The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | Apr 14th

By Puja Sharma

The Monday Roundup sets the scene for the week’s biggest news stories, industry deals, and upcoming events. For Prime subscribers only.

Improving Regulatory Sandbox

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has unveiled a series of measures to strengthen the UK’s FinTech ecosystem. Key updates include improvements to the Regulatory Sandbox, enabling companies to safely trial innovative products with tailored support, accelerating their path to market. The FCA is also widening its pre-application support to cover wholesale, payments, and cryptoasset firms, with the goal of attracting more FinTech businesses to the UK.

A notable addition is the launch of the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System (PISCES), designed to help private firms scale effectively. The FCA’s AI Lab will also work closely with firms to integrate artificial intelligence, boosting competitiveness across financial markets. On the consumer side, the regulator plans to make financial advice more accessible and supervise Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) products. In parallel, the FCA is enhancing its data-driven tools to detect better and combat financial crime.

Lloyds Banking Group has transitioned its core machine learning (ML) and generative AI (GenAI) platforms to Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, as revealed during the Google Cloud Next conference. This shift is a key part of Lloyds’ strategy to accelerate the deployment of impactful AI solutions. The migration included moving 15 modeling systems—comprising hundreds of models—from its on-premises setup to the cloud. Now, more than 300 of the bank’s data scientists and AI developers are leveraging the Vertex AI platform, which has already sparked over 80 new ML initiatives and led to the rollout of more than 18 GenAI systems in live environments.

Future-ready Finance Stack

BNP Paribas Securities Services has partnered with Confluence to automate its regulatory reporting, aiming to boost both efficiency and accuracy. By tapping into Confluence’s cutting-edge tech and data management expertise, BNP Paribas plans to streamline its reporting workflows, minimise manual errors, and strengthen regulatory compliance. The collaboration highlights BNP Paribas’ focus on innovation and operational excellence, positioning the firm to deliver faster, more reliable reports and gain a competitive edge. Ultimately, this alliance reflects the growing role of technology in modernising financial services and meeting ever-evolving regulatory demands.

Aurionpro Solutions has announced the acquisition of Hyderabad-based Fintra Software Private Limited in a strategic move to strengthen its transaction banking offerings. The deal involves a 100% stake purchase, encompassing all of Fintra’s intellectual property and resources.

This acquisition is set to deliver a fully integrated front-to-back solution for cash and trade management, significantly enhancing Aurionpro’s value proposition for corporate banks. The synergy between Aurionpro’s robust transaction banking solutions and Fintra’s strong back-end trade finance capabilities aims to address the evolving demands of modern banking.

A long-standing partner, Fintra’s trade finance back-end platform is already integrated with Aurionpro’s trade solution, currently used by leading banks across India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

What is the Buzz

Recent disruptions in India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) have sparked calls for stronger solutions, according to FinTech leaders. With UPI handling thousands of transactions every second, the multiple outages over the past month have affected millions, raising questions about the system’s reliability. As UPI increasingly serves as the go-to payment method for both consumers and merchants, these incidents underscore the challenges of managing complex coordination among multiple financial entities for each transaction. Industry executives stress the urgent need for more resilient infrastructure and backup systems to guarantee uninterrupted digital payments.