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Prodigy Finance Establishes another $350 Million Facility for International Masters Students with Citi, Schroders Capital, and SCIO Capital

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LONDON, July 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Prodigy Finance, a social impact driven FinTech and a leading international student loan lender, is proud to announce a $350 million facility with Citi, Schroders Capital and SCIO Capital. This is the first transaction that Prodigy has closed under their new multi-issuance special purpose vehicle structure.
The joint initiative between Prodigy Finance and their funding partners represents a significant commitment to providing accessible financial support to aspiring masters students from around the world. To date, Prodigy has funded over $1.8 billion in postgraduate education loans to more than 35,000 high-potential students from over 100 different countries.
According to 2022 market intelligence firm HolonIQ, a ‘most likely’ scenario will see around 8 million internationally mobile students register in foreign institutions by 2030 – and in line with this finding, the $350 million facility will be dedicated to financing international masters students, allowing them to bridge their financial gaps and pursue their educational aspirations with confidence.
As of 2022, 86% of Prodigy Finance’s borrowers hail from emerging markets, while 67% are first-generation students. With this facility, Prodigy Finance aims to further democratise access to education, fostering a diverse and inclusive academic environment that celebrates talent from every corner of the globe across a variety of degree programmes. Notably, Prodigy Finance saw a rise of 97% in applications submitted for financing in STEM degrees in 2022, compared to 2021.
By offering competitive interest rates and flexible repayment options, the facility aims to make pursuing a master’s degree more financially viable for deserving students, who will be able to apply for finance to fund more than 5,000 courses across the fields of computer science, information systems, analytics, engineering management and more in 19 countries – including Prodigy Finance’s recent expansion of approved courses in Australian universities.
“We are thrilled to secure this facility from Citi, Schroders Capital and SCIO Capital, which we will deploy to enable international masters students to unlock their full potential,” said Neha Sethi, CFO at Prodigy Finance. “Education is a catalyst for societal progress, and we believe that financial barriers should not hinder anyone’s pursuit of knowledge. Through this initiative, we are committed to empowering students to realise their dreams and contribute meaningfully to the world.”
“We are pleased to continue our financing relationship with Prodigy,” said Michelle Russell-Dowe, Global Head of Securitized Product & Asset-Based Finance at Schroders Capital. “As access to credit globally becomes more scarce we appreciate the opportunity to find attractive investments facilitating education, and we are happy to complete our second financing with Prodigy in this area.”
“SCIO is excited to continue to support Prodigy Finance’s journey and their important mission of providing equal access to life changing education around the globe,” said Jason Harris, CRO at SCIO Capital.
To learn more about this transformative initiative, please visit Prodigy Finance’s social impact page.
About Prodigy Finance
Founded in 2007, Prodigy Finance is an international student lender that has helped over 35,000 international masters students attend the world’s top universities. To date, Prodigy Finance has disbursed over $1.8 billion in funding to students from more than 150 countries.
Prodigy Finance is fueled by impact investors, and other private qualified entities who invest in tomorrow’s leaders whilst earning a financial and social return. Prodigy Finance’s borderless lending model enables students to apply for a loan based on their future earning potential and not just their current circumstances and credit history.
Schroders Capital
Schroders Capital provides investors with access to a broad range of private asset investment opportunities, portfolio building blocks and customised private asset strategies. Its team focuses on delivering best-in-class, risk-adjusted returns and executing investments through a combination of direct investment capabilities and broader solutions in all private market asset classes, through comingled funds and customised private asset mandates.
The team aims to achieve sustainable returns through a rigorous approach and in alignment with a culture characterised by performance, collaboration and integrity. 
With $90.6 billion (£75.3 billion; €84.8 billion)* assets under management, Schroders Capital offers a diversified range of investment strategies, including real estate, private equity, secondaries, venture capital, infrastructure, securitised products and asset-based finance, private debt, insurance-linked securities and BlueOrchard (Impact Specialists).
*Assets under management as of 31 December 2022 (including non-fee earning dry powder and in-house cross holdings).
Schroders plc
Founded in 1804, Schroders is one of Europe’s largest independent investment management firms by assets under management. As at 31 December 2022, assets under management were £737.5 billion (€831.3 billion; $887.2 billion). The founding family remain a core shareholder, holding approximately 48% of the firm’s voting shares. Schroders has continued to deliver strong financial results. It has a market capitalisation of circa £7 billion and employs over 6,100 people across 38 locations.
Schroders has benefited from the most diverse business model of any UK asset manager by geography, by asset class and by client type. Schroders offers innovative products and solutions across their five business areas of solutions; institutional; mutual funds; private assets & alternatives; and wealth management. Clients include insurance companies, pension schemes, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and foundations. They also manage assets for end clients as part of their relationships with distributors, financial advisers and online platforms. Schroders’ Wealth Management offering reflects their strategic ambition to provide wealth management and financial planning services to clients across the wealth spectrum.
Schroders’ strategic aims are to grow their asset management business, build closer relationships with end clients and expand their private assets and alternatives business. Schroders’ purpose is to provide excellent investment performance to clients through active management. The business channels capital into sustainable and durable businesses to accelerate positive change in the world. Schroders’ business philosophy is based on the belief that if they deliver for clients, they deliver for Shareholders and other stakeholders.
Further information about Schroders can be found at www.schroders.com.
Issued by Schroder Investment Management Limited. Registration No 1893220 England. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. For regular updates by e-mail please register online at www.schroders.com for our alerting service.
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HUAWEI CONNECT 2024 | Huawei Unveils the Brand-New Xinghe Intelligent Fabric Solution, Powering the AI Era

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SHANGHAI, Sept. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — At HUAWEI CONNECT 2024, over 300 industry leaders, experts, and scholars gathered for the data center network session themed “Xinghe Intelligent Fabric, Powering the AI Era.” The event featured discussions on the evolution and technological advancements of data center networks. During the session, Arthur Wang, President of Data Center Network Domain at Huawei’s Data Communication Product Line, introduced the newly upgraded Xinghe Intelligent Fabric solution. This cutting-edge solution aims to establish a data center network characterized by one map for intelligent operations and maintenance (O&M), one network for diverse computing, and one platform for simplified deployment, providing a robust network infrastructure to support enterprises’ digital and intelligent transformations.

In his keynote speech, Arthur Wang outlined the emerging trends in data center network development. He emphasized that in the AI era, data center networks require both a “brilliant brain” and “resilient bones.” The newly launched Xinghe Intelligent Fabric solution is designed to deliver a powerful network infrastructure tailored for the AI era, featuring:
One Map for Intelligent O&M: Zero Management ConcernsHuawei’s exclusive network digital map enables rapid cross-data center and cross-vendor fault identification within minutes. Additionally, the NetMaster network large model facilitates AI-driven O&M, eliminating manual intervention and ensuring zero management concerns.
One Network for Diverse Computing: Zero Service InterruptionsThe Xinghe Intelligent Fabric supports various application scenarios, including intelligent computing, general-purpose computing, and storage. The innovative Network Scale Load Balancing (NSLB) algorithm increases network throughput to 95% and boosts AI training efficiency by over 10%. With the exclusive iReliable three-level fast switchover capability, it achieves sub-millisecond switchover, guaranteeing zero service interruptions.
One Platform for Simplified Deployment: Zero Configuration ErrorsBy employing digital twins to simulate networks in advance and verify configurations post-deployment, the solution ensures 100% accuracy in network changes. By harnessing network-security convergence capabilities, AI creates an intelligent security matrix to analyze millions of security policies, achieving zero configuration errors.
Looking ahead, Huawei will continue to collaborate with industry partners to enhance research and innovation in data center networks, promote intelligent upgrades, and create greater value for the industry.
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Huawei Launches All-New Xinghe Intelligent Campus with Full Upgrades, Maximizing Enterprises’ Intelligent Productivity

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SHANGHAI, Sept. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — During HUAWEI CONNECT 2024, the Xinghe Intelligent Campus session was successfully held, attracting more than 200 industry pioneers, experts, and scholars from around the world to explore campus network trends and technological innovations. Also at the event, Huawei unveiled its all-new Xinghe Intelligent Campus Solution that stands out for full upgrades to wireless, application, and operations & maintenance (O&M) experience.

Shawn Zhao, President of the Campus Network Domain, Huawei’s Data Communication Product Line, said, “As video conferencing, AI terminals, and AI applications become more widespread, the campus network access density has increased threefold, and the demand for bandwidth has grown tenfold. In this case, users place new requirements on the assurance for AI applications and audio/video services while expecting more intelligent O&M.”
To meet these needs, Huawei launched its all-new Xinghe Intelligent Campus Solution with full upgrades. Specifically, this solution upgrades wireless experience in performance, roaming, and IoT convergence. It also leverages X-Scheduler (an experience scheduling engine) to upgrade application experience, while drawing on AI-assisted decision-making and a tidal prediction algorithm to upgrade O&M experience. These help customers build an industry-leading digital infrastructure and facilitate the digital and intelligent transformation of enterprises.
In addition, the solution provides end-to-end security assurance. On the wireless side, the innovative Wi-Fi Shield technology radically prevents packet eavesdropping on the air interface. On the wired side, the full-link MACsec capabilities from switches to APs ensure secure campus network data transmission since the very beginning.
Also at the session, leading analyst firms, customers, and partners in various industries shared their unique insights, best practices, and successful cases. Key speakers include Sian Morgan, Research Director of Dell’Oro Group; Dr. Haitham S. Hamsa, Professor of Information Technology, Cairo University; Shang Qun, Assistant to the Director of the Computing Center, Peking University; Sun Pan, Director of Infrastructure Operations Dept, System Digitalization Dept, FAW Group; Connee Zhang, CEO of CypressTel. Their valuable practices will provide a unique reference for the digital and intelligent transformation of enterprises across industries.
Looking ahead, Huawei believes that the Xinghe Intelligent Campus Solution will become the preferred choice for global enterprises’ digital and intelligent transformation to reap more benefits.
For more information about Huawei’s Xinghe Intelligent Campus Solution, visit https://e.huawei.com/en/solutions/enterprise-network/campus-network.
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Huawei Launches Over 20 All-New Xinghe Intelligent Network Offerings to Amplify Industrial Intelligence

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SHANGHAI, Sept. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — During HUAWEI CONNECT 2024, Leon Wang, President of Huawei’s Data Communication Product Line, announced more than 20 all-new Xinghe Intelligent Network offerings globally at the summit themed “Xinghe Intelligent Network, Amplify Industrial Intelligence”. These purpose-built offerings contribute to an AI network ecosystem and help customers seize opportunities for intelligent development and maximize intelligent productivity.

With the development of AI technologies, the world is advancing from digital transformation to intelligent transformation. All industries are quickly adopting AI technologies to create new use cases, for example, self-driving cars, intelligent diagnosis and treatment, and intelligent train inspection. All of these are significantly improving the efficiency and experience of our work and daily lives.
The advent of the intelligent era is driving networks into intelligent ones. Huawei has been making joint efforts with partners to lead research and practices of intelligent networks. That’s why Huawei constantly upgrades its Xinghe Intelligent Network offerings to help customers grasp opportunities for intelligent development, build new intelligent network infrastructure, and maximize intelligent productivity in the intelligent era. Key highlights include the following:
Xinghe Intelligent Campus focuses on AI-enabled, experience-centric campus network construction, ensuring zero freezing for audio and video applications, zero degradation on services, and zero waiting for interactions.Xinghe Intelligent WAN introduces a wide range of intelligent technologies to intelligently schedule millions of flows and precisely optimize service experience.Xinghe Intelligent Fabric adopts the AI Turbo engine to improve network throughput, enhancing foundation model training efficiency.Xinghe Intelligent Network Security integrates AI technologies into network security detection, accurately and rapidly identifying threats.To support network solutions in various scenarios, Huawei released more than 20 featured offerings globally. Examples include the industry’s first 100 Tbps fixed-form Ethernet data center switch, the industry’s first 51.2 Tbps liquid-cooled fixed-form data center switch, the industry’s first AI router, high-quality 10 Gbps campus switches and Wi-Fi 7 APs, Intelligent SASE Branch Security Solution, and the industry’s first IP Autonomous Driving Network Solution. All these offerings are designed to help customers with greater business returns.
As the intelligent era calls for intelligent networks, Huawei will continue to drive the development of intelligent networks and upgrade its Xinghe Intelligent Network products and solutions, ultimately helping global customers to stride towards the intelligent era and reap more benefits.
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