Latest news with #TCF
Scoop
5 days ago
- Business
- Scoop
New Code To Strengthen Support For Vulnerable Telecommunications Consumers
Press Release – NZ Telecommunications Forum – TCF The Vulnerable Consumer Code takes effect six months after its approval date of 22 May 2025 and full compliance is required within 12 months. The New Zealand Telecommunications Forum (TCF) has today announced the release of the Vulnerable Consumer Code, a voluntary industry-led initiative designed to provide greater protection and support for telecommunications customers who are dependent on fixed-line services due to health, safety, or disability reasons. The code sets out clear obligations for Retail Service Providers (RSPs) and Network Operators to ensure that Registered Consumers—those with verified needs—receive priority support in the provision, maintenance, and repair of essential fixed-line services. This initiative is aimed at fostering consistent care practices across the sector and aligns with existing consumer protection measures such as the Commerce Commission's 111 Contact Code. The Code covers services delivered over copper, fibre, fixed wireless, HFC, and satellite networks. Paul Brislen, CEO of the New Zealand Telecommunications Forum, says 'This Code reinforces the industry's commitment to ensuring no consumer is left unsupported, particularly those whose wellbeing depends on reliable telecommunications.' The Code will take effect six months after its approval date of 22 May 2025, with full compliance required within 12 months.
Scoop
5 days ago
- Business
- Scoop
New Code To Strengthen Support For Vulnerable Telecommunications Consumers
The New Zealand Telecommunications Forum (TCF) has today announced the release of the Vulnerable Consumer Code, a voluntary industry-led initiative designed to provide greater protection and support for telecommunications customers who are dependent on fixed-line services due to health, safety, or disability reasons. The code sets out clear obligations for Retail Service Providers (RSPs) and Network Operators to ensure that Registered Consumers—those with verified needs—receive priority support in the provision, maintenance, and repair of essential fixed-line services. This initiative is aimed at fostering consistent care practices across the sector and aligns with existing consumer protection measures such as the Commerce Commission's 111 Contact Code. The Code covers services delivered over copper, fibre, fixed wireless, HFC, and satellite networks. Paul Brislen, CEO of the New Zealand Telecommunications Forum, says 'This Code reinforces the industry's commitment to ensuring no consumer is left unsupported, particularly those whose wellbeing depends on reliable telecommunications.' The Code will take effect six months after its approval date of 22 May 2025, with full compliance required within 12 months.
Finextra
22-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Temenos Community Forum welcomes an era of innovation, customer centricity and agentic tools
Temenos CEO Jean-Pierre Brulard opened this year's Temenos Community Forum (TCF), in Madrid, Spain, with an impassioned speech focused on customer and partner gratitude. 0 This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. Contextualising the scope of the payments landscape and its desire to innovate, Brulard explained that the plenary hall contained 1000 people from 90 countries. Against the backdrop of 347 go-live projects, he went on to list some of the key points of celebration across different continents - mostly the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Importantly, whilst assisted and enabled by Temenos, Brulard made sure to congratulate the customer implementation. Backing up their increased focus on customer centricity, Brulard described his 45,000 miles of travel on what he termed as his 'Listening & Learning Tour' where he directly gathered feedback from existing customers and partners. This feedback, he explained, was broken down into four key challenges: Growth via differentiation and technology; Improvement of customer centricity across multi-channel methodologies; Operational efficiencies; and Risk and compliance. In response, Brulard said: "These challenges were existing already last year. They are not new. This year, you are facing a new one: macroeconomic uncertainty. In times of uncertainty, you have two options: one is to wait and see and to postpone your investment, and the second one is really to focus your investment on what really matters, which is technology. As we have seen in the past, during different times of crisis and uncertainty, the banks that have invested in technology not only perform better, but widen the gap with the others." Following this and reiterating Temenos solutions being co-designed by the customer through implemented feedback, Brulard unveiled the provider's mission statement, tagline and an accompanying video. The tagline summarises all of these elements neatly: Leading Banking Forward. Concluding his session, Brulard said: "It is not only our journey, it is our collective purpose as a community to lead banking forward. You are not in this room by coincidence, you are here because you have shown leadership." Leveraging AI: building less, building better Barb Morgan, chief product and technology officer, unveiled several generative AI and agentic AI developments. Morgan started, in some sense, where Brulard finished: re-establishing the importance of banking on society and with the contributions of customers: "We didn't create this mission in a boardroom: we shaped it with you, with our customers, our partners, and our people. It's grounded in the fact that banking isn't standing still and neither are we. To me, leading banking forward is more than a mission, it's a commitment, it's a call to action because what we do has foundational impacts on economies, on businesses and on peoples' lives. [...] Now my job is to make it real." Morgan later described a story of a mother whose house had been lost during a tornado in the US and had been helped by a local banker. While it was an emotive story, it also emphasised the impact banks have. Before unveiling Temenos' GenAI Copilot tool, a full customer rollout of an internally developed tool, Morgan explained that the intention is to build less but build better, reiterating the motto of "listening to lead." This was later demonstrated by a theatrical performance of a typical use case. A fictional customer spoke to the audience through the copilot tool, which was embedded into Microsoft Teams and assisted them with applying overdraft limits and interest rates on an account. Morgan also announced two other developments: the Temenos AI Studio and FCM AI Agent. Discussing their AI Studio, she said: "In the past, we would have conversations with our customers and they'd tell us what they need us to build and we'd say okay. Now we're going to have those conversations, we're gonna bring our expertise and impact, but if you need anything specific to you, we're also going to provide our AI Studio so that you have the ability to develop, customise, deploy and monitor your own models. We'll preload it with banking modules that you can start from, we'll provide training and support that then allow you to build those for yourselves.' Lastly, when announcing the FCM AI Agent, she described it as a training solution that focuses on compliance, risk, and financial crime. This agent, Morgan explained, is not just an AI solution that provides clarity, intelligence and security insight but that it is also "the first solution of its kind to receive regulatory acceptance for explainable reason and sanctioned screening." Increasing innovation and systemising service During an announcement-packed first day of the conference, there was also a discussion from Temenos CRO, Will Moroney, who explained how their service delivery is systemised and collaborated on in such a manner that their team is not just the 750 colleagues, but also the 8000 people within their partnerships. This message was backed up by a belief that if, when visiting product management offices, Moroney could not "determine who the Temenos person is, that is the definition of success." During the rest of the day, there were more discussions around innovation and the purposeful usage of generative AI and agentic AI. These took the form of a case study conversation with Paul Weiss, CTO, Regions Bank; Marnix Tummers, IT director, wealth management, ABN AMRO; and a keynote from Christian Saredis, chief executive, EMEA Financial Services, Microsoft. The first day of TCF can be summarised in tone, quite succinctly, by an Oren Harari quote referenced by Saredis: "The electric light didn't come from the continuous improvement of the candle."
Engadget
14-05-2025
- Business
- Engadget
Appeals court confirms that tracking-based online advertising is illegal in Europe
The Belgian Court of Appeal ruled today that the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) currently used as the foundation for most online advertising is illegal in the EU. This decision upholds the findings of the Belgian Data Protection Authority from 2022 that the technology underpinning online ads violates several principles of the General Data Protection Regulations , an EU digital privacy law that took effect in 2018. Engadget's Daniel Cooper wrote a thorough explainer of the different systems that support the current online advertising ecosystem, which is valuable reading for anybody spending time online. The very simplified version is that advertisers participate in real-time bidding (RTB) to show their content online. Currently, those bids are based on information gathered from tracking individuals' activities online with cookies. The TCF was created by the Interactive Advertising Bureau as a way to standardize how websites ask users for permission to be tracked. The original 2022 decision determined that both the consent collected by the TCF and the data collected in the RTB process were illegal under the GDPR. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement "Today's court's decision shows that the consent system used by Google, Amazon, X, Microsoft, deceives hundreds of millions of Europeans," said Dr Johnny Ryan, director of Enforce at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, who has been leading the legal charge against the current approach to ad tech. "The tech industry has sought to hide its vast data breach behind sham consent popups. Tech companies turned the GDPR into a daily nuisance rather than a shield for people." The reaction from IAB Europe, which filed the appeal, seems to mostly be relief that it hasn't been found responsible for the data collected by TCF. "The Market Court has rejected the APD's view that IAB Europe is a joint controller together with TCF participants for their own respective processing of personal data, for instance for the purpose of digital advertising," the organization's statement says. IAB Europe notes that it has already suggested changes to the TCF that better reflect the "limited controllership" and submitted them to the Belgian Data Protection Authority. The group faced fines and was ordered to rebuild its current ad-tech framework as a result of the original decision. We've also reached out to some of the major advertisers that use the RTB technology for comment on the ruling. While this does seem like a big win for privacy advocates and internet users in the EU, it's unclear exactly what the next steps will be for advertisers and for ad tech systems. Most likely, regulators will oversee changes the IAB Europe makes to the TCF, so consent pop-ups may not yet be a thing of the past.
The Sun
28-04-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Tax Matters – Tax Corporate Governance Framework the way forward for large businesses
THE Inland Revenue Board (IRB) has opened its doors to large taxpayers and offer them an opportunity to cooperate with them to manage their tax affairs with the ultimate intention of providing certainty to the taxpayers grounded on building trust and transparency between both parties. This programme is called the Tax Corporate Governance Framework (TCGF). This is a two-way process where there will be open lines of communication between the two parties to minimise potential disagreements. Internationally, many countries have initiated this programme, and the underlying principle is 'cooperative compliance'. The purpose is to encourage taxpayers to improve the level and quality of compliance such that the tax authorities have a sustainable recurring revenue source with minimal deployment of resources. Ultimate aim The principal goal here is to ensure that taxpayers report the correct taxes in their tax returns, and the taxes are paid on time. To achieve this, the IRB needs to be satisfied that there is a system of controls in place in the taxpayer organisations which will produce the required results reliably. This must start with data collection points such as sales, purchases, orders, etc, and thereafter the data must be recorded accurately and must be complete. The data must be processed and analysed in accordance with the tax principles, and while doing this, tax risks must be identified and managed in accordance with the company's tax philosophy without infringing the tax laws. If there is a conflict between the tax philosophy of the organisation on a particular transaction versus the IRB's current position, the TCGF allows the taxpayer to engage with the IRB prior to the transaction being undertaken, or prior to the filing of the tax return. This avenue provides near certainty on where the taxpayer stands in relation to any controversial tax issues. This was not available in the past, and it is a 'golden opportunity' for taxpayers to avoid future surprises. Eligibility for participation There are three conditions to be met: large companies, public listed companies, government linked companies and state-owned enterprise earning RM100 million and above; taxpayers who have been filing their tax returns and paying their taxes diligently for the past three years; and taxpayers with established tax control framework (TCF). All three conditions must be fulfilled. Investment holding companies and dormant companies are not eligible. The reality on the ground level is that most companies do not have comprehensive TCF in place. To encourage organisations to participate in the TCGF, the IRB must not impose the availability of a TCF as a precondition for entering the programme. If there is a willingness and a clear commitment by the organisation to institute a TCF, the IRB should accept such organisations into the programme and allow them a grace period of six to 12 months to institute a TCF to increase the level of participation by the large companies. The RM100 million threshold is reasonable for manufacturing companies where the material element is large, and achieving the RM100 million threshold is much easier when compared to companies in the services sector which principally relies on manpower. If the IRB wants to increase the participation of the service companies, then the threshold of RM100 million should be reduced to a smaller amount. Implementation timeline Taxpayers should be advised that implementing the TCGF programme will entail anywhere from nine to 15 months. Once you have been accepted into TCGF, you will be subject to less scrutiny on your tax returns for the next three years together with a dedicated officer from the IRB being assigned to each participant. The underlying intention here is to avoid audits and investigations for such taxpayers. However, if there are significant fluctuations or variations that need an explanation, there will be a dialogue initiated by the IRB or by the taxpayer to understand such fluctuations.
