Month: October 2019

Sorina Bera, CEO Allevo joined a panel at the Future&Security of Financial Services conference, organized by Oxygen Events. The event that was on October 31^st brought together decision makers from banks and companies.

Our CEO, Sorina Bera, moderated the focus session: “Transforming the Payments Ecosystem”, in the first panel of the event, were she had as guests: Radu Zanfir, Head of SWIFT Department CEC Bank, Bogdan Liviu Barbu, Deputy Executive Director of Operations Division, BCR and Marius Caraiani, IT Director, Informatics Department, Smith&Smith Payment Institution.

Radu Zanfir, talked about the benefits that SWIFT gpi brings to banks and the improvements it has for the customer-bank experience. The service is operational at CEC Bank starting September 30, 2019 and the bank plans to extend it.

Another hot topic for the banks is instant payments, and Bogdan Liviu Barbu, from BCR explained that the bank he represents implements the system as we speak, while Marius Caraiani, from Smith&Smith Payment Institution continued speaking about an important project for his company and more for its clients: implementing a software solution for API exposure to third parties.

The first session was moderated by Rodica Tuchilă, Executive Director of the Romanian Banking Association (ARB) and the second one by Toma Cimpeanu, CEO ANSSI. The event was opened by Radu Gratian Ghetea, Honorary President of the Romanian Association of Banks.

Other subjects debated as part of the conference include: digital Romania, Payment Service Directive (PSD2), the potential of blockchain technology, information security management, competitive intelligence, cyber intelligence.

Ioana Guiman, Managing Partner Allevo participated at the 10^th edition of SWIFT Business Forum Romania, held this year under the “Looking to the future of payments” umbrella. The event, a tradition for the local market, was organized on Bucharest on 24^th of November by the Romanian Banking Association and SWIFT.

Ioana was invited to speak on the SWIFT gpi panel moderated by Marianna Janssen, SWIFT gpi expert EMEA, and shared the stage with Marc Recker from Deutsche Bank, Cristian Cengher from Erste  Group Bank, Radu Zanfir from CEC Bank and Adrian Radu from Banca Transilvania.

More information about the event can be found on our blog.

The high-level theme of the event was “Looking to the future of payments”. A traditional event, at its 10^th edition,  SWIFT Business Forum Romania was held in Bucharest on 24^th of November and organized by the Romanian Banking Association and SWIFT.

More than 100 representatives from financial institutions discussed about the challenges that impact the payments industry in the context of rapid transformation of the EU payments landscape. Changes in consumer behavior, faster and real-time payments, open banking models, new regulations, technology disruption, compliance pressure are among the challenges that affect and reshape the payments space.

In the opening plenary Dr. Radu Gratian Ghetea, President of Honour of the Romanian Banking Association, and SWIFT National Member Group Chairperson and Sergiu Oprescu, Chairman of the Board of the Romanian Banking Association made a radiography of the Romanian banking system, followed by Matthieu de Heering, Head of Central & Eastern Europe, SWIFT who presented the SWIFT 2020 Strategy update.

Other topics include:

• Tanja Van Sterthem, Financial Service Consultant, Standards Advisory Team, SWIFT presented details about the migration of cross-border payment traffic to ISO 20022 that start in November 2021;
• In the Evolution of the European Payments Landscape, Rodica Tuchila, SWIFT User Group Chairperson, Romania, moderated a panel of SWIFT experts and representatives of the National Bank of Romania and Banca Transilvania. They discussed the EU payments landscape and the impact on the Romanian market;
• As cyber-attacks become more frequent and sophisticated, Frank Versmessen (SWIFT) talked about securing the financial ecosystem, followed by Gizem Tansu (SWIFT) who presented the Financial Crime Compliance Portfolio of SWIFT.

Marianna Janssen SWIFT gpi expert EMEA, moderated a focus session on SWIFT gpi. Allevo was represented by Ioana Guiman, Managing Partner Allevo and shared the stage with Marc Recker from Deutsche Bank, Cristian Cengher from Erste Bank, Radu Zanfir from CEC Bank and Adrian Radu from Banca Transilvania.

 

The 10^th edition of the SWIFT Business Forum Romania was instrumentally put together by the Romanian Banking Association. Special thanks to Rodica Tuchila, Executive Director at the Romanian Banking Association, and Judit Baracs, Country Manager Romania SWIFT, for the flawless organization.

Allevo was invited by the National Bank of Romania to moderate the “New technologies – trends, innovative tech solutions, new business models” panel, at the Annual Payments Forum.

The event marks an amazing step in the evolution of the financial services industry in Romania. The National Bank of Romania launched the Fintech Innovation Hub, a collaboration platform meant to bring together banks, fintechs and the regulator. This is a first on the local market and comes in to confirm that the fintech space in Romania is strong and growing and that beautiful things can happen when all players come together at the same table. And the fact that this initiative comes from the regulator is a truly wonderful thing that happened to this industry.

Video intro: https://lnkd.in/e3dA3N4

The panel was moderated by Ioana Guiman and on stage there were:

• Sorin Cheran, Artificial Intelligence Chief Technologist HPE
• Alberto Guidotti, Founder, Euronovate
• Tudor Cristea, Regional Sales Manager, Palo Alto Networks
• Cristian Pielescu, Founder, Convex Network
• Ștefan Ionescu, Managing Partner, Lew.ro
• Razvan Boldis, Founder & CEO, indexAR

 

At Sibos this year we announced:

• our selection in BCR-InnovX accelerator for scaleups
• the gpi feature of FinTP, already live with the first bank to onboard gpi in Romania

 

Sibos 2019: Ioana Guiman, Allevo from Advertainment Media on Vimeo.