial intelligence (AI) in…

Fintechs are growing customer bases at a lower rate, but profits and revenues are strong as the industry becomes sustainable, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) report. In the second…

The details of about 130,000 UBS staff were leaked after a cyber attack on a procurement service provider used by the Swiss banking giant. A private bank in Switzerland, known as…

Insurance companies are warned to be on their guard against a spreading campaign of network intrusions orchestrated by the Scattered Spider cyber crime collective after evidence emerged that the teenaged hacking…

West Brom Building Society is embarking on a three-stage project to build the digital capabilities its customers want. The organisation, which offers mortgages and savings products to about 500,000 people, will…

The UK’s financial services regulator has teamed up with Nvidia to provide an environment to enable finance firms to test out artificial intelligence (AI) safely. In what the Financial Conduct Authority…

Almost all (96%) of Europe’s largest financial services organisations have been affected by a security breach at a third-party organisation, research has found. This was 25% higher than when the same…

Barclays has signed an agreement with public cloud giant Microsoft that will see the latter’s generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tool Copilot rolled out to 100,000 of the bank’s employees globally. The…

Citigroup is “streamlining” tech support operations in China as part of a global restructure, with 3,500 roles set to go. The finance giant said some of the jobs will be moved,…

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CommBank) plans to accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into its business after completing a year-long migration of its data platform to Amazon Web Services…

Security leaders accustomed to the time-worn cliché of being the guy in IT whose job it is to say no can from today avail themselves of new National Cyber Security Centre…

Businesses are losing out twice by having to support old IT systems that they cannot afford to turn off because they perform business-critical functions. Companies have to pay to keep computer…

The global fintech sector saw its revenues increase three times that of the finance sector as a whole in 2024, as it enters a new “era of maturity”. Despite reduced investment…

Zopa Bank will make its current account widely available by the end of this year, signalling a major milestone in the company’s journey from peer-to-peer (P2P) lending to banking. Beginning life…

The UK economy lost £1.17bn to payment fraud in 2024, with a steep increase in unauthorised remote purchases. Remote purchase fraud, which sees criminals use stolen card details to make unauthorised…

The UK’s financial technology sector, or fintech as it is widely known, will see a 32% increase in professional hiring this year, with cyber security and technology roles the most in…

Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide Building Society are set to roll out a generative AI (GenAI) tool that has been specifically designed for the UK finance sector. The tool, known as…

HMRC has begun the process of breaking away from its heavy reliance on Fujitsu for IT services, with a tender worth £500m designed to exit the supplier’s services. In the clearest sign…

Financial technology (fintech) companies have a strong security posture but are at risk from third-party weaknesses, according to analysis. In its latest report, SecurityScorecard stated that the fintech sector ranked highest…

The software arm of Capital One has expanded the availability of a tool that enables IT departments to improve their data security using data tokenisation. The business-to-business software division of the…

Quantum computing may still be regarded by many IT leaders as a very niche technology, but broader business use cases may be just a few years away. While only a handful…

UniCredit has signed a 10-year agreement with Google Cloud to “accelerate” its digital transformation by tapping into the supplier’s cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics capabilities. UniCredit will migrate “large…

Countries in the Nordic region are planning offline backups to digital payments in the event of losing internet connectivity. According to a Reuters report, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Estonia have…

This year’s Innovate Finance Global Summit (IFGS) event comes with the backdrop of turmoil caused by Donald Trump’s return as US president, with uncertainty for fintech and other businesses with close…

Artificial intelligence (AI)-related roles could be the only “safe jobs” in the banking sector as financial organisations “relentlessly” press on with AI-led transformation. In its latest AI talent report, banking industry…

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) plans to offer a service where companies under its watch can test out artificial intelligence (AI) tools before they go live. Firms are currently being slowed…

Daniele Tonella, global head of IT at ING Bank, tells Computer Weekly about his first nine months in the job, which has so far seen him navigate four layers of tech….

Starling Bank has created a US subsidiary where it will target mid-sized banks with its banking software as a service (BaaS) offering. The tech operation of Starling Bank has already won…

Three announcements in the space of a few days this month suggest financial scams have reached a tipping point and banks are ready to up the ante. Santander last week published…

Lloyds Banking Group will build, deploy and scale artificial intelligence (AI) systems using a Google service, accelerating production while slashing CO2 emissions. The bank is using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI to…

Over £18m was stolen from Santander customers in the UK during the first three months of this year, according to the bank. In its quarterly report on scams, the Santander said…

Fintech trade body calls on the government to establish a national centre to help businesses across different sectors fight fraud through data sharing. Innovate Finance said that current data sharing initiatives…

Banks and tech firms are coming together in an initiative to share information on fraud to give them visibility of the attacks targeted at customers. The collaboration is part of Stop…

Given digital technology is so central to how we live, work, transact and communicate, we have recently seen the finalisation of an unprecedented amount of digital regulation in both the UK…

Banks are operating a “spaghetti” tech structure that is creating a game of “technology Jenga” for IT managers updating their systems. Making changes to IT systems has huge knock-on effects, with…

The government has canned the Payments Services Regulator (PSR) to reduce red tape as part of its Plan for Change. PSR activities will be transitioned to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA),…

Imagine the impact of a sudden service disruption on your business. Customers unable to access your platform, transactions put on hold, and your team racing against the clock to fix the…

The government-backed Centre for Finance, Innovation and technology (CFIT) has outlined its plan to fight economic crime through digital business IDs. Digital IDs for business will improve business efficiency, security and…

In 2024, the Norwegian government set out a national digitisation strategy with the aim of making the country the most digitised in the world by 2030. This intent is nothing new…

Customers of multiple banks have reported problems banking online, as they struggle to access services on payday for the second month running. The problems came two days after MPs were due…

The Post Office has made its first official apology to subpostmasters who used its faulty Capture accounting software and were blamed and punished for unexplained shortfalls. Ken Tooby received a letter…

The UK government has begun its search for an IT supplier to support its plan to build open banking capabilities into its payment platform. The Government Digital Service (GDS) is looking…

CaixaBank will invest in programmes to make more use of artificial intelligence (AI), as part of a multibillion-euro business plan announced last year. The IT element of the bank’s two-year, €5bn…

The CrowdStrike incident in 2024 hit the UK like a hurricane. As it swept across the country, it ground flights to a standstill, forced hospitals to cancel operations, and brought down…

Many companies from a range of industries worldwide are stuck at a trial stage of emerging technologies usage, according to the sixth annual EY Reimagining industry futures study. The firm surveyed…

Fintech investment has been on a downward spiral since 2012, but the second half of this year could see the first shoots of recovery. Investment in UK fintechs fell by over…

MPs have written to bosses at the UK’s biggest banks to shed light on the impact of IT failures on their businesses, after a Barclays outage caused chaos on payday last…

One of the interesting developments right now is the intersection between AI and Web3. From the creation of AI agents integrated into Web3 decentralised applications to the impact of generative AI…

The Parliamentary Treasury Committee has called on consumers, finance firms and IT suppliers to provide evidence to support an inquiry into the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the finance sector….

Customers of Barclays Bank have been left unable to access web app and online banking, make payments to and from their accounts, or access customer services, in the wake of a…

Those Beyond started life as the tech lab of fintech unicorn Thought Machine, supplying cloud-based core banking systems to the world’s biggest banks. Now, after setting off in a different direction…

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) came into force on 16 January 2023. Following a two-year implementation period, from 17 January 2025, financial organisations must fully comply with the new regulation,…

Financial services regulators in the UK and New York are to share staff through a secondment programme that kicks off next month. The New York Department of Financial Services and the…

Although they have had two years to prepare for the incoming legislation, a study has today revealed that a significant minority of UK financial services organisations are set to miss the…

The women behind fintechs still face discrimination when seeking investment, despite the issue being an industry talking point for years, according to figures from a UK fintech industry body. Innovate Finance’s…

Two separate announcements have highlighted the aggressive cost-cutting measures banks are putting in place as digital technologies replace thousands of people from the back-office of their organisations. Bloomberg Intelligence’s recent report predicts…

With cyber criminality and fraud against banks running rampant in recent years and showing no signs of slacking off, banking organisations around the world are coming to understand that they need…

It seems fintech has been replaced by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) as the most-used term in banking IT this year. Fintech, after all, is not a technology but a movement, which…

Wendy Redshaw, chief digital information officer (CDIO) at NatWest Retail Bank, has had a distinguished career leading technology-led change in some of the world’s biggest financial services organisations. Now, she’s using…

Technology has always been a transformative force, reshaping industries, economies, and societies. In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, its potential to democratise access to opportunities stands out as one of its most…

International financiers have pulled support for a revolutionary paytech system being rolled out in the Middle East after it became embroiled in Russian plans to evade sanctions intended to snuff foreign…

The Bank of England is launching a consortium where private sector finance organisations and artificial intelligence (AI) experts can provide knowledge on the technology’s benefits to the sector and manage risk….

Ireland’s Department of Social Protection has contracted Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to provide the IT and business services that underpin its new retirement pension scheme. The 15-year contract will see Ireland’s…

Financial services firm and money transfer specialist MoneyGram has disclosed a breach of customer data arising from a late-September cyber attack on its systems, but has waited over a week to tell…

MoneyGram said it is “shocked and disappointed” by Post Office portrayal on a contract breakdown, which saw money transfer services removed from thousands of branches. The money transfer firm also confirmed that…

Metro Bank has contracted Infosys to support its digital business transformation and use of automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and data technologies in a deal that will also help it meet cost-cutting targets….

HSBC has worked with Quantinuum to trial “the first application” of quantum-secure technology for distributing tokenised physical gold. The HSBC Gold Token for retail investors in Hong Kong allows the bank’s customers…

Barclays has extended a private cloud contract with HPE to use GreenLake Cloud as a core pillar of its hybrid cloud strategy. Barclays signed a strategic contract with HPE in 2021 to…

Mphasis is expanding its UK operation with a central London innovation hub that will provide its customers with the opportunity to jointly investigate the application of the latest technologies to their businesses….

Recorded incidents of digitally enabled financial fraud and scams across the UK have hit their highest ever level, with consumers lodging a total of 8,734 complaints and with over half relating to…

Lloyds Bank is streamlining its trade financing sales through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), which will automate the checking of documents in line with industry regulations. Trade finance transactions involve large…

Financial services company BBVA has received approval from the UK regulator for a takeover of Spanish rival Sabadell, which would see it take control of the UK’s TSB Bank and pose interesting…

Nationwide Building Society is using Red Hat as part of its application development platform, which is speeding up software releases and improving availability. The UK finance giant is using Red Hat OpenShift…

According to the House of Commons, there were approximately 5.6 million private sector businesses in the UK as of 1 January 2023, 0.8% more than in 2022. Meanwhile, the number of self-employed…

US bank Wells Fargo has reported a big jump in recommendations from customers after using artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to help families manage the bank accounts, mortgages and financial assets of…

On Friday 19 July 2024, the UK awoke to news of a fast-spreading IT outage, seemingly global in its nature, affecting hundreds – if not thousands – of organisations. The disruption began…

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is only bettered in size by Accenture and IBM Global Services, with a customer list already containing the world’s largest and best known corporates. In the UK, TCS…

Nordic banks are turning more eagerly to artificial intelligence (AI) and innovation-led tech partnerships that can help them compete more cost-efficiently with niche digital banking rivals that are increasingly populating the financial…

The Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) and the monetary authority, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), are in the midst of a profound supervisory transformation fuelled by the rapid development of artificial…

Technology changes fast and tech jobs are changing just as rapidly, according to Belinda Finch, CIO at enterprise technology company IFS. Finch joined IFS late last year from mobile company Three, where…

Police have shut down a web service used by more than 2,000 criminals worldwide to launch and manage phishing attacks. The Metropolitan Police worked with police forces from 19 countries to disrupt…

Members of the House of Lords are pressing for changes to legislation that will give the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) new powers to require banks to monitor the accounts of…

Coming from a military intelligence background, focusing on the financing of terrorist groups, I saw the power of the dollar over bad actors. A dollar removed from their back pocket, or to…

Thousands of fraudulent websites that appear to be those of the UK’s largest retail banks – but are, of course, nothing of the kind – are being reported every year. More than…

Nationwide building society is recovering from an IT outage that caused significant difficulties for customers over a period of several hours, with account holders reporting problems making purchases and sending and receiving…

Nationwide’s proposed takeover of Virgin Money could see a company that has gone through multiple technology integrations in recent years integrated into a well-established digital strategy. Nationwide plotted its future technology in…

Dutch companies are vulnerable to deepfake digital fraud due to the country’s high level of digitisation and working from home.   Ali Niknam, CEO of Dutch digital bank bunq, recently reported that an…

Cloud-first IT strategies seem to be falling out of favour with technology decision-makers and business leaders, suggests data from the TechTarget/ESG 2024 Technology Spending Intentions study. More than 1,400 technology decision-makers and…

American Express has written to customers warning them that their account details may have been breached after a third-party supply to various merchants reported unauthorised access to its systems. Details emerged following…

Insurance services provider Admiral is shifting its core operations to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and working with the tech giant to improve how its customer-facing app works. The collaboration means Google…

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will provide technology services to over five million pension policies over the next 15 years, after life insurance and pensions giant Aviva contracted the IT services giant…

A cyber attack against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that resulted in misinformation being posted on the financial regulator’s social media channels was the result of a SIM-swapping attack,…

Labour peer Prem Nath Sikka has asked the government what it knew about the Post Office’s attempt to remove a High Court judge from his position during a High Court battle with…

The IT expert who represented Alan Bates and more than 500 subpostmasters in a High Court case against the Post Office said if changes to the rules on computer evidence, described…

Whilst other forms of AI will still drive the bulk of the business impact, generative AI will remain the hotly debated topic. All the big players have now put their first…

Spanish banking giant Santander has increased its IT workforce to 27,500 globally after adding 4,500 in 2023 to support its digital transformation, which has seen 95% of systems moved to the…

The Metropolitan Police is investigating the Post Office for fraud related to money taken from wrongly prosecuted subpostmasters, nearly four years after the force began investigating possible crimes of perjury committed…

Cryptocurrency markets fluctuated wildly on the evening of Monday 9 January after the US financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), briefly appeared to claim it had approved spot bitcoin…

With spending on IT in the finance sector expected to emerge from the doldrums, we kick off our review of Computer Weekly articles with research from software giant Finastra and its…

Visa is funding data science and artificial intelligence (AI) scholarships for students from underrepresented backgrounds in a programme aimed at increasing diversity in the sector and closing the UK skills shortage.                                                                                                                …

Visa wants to be at the forefront of the next phase of generative AI (GenAI) innovation through investment in tech startups that will apply the technology to payments and commerce. The…

Lloyds Banking Group has launched a digital identity service in partnership with a tech startup it invested in this year. The app, which is available free of charge to all UK…

The rate of cyber fraud dropped slightly over the first six months of 2023, falling 2% compared to the same period in 2022, but even so criminals and fraudsters still managed…

The meteoric increase of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) across all sectors is impossible to ignore. Whatever your feelings about AI, the use of these models is with us to…

Fintech-based credit services, known as buy now, pay later (BNPL), were used by over a quarter of adults in the UK in the second half of last year, according to Financial…

Lloyds Banking Group has described the opening of a tech delivery centre in Hyderabad, India, as a “pivotal moment” in the bank’s £3bn, three-year, digital transformation journey The tech centre, which…

Banks should be setting up a quantum computing taskforce, a report from UK Finance has concluded. The Identifying and seizing the opportunities presented by quantum technology report, produced in conjunction with…

UK fintech unicorn Thought Machine has cut 50 staff in roles it said were no longer needed, with sales and marketing positions mainly affected. The cloud-based core banking software provider, which…

Visa  is offering its customers artificial intelligence (AI) advisory services following the launch of an operation dedicated to the technology. As part of Visa Consulting and Analytics, the payments giant’s AI…

A suspected LockBit ransomware attack on ICBC Financial Services, the US arm of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), a leading state-owned bank, disrupted activity in the US Treasury…

Shawbrook Bank has seen a fourfold reduction in the time it takes to process buy-to-let mortgage offers since rewriting legacy software using low code through a Pegasystems platform. The time it…

Cryptocurrency scams have increased by 23% in 2023 compared with the same period last year, according to Lloyds Banking Group. In a report that collated accounts held at Lloyds Bank, Halifax…

A million people in the UK could lose easy access to a bank branch in their local area, as banks continue to shutter their high street operations in favour of digital…

The possibility that this was the case was first raised by security researcher and commentator Kevin Beaumont via social media website Mastodon on Thursday 9 November. Beaumont had posted evidence drawn from…

JPMorgan Chase has been named the leading global bank for artificial intelligence (AI) maturity in the benchmarking index from Evident AI. Created by AI platform Evident, the AI index is a…

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is expected to take over the jobs of three-quarters of current financial services executives, according to a survey. Following a survey of around 500 executives at major…

According to Finastra’s Financial services: State of the nation survey 2023, technology investment is currently constrained for 78% of financial institutions, but 69% expect investments to resume in full in the…

Sasha Jory developed her IT leadership skills in a series of roles with blue-chip finance firms. She joined insurer Hastings Direct in 2019 and became CIO in January 2023. As a…

Consumer affairs and financial services specialists alike have given their backing to new commitments from some of the world’s leading tech and social media platforms to do more to clamp down…