Canadian start-up Symend has closed a $43m series B+ funding round led by Inovia Capital, topping up a May 2020 $52m raise. The firm helps companies such as financial institutions and utilities identify and assist customers struggling to pay bills, with a white-label digital engagement platform that uses behavioural science and artificial intelligence to enable businesses to identify at-risk customers. The platform can also provide evidence-based recommendations for unique treatment strategies that aim to treat customers with empathy while increasing the likelihood of repayment.

New York-based Personetics has closed a $75m investment from Warburg Pincus. The company offers a proprietary artificial intelligence software platform to help financial institutions boost customer personalisation and engagement, using personal financial data to customise individual user experiences. Analysing billions of transactions on a daily basis, its tecmology is currently being used by more than 95 million customers of clients such as US Bank, RBC, Santander, Metro Bank and Mitsubishi UFG.

The European Central Bank plans to increase its use of data analytics and artificial intelligence in bank supervision to keep up with developments in financial institutions, according to Pentti Hakkarainen, who heads digital activities for the Single Supervisory Mechanism. The ECB will rely on digital strategies and innovations developed by national supervisory authorities, especially so-called suptech applications designed to make supervision predictive and proactive rather than just backward-looking.

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority was targeted by 238,711 malicious and unsolicited emails in the final three months of 2020, according to the response to a freedom of information request. November saw the largest number, with the FCA receiving 84,723 total malicious messages, including 831 e-mails containing malware.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore has responded to a consultation it conducted last year by revising its technology risk management guidelines. Financial institutions must implement enhanced risk management for cyber-threats to information sharing with trusted parties, detect and respond to misinformation related to the institutions, and conduct cyber-security stress tests.

The transaction value of global business peer-to-peer lending has risen by almost 14% to $206.1bn in value last year, according to Finaria. The Italian foreign exchange trading platform says the trend is set to continue in 2021, when it expects the market to grow by 17% to $241.6bn, rising to more than $297bn by 2024.

The UK remained the leader for financial technology investment in Europe and second worldwide last year, with $4.1bn in venture capital and growth private equity invested in 408 deals, according to Innovate Finance, although the total was 9% lower than in the previous year. Global fintech investment amounted to $44bn in 3,052 deals, with the US attracting $22bn, up 29% from 2019, while Indonesia was third with $3.3bn and India fourth with $2.6bn.

New York-based quantitative hedge fund manager Cindicator Capital is advertising for an active member of the wallstreetbets sub-Reddit community to join the firm as a sentiment trader with a £200,000 salary. The wallstreetbets forum caused a storm in financial markets in January with a collective drive to buy stocks sold short by prominent hedge fund firms. Cindicator Capital is looking to get ahead of the competition with a staff member who can report on prevailing mood and direction of the Reddit investment community.

Libeo has raised €20m in a funding round led by partners of DST Global, Serena, LocalGlobe and Breega, with participation from various angel investors. Based in France, Libeo simplifies the management and payment of supplier invoices by connecting companies to each other directly. It claims that the number of B2B payments it has processed has multiplied by 30 over the past 12 months, to €100m per year from more than 35,000 firms. Its new funding comes less than a year after it completed a €4m seed round.

TCV, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has previously invested in Airbnb, Spotify, Peloton and Facebook, has closed its latest fund, TCV XI, with a record $4bn. TCV plans to continue backing its existing portfolio companies, as well as to invest in new start-ups emerging from the fintech, e-commerce, education and other sectors. Over the past year, TCV has invested in Mollie (which raised $106m), Spryker ($130m), Revolut ($500m), Klarna ($650m), Nubank ($400m), Mambu ($135m) and Strava ($110m).

UK-based PensionBee is to give customers the opportunity to acquire shares in the online pension management firm as part of its IPO plans. PensionBee is to use its open API to connect interested customers’ accounts to PrimaryBid, the London Stock Exchange-backed retail investment platform, in advance of any public offering. The company currently has more than £1.2bn in assets under administration and says it has more than 65,000 invested customers.

UK-based Atom Bank has agreed to a deal with Plaid to offer open banking and payment initiation services to its SME customers. The deal will initially see Atom Bank offer business owners a streamlined loan application process and faster decision-making. The bank has previously received a £10m grant from Britain's Banking Competition Remedies Board to bring greater competition to the SME banking market.