MONTRÉAL, Nov. 25, 2024 /CNW/ – Croesus is pleased to announce the appointment of Vincent Lévesque as Vice-President, Head of Products. Lévesque will be responsible for leading and implementing the Canadian WealthTech’s product strategy.

Specifically, Lévesque will lead the product lifecycle vision and strategy, drive innovation projects, and oversee the development of solutions in collaboration with the software engineering teams. His role will be to ensure that Croesus’s offerings meet the changing needs of the current and future market, help Croesus strengthen its leadership position in the markets it serves, and support the company’s growth objectives.

“We are delighted to welcome Vincent Lévesque to the Croesus management team. His appointment will enhance our strategy for accelerated growth and our vision of simplifying and humanizing our solutions. Vincent’s presence will boost our capacity to quickly deliver innovative solutions to markets in North America and Europe,” said Vincent Fraser, President, Chief Executive Officer, and member of the Board of Directors at Croesus.

“I am honored to have been selected by Croesus and excited to join this WealthTech. The wealth management technology sector is booming, and opportunities to create value are everywhere. I am motivated to play a central role in fostering an even more robust and forward-looking product culture,” said Vincent Lévesque, Vice-President and Head of Products at Croesus.

With 25 years of experience in leadership and digital product design, Vincent Lévesque has held senior product design positions at the National Bank of Canada, Videotron, and FLO. Armed with an MBA, Vincent has always focused on developing high-performance, user-centric solutions and creating innovative frameworks to improve user engagement and operational efficiency.

About Croesus

Croesus provides innovative, high-performance, and secure wealth management solutions that include portfolio management systems, portfolio rebalancing tools, and application programming interfaces (APIs). These solutions empower wealth management professionals to improve their productivity, enhance their client relationships, make informed decisions, and maximize the management of their assets under management. Croesus’s mission is to provide a superior experience to its clients, users, partners, and employees and to positively impact the community. With more than 200 employees in its Montréal, Toronto, and Geneva offices, Croesus has won several industry awards for being a high-quality solution provider and an outstanding employer.

SOURCE Croesus

Leading bank in Serbia uses SAS Visual Analytics on SAS Viya to derive real-time insights that guide strategy, performance and innovation

CARY, N.C., Nov. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Banca Intesa Beograd, the Serbian unit of international banking group Intesa Sanpaolo, has launched an interactive reporting system with data and AI leader SAS to further democratize analytics in its operations. The result: more efficient processes, improved risk management and enhanced customer experience.

“We are creating a corporate culture where decisions are based on data analytics,” said Zoran Šiljković, Head of Commercial Planning and Reporting at Banca Intesa Beograd. “This enables us to make more accurate predictions, identify opportunities and reduce risks.”

Turning data into democratized insights
Banca Intesa’s advanced reporting engine was developed using SAS® Enterprise Guide® and SAS Visual Analytics on SAS® Viya®. It allows senior leadership and bank employees alike to monitor real-time performance and progress – delivering concrete insights on revenues, fees and commissions, risk mitigation, customer retention, cross-sell opportunities and more – so they can adjust as necessary.

The retail dashboard alone – one of several dashboards on the platform – is a “mega repository” of over 80 easy-to-understand graphical reports for Banca Intesa’s various segments, including mass market, small business, transactional and pricing. It incorporates all sorts of data: internal and external; categorical and numerical; third-party, customer and transactional. Reports are widely accessible across the bank’s 2,000 employees and available in multiple formats to accommodate users’ diverse devices and reporting needs.

The reporting system’s popularity is a testament to the value it delivers. An average of 1,400 unique users access its dashboards monthly, opening nearly 200 distinct reports and registering almost 160,000 logs. Šiljković said the dashboards help the bank “recognize customer behavior and be proactive” in adapting to fluid market dynamics and its 1.4 million clients’ evolving needs.

“Analytics enables us to make strategic but also operative and tactical decisions and optimize processes to better understand customer behavior, provide personalized offers, and more effectively meet customers’ expectations and needs,” he said.

All the strategic data – on one page
Among the retail dashboard’s dozens of reports, two recent additions are making a big impact, according to Šiljković. The One Executive Page was created to simplify reporting for Banca Intesa executives, synthesizing insights from dozens of subreports into a singular view.

“One Page was born out of some specific business needs of management,” Šiljković said, “especially board members, who needed more effective, immediate reporting [that was] easy to access and understand, with clear information to reduce decision-making time.”

Šiljković said the first step was to ensure accurate, consistent, reliable data. “Thanks to SAS technology,” he said, “we were able to ensure the accuracy of the data and automate the creation and distribution of reports, which can be accessed by top management in real time and via mobile devices.

“The initial idea was to create a report with strategic data on a single page – hence the name, One Executive Page. In reality, the report is interactive, and with SAS Visual Analytics, accessible in multiple formats – tables, graphs, descriptions, etc. The manager decides whether to see everything on one page or to deepen certain data and insights with other views.”

A real-time view into employee performance
The second new component of the dashboard, Performance and KPI Scheme, has quickly become “a standard in the bank,” said Šiljković. Used by nearly 1,400 employees, its interface allows staff to check their up-to-the-minute performance and productivity.

“No IT knowledge is needed to use the dashboard,” he said. “It is really very simple and intuitive. Every employee can see the results of their KPIs at any time, in real time. All employees can understand how they are performing and decide in real time if, where and how to improve their performance.

“And Performance and KPI Scheme doesn’t just show employees their results; it ties in their projected financial incentives owing to an interactive calculator created in SAS Visual Analytics.”

Building on pillars of success
Banca Intesa Beograd is no newcomer to SAS. The bank has used SAS solutions in critical areas like risk management since 2011 to help support what Šiljković identified as the bank’s three key pillars of success: technological innovation, data-driven decision making, and investment in talent and skills.

“It’s easy to see why Banca Intesa Beograd has been a banking leader in Serbia for many years,” said Stu Bradley, Senior Vice President of Risk, Fraud and Compliance Solutions at SAS. “The bank’s commitment to a data-driven culture to benefit its customers is deeply ingrained, extending to every employee. The integration of its data on a single, AI-powered platform will enhance agility across the bank, as employees at every level are empowered to make quicker, better-informed decisions.”

Šiljković agreed that making the tools accessible to everyday users has been crucial.

“The integration of AI opens many new opportunities for us to achieve success through innovation,” he said. “Motivating our employees to learn data analysis guarantees that Banca Intesa Beograd continues as the leader in industry developments.

“SAS tools have helped accelerate the democratization of analytics in the bank, because they enable users of all skills, even those without technical knowledge, to intuitively work with data.”

About SAS
SAS is a global leader in data and AI. With SAS software and industry-specific solutions, organizations transform data into trusted decisions. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW®.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2024 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.

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SOURCE SAS

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Nov. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the world’s digital infrastructure company®, today announced that it has issued an additional €1.15 billion in green bonds. This builds on more than $750 million offerings in green bonds that Equinix completed in September this year. With these latest issuances, Equinix will have issued a total of approximately $6.9 billion of green bonds, making it a top 5 issuer of green bonds in the U.S. Equinix will utilize the green bonds to further its sustainability initiatives and enhance the operational efficiency of its global business.

“We view green finance as an integral part of our sustainability strategy at Equinix,” said Katrina Rymill, SVP Corporate Finance & Sustainability, Equinix. “Our green bonds demonstrate Equinix’s continued commitment to design, build and deliver the most reliable, secure and sustainable data center and digital infrastructure possible in order to benefit our customers, our investors, and the communities in which we operate.”

Equinix issued €650 million principal amount of 3.25% senior green notes due 2031 and €500 million principal amount of 3.625% senior green notes due 2034. Equinix used rate locks to hedge a significant portion of the interest rate risk associated with the issuance of the Euro green bonds. Accounting for such hedges, the 6-year and the 10-year Euro green bonds are expected to carry an effective coupon to Equinix of 3.27% and 3.65%, respectively. The offering closed on November 22, 2024.

Equinix intends to allocate an amount equal to the net proceeds from the green bonds to finance or refinance, in whole or in part, recently completed or future Eligible Green Projects. Equinix’s allocation strategy includes covering project expenditures up to two years before the issuance of the green bonds and three years following the green bond issuance. These projects, which form the backbone of the company’s sustainability mission, span a wide range of impactful categories—from green building development and renewable energy innovations to advanced energy efficiency, resource conservation and cutting-edge decarbonization solutions.

Highlights/Key Facts

Equinix’s Eligible Green Projects follow its 2024 Green Finance Framework based on the Green Bond Principles of June 2021 and Green Loan Principles of February 2023, a set of guidelines that promote transparency and integrity in, and advance the standardization of, green debt disclosures. The Framework aims to increase Equinix’s focus on protecting the environment and addressing global climate change through greenhouse gas emissions reductions, increasing resource efficiency and driving corporate transparency and accountability.Globally, Equinix has continued to invest in new and innovative technologies in energy efficiency, renewable energy and heat export projects as part of its global Future First sustainability strategy, focusing on areas that have the greatest impact on customers and key stakeholders.In 2023, it maintained 96% renewable energy coverage across its portfolio. It also remains focused on improving the energy efficiency of its facilities as measured by power usage effectiveness (PUE), which improved 8%+ compared to the prior year.In addition, Equinix was recognized for its climate performance and transparency in 2023 by achieving the highest ranking of the CDP’s prestigious Climate Change A List for the second consecutive year. Of 23,000+ companies that disclosed environmental data to CDP in 2023, less than 2% received the top score.

Additional Resources

Equinix Issues More Than $750 Million in Green Bonds to Drive Sustainability Initiatives [press release]What Are Green Bonds? How Are They Used in the Data Center Industry? [blog]2023 Equinix Sustainability Report and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Metrics [report]

About Equinix
Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX) is the world’s digital infrastructure company®. Digital leaders harness Equinix’s trusted platform to bring together and interconnect foundational infrastructure at software speed. Equinix enables organizations to access all the right places, partners and possibilities to scale with agility, speed the launch of digital services, deliver world-class experiences and multiply their value, while supporting their sustainability goals.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about Equinix’s intent to allocate an amount equal to the net proceeds from the green bonds to finance, or refinance, a portfolio of Eligible Green Projects; the effective coupon rates on the green bonds as a result of hedging; the intended impact of Equinix’s Green Finance Framework; Equinix’s long-term sustainability goals; and similar statements that are not historical facts. Please see recent and upcoming Equinix quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix, for factors that might cause such differences. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

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SOURCE Equinix, Inc.