The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | March 13th

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.

Green Foot Forward

The 2023 NICE Actimize Fraud Insights Report delved into the banking and payments landscape and uncovered the most pressing threats and patterns impacting financial institutions.

The report was created by analysing billions of banking and payments transactions representing over $110 trillion in value. NICE said, “Fraudsters are becoming increasingly sophisticated, shifting their tactics from traditional account takeover and unauthorised fraud to more complex authorised payments fraud (scams). This not only complicates the fraud threat landscape but also puts FIs at risk of double loss scenarios – both first-party and third-party victims.”

The report indicated that from 2021 to 2022, attempted fraud transactions skyrocketed by 92%, and attempted fraud amounts soared by 146%. This trend highlights two key points. First, there is a dramatic increase in overall transaction volumes and second, fraudsters are becoming bolder and targeting higher fraud amounts.

Deutsche Bank has unveiled an estimate today that its revenues from ESG business will grow to around €1.4bn per year, ahead of €800bn secured last year.

According to ESG Today, the estimate was unveiled at the bank’s ‘Sustainability Deep Dive 2023’ last week. During this event, Deutsche also set a series of new sustainable finance goals, including an ambition to enable a total of €500bn in sustainable financing and investments between 2020 and 2025. There are also financed emissions commitments and updates to its policies for financing emissions-intensive sectors.

Deutsche Bank’s €500bn 2025 sustainable finance goal builds on the bank’s prior ambition to achieve €200 billion in sustainable financing and investments by the end of 2022.

The bank also outlined a series of initiatives it will pursue to reach the new 2025 goal. These include measures to link supply chain financing to environmental and social criteria, providing more financing for energy-efficient construction and renovation in Germany, and grow its ESG financing in developing economies and emerging markets.

Crackdown

FinTech’s most promising company has cracked under the pressure. Railsr, the London, U.K. embedded finance startup formerly known as Railsbank and once worth nearly $1 billion, announced today that it has been acquired by a shareholder consortium; and as part of the deal, it’s going into administration so that it can continue as a going concern as it restructures.

The consortium, which trades under the name Embedded Finance Ltd, includes previous Railsr’s investors D Squared Capital, Moneta VC, and Venture Capital. The company is not disclosing the value of the deal. It was valued, when still solvent, at around $250 million back in October 2022, so that is one starting point.

This sale and bankruptcy state caps off a difficult period of uncertainty at Railsr. Previously, sources have told TechCrunch that Railsr was in talks to be acquired by Flutterwave, the pan-African financial services company that was valued at more than $3 billion in a fundraise last year, although a deal never materialized.

RangeForce, which helps teams improve their cybersecurity skills, has scored $20 million in its Series B funding round to bolster the expansion of its platform.

Energy Impact Partners and Paladin Capital Group led the SerB, with commitments also coming from KPN Ventures, Lapa Capital Partners, Lanx Capital, and Cisco Investments.

RangeForce’s defencedefenseng solutions are available in three tiers to meet an organisation’s needs. All of these include real-world interactive exercises that simulate live attacks to better protect teams against current and emerging cyber threats.

It claims the training provides users with relevant tools to defend against current threats while using their existing software. In addition to offering realistic emulated environments to test responses to real threats, the platform also boasts hundreds of interactive modules and challenges.

The CyberTech platform claims to have experienced rapid growth with Fortune Global 2000 companies across finance, technology, and healthcare.

Speaking on the funding round, Energy Impact Partners managing partner Nazo Moosa said, “RangeForce’s cyber defence fills a crucial gap in continuous cybersecurity upskilling today. Organisations desperately need cutting-edge training to help them reduce cyber risk and retain critical talent. Our investment is rooted in the belief that RangeForce fits both needs exceptionally well.”

What is the buzz

Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), UK financial institution major HSBC has reportedly acquired Silicon Valley Bank UK (SVB UK) for £1.

This move will help protect deposits of thousands of startups in the UK, according to a report from UKTN. The transaction was facilitated by the Bank of England in consultation with the Treasury. No taxpayer funds were used.

Speaking on the deal, HSBC Group CEO Noel Quinn said, “This acquisition makes excellent strategic sense for our business in the UK. It strengthens our commercial banking franchise and enhances our ability to serve innovative and fast-growing firms, including in the technology and life-science sectors, in the UK and internationally.”

The report claims SVB UK has over 3,000 startup customers. It also has loans of around £5.5bn and deposits of around £6.7bn as of 10 March, it said.