We have collated some of the main Asian tech stories for your Tuesday tech round up.
Swift Adds Vietnam Bank To Its KYC Registry
Swift announces today that Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development has joined the Know Your Customer (KYC) Registry, a centralised repository that maintains a standardised set of information about correspondent banks required for KYC compliance.
Doan Thi Thanh Huong, Deputy Director at Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, says, “As one of the first banks in Vietnam to join The KYC Registry, we strongly support Swift’s community initiative to reduce the cost and risk related to know your customer compliance. The KYC Registry enables us to proactively share information with correspondent banks, increasing efficiency, reducing cost and allowing us to demonstrate KYC compliance more quickly and effectively.”
Banks contribute an agreed ‘baseline' set of data and documentation for validation by Swift, which the contributors can then share with their counterparties. Each bank retains ownership of its own information, as well as control over which other institutions can view it.
Banks are not charged for data contribution or for using the Registry to share their KYC information with other banks. To maximise the Registry’s benefits, data consumption is free in 2015 for banks that contribute their own KYC information to the Registry and promote it to their correspondents.
MetLife Singapore Sets Up LumenLab Disruptive Innovation Centre In Life Insurance:
MetLife has built an innovation centre called LumenLab, betting on innovation as a core pillar of their Asia Strategy. MetLife believes technological, customer and socio-economic trends impacting the Asian Life Insurance market make it ready for disruption.
The firm is starting with Asia because the Asiafication of demand means that Asian consumers are leading the way, spurring innovation that will go global. They are aiming to create an insight-driven growth engine that anticipates and empathizes deeply with our customers’ problems to build scaleable businesses that add value across the enterprise.
MetLife say they are making a big bet on innovation and a big bet on Asia. LumenLab itself has three functions: it will act as a sensing lab, an incubator of multiple startup projects, and as a customer experience centre.
The strategy to differentiate through innovation is showing early promise; MetLife Asia is already seen as the regional reference player for disruptive innovation.
Bravura Bolsters Front-end Portal Proposition For Fund Managers
Bravura Solutions Pty Limited (Bravura), a trusted supplier of wealth management, life insurance and transfer agency software applications today announced the general launch of its taWeb front-end solution.
Bravura’s dedicated D2C and distributor front-end proposition for transfer agents and fund managers provides an improved online service offering for building stronger relationships with fund promoter clients and their distributor communities.
The solution comprises two distinct portals, Retail & Distributor, each offering a user experience tailored specifically for the intended target audience. The retail portal is intuitive to use and delivers convenient, time-saving access to account data, fund trading and key investor documents. The distributor portal delivers the same functionality but with a significantly more powerful, task and MI orientated interface for adviser clients.
Andy Chesterton, Chief Operating Officer, Global Transfer Agency at Bravura said, “The pressure is on to retain and boost assets under management. As such, web-delivered services – which meet client demand for convenient, time-saving access to investor account data – are increasingly important. Whether a retail investor or distributor, taWeb provides the exact data they need whenever they need it, whilst also offering fund managers the ability to better track investor and distributor activity and deliver targeted product messages.”
