Connect with us

Technology

Ascensus Continues Focus on Financial Wellness and Extends Relationship with Financial Finesse Including AI-Powered Coaching

Published

on

Partnership supports advisors and plan sponsors in helping participants improve retirement preparedness and overall financial wellness

DRESHER, Pa., Oct. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Ascensus announced today it has extended its relationship with Financial Finesse—the nation’s leading provider of unbiased financial coaching as an employer-paid benefit—to support increased plan engagement and improve participants’ overall financial wellness.

Since 2018, Ascensus has seamlessly integrated Financial Finesse’s capabilities with Ascensus’ other financial wellness tools and resources, like the READYSAVE app, which are tailored for retirement plan participants. Ascensus was also the first recordkeeper to introduce Aimee (Artificial Intelligence Motivating Employees Everywhere), Financial Finesse’s AI-powered financial coach, in 2021. In 2023 alone, users who utilized Aimee saw a 60% increase in their overall financial wellness score.1

Financial Finesse encourages key participant behaviors such as reviewing retirement projections, taking advantage of company match, and evaluating how effectively investments are allocated according to each saver’s goal retirement date. Pairing financial coaching and education with the consultation of a plan advisor, together Financial Finesse and Ascensus can have a deeper impact on the financial wellness of entire workforces and help advisors grow their businesses in the process. Ascensus participants using Financial Finesse achieved the following results:1

99.2% of users felt better prepared to make a financial decision.90.9% felt more prepared for their future after their coaching session.80% took at least one action within 30 days of working with a coach.63% who did not have emergency savings now have at least $1,000 set aside for unplanned expenses.

Plan sponsors benefit from this data and gain insight into the effectiveness of their plan and overall financial wellness of their employees.

Financial advisors looking to deliver innovative retirement plan solutions can also benefit from leveraging Financial Finesse. The suite of services can help advisors to expand and scale their practice by addressing the needs of participants who are not yet ready for fee-based financial advice. As a result, advisors recently voted for Ascensus to win an Advisor Choice Award in the Financial Wellness category for small market plans.2

“The opportunity for this unique solution to benefit our clients for years to come is exciting to us all,” said Jason Crane, head of Core Retirement at Ascensus. “We’re committed to empowering savers to take control of their financial wellness and prepare for the future, and Financial Finesse has proven to be an effective partner in helping to boost plan engagement and get more savers saving more.”

“We are thrilled to deepen our relationship with Ascensus,” said Liz Davidson, founder and CEO of Financial Finesse. “The scale of this expanded partnership underscores their commitment to innovation and relentless focus on supporting retirement plan advisors and plan sponsors while helping millions change their financial lives and save for a better future.”

1 Financial Wellness Think Tank™, Financial Finesse. Updated through 8/21/2024.
2 NAPA. 2024 Advisor’s Choice Awards. September 2024. https://www.napa-net.org/news/2024/9/2024-advisors-choice-small-market-plans/

About Ascensus 
Ascensus is a market-leading enabler of tax-advantaged savings—providing technology, services, and expertise that help millions of people save for a better future.

The company is a premier savings program service provider, third-party administrator, and government savings facilitator. Its platforms, industry knowledge, and data-based insights enhance the growth and success of its partners, their clients, and savers through co-branded, private-labeled, and governmental partnerships.

Ascensus offers comprehensive qualified and nonqualified retirement plan solutions, third-party retirement plan administration, 529 education and ABLE savings program administration, corporate- and bank-owned life insurance solutions, and fiduciary and total rewards services.

The company’s brands include Ascensus; Newport, an Ascensus company; and FuturePlan by Ascensus. Ascensus has more than $818 billion in assets under administration and employs more than 5,700 associates as of June 30, 2024.

For more information, visit ascensus.com and newportgroup.com.

About Financial Finesse
Financial Finesse is the country’s leading independent provider of unbiased workplace financial wellness coaching programs. Since 1999, the firm has helped tens of thousands of organizations improve their bottom lines and become more competitive by empowering their employees to achieve financial security. The company’s award-winning financial wellness programs are made available to employees at no cost as an employer-sponsored benefit. With highly personalized and ongoing one-on-one coaching from CFP® professionals, AI-powered virtual coaching, live workshops, webcasts, educational tools, and content, Financial Finesse has worked with millions of employees to build better financial lives for themselves and their families. For more information, visit www.financialfinesse.com.   

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ascensus-continues-focus-on-financial-wellness-and-extends-relationship-with-financial-finesse-including-ai-powered-coaching-302264478.html

SOURCE Ascensus

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Technology

Trend Micro launches AI-powered app to help combat Singapore’s growing scam problem

Published

on

By

New mobile app for consumers addresses rising concerns as more than 4 in 5 Singaporeans worry about family members falling victim to scams

SINGAPORE, Oct. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity, today announced the launch of Trend Micro Check, a multi-featured mobile app uniquely designed to help consumers identify potential scams and growing AI threats such as deepfakes. Trend Micro’s one-of-a-kind AI-powered solution allows consumers to submit content such as messages, ads, or social media posts to help them quickly determine if it can be trusted or not, and will also help them verify if a live video call is a deepfake.

Tim Falinski, VP Consumer Business, AMEA at Trend: “Scams are at the top of the list of online threats to consumers, and AI has made it easy for cybercriminals to scam innocent people. While they take advantage of new technology to cause harm, we do the opposite. We are leading the race against these threats and working tirelessly to stay ahead of them with our own AI capabilities.”

Scams have been a growing problem in Singapore, with victims losing S$651.8 million last year. A recent Trend Micro study of 1,020 Singaporean consumers revealed that 68% of respondents believed the volume and risk of online scams have gotten worse over the last year, and 85% stated they were worried a family member might become a victim of an online scam. In addition, 97% of consumers said they would take action if it would help protect themselves, their families, and others from the work of scammers. 

While 69% of respondents said they were somewhat or very confident they could identify online scams, 74% said they would still use an app that could help them quickly verify if an email, social media post, online ad, text message, or phone number was a scam.

“With more than $1 trillion lost by consumers worldwide to scams last year, more must be done to protect them” said Jorij Abraham, Managing Director of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance. “As our first Foundation Partner, Trend Micro is clearly committed to stopping this problem by delivering tools like the AI-powered capabilities in Trend Micro Check, and by supporting and participating in the important work we do. We applaud Trend’s dedication to this cause and their technical leadership in using AI against the misuse of AI.”

Online scammers have been successful in part because AI tools allow them to create deceptive content that in turn elicits an emotional response from consumers. With a tool like Trend Micro Check, consumers can proactively block scams before seeing them, receive real-time alerts about scams before they can do harm, and most importantly, easily and instantly verify if something is a scam before they can be deceived by it. The app offers a powerful and unique set of features including:

•  Scam Check: AI-powered tool providing real-time assessment of the likelihood that content (e.g. social ad, text or email message, website URL or more) is a scam. The tool returns an easy-to-understand summary of the potential security concerns, along with recommended actions.
•  Deepfake Scan: Identifies potential AI “face-swapping” scam attempts during live video calls.
•  SMS Filter: Automatically filters out spam and scam text messages before it hits the inbox.
•  Web Guard: Blocks risky websites and filters out suspicious ads.

Trend Micro Check is now available to download for iOS and Android devices in select countries. For additional details about Trend Micro Check, including device requirements and feature and language availability, visit https://www.trendmicro.com/tmcheck.

As part of its mission to fight back against online scams, Trend Micro will also be Chairing the Cybersecurity Scam Prevention and Investigations track at the Global Anti-scam Alliance Summits in Singapore on October 21-22, and in Washington D.C. on November 12-13, 2024. For more information or to register for the summits, visit: https://www.gasa.org/all-events.

About Trend Micro 
Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, helps make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Fueled by decades of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation, Trend Micro’s AI-powered cybersecurity platform protects hundreds of thousands of organisations and millions of individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. As a leader in cloud and enterprise cybersecurity, Trend’s platform delivers a powerful range of advanced threat defense techniques optimised for environments like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and central visibility for better, faster detection and response. With 7,000 employees across 70 countries, Trend Micro enables organisations to simplify and secure their connected world. www.TrendMicro.com.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/trend-micro-launches-ai-powered-app-to-help-combat-singapores-growing-scam-problem-302263824.html

SOURCE Trend Micro

Continue Reading

Technology

ROSHI Unveils Comprehensive Report on the Future of Digital Lending, Highlighting Global Trends for 2025 and Beyond

Published

on

By

SINGAPORE, Oct. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Singapore-based fintech ROSHI has released an extensive report analysing the future of digital lending, focusing on global trends expected to shape the industry in 2025 and beyond. The report provides in-depth insights into the transformative impact of technology on the financial sector particularly in lending practices.

The report reveals significant growth projections across various sectors of digital lending. AI-powered lending models are enhancing credit risk assessment, potentially improving performance by 10-15% compared to traditional models. The global peer-to-peer lending market is expected to experience substantial expansion, with projections indicating it will surpass US$705.81 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 26.7% from 2022 to 2030.

Decentralised Finance (DeFi) emerges as a major trend with the market valued at USD 13.61 billion in 2022 and expected to expand at a CAGR of 46.0% from 2023 to 2030. The report also highlights the growing influence of open banking, noting that by January 2024, 13% of digitally active consumers in key European markets were using open banking services.

Overall, the digital lending platforms market is set for significant growth with projections indicating it will reach a valuation of USD 795.34 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 11.90%.

“Our analysis reveals that the lending landscape is undergoing a profound transformation driven by AI, blockchain and open banking technologies,” stated Amir Nada, ROSHI Founder and CEO. “While these advancements offer unprecedented opportunities for both lenders and borrowers they also present new challenges in terms of regulation and data security.”

The report also explores the rise of green loans, the impact of personalization on lending practices and the regulatory challenges facing the industry. This comprehensive view aims to provide valuable insights for financial institutions, policymakers and consumers alike.

ROSHI continues its mission to offer transparent, data-driven insights to help stakeholders navigate the complex and rapidly changing landscape of digital lending. The full report can be accessed here.

ROSHI is a Singapore-based fintech transforming digital lending across Southeast Asia. Since its launch in March 2022, the fintech has leveraged AI algorithms and machine learning to assist borrowers with their lending requirements. Through partnerships with various banks and lenders the platform has helped hundreds of individuals secure approvals.

Contact Information

Amir Nada
ROSHI Pte Ltd
Singapore, SG
Voice: +65 8950 9286
E-Mail: media@roshi.sg
Website: https://www.roshi.sg/

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/roshi-unveils-comprehensive-report-on-the-future-of-digital-lending-highlighting-global-trends-for-2025-and-beyond-302264958.html

SOURCE ROSHI

Continue Reading

Technology

Oracle to Invest More Than US$6.5 Billion in AI and Cloud Computing in Malaysia

Published

on

By

Oracle plans to open a cloud region in Malaysia, including 150+ infrastructure and SaaS services, to help boost the country’s digital economy and drive AI-fueled innovation  

Organizations across Malaysia can accelerate AI innovation with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s high performance and built-in security, powerful data, and distributed cloud capabilities

Upcoming cloud region to extend OCI’s footprint in Asia Pacific to 12 public cloud regions

AUSTIN, Texas and KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — To meet the rapidly growing demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services in Malaysia, Oracle today announced plans to invest more than US$6.5 billion to open a public cloud region in the country. The upcoming cloud region will enable Oracle customers and partners in Malaysia to leverage AI infrastructure and services and migrate mission-critical workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

The planned public cloud region will help organizations in Malaysia modernize their applications, migrate all types of workloads to the cloud, and innovate with data, analytics, and AI. Customers can have access to OCI Generative AI Agents with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities; accelerated computing and generative AI services to help keep sovereign AI models within country borders; and OCI Supercluster, the largest AI supercomputer in the cloud—orderable with up to 131,072 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs with NVIDIA ConnectX-7 NICs for RoCEv2 networking or NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 rack solutions using liquid cooling and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking. In addition, 150+ services, including Oracle Autonomous DatabaseHeatWave MySQL Database ServiceOracle Cloud VMware Solution, OCI Kubernetes Engine, and Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite will also be available, offering customers infrastructure, platform, or SaaS services.

“We warmly welcome Oracle’s US$6.5 billion investment in Malaysia, which represents yet another expansion of their 36-year footprint in Malaysia,” said YB Senator Tengku Datuk Seri Utama Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, minister of investment, trade and industry (MITI), Malaysia. “This investment will empower Malaysian entities, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, with innovative and cutting-edge AI and cloud technologies to enhance their global competitiveness. It is also a significant step towards realising the country’s New Industrial Master Plan’s ambitious vision of creating 3,000 smart factories by 2030. Oracle’s decision to establish a public cloud region in Malaysia underscores Malaysia’s infrastructure readiness, and its growing position as a premier Southeast Asian destination for digital investments.” 

Malaysia offers unique growth opportunities for organizations looking to accelerate their expansion with the latest digital technologies,” said Garrett Ilg, executive vice president and general manager, Japan & Asia Pacific, Oracle. “Our multi-billion dollar investment affirms our commitment to Malaysia as a regional gateway for cloud infrastructure as well as a comprehensive suite of SaaS applications deployed within Malaysia.”

“Rapidly growing demand for AI services prompts calls for more data centers that store large amounts of data and computational power to train and deploy AI models,” said Franco Chiam, vice president, cloud, data center and future digital infrastructure, Asia Pacific, IDC. “According to IDC FutureScape ‘The Infrastructure and Cloud Impact 2024 Predictions’, Malaysia’s public cloud services market is expected to grow by 27.2 percent CAGR from 2022 to 2027. The upcoming Oracle cloud region in Malaysia, therefore, signals the country’s potential to become a hub for technological innovation and growth in Southeast Asia.”

OCI Provides Customers with the Latest AI Infrastructure Offerings and a Resilient and Scalable Cloud Foundation Running Within Malaysia’s Borders

Oracle is the only hyperscaler capable of delivering AI and a full suite of 150+ cloud services across public, dedicated, and hybrid cloud environments, anywhere in the world. OCI’s unique cloud architecture enables Oracle to launch more public cloud regions faster by starting with an optimal footprint and scaling as needed, and deploy dedicated cloud regions with hyperscale cloud services inside customer data centers. This approach helps meet the needs of all countries and markets without compromising cloud capabilities, while also providing the consistent performance, SLAs, and global pricing for which OCI has become known.

With the planned public cloud region in Malaysia, customers and partners can gain low-latency access to cloud services to help them derive better value from their data and securely store data and run applications to help address regulations and requirements for data residency within Malaysia. In addition, OCI’s sovereign AI capabilities provide customers with increased control over where they locate their data and computing infrastructure and how they manage it. As a result, customers can achieve AI sovereignty by gaining the assurance that their use of AI is aligned with digital sovereignty frameworks.

Customers in Malaysia Welcome the Upcoming Public Cloud Region

Several NVIDIA AI infrastructure services will be available to customers, including NVIDIA AI Enterprise, NVIDIA Omniverse, and NVIDIA DGX Cloud.

“NVIDIA underpins the world’s largest AI models for training and inferencing, and Oracle’s continued expansion in Malaysia will help organizations across the country harness the power of AI,” said Dennis Ang, senior director, enterprise business (ASEAN and ANZ region), NVIDIA. “With the new Oracle Cloud Malaysia Region, customers in Malaysia will gain local access to NVIDIA’s accelerated, secure, and scalable platform for end-to-end AI development and deployment on OCI, helping accelerate the development of generative AI applications.”

Read the full release here.

 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/oracle-to-invest-more-than-us6-5-billion-in-ai-and-cloud-computing-in-malaysia-302264649.html

SOURCE Oracle

Continue Reading

Trending