Corporate Vision August 2026 Modern Banking and Efficient Payments Processing with Finastra A modern enterprise payments hub, Finastra Global PAYplus helps financial institutions modernise payments, simplify operations and compliance, and accelerate innovation. Built for scale, resilience and the real-time era, the ISO 20022-native, cloud-agnostic, multi-rail platform sits at the centre of Finastra’s payments portfolio. Following Finastra’s recognition as Best Payments Software & Solutions Company 2026 in this year’s Technology Excellence Awards, this feature explores how Global PAYplus is helping banks transform payments with greater control, flexibility and efficiency.
AI Global Media, Ltd. (AI) takes reasonable measures to ensure the quality of the information on this web site. However, AI will not assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, correctness or completeness of any information that is available through this web site. If errors are brought to our attention, we will try to correct them. The information available through the website and our partner publications is for your general information and use and is not intended to address any particular finance or investment requirements. In particular, the information does not constitute any form of advice or recommendation by us or any of our partner publications and is not intended to be relied upon by users in making or refraining from making any investment or financial decisions. Appropriate independent advice should be obtained before making any such decision. Any arrangement made between you and any third party named in the site is at your sole risk and responsibility. Welcome to the August 2026 issue of Corporate Vision Magazine, a monthly publication dedicated to delivering the latest insight and news from across the corporate landscape. This edition sees us take a deep dive into the work of Finastra Global PAYplus, the modern enterprise payments hub that is accelerating payments through innovation. Offering unified payments from a single hub, Finastra Global PAYplus is trusted by customers all over the world. More on the single solution that is leading the future of payments can be found inside. Also within these pages, we cover the latest developments in cybersecurity and hear from an industry expert on how AI and automation are driving sustainable growth for small businesses. All of this and much more await in the latest edition of Corporate Vision Magazine, which remains committed to sharing success stories and reflecting on the developments of everything relating to the future of better business. Sofi Parry, Senior Editor Website: www.corporatevision-news.com Editors Letter Editorial Team Sofi Parry, Senior Editor | Kita Thomas, Writer | Joshua Beardsmore, Writer Design Team Emma Hunt, Creative Team Manager | Lauren Baldwin, Graphic Designer
Contents 4. News - Health and Wellbeing More Important Than Salary in Recruitment and Retention for 44% of Companies - UK Companies Warned Over ‘One-Size- Fits-All’ Approach to Global Staff Leave 7. Scaling Smarter: How SMBs Are Using AI and Automation to Drive Sustainable Growth 8. Modern Banking and Efficient Payments Processing with Finastra 12. GC Cybersecurity: Redefining Enterprise Data Protection
Corporate Vision Health and Wellbeing More Important Than Salary in Recruitment and Retention for 44% of Companies Supporting the health and wellbeing of staff is the most important factor for the recruitment and retention of talent, according to new figures released by employee benefits experts at Everywhen. Health and wellbeing support was classed as the most important factor by 44% of employers, similar to, and indeed slightly above, salary levels (43%), revealing the magnitude of the value placed on workplace health and wellbeing. Debra Clark, Head of Wellbeing at Everywhen, says: “We were hoping and expecting that employers would recognise the important role health and wellbeing support plays in recruitment and retention, but even we were surprised that it is seen as more important than salary.” Related to health and wellbeing, working hours and practices were classed as important for recruitment and retention by 42% of employers, while company culture and ethos were stated as important by a third (33%) of employers. Most important factors for recruitment and retention Health and wellbeing support- 44% Salary levels- 43% Working hours and practices- 42% Training and career progression- 38% Company culture and ethos- 33% Pension provision- 23% Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy- 14% Looking in greater detail at the research, the health and wellbeing programmes offered by UK companies are seen as being more important to employee retention than to recruitment. Indeed, 39% of employers said that the way they support the health and wellbeing of employees is a key reason people stay with the company. Alongside this, 24% of employers stated that the health and wellbeing support offered is a key reason people decide to work for the company in the first place. Moreover, employers are using health and wellbeing support strategically, with over a third (34%) stating that it helps them to recruit and retain key demographics of staff, for example, by age and gender. With the value that health and wellbeing support adds, it is a good idea for employers to actively promote the support they offer. Internal promotion will assist with the retention of talent, whilst external promotion should be considered for recruitment. Nearly one in five employers (19%), unfortunately, stated that their company does not offer enough health and wellbeing support and that this impacts their ability to recruit and retain people. The role of health and wellbeing support Health and wellbeing support is key to employee retention- 39% Health and wellbeing support helps recruit and retain key demographics of staff, for example, by age and gender- 34% Health and wellbeing support is key to recruitment- 24% We don’t offer enough health and wellbeing support, and this impacts our ability to recruit and retain people- 19% Debra Clark comments: “It is great that employers recognise how they can use health and wellbeing benefits to recruit and retain specific demographics, helping to find and match talent with any gaps in the workplace. This shows how employee benefits can be as fundamental to the health and wellbeing of the company as they are to the health and wellbeing of the workforce. For the 19% that feel their recruitment and retention is negatively impacted by lack of health and wellbeing support, perhaps this can help to prove that the outcome is worth the investment.” Differences by Size of Company Larger companies place greater emphasis on health and wellbeing to help them recruit and retain talent, whereas SMEs rely more on salary. However, as SMEs often need to compete with their larger counterparts for talent, they may have even more to gain if they look after their staff, and they may find this is a more costeffective way to attract and retain talent than having to increase salaries. Debra Clark concludes: “Whilst budgets may be tight, it is shortsighted of employers not to put what they can into health and wellbeing support. With the value that can be added for recruitment and retention alone, a strategic and thoughtful health and wellbeing programme can pay for itself. Employee benefits experts will be able to help put plans in place so that health and wellbeing support can be matched to the requirements and objectives of the company.”
News UK Companies Warned Over ‘One-SizeFits-All’ Approach to Global Staff Leave 81% of UK-based employers who already have employees overseas intend to increase their workforce abroad, according to fresh statistics. However, as businesses manage the annual surge in summer leave requests, managing annual leave across international teams is becoming increasingly complex. For companies employing people in multiple countries, holiday policies are no longer just an internal HR issue. Different legal frameworks and employee protections can create compliance risks if businesses apply the same approach globally. For example, while UK employers have broad discretion over when leave can be taken, rejecting a similar request in Germany could potentially lead to a labour court dispute if employees believe their statutory rights are being restricted unfairly. The experts at Teamed say many growing businesses underestimate how quickly international workforce management becomes challenging, particularly when hiring overseas without a local entity or Employer of Record structure. Tom Price-Daniel, Co-founder of Teamed, explains: “Companies can now hire across borders in a matter of weeks. The problem is most of them are doing it with a rulebook written for one country.” “What feels like a routine HR call in the UK can blow up somewhere else entirely. Turn down annual leave, get working time wrong, apply the wrong policy in the wrong market, and you are suddenly looking at employee disputes, financial penalties, and a reputation problem that costs far more than the hire ever did.” Why UK holiday rules can become a legal headache overseas 1. The ‘one-size-fits-all’ HR mistake that could land employers in trouble abroad Applying the same holiday policy across every country might seem efficient, but it can quickly create compliance issues. Annual leave laws vary between countries, covering everything from mandatory holiday allowances and public holidays to sick leave protections, carry-over rules, and when employers can reject time-off requests. In countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and France, employee protections are often stricter than in the UK or US, giving businesses less flexibility around leave management. International employers therefore need locally compliant policies that protect the business while providing consistency for global teams. 2. The global workforce admin nightmare growing businesses cannot afford to ignore Managing leave manually across multiple countries becomes increasingly difficult as international teams scale. Centralised systems can provide visibility over leave allowances, public holidays, overlapping absences, and country-specific employment obligations, helping businesses identify potential compliance gaps. They can also highlight when increasing headcount in a particular country means continuing without a local entity is no longer sustainable operationally, financially, or legally. 3. When hiring abroad starts to reshape your legal risk Companies often hire overseas because they have found the strongest candidate for a role. However, as they build larger teams within the same country, their legal and operational obligations can shift. For instance, a UK-headquartered company employing six or more people in the Netherlands may need to consider whether establishing a local legal entity is more practical and cost-effective. Likewise, US companies with staff in the UK need to stay on top of evolving UK employment regulations and understand how changes affect their workforce. Tom Price-Daniel adds: “Hiring internationally gives you access to brilliant people anywhere in the world. It can also turn into a compliance nightmare quicker than most leaders expect.” “A lot of companies treat it as a recruitment problem. Find the person, send the offer, done. But every new country is a completely different set of employment laws, worker protections, and tax obligations. What works perfectly in the UK can land you in serious trouble in Germany or Brazil.” “The companies winning globally are not the ones hiring the fastest. They are the ones who put the local expertise and the proper processes in place before the cracks start showing.”
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August 2026 | 7 Scaling Smarter: How SMBs Are Using AI and Automation to Drive Sustainable Growth By Kristin Marquet, Founder & CEO of Marquet Media Most small and mid-sized businesses don’t have a growth problem; they have a systems problem. In the rush to scale, many founders default to doing more: more content, more outreach, more manual processes. AI has only accelerated this behavior. Businesses are adopting tools quickly, but often without a clear strategy, resulting in more noise than meaningful progress. The result is a familiar pattern: increased activity, minimal efficiency, and very little sustainable growth. AI and automation are not shortcuts to scale. When used correctly, they are infrastructure. The companies seeing real results are not simply layering AI onto existing workflows. They are rethinking how work gets done in the first place. The first shift is understanding that process comes before tools. Most SMBs adopt AI reactively. They add a chatbot, automate a few emails, or experiment with content generation. But without a clearly defined workflow, these tools operate in isolation. They don’t reduce friction or improve outcomes; they simply add another layer of complexity. Sustainable growth starts with clarity. What are the core functions of the business? Where are the bottlenecks? Which tasks are repeated daily, weekly, or monthly? Once those patterns are mapped, AI can be applied with precision. The second shift is automating repeatable decisions, not just tasks. There is a difference between saving time and creating leverage. True scalability comes from removing decision fatigue across the business. Lead qualification, onboarding flows, client communication, and follow-ups are all areas where structured automation can create consistency without sacrificing quality. When these systems are in place, the business becomes less dependent on constant manual input. Teams can focus on revenuegenerating work, such as strategy, relationships, and creative direction, rather than operational upkeep. The third shift is using AI to enhance services, not replace them. One of the biggest misconceptions is that AI should replace human input. In reality, its greatest value is in amplification. It allows businesses to deliver faster, more personalized, and more consistent experiences at scale. For service-based businesses in particular, this is where the real opportunity lies. AI can support research, streamline content creation, and improve responsiveness, but the strategic layer—the insight, the positioning, the decision-making—still belongs to the founder or the team. The businesses that understand this distinction can scale without diluting their value. When applied strategically and thoughtfully, AI and automation do more than improve efficiency. They create long-term stability. Processes become repeatable. Outcomes become more predictable. Growth becomes less reactive and more intentional and sustainable. This is especially important for SMBs operating without large teams or unlimited resources. Instead of expanding through constant effort, they expand through structure. The future of growth is not about doing more. It is about building systems that allow the business to operate at a higher level with less friction. AI is not the strategy. It is the support system. The businesses that scale successfully will be the ones that recognize this early and build accordingly.
Corporate Vision Modern Banking and Efficient Payments Processing with Finastra
August 2026 | 9 Finastra is a global financial services software provider trusted by banks, credit unions, community banks, corporates and financial institutions to deliver secure, reliable and mission-critical technology. Finastra combines deep financial services expertise built over two decades serving some of the largest banks in the world with continued investment in open, modern platforms. Its payments solutions support more than 600 customers globally to deliver growth and superior customer experiences. Across its portfolio, Finastra helps financial institutions modernise complex payment environments, reduce operational friction and respond faster to evolving customer, market and regulatory expectations. Global PAYplus is Finastra’s enterprise payments hub for financial institutions that need to centralise processing, support multiple payment types and scale securely across high-volume environments. The platform helps banks manage real-time, highvalue, cross-border payments and Mass Payments through a single, configurable architecture, supporting faster time to market while reducing complexity and risk. The need for this capability is clear. The rapid adoption of instant payments, ISO 20022, alternative payment models and cloud-native technologies has exposed the limitations of many legacy payment systems. High maintenance costs, fragmented architectures, slower processing, limited flexibility and weak data visibility can make it difficult for banks to meet rising expectations or introduce new services quickly. By moving to a centralised payments hub, financial institutions can standardise processing, improve resilience and support growing digital payment volumes. This is particularly important for global and large super-regional banks that must compete with fintechs while maintaining control, compliance and reliability across markets. Global PAYplus enables centralised processing for incoming and outgoing payments while supporting compliance with market and scheme requirements. Its ability to process multiple payment types through one hub can improve straight-through processing, reduce manual intervention and give banks a stronger foundation for operational efficiency. The platform also simplifies IT and payments architecture by reducing the number of interfaces and systems required compared with fragmented legacy estates. This supports faster, more accurate data, improved regulatory reporting, lower operational costs and the ability to process millions of payments daily. Designed to integrate with existing bank architecture, Global PAYplus supports deployment across cloud and on-premises environments. Its cloud-agnostic approach, containerisation and microservices-based architecture help institutions modernise progressively without locking themselves into a single infrastructure model. Finastra is also extending the value of its payments hubs through AI-enabled capabilities such as exception handling, repair support and advanced analytics. These capabilities are designed to help operations teams improve visibility, reduce manual effort and make better-informed decisions across the payments lifecycle. Radha Suvarna, Chief Product Officer, Payments at Finastra, said of the solution: “Global PAYplus is designed to help financial institutions centralise all payment types within a given market or across markets into a single solution; a solution that is forward compatible to payments evolution while meeting the scalability, security, resiliency, and business continuity requirements of institutions globally.” A modern enterprise payments hub, Finastra Global PAYplus helps financial institutions modernise payments, simplify operations and compliance, and accelerate innovation. Built for scale, resilience and the real-time era, the ISO 20022-native, cloud-agnostic, multi-rail platform sits at the centre of Finastra’s payments portfolio. Following Finastra’s recognition as Best Payments Software & Solutions Company 2026 in this year’s Technology Excellence Awards, this feature explores how Global PAYplus is helping banks transform payments with greater control, flexibility and efficiency. “By implementing Finastra Global PAYplus, we have significantly reduced manual intervention and processing and the time it takes to process a payment. Our STP rate for domestic payments is now nearly 100%, and for cross-border, it is more than 90%, which has helped improve our customers’ satisfaction.” – Ms. Vu Thi Xuan Tho, Vietcombank
Corporate Vision accelerated revenue growth through differentiation, improve operational efficiencies and improve risk and resiliency - as opposed to a one-off upgrade to their technology.” That perspective is central to the value of Global PAYplus. By treating modernisation as a platform investment, banks can launch services faster, respond to customer expectations more effectively and build the resilience needed for continuous change. Hundreds of institutions globally already rely on Finastra to support financial services technology. As payment ecosystems continue to evolve, Finastra is expanding its payments capabilities across AI, new payment models and emerging technologies to help financial institutions remain ready for what comes next. Named Best Payments Software & Solutions Company 2026 as part of the Technology Excellence Awards, Finastra continues to demonstrate the role modern payments technology can play in helping banks simplify operations, improve resilience and create room for innovation. Global PAYplus is a clear example of that focus: a scalable, configurable enterprise payments hub built for the demands of modern banking. To find out more about Global PAYplus or Finastra’s wider portfolio of financial services solutions, visit the company website below. Contact: Larisa Alexandra Ciobanu Company: Finastra Web Address: https://www.finastra.com/ Finastra’s payments focus is reinforced by continued investment in research and development across its portfolio. This includes Finastra OperatorAssist, recognised through the company’s inclusion in the AIFinTech100, which supports generative AI across the payments lifecycle when used with Finastra’s cloudagnostic payment hubs. OperatorAssist is designed for payments operations rather than generic assistance. It can interpret ISO 20022 messages, error codes and operational workflows, helping teams investigate exceptions, understand issues and receive guided repair recommendations through a payments-aware interface. This matters because even when straight-through processing rates are high, banks can still spend disproportionate time on the small percentage of payments that require investigation or repair. As volumes grow and new rails and regulations are introduced, reducing this operational burden becomes increasingly important for scale. By combining AI with human-in-the-loop, analytics and payments-specific intelligence, OperatorAssist helps streamline exception management and simplify day-to-day payment operations. For financial institutions, this can support better efficiency, improved responsiveness and stronger operational resilience. For Finastra, payment modernisation is not merely a technology refresh but a long-term strategic investment to drive the right business outcomes for our customers. As Radha Suvarna notes, “the banks that will benefit most from modernising payments are those who view it as a strategic priority to drive business outcomes including lowering Total Cost of Ownership,
August 2026 | 11
Corporate Vision GC Cybersecurity: Redefining Enterprise Data Protection In today’s rapidly evolving world, one cybersecurity company has identified a glaring problem within security architecture: the cybersecurity threat landscape has crossed a threshold across which static security tools will never catch up. To address this growing problem, GC Cybersecurity has developed a platform acknowledged as the industry’s most advanced defence against malicious and purposeful acts of information and data exfiltration. We spoke with Co-Founder and CEO Tarique Mustafa for more, as GC Cybersecurity is named in the Technology Excellence Awards 2026. Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, GC Cybersecurity is the proud provider of innovative, advanced data protection solutions that promote data security. The company was founded by security industry veterans and now operates with the support of the industry’s leading authorities. With a stellar reputation across the sector, GC Cybersecurity serves marquee name clients in the financial, government and security, oil and gas, education, hi-tech, and transportation industries. To these clients, GC Cybersecurity offers the Information Security and Enforcement (ISE), a 5th generation cybersecurity platform. Powered by a breakthrough DeepAI engine, ISE delivers fully autonomous, zero-trust data protection across generative AI, email, cloud storage, SaaS applications, and collaboration platforms. It is the world’s first autonomous data protection platform that continually observes, understands, and protects sensitive data in real time, without human interaction. This solution has become essential across a wide range of sector; as state-sponsored bad actors leverage AI to execute much more sophisticated, comprehensive, and increasingly asymmetric attack vectors, the static protection afforded by most legacy cybersecurity platforms is decreasing over time at a rapid rate. “By the time an AI-powered cyber-attack has been detected, stopped, and diagnosed, valuable enterprise assets like sensitive enterprise data are already gone,” explained Tarique. “Cyber attacks of any scale will not break out autonomous, AI-powered data protection.” The average number of days to identify and contain a cyber attack is 287, with 83% of enterprises suffering multiple breaches at an average cost of $10.2M. The ISE platform autonomously observes and classifies all data in transit, as well as actors sending and receiving this data. It understands their behaviours and acts autonomously, shutting down sensitive data being exfiltrated. It covers 100% of the data attack surface and stops exfiltration in less than one second, with 90% less policy management overhead and zero manual policies. Developing such an industry-leading product has not been a journey without obstacles. “The biggest challenge has been achieving real-time, orchestrated protective action to protect 100% of the data by the collaboration between our security agents,” Tarique told us. “In short – achieving truly autonomous, advanced data protection and security. We achieved this using the AI-first principles of ontology, semantic meaning, and domain language models.” By leveraging the deep AI disciplines of knowledge engineering, in combination with a semantic layer, enterprise ontologies, and domain specificity, ISE can very accurately and confidently classify massive amounts of data in transit. Its real-time actor profiles and autonomous managed policy rules result in fast, effective, and real-time decision-making for data in transit for a variety of critical enterprise use cases such as data moving into LLMs out of enterprise email, into or out of cloud data platforms, SaaS applications, and even into or out of collaboration systems. Internally, GC Cybersecurity operates as a lean organisation that is entirely customer centric. The team ensures that every release addresses a real customer need that is critical path, building innovative, disruptive, and often new-to-market products based on first AI principles and cybersecurity. Whilst these initiatives can be hard to execute, they are proven to create a large competitive moat and unique positioning that GC Cybersecurity enjoys, leveraging its competitive work environment to deliver such next-generation solutions. Looking ahead, GC Cybersecurity anticipates growth to stem from its channel partner centric go-to market. Recognised as the Best Cybersecurity and Compliance Platform 2026, the ISE platform has earned renown for providing the highest level of advanced enterprise data protection at attractive margins, with very high customer retention. This success demonstrates GC Cybersecurity’s ability to provide very high margins to its channel partners across any regulated industry, from government, military, and healthcare to insurance, oil and gas, and finance. Reflecting on GC Cybersecurity’s success, Tarique concluded, “Our team realised long ago that the Era of AI is going to usher in a new era of Cyber-Insecurity. We committed our team to collaborative, fully autonomous, advanced data security solutions and have been at the leading edge of innovation to deliver these AI-powered cybersecurity solutions that protect 100% of the data landscape. No other cybersecurity platform offers actorbased, autonomous, and advanced data protection in our enterprise data security category.” Contact: Tarique Mustafa Company: GC Cybersecurity by GhangorCloud, Inc Web Address: www.gccybersecurity.ai
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