The TALL Group of Companies, the UK’s leading provider of secure electronic and paper payments solutions, has successfully defended a patent infringement case brought against it by a competitor, global customer communications company Communisis.
The now disproven claim was that an encryption system, which helps to ensure that fraudulent cheques are trapped and rejected wherever possible was a direct or equivalent infringement of a system allegedly invented and owned by Communisis.
But, after a process that has been ongoing since 2017, a ruling passed down by the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) stated that, not only was TALL Group’s system different, its method was “much more secure and effective” than the one covered by the patent of its larger rival and, therefore, did not infringe.
Additionally, Communisis’ patent was held to be invalid due to lack of inventiveness compared to three earlier patents, one of which dated back to 1974, and because the alleged invention was no more than a “mathematical method” which cannot be patented. Communisis, whose CEO stood down recently, employs more than 2000 people, according to company data tracker Owler, with offices in 17 countries. The TALL Group consists of TALL Security Print Ltd, Checkprint Ltd and DLRT Ltd, operating out of three accredited sites in the UK and employs 150 people.
Commenting on the win, Martin Ruda, Group Managing Director at the TALL Group of Companies, said: “We were always confident of the outcome of this case. As an organisation committed to the safety, security and integrity of the UK payments systems, we will continue to develop and implement effective cheque fraud prevention tools which can benefit all cheque using customers, their banks and the cheque clearing industry as a whole.
In contrast to others, we believe that strong methodologies to trap fraudsters should be made available across the industry, and our UCN Plus® system, which significantly enhances the protection afforded to business cheque customers, is offered freely to other Accredited Cheque Printers.’’
Colin Bell, intellectual property lawyer and partner at Brabners, said: “This has been a long and drawn out ordeal for TALL Group and I am glad it has ended with the right decision from the court. While we were always confident of winning, the judgment emphasises the importance of providing good instructions to experts in patent cases. Economically there are challenges ahead for all businesses and this judgment means my client is now able to face into them unimpeded.”
Modulr, a leading Payments as a Service API platform, has secured a £9 million investment from PayPal Ventures to develop additional products, grow its team and expand its customer base.
Modulr enables digital businesses and software platforms across lending, banking, fintech, travel, employment services and accounting to easily embed and build new payment products and services within their customer journey. With its full stack Payments as a Service API, it handles much of the complexities and regulatory overhead, so that its customers can focus on their own unique value proposition. Modulr’s direct access to the Bank of England facilitates the fast experience that digital customers demand.
Modulr is tapping into the massive business to business payments digitisation opportunity by working with platforms that serve small and medium-sized businesses. 2020 has been a breakout year for the company as it signed up number of large enterprise customers, despite the macro economic challenges posed by COVID-19.
Anil Hansjee, partner at PayPal Ventures said: “More digital businesses are looking to incorporate payments into their existing user experience but either don’t have the expertise or the resources. Modulr is well-positioned to be an enabler of this trend and will undoubtably expand end-users’ access to fast, reliable and secure financial services. We look forward to working with Modulr as it helps to powers the next generation of digital businesses.”
Myles Stephenson, CEO of Modulr said: “This investment marks an important milestone for Modulr’s modern payments infrastructure. Modulr lowers the barriers to bringing payments into a platform, creating endless new possibilities for our customers while allowing them to focus on their core competencies. The investment from PayPal Ventures enhances our ability to execute on that vision.”
In the last year, Modulr became a directly connected participant of the Bacs scheme, alongside direct participation in the Faster Payments scheme, enabling Modulr to settle and hold funds at the Bank of England. Modulr has further added direct access to Visa and Mastercard, as well as delivering innovative new products including Payment Initiation and Confirmation of Payee. Modulr was most recently granted an electronic money license from the Central Bank of Ireland which marks an important step in the company’s European ambitions.
In total, Modulr has raised £63.3 million including investment from PayPal Ventures, Highland Europe, Frog Capital, Blenheim Chalcot and a £10m grant from the Capability and Innovation Fund.
Tymit, the mobile-enabled instalment credit card, has today announced it has partnered with the FinTech Modulr, the payments-as-a-service API platform, to bring real-time payments to Tymit cardholders, enabling them to take control of their finances and plan the way they pay.
Many people’s personal finances have been put under pressure by the Covid-19 crisis. And while the Job Support Scheme has taken over from furlough, many will still find it difficult to stay on top of their finances and pay bills in the coming months. The common experience of clunky, slow and unreliable repayments to credit card bills only adds to financial and emotional stress.
Tymit is on a mission to reinvent the credit card by making it more flexible, safer and fairer. Without the burden of a revolving balance, Tymit users avoid unnecessary interest and charges, while purchase simulation and upfront fee breakdowns enable smarter spending. This is made possible through Modulr’s fast and reliable payments infrastructure, and underpinned by the FinTech’s direct access to the Bank of England.
For most credit cardholders, making repayments to their account is a major and unfair pain point. Legacy systems – upon which traditional credit card providers typically run – introduce significant delays to the process, meaning payments can take days to clear on their balance. Modulr’s API-first platform enables Tymit to roll out real-time payments (via the Faster Payments scheme) to all its customers quickly and efficiently. This provides them with the transparency and control they need during these challenging times.
Martin Magnone, CEO at Tymit, said: “Our partnership with Modulr gives our customer experience a serious boost by allowing us to apply payments in real time. Tymit users can now make Faster Payments and access an always up-to-date account balance, helping them manage their finances better through improved visibility. With this partnership, we’re bringing together the best in payments and credit innovation to offer a real alternative to the traditional credit card experience.”
Myles Stephenson, CEO at Modulr; commented: “We live in a time where instant payments and balance updates are no longer ‘nice to have’, but a necessity that can make a real difference to people’s financial lives and wellbeing. Tymit’s mission to reinvent the credit card, using real-time account information is something that’s desperately needed right now. And powered by Modulr, our payments infrastructure will drive efficiency, creating faster and more efficient credit card experiences for Tymit customers.”
Modulr, the payments platform, became one of few non-banks to gain direct access to the Bank of England, including Bacs and Faster Payments, last year. Through this access, the FinTech has been able to innovate and create new ways for its partners to access payments through automation, in a quicker, simpler and more efficient way than via traditional banking partners. Modulr has also led the market in being the first non-bank or building society to implement Confirmation of Payee in 2020, a groundbreaking anti-fraud service.
Growth Consultancy the Fyami Group has announced an integrated package of sales, marketing and business services to the many IT, finance and fintech companies seeking to re-establish operations post lockdown. Whether companies are returning to the office, restarting their business or simply reuniting the team, Fyami has integrated a suite of services to reignite their operations in the ‘new normal’.
The services available are offered either in the UK or globally by Fyami themselves or where appropriate through a number of chosen partner companies with a track record for delivery. For qualifying companies and prospects, Fyami are happy to conduct an initial one-hour assessment of the services they need. Services on offer include:
• Online & traditional sales strategy
• Telesales campaign creation & lead generation
• Sales training & upskilling teams
• Digital marketing consultancy & Martech
• Digital transformation
• Web design & app creation
• SEO & Social Media management
• Public Relations, content generation & blogging
• Email marketing including HubSpot management
• Events Management: Webinars, Zoom events, Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams.
Chris Davey of Fyami client Tiralis Global believes that the integrated approach will work well. In his view: “The days of business silos are gone for good. We needed a company who could help get us to get found and to help us to get more customers. This required an overall strategy that would help with our sales, marketing and website… helping us all to collaborate. That’s exactly what Fyami does well.”
Faye Eldridge founder of Fyami welcomed these comments noting;
“Navigating your business and your people through COVID-19 safely has been a daily challenge, one that no company could have anticipated this year. As workplaces are starting to open-up to this ‘new reality’, IT finance and fintech companies need to take a holistic approach where sales, marketing, technology & product development teams can collaborate to identify their best come-back options. Fyami recognises this need to take an integrated approach and is introducing a broad range of high-impact services to reignite our clients’ operations; enabling them to hit the ground running when planning their next move.
“Whether you need to make some transitional changes to your sales model and organisational structure or whether you are unsure how to mitigate the business risks of your future marketing strategy in such fast-moving times, then Fyami can make a difference.”
David Sexton, VP & Head of Insurance Practice, UK and Ireland, Cognizant, discusses why AI is set to transform the insurance industry
The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is spreading, probably further than many people thought it might. The next industry to be fundamentally transformed by AI is insurance. From product development, underwriting and claims, to customer service chatbots, risk assessments and quotations, technology is being deployed across the sector to provide faster, more accurate services. What is interesting, however, is that while some major insurance companies are investing aggressively in AI, many are moving slowly, unsure of how best to deploy these technologies.
As Cognizant’s recent AI survey shows, only half of insurance executives consider AI technologies to be ‘extremely’ or ‘very important’ to their company’s success, lower than for any other industry, such as financial services, healthcare and manufacturing. Looking ahead three years, only 36% felt AI would be very important, again lower than any other industry.
This lack of awareness around the importance of AI is worrying as new entrants to the market start making an impression. These insurtechs, a term used to describe new digitally focused entrants in the market that are using technology innovations to increase savings and efficiencies, are using AI capabilities to introduce a new range of innovative products. These include instantly customisable life insurance and on-demand property coverage. Consequently, traditional insurance companies are now facing unexpected competition. It is critical that they pick up the pace when it comes to technology investment and adoption, or face being left behind.
Enhancing the customer experience
Most insurers already using AI technology have focused their investment on customer service projects such as chatbots. This allows them to automatically capture customer information and respond to enquiries. Our research found that the best applications for chatbots in insurance include product management, marketing, underwriting & policy acquisition, policy servicing and claims management. Moreover, the research also found that insurance executives who were familiar with existing AI projects at their companies most often cited ones related to customer service (56%). This is likely because chatbots allow customers to receive personalised product recommendations and quotations almost instantly, giving consumers and business customers the ability to purchase most insurance products online in minutes. For example, the chatbot Amelia is used by insurers such as MetLife to combine machine learning (ML) with natural language processing (NLP) to make decisions based on real-time conversations.
Whilst many may worry about AI taking jobs within the industry, these technologies are actually enhancing many jobs carried out by humans. For example, call-centre representatives can receive information based on data from technology to assess the sentiment and mood of a discussion whilst a call is in progress.
Faster, more accurate underwriting
Across the insurance industry, AI technologies can now also be applied to a wider variety of data sources to improve the accuracy of risk assessments and quotations. For example, these tools can automatically analyse real-time data from security systems or by using drones when underwriting homeowner-insurance applications. Looking to car insurance, AI tools can be used to conduct analyses of telemetry data and provide insight into driving behaviour to inform car insurance quotations, such as how fast the customer drives on average, how quickly they accelerate and whether they drive faster than the speed limit. Zurich Insurance Group, for example, has partnered with the Swedish insurtech, Greater Than, to allow it to analyse a potential customer’s driving data compared to a set of reference profiles created from more than a decade’s worth of collected data, allowing the company to customise and personalise their customers’ premiums based on the individual’s driving behaviour.
Reimagining the claims process
The claims process is just another area in which AI can be applied to automatically audit thousands of open claims when action can still be taken, rather than reviewing of a sample of claims after they have closed. As such, insurers will be able to move beyond the traditional reactive model of paying claims after a loss and be able to adopt a proactive, preventive model of helping customers avoid losses in the first place. For example, commercial property insurers can use the data generated by smart buildings to help their customers reduce the risk of fire or water damage, and the data generated by telematics devices in vehicles can allow car insurers to provide customers with feedback on their driving behaviour.
Now is the time to adopt AI
AI can, and is, revolutionising insurance. It is being used in every function of a business to transform the way organisations operate. As highlighted, established players have two choices – either ramp up their investment to compete with new, disruptive insurtechs, or partner with this innovative competition to access the technology, unencumbered by legacy systems and processes. If they want to compete in a market driven by the customer experience, then getting on board the AI bus is the only way to ensure they do not get left behind.
Smarterly, the savings and investment platform, has been chosen to be part of this year’s Tech Nation Fintech Programme. Tech Nation, a government sponsored organisation, supports early stage fintech companies with the greatest potential for growth. Aimed at company founders, the programme will provide insight sessions delivered by some of the most established fintech entrepreneurs, investors and partners to help the chosen companies scale quickly in the UK and overseas.
“Being selected for the Tech Nation Fintech Programme is a huge honour. Smarterly has achieved so much in its short history and we believe being part of Tech Nation’s Fintech Programme will help us to achieve our expansion plans even faster,” says Ben Pollard, Smarterly Founder.
The company, one of just 25 fintechs to be chosen for the prestigious programme, aims to turn the UK into a nation of investors by promoting the benefits of healthy savings habits via the workplace.
Employers use Smarterly to enhance the financial wellbeing of their workforce by providing them with an accessible way to save and invest from as little as £10 per month, direct from pay. Employers can contribute to support the varied financial needs of employees as a complement to pensions.
“Having recently secured significant investment to support the business through its next stage of growth, being chosen for the Fintech Programme has come at an opportune time as we continue on our mission to be the go-to place for workplace savings. We welcome the support from Tech Nation to help us execute our strategy for growth,” says Phil Hollingdale, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Smarterly.
Smarterly joins some of the UK’s most acclaimed Fintech companies. The Tech Nation Fintech Programme boasts a well known alumni including Monzo, Perkbox, Funding Circle, Skyscanner, Zoopla and Revolut.
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