Beeks Financial Cloud Regulatory News (BKS)

This announcement contains inside information

Beeks Financial Cloud Group plc

("Beeks") 

Beeks Financial Cloud signs two significant contracts

Secures additional Tier 1 customer and enters the growing Open Banking and Payments sector

Glasgow, 20 December, 2019 -- Beeks Financial Cloud Group Plc, a cloud computing and connectivity provider for financial markets, is pleased to announce that it has secured two significant contracts, signing a $1 million annualised contract with a global financial markets technology provider and a £1.1 million contract over three years with a cloud-based payments solution provider.

Global financial markets technology provider

Beeks has secured its first $1m annualised contract, with a global financial markets technology provider ("the Technology Provider"). Beeks will provide the Technology Provider with a global deployment of private cloud infrastructure.

Beeks will be the preferred cloud vendor for on-demand infrastructure provision globally, to complement the Customer's existing secure, high-performance data and voice communications solutions delivered to the global financial markets. The SaaS-based contract will commence in January 2020 and is committed to grow to a run rate of $1 million annually, with the potential for further expansion thereafter.

Open Banking and Payment Solutions Provider

Beeks has also signed a three-year contract with a cloud-based payments solution provider ("the Payments Provider"). The contract is worth £1.1 million over three years, with implementation due to be completed in the first half of calendar year 2020. This is the first win for Beeks in the growing Open Banking and Payments sector, demonstrating the security of the Beeks' offering and applicability to this new segment of the financial markets.

Beeks will design and supply a private network and fully managed infrastructure environment, enabling the Payments Provider to expand its secure and resilient end-to-end Payments-as-a-Service solution for financial institutions and regulated Fintech organisations.

New regulations, such as the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and the Open Banking reforms, which require the sharing of financial data, are driving a shift towards new Open Banking and Payments offerings within Financial Services and the growing adoption of cloud-computing to deliver them. Beeks Financial Cloud's proven capabilities and global network mean it is ideally placed to support Financial Services institutions in this move to cloud-based infrastructure, providing an expanding addressable market for the Company and the opportunity for continued growth in the Open Banking sector.

Gordon McArthur, CEO of Beeks Financial Cloud, commented, "We are delighted to be able to announce two such significant new customers. Our selection as preferred vendor for one of the largest technology providers for financial markets globally represents our largest initial customer deployment to date and provides Beeks with a significant growth opportunity. The scalability of our network means that we are ideally placed to provide substantial cloud infrastructure setup across our locations internationally.

"We are also delighted to have been selected to support the expansion of this innovator in the Payments sector. Regulation is driving the use of new technology, with the demand for increased level of security and expanding data volumes requiring banks and payments institutions to assess more flexible and secure cloud-based infrastructures over traditional IT architectures. Our global network and proven expertise mean Beeks is well-positioned to benefit from the expected growth in Open Banking and Payment applications and we look forward to expanding this customer segment in the future."

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ABOUT BEEKS FINANCIAL CLOUD

Beeks Financial Cloud is a leading cloud computing and connectivity provider for financial markets, offering low-latency Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to retail and institutional traders in foreign exchange, financial futures, equities, fixed income and cryptocurrency asset classes. Based in the UK with twelve international datacentres, Beeks supports its global customers at scale in the leading financial centres. For more information, visit: www.beeksfinancialcloud.com.