Industry news

The UK trade deficit widened in the month of September as exports decreased by £0.2 billion and imports grew by £1.2 billion, emphasised by the fall in the value of the pound. The Government had hoped that the depreciation of the pound in recent months may have spurred exports and reduced imports but it appears to have had little effect per the Office of National Statistics. "So far there is little evidence in the data of the lower pound feeding through into trade volume or prices” said ONS statistician Hannah Finselbach.

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Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies worldwide could benefit from a victory by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, said COL Financial. Donald Trump plans to place tariffs on BPO activity if he were to win the race to the Whitehouse, damaging many south Asian countries that specialize in in the sector. “I think one of the reasons why people believe that Asia will not benefit from a possible Trump victory is his talk against trade between other countries and the US, like he would impose tariffs,” said April Lee Tan, head of research at COL Financial.

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Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation, a provider of information technology, consulting, and business process services, today announced its third quarter 2016 financial results. Revenue for the third quarter of 2016 was $3.45 billion, up 8.4% from $3.19 billion in the third quarter of 2015. “We see ongoing client demand for our services across industries and geographies,” said Francisco D’Souza, Chief Executive Officer. Fourth quarter 2016 revenue is expected to be in the range of $3.45 billion to $3.51 billion.

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Related news: Cognizant and Centrica Tie Up Deal

Scicom is on track to be the largest business process outsourcing (BPO) provider in Sri Lanka by March 2017, according to group executive director and chief executive officer Datuk Leo Ariyanayakam. Scicom recently became the call centre provider for SriLankan Airlines, according to local reports. In addition to strengthening its BPO presence in Sri Lanka, Scicom also expressed interest in moving into e-government services in Nepal, Cambodia and Laos. There's more opportunity in these markets because they're quite constrained in terms of their budgets”.

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Check out our report on Sri Lanka: SRI LANKA – A HIDDEN OUTSOURCING GEM

Yesterday, Tesco Bank froze over 20,000 accounts after suspicious activity was reported including money being taken from accounts. About 40,000 accounts saw suspicious transactions over the weekend. Chief Executive, Benny Higgins blamed "a systematic, sophisticated attack" which would be unprecedented on a UK bank. The bank has described the incident as a hack, days after Mr Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a £1.9 billion scheme for cyber protection.

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Related news: UK Government to Boost Cyber Security

easyJet, Europe’s leading airline has created 37 new jobs at leading global customer experience and business process outsourcing company, Webhelp. There were 23 people working for Webhelp on the easyJet account on a temporary basis and the signing of a permanent contract not only secures those 23 people on a permanent basis but also allows the company to recruit a further 14 people. Lisa Burger, easyJet’s Head of Customer, said “We have been working with the Webhelp team for a number of months and have been very impressed by the quality of their work, we are delighted to be creating 14 new jobs at Webhelp’s Rothesay site in addition to making 23 existing roles permanent”.

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Related news: Easyjet Hit By Slump in Pound

The government has announced that a new rail franchise will combine the current InterCity West Coast services with the development and introduction of High Speed 2 (HS2) services. The franchise will be responsible for the West Coast main line from 2019 and high speed HS2 for its first three years. Bidders to run the line include current East & West coast operator Virgin and First Group.

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Panini, a global payments technology leader, officially announced that its Everest solution architecture that integrates computing platforms with check capture, was recently fully patented in the United States. Panini's Everest unleashes the full power of Panini scanning platforms while dramatically removing the cost and complexity of integration, deployment and support for its customers and partners. Check scanning devices developed with this new technology can be used in different settings and even shared among users, making the move from Branch Image Capture (BIC) to Teller Image Capture (TIC) more attractive to financial institutions and aligning with the "bank of the future" trend of empowering roaming universal bankers in an open lobby environment.

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Related news: Challenger Bank Begins Fintech Rollout

Why not join us at our BFSI conference in London on the 23rd of November to learn more about Fintech and changes in Banking Technology.

A new study from Juniper Research has found that the total transaction value of Mobile Financial Services in emerging markets (including domestic money transfers, deposits on loans, insurance products, and savings accounts) will approach $500 billion in 2021, up from an estimated $198 billion this year. However, the research cautioned that a key challenge would be tailoring financial service products to the needs of individual markets. It cited the case of several early implementations of mobile financial services in markets such as India, the Philippines and Nigeria achieving limited adoption where products were often ill-suited to their target audience.

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The Tandem banking app is being rolled out today as the challenger bank hopes to take a bite out of the traditional banking industry. The app will be rolled out gradually with the hope of going public next year. Currently the app allows you to manage any existing UK bank account, however Tandem has plans for its own products, such as current accounts and loans, in the future. Tandem is part of a wave of financial focused start-ups that have been receiving a lot of attention from investors and industry analysts.

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Related news: Dutch Bank ING Returns to the UK in Digital Banking