HDBank joins Contour network to improve LC issuance

HDBank, a Vietnamese-based financial institution, has joined Contour, the open trade finance network, to increase its ability to extend trade financing to more corporates. HDBank is the latest financial institution to join Contour and marks the first bank in Vietnam to be part of the company’s trade finance network. This offers an opportunity for Vietnamese corporates to take advantage of the online negotiation and streamlined management of letters of credit (LCs) with counterparties in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the US. 

Built on R3’s Corda, Contour’s network is focused on overhauling the LC issuance process. LCs are traditionally paper-based, time consuming to process and costly to deal with. By digitising LCs on a blockchain network, the processing time and cost involved will be significantly reduced. With the current socio-economic climate, Contour says that the need for further efficiency in the market has grown even more apparent.

 

Finovate Capital partners with MonetaGo’s Fraud Prevention Network

Finovate Capital, an Indian short-term lending fintech platform, has announced the integration of MonetaGo’s secure financing solution to build-in a more robust platform solution to its lenders in India.  

The Finovate Capital platform provides businesses with access to short-term finance by combining the traditional approach of credit distribution with a fintech platform. The integration of MonetaGo’s Secure Financing Solution will enable Finovate Capital to fingerprint invoices, which effectively prevents duplicate financing. The solution will also allow for invoice authentication with GSTN (Goods and Services Tax Network) database and verification of eWay Bill submitted with NIC (National Informatics Centre) eWay Bill database. MonetaGo combines R3’s Corda platform with its own proprietary technology, to enable businesses to reclaim value lost through paper-based processes, and return it to their balance sheet.  

 

AFP: CPA (USA), CMA and CTP holders eligible to waive Part I of FP&A Exam

The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) has announced that current holders of the Certified Public Accountant USA (CPA), Certified Management Accountant (CMA) or Certified Treasury Professional (CTP) credential are eligible to waive Part I of the Certified Corporate Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) Professional Exam.  

In 2019, AFP reformatted both parts of the FP&A Exam to new FP&A test specifications. Part I of the exam focuses on fundamental knowledge in finance, accounting and forecasting - fundamental knowledge also tested on the above certification and licensing exams. AFP determined the fundamental knowledge exhibited by holding the CPA, CMA or CTP credentials is sufficiently comparable to passing Part I of the FP&A exam.

Part II of the exam takes that fundamental knowledge and applies it to FP&A, testing the ability to convert that knowledge into building, interpreting and communicating financial projections through various techniques. Therefore, holders of the other certifications will still need to take this portion of the exam.

“While the other exams are not exact duplicates of the first part of our FP&A exam, they do test the fundamental knowledge that we require to achieve the certification,” said Jim Kaitz, president and CEO of AFP. “By waiving that portion of the exam to these practitioners, we ensure that all FP&A credential holders are held to the same standards.”

 

Adflex heads to the cloud

B2B digital payments integration firm Adflex says it now enables both acquirers and supply chain businesses to simplify and accelerate integration of its modular digital payment services, following the cloud-transformation of its payments platform.

“By wrapping our suite of digital payment services in RESTful APIs, we can now serve our acquirer and merchant clients with new levels of flexibility and agility,” commented Pat Bermingham, CEO of Adflex. “By cloud-enabling our platform, many of the traditional complexities associated with integrating payment services are bypassed, so activations can be achieved in a matter of hours, instead of days or weeks. By connecting to Adflex’s platform through standardised, interoperable APIs, our clients can begin to self-serve; selecting the specific services they require and assembling them according to a modular design.”

 

IASB proposes deferring IAS 1 amendments’ effective date due to COVID-19

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has proposed to defer by one year the effective date of Classification of Liabilities as Current or Non-current, which amends IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements.

The IAS 1 amendments were issued in January 2020, effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2022. However, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board is proposing to provide companies with more time to implement any classification changes resulting from the amendments by deferring the effective date by one year to annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2023.

The Board is not proposing any changes to the original amendments other than the deferral of the effective date. To enable the quick support of stakeholders at this difficult time, the comment period on the proposal is short - 30 days. The comment deadline is 3 June 2020.