We are pleased to offer members of our Z/Yen Community 25% off ticket prices at our forthcoming Economic Crime Summit – Identity, Fraud, Security in partnership with Cityforum, at Simmons and Simmons LLP, just use code Z/Yen25 and book here. A very warm welcome to our new sponsor, C2Zero, who offers innovative and creative ways for customers to embed environmental impact into their goods, services, and own operations. Click here to learn more and purchase your own Carbon Cancellation Certificates linked to the cancellation of regulated UK emissions allowances. Lastly, if you are on LinkedIn do follow us @Z/Yen Group Limited for the latest updates on our webinars and events. Wishing everyone an impactful and enjoyable May.
Charlotte Dawber-Ashley (Manager, FS Club) & The Team at Z/Yen

Knowledge Miles: The 695th Lord Mayor's Lectures

Z/Yen Group are delighted that our Chairman, Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli, is serving as the 695th Lord Mayor of the City of London for the year 2023/2024. As part of Michael’s working theme, we are running Knowledge Miles: The 695th Lord Mayor's Lecture Series, an online webinar series exploring the connections of the Square Mile and its role as "The World's Coffeehouse" addressing diverse global challenges. Please see the table below for February's lectures and contact Jacopo Moratto if you and your organisation would like to get involved:

Global Warming, Energy Costs, And Water Poverty - The Need For 'Green' Plumbing In The UK And Worldwide, Tuesday, 07 May 2024
The Achilles’ Heel Of AI: How A Major Tech Risk To Your Business Could Be One You Haven’t Heard Of , Wednesday, 22 May 2024
Why The UK-India Relationship Matters? Opportunities For The Financial Centre Of The World , Friday, 24 May 2024
Featured Past Lectures

Professor Alex Edmans:
Mastering Misinformation: How Stories, Statistics, And Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It

Find our entire library of lectures and webinars on YouTube

David Tuppen & Stuart Simmons:

Empowering Personalisation & Automated Decisioning

Events & Webinars

• Events

2024 Economic Crime Summit – Identity, Fraud, Security, Wednesday, 15 May 2024
The Lord Mayor's Appeal Abseil Challenge, Friday, 07 June 2024
Bavarian Ball, Thursday, 13 June 2024
Discover The Literary Heart Of the City of London, Tuesday, 25 June 2024

• Webinars

Safe Spending For All: How Sibstar Is Empowering People Living With Dementia To Safely Spend, Wednesday, 08 May 2024
Sustainable Energy Futures For Remote Communities, Monday, 13 May 2024
Creating Lifeboat Money For The Next Financial Crisis: And Eternally Sustaining Humanity, Tuesday, 21 May 2024
Lunch and Learn: How to Achieve Good Business Accreditation, Wednesday, 22 May 2024

All Forthcoming EventsAll Past Events

If you enjoy our webinars and events, and would like to contribute to our content, we would very much welcome your support as a corporate sponsor, please contact Charlotte_Dawber-Ashley@zyen.com to discuss the various opportunities available.

The Esop Centre’s newspad, is a monthly publication providing in-depth coverage of the main international news in the field of employee share ownership. Read this month’s newspad in full.

Esop Centre’s Newspad All-Employee Share Plan Awards 2023 Results , Monday, 29 April 2024

Public Reports

Z/Yen publishes reports on its three leading indices: the Global Financial Centres Index, the Global Green Finance Index, and the Smart Centres Index. In addition to this, reports on topics of special interest are also regularly published by Z/Yen.

Mike Wardle : Focus On Busan 2024

Mike Wardle, Professor Michael Mainelli : The Global Green Finance Index 13 - Supplement H2 Go - The Hydrogen Economy, Pipedream Or Panacea?

FS Club News

Busan Finance Center: Busan Metropolitan City Fosters Local Startups with a Region-Led 100 Billion KRW(74 Million USD) Future Growth Venture Fund: Busan Metropolitan City has announced the creation of a venture fund(Busan Future Growth Venture Fund) aimed at promptly supporting startups facing challenges. The initiative focuses on aiding local companies in their international expansion and subsequent investments, with a particular emphasis on investing in the expansion of technology commercialization enterprises. The fund is established with a total capital of 100 billion KRW(74 Million USD), with contributions including 5 billion KRW(3.7 Million USD) from Busan Metropolitan City, 50 billion KRW(37 Million USD) from the Korea Development Bank, 10 billion KRW(7.4 Million USD) from the regional BNK Financial Group, among others. Busan Metropolitan City emphasized that 'Future Growth Venture Fund' is the first region-led initiative and plans to create a sub-fund of up to 250 billion KRW(185 Million USD) by the second half of this year. The fund stands out not only for its substantial size but also for its innovative approach to fund management. It aims to implement a tier-based system that sorts investments according to the region's unique characteristics and strengths, categorizing them into local, metropolitan, and global tiers based on their respective roles. In addition to the fund, Busan Metropolitan City plans to strengthen its startup support infrastructure by establishing the 'Busan Innovation Startup Town' and the Busan Startup Institution, which will serve as the control tower for Busan’s startup policies, starting its full operations in 2025.

Fintech Lab Seoul: Seoul Financial Hub, managed by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, is currently inviting esteemed overseas financial institutions to join our global financial epicenter in Yeouido, Seoul. Benefit from exclusive office space, expert consultation on market entry, and unparalleled networking opportunities. Stay ahead with insights into the Korean Financial market. For further details about Seoul Financial Hub, click here.

Financial Services Comission Mauritius:

New Regulatory Framework for Spot Commodity Market in Mauritius: The new Rules aim to support the creation of a new and dynamic ecosystem for spot commodity trading, clearing and intermediation within Mauritius with the new following financial business activities:

(a) spot commodity market; (b) spot commodity clearing house;

(c) spot commodity broker; (d) spot commodity broker’s representative;

(e) spot commodity trading adviser; and (f) spot commodity trading adviser’s representative

The new regulatory framework for spot commodity market and its intermediaries, overseen by the FSC, provides salient features such as a fast-track application process for existing licensees, a Spot Commodity Market may inter-alia be operated through an electronic system, and operators may engage in environmentally-linked financial instruments.

Bridgeworks: Bridgeworks, based in Lymington, Hampshire, UK, was invited last month to present their award-winning AI technologies to U.S. government and industry leaders to highlight the best in British technology. A key aim was to spotlight the support of the U.K. Government’s Department of Defence and Security Exports, (Department for International Trade), and share insights as an Export Champion. British Ambassador to the United States, Dame Karen Pierce was present to facilitate valuable engagement with the U.S. Federal agencies and U.K. technology partners. David Trossell, CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks, explains: “We invited our customers, OEM Partners, such as Dell Technology and IBM, Spectra Logic and our North American Resellers and System Integrators to share their successes implementing our systems.” Trossell explains: “We were able to present solutions and deliverables and translate those to future business benefits for end users.” Eykyn commends Trossell: “I am not a technical man, but I have always been interested in new technology. With Bridgeworks our WAN and data acceleration products, our CEO and CTO David Trossell, brought all his extensive skills in the storage world to bear, strongly supported by the IBM R&D Storage Establishment at Hursley, who confirmed the need for the AI and machine learning based products David developed and which we now know as PortRockIT and WANRockIT." See their full news item here.

GFT Financial Ltd: GFT teams up with Google Cloud to launch ‘GenAI Intelligent Assistant’: GFT in partnership with Google Cloud Industry Value Networks, have built the next generation interface for retail banks. The GenAI Intelligent Assistant is a conversational interface, built on Google Cloud’s Generative and Vertex AI technologies, utilising advanced large language models to give banking customers immense flexibility on the questions they can ask and have answered by the AI-powered assistant. Read our press release here. GFT wins double at the FS Tech Awards. Taking the Digital Transformation Project of the Year and Best Use of IT in Investment banking prizes: GFT were celebrating double triumph at the recent FSTechAwards in London as we won in the ‘Digital Transformation Project of the Year’ and ‘Best Use of IT in Investment Banking’ categories! These wins stand as a testament to the dedication and hard work of GFT’s commitment to the success of Deutsche Bank. Thank you to the FStech Awards and to everyone who has been part of our remarkable journey. Find out more here. Carlton Hopper speaks alongside Engine CEO Sam Everington on FinTech Futures podcast: Listen to GFT UK Managing Director Carlton Hopper in conversation with Engine by Starling CEO Sam Everington, alongside Dave Wallace and Dharmesh Mistry discuss how our partnership is helping banks rapidly modernise. Listen to this FinTech Futures podcast here and stay tuned for news about how we are putting our partnership into practice! ‘Power of 3’ a robust resolution for fraud event alongside AWS and Confluent: GFT had a strong presence at this year’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit in London and it saw our first to launch initiative under the ‘Power of 3’ alongside AWS and Confluent as we showcased our solution that allows you to implement scalable, real-time fraud solutions with advanced ML capabilities, security, and agility. By utilising GFT's fraud modelling proficiency, Confluent's real-time data streaming, and AWS's scalable machine learning capabilities, you can realise reduced fraud losses. Discover more about our partnership here. Our latest blogs: Innovation in retail banking with an intelligent assistant by Simon Thompson – LINK. Reflections on Paris Blockchain Week and the Web3 landscape by Richard Dhuny - LINK

i2 Group: i2 Group is a world leader in intelligence analysis software. For more than 30 years we have empowered intelligence analysts and investigators to discover, create, and exploit actionable intelligence to identify the perpetrators of criminal activity. This blog demonstrates how i2’s iBase product was used to manage supplier risk for a Billion-Euro Construction Project. iBase was used to prevent and identify potential issues with subcontractors, ensuring timely project completion, high quality standards, and cost savings. The tool is used regularly in risk assessments to help prevent money laundering activities and to classify risks for ongoing projects. Read the article in full here.

Compass Plus: Are legacy systems truly on their last legs? 🕰️ Our latest collaboration with Consult Hyperion delves deep into why FIs need to change their mindset when it comes to #payments ecosystem modernisation. Instead of fixating solely on the front-end, it's time to invest more in your core technology and embrace a future-proof strategy. In our latest white paper, we dissect the payment system architectures that #FIs, #banks and #processors utilise today, highlighting their benefits, disadvantages, and where they should sit in your tech stack. This white paper is a must-read for C-level execs and payments professionals seeking to break free from the chains of the past.

Compass Plus: Funded project: Minority Business Matters is our latest funded project and offers a range of free business support to SMEs located in any London borough. The project is in partnership with MSDUK and funded by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. It will run until March 2025. If you have any connections with suitable business owners or founders of ethnic minority businesses, or know someone who does, please consider introducing them to this project by sharing a link to the minoritybusinessmatters.com. Upcoming event for SMEs: Our upcoming Lunch and Learn: ‘How to Achieve Good Business Accreditation ’ is scheduled for 22 May, and will be joined by Jenny Herrera, CEO of the Good Business Charter (GBC). Jenny will introduce GBC and share examples from accredited SMEs to illustrate the wide-ranging benefits it offers. Your help in spreading the word would be much appreciated, whether that's by re-sharing our posts on social media or by including the workshop details in your newsletters or event pages: LinkedIn, Twitter.

Z/Yen Launches Ethical AI Course with CISI Register Here

The Chartered Institute For Securities & Investment, in collaboration with Z/Yen Group and The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor Professor Michael Mainelli, have launched a Certificate in Ethical Artificial Intelligence.

The short online course deals with the core definitions and global developments in the field of AI, associated ethical dilemmas, and the implications for financial services.

Find Out More

Pamphleteers Blog

The Pamphleteers Blog features considered thoughts – somewhere between a knee-jerk editorial and a full-blown piece of research. "Write for today and not for tomorrow."

Made Me Think
Chris Yapp :

The Value of Models

Of Great Interest
Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland :

Are Digital Systems Fit For Purpose?

Read More

FS Club Bulletins - Keep Track Of Your Commercial Interests

FS Club provides up to 1,000 weekly bulletins on a variety of topics from Inflation, to Inter-Bank Lending, to the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. Register here.

Open Banking

Shareholders

Best Of The Finanser

Stirred My Thoughts:

A portal of knowledge for free from Mckinsey

Grabbed My Attention:

The things that AI will never tell you

Read More

Membership & Sponsorship

FS Club is the premier global executive knowledge network for technology and finance professionals. Great events, research, and social functions build a buzz for Members and a valuable partnership for Sponsors. Membership of the FS Club is a great way to enhance your professional development, grow your network and profile, and get backing for your ideas, contact: Charlotte_Dawber-Ashley@zyen.com