Baroness Karren Brady & Lady Mone to headline Women in Business EXPO 2019

Two of the UK’s most well regarded businesswomen, Baroness Karren Brady of Knightsbridge CBE and Lady Michelle Mone, Baroness of Mayfair OBE, will be bringing their business experience to the first annual Women in Business EXPO in 2019.

Launched by Hub Exhibitions, Women in Business EXPO is a new free-to-attend event designed to provide an environment where women can learn, network and share experiences. The event, which will take place 16-17 October 2019 at Farnborough International Conference and Exhibition Centre, Hampshire, will provide attendees with a range of fascinating talks and access to leading companies, which will be providing business, franchise and career opportunities along with support for future career moves.

Baroness Karren Brady will kick off the event on day one with an empowering session on business and career development, drawing on her work as Vice Chairman of West Ham F.C, a Peer in the House of Lords and Small Business Ambassador for the Government. Star of The Apprentice, Karren is recognised as the first woman in football, having transformed Birmingham City Football Club, taking it from administration to the stock market during her time, the latter of which made her the youngest Managing Director of a PLC in the UK.

Lady Michelle Mone is set to open day two of the conference with a fascinating and inspiring look at how she built her multi-million-pound lingerie business, Ultimo Brands International, from the ground up. As a peer in the House of Lords, OBE recipient and Start-Up Business Tsar for the Government, Michelle is one of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs and is set to provide attendees with practical and honest business advice.

Michelle commented: “I’m delighted to be speaking at Women in Business EXPO. This event is so important to highlight and show how women of today can overcome the unique challenges faced in work and business, and provide the inspiration for a new beginning.”

Christie Day, Group Event Director for Women in Business EXPO also commented: “According to the Women’s Business Council there has been a ‘significant shift’ in the experiences of women in the workplace in the last five years. But there’s still challenges to be overcome. We want to empower women to confidently take the next step in their working lives, and to feel comfortable juggling the work/life balance. Whether you’re returning to work, planning the next chapter in your career, looking to start a business or considering franchising, we launched Women in Business EXPO with you in mind.”

Other inspiring speakers at the event include:

• Caprice Bourret, the supermodel turned highly successful entrepreneur will share her incredible experience building a global company and share tips for setting up a business in changing economic times.
• Cynthia V Davis, founder and CEO of BAME Recruitment, will dig into the role female entrepreneurs play in being visible leaders and challenging the status quo with diversity
• Suzanne Burke, Head of Operations for the Office of the Small Business Commissioner, will be sharing her wealth of knowledge on the small business market in the UK and top tips to overcome some of the biggest challenges small businesses face around payments.

This year’s event, sponsored by NatWest, Sky, Vodafone, Avast,Pure Storageand Red Hat,will include dedicated areas on Women in Tech, Women in Franchise and Women in Finance. Attendees will also have access to a specialist CV and interview clinic, to help hone skills in applying for that next job, along with a franchise matchmaking service, which will provide advice on starting a franchise and suitable investments, and a focused wellbeing track, featuring top tips and interactive workshops to help improve wellbeing in the workplace.

Uses of machine learning in finance

If you wonder whether to implement AI and Machine Learning into your financial business or not, this is an article for you.

We will discuss here the advantages and disadvantages of this solution. Machine Learning is ideal for the financial service’s industry because there is always an enormous database to operate and the more data you have the better for you because due to that the AI can learn faster.

Yes, investing in Machine Learning requires some significant amount of money which often is a major concern but the payback is quick to be noticed. Here are some examples of what Machine Learning is capable of doing.

Automation of customer service

The use of Machine Learning saves your company’s energy, money and time. It can even replace regular employees by taking over the whole part of the company responsible for customer service. AI can answer e-mails and phone calls, and can also respond to requests via chat on a website. The program can teach itself to answer more and more accurately, and eventually become the master of customer service. Machine Learning can also provide the company with improved training for employees and even perform it.

But then, these solutions are obvious and do not regard only financial businesses. Well, when it comes specifically to the field of finance, AI has also a lot to offer. For example, it is very effective in detecting fraud, helping to make the best trading decisions and instantly predicting a level of credit risk.

Detecting fraud

It is sometimes hard to see small anomalies in the financial habits of customers and to be honest no one can monitor all their clients all the time. AI, on the other hand, can. It processes tons of information every second and detects those anomalies in an instance. What is more, it can not only detect but also immediately prevent fraud because of how fast and accurate it operates. Preventing fraud results in blocking suspicious operations, transactions, and accounts. Of course, if there is enough percent chance of them being abusive.

Processing information on credit risk

Automation of analyzing the solvency and credit risk of any customer benefits companies greatly. There is a really small chance of any mistake and there are no emotions involved in the process which unfortunately is essential in financial services. Generally speaking, AI protects your company from making bad financial decisions that can hurt your business. It considers many factors, some of which could seem irrelevant to a human being but all in all, make a great difference.

Analyzing the stock market

AI is capable of analyzing thousands of data all day and all night to track patterns and predict the state of the market. That is something that no human could ever achieve. Nevertheless, the results of those operations are very desirable. Every little change that has been predicted can save or earn lots of money within seconds.

Read more: https://addepto.com/finance/

Could TikTok be the next massive social network for small firms?

When you are at the helm of a small but ambitious business, trying to get the word out about it can pose various problems.

After all, your marketing pockets aren’t as deep as those of the long-established, big-name players, and even marketing on social media can seem expensive these days.

That’s because, unfortunately, every marketer and their dog seem to be on there, giving you a lot of tough competition to fend off. However, levelling the playing field could be just a matter of choosing the right social network. Could the emerging TikTok be exactly that network?

A beginner’s guide to TikTok

We know what you’re probably thinking: you have no idea what TikTok actually is. That would be understandable, given its largely teenage fanbase; according to Business News Daily, over 40% of the TikTok app’s users are aged between 10 and 19.

However, this begs another obvious question: “what is the TikTok app?” The app itself enables its 500 million monthly users to shoot short-form, musically-influenced videos, sprinkle them with a few chosen lenses, filters and AR features and then share these video creations on the TikTok network.

Yes, it already sounds like fun – no wonder so many members of that young demographic cohort, Generation X, are addicted. Being able to unlock the conundrum of how to reach those people is just one reason why marketing on TikTok is well worth considering.

No huge marketing budget? No problem!

Trying to scrape together the money for an extensive advertising campaign on social media can be arduous for a small business, and that’s hardly surprising when you consider what they would be up against. On the likes of Facebook and Twitter, there is so much competition for advertising spots that the gatekeepers – the social media sites, we mean – hold much of the bargaining power.

However, until relatively recently, TikTok had no paid advertising opportunities of which to speak. The network has recently been implementing options, including takeovers of both brands and hashtags, while native content ads can be inserted seamlessly into feeds.

Even now, though, advertising on TikTok is much cheaper than doing so on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, as you won’t be faced with nearly as much competition in your bid for sponsorship and ad placements. You should act on these lower costs now, before saturation sets in…

Gen X marks the surprisingly lucrative spot

It’s tempting to dismiss Generation X as a bunch of smartphone-addicted youngsters, but such ridicule would be at your own peril. Their buying power is growing, and you can build trust with them by producing content that is both authentic and consistent.

That’s straightforward on TikTok, where overly polished-looking content could actually look out of place amidst the eccentric creativity that runs riot on the platform. With Generation X weekly streaming an average of 23 hours of video content as per a Forbesreport, the case for marketing on TikTok – and reaching out to the notoriously hard-to-reach Gen X – gets even stronger.

Starling Bank partners with SumUp to give customers faster payouts

Starling Bank has partnered with SumUp, Europe’s leading mobile point of sale company, to provide small merchants with access to faster settlements.

With its card terminals relied upon by over 1.5m users globally, SumUp is helping small business merchants by delivering access to affordable and easy-to-use payment devices. Their terminals can be used with an accompanying app and, crucially, without an app, via their standalone 3G Reader solution which comes with an integrated free data card.

Starling’s Banking Services business provides fintechs, such as SumUp, with access to key payment schemes and a full bank offering all through a simple API.

While SumUp enables merchants to accept card payments in seconds with just an easy-to-use device in hand, traditional banking providers and existing card rails means the process of settlement for small businesses currently requires a waiting time of two to four days for payments to clear through. By using Starling Banking Services, SumUp can now ensure their UK merchants will soon receive payments on the next business day and do not need to wait days to see the money their customers have paid them for their products and services.

Starling’s Banking Services continues to grow with this new partnership, serving disruptive and innovative payments businesses across the fintech ecosystem. Existing clients include the Department for Work and Pensions, the savings and investment marketplace Raisin UK and fintechs Currency Cloud, Pockit, PelicanPay and Vitesse.

Helen Bierton, Head of Banking at Starling Bank said, “Small businesses are the lifeblood of an innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem, so making sure they can receive the rewards of their hard work is incredibly important. Our partnership with SumUp means that whether a small merchant is serving coffee or cutting hair, we are helping to ensure they get paid as quickly as possible so they can get on with growing their businesses.”

Dimitri Gugunava, VP Banking and Acquiring at SumUp said, “We always look for new ways to improve the services we offer our 1.5m merchants worldwide on a journey of empowering them to succeed while doing what they love. Quicker payouts is an important step which we were able to take through our partnership with Starling Bank.”

Starling was the first challenger bank to be a direct member of the Faster Payments Service and the only banking provider of real-time access to Faster Payments through APIs in the transaction banking world. Starling’s pioneering Banking Services platform enables businesses, including Payment Service Providers, retailers, corporations and fintechs to develop and scale new products and to move money in seconds.

Through their simple APIs, this can be done quickly and efficiently without the need for long development lead-times and complex legal arrangements. Starling customers can pick and choose individual components, or product features, to revolutionise how they make payments and innovate new products for their customers.