Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • SoFi Goes InsurTech with Lemonade and Root.
  • Lending Club Shutters SMB Lending Arm, Redirects Customers to Other Lenders.

Around the web

  • elEconomista interviews Finect’s Antonio Botas (in Spanish).
  • YellowDog partners with DVE Advanced Systems.
  • Ixaris adds new Chief Legal and Compliance Officer Georg von Breven and Commercial Director Sean Ashton.
  • FICO unveils the latest version of its Decision Management Platform, FICO DMP.
  • Visa launches a suite of beta APIs and tools to help developers design and test payment solutions.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

FICO and Equifax Forge Strategic Partnership

FICO and Equifax Forge Strategic Partnership

A new strategic partnership between FICO and Equifax will help financial institutions better manage risk, marketing, and fraud. The two companies have introduced the Data Decisions Cloud: an end-to-end data and analytics suite that integrates Equifax Ignite, a data and analytics management solution, with FICO Cloud applications and Decision Management Suite, FICO’s digital decisioning platform.

“Our common mission is to empower financial institutions to leverage data-driven decisioning in all their customer interactions,” FICO CEO William J. Lansing said. “With this strategic partnership, FICO and Equifax will help organizations operationalize the best data with unparalleled predictive analytics and applied AI, and do so in a streamlined and cost-effective way.”

The Data Decisions Cloud will enable institutions to better navigate differentiated data to find insights and build highly-predictive models that add greater personalization and protection to the customer experience. For FIs in particular, the solution aims to accelerate the pace of innovation around data and decisioning by helping them take advantage of technologies like explainable AI and neural networks.

Via the partnership, the two companies plan to launch additional joint initiatives later in 2019. Among the upcoming products are a connected system that promotes data science collaboration by providing real-time access to raw and trended data, and an AML/KYC compliance-as-a-service solution. FICO and Equifax also plan to introduce an integrated, pre-screen marketing automation solution that creates FCRA-compliant, customer acquisition and retention campaigns.

“We are energized about this broad partnership between Equifax and FICO,” Equifax CEO Mark W. Begor said. “Two industry leaders are joining forces to help financial institutions better meet the needs of consumers and improve business agility.”

FICO (which stands for Fair Isaac Corporation) participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr NewYork in 2016, with a presentation called Rapidly Deliver Contextually-Powered Stream Processing. Members of the company’s product management and product engineering teams discussed how its Decision Management Platform transformed data “from raw to decision-ready” to help companies better manage risk, fraud, marketing, and customer service.

The company began the year with news of a partnership with electronics payments specialist Conductor to fight payment card fraud in Brazil. Also this year, FICO announced winning five new patents for fraud prevention, AI, and advanced analytics technologies. Founded in 1956 and headquartered in San Jose, California, FICO trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker FICO, and has a market capitalization of $7 billion.

Atlanta, Georgia-based Equifax demonstrated its mobile app at FinovateFall 2011. More recently, the company introduced its Ignite solution in the U.K., and teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Experian to provide free credit monitoring via its TrustedID Premier service.

The global data analytics and technology company is active in 24 countries in the Americas, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region, and employs 11,000 workers around the world. With a market capitalization of $14 billion, Equifax trades on the NYSE under the ticker EFX.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • FICO and Equifax Forge Strategic Partnership.

Around the web

  • Motive Partners closes investment in Finantix announced in December.
  • Since launching in the region last year, Plaid expands coverage in Canada, adding support for Desjardins, National Bank of Canada, President’s Choice, and Simplii.
  • NDGIT’s API platform enables UBS to deliver PSD2 APIs for TPPs.
  • Ledger partners with Hong Kong-licensed Legacy Trust to introduce institutional-grade custody solution to accelerate the flow of institutional money into digital assets.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Glacier Bancorp Deploys Roostify Powered Digital Mortgage Solution.

Around the web

  • Fiserv Announces Plans to Acquire First Data in $22 Billion Deal.
  • Forrester names CREALOGIX as a leader in the Now Tech: Digital Banking Engagement platforms, Q4 2018.
  • Worldpay and Revel Systems announce enhanced partnership to provide consolidated POS and payments solution.
  • International bookmaker and gaming operator SKS365 picks ARIC Fraud Hub from Featurespace for real-time fraud protection.
  • PayPal appoints marketing executive Allison Johnson to EVP and Chief Marketing Officer.
  • Forbes features iProov in article discussing identity and blockchain technology.
  • FICO teams up with electronics payments specialist Conductor to support payment card fraud protection in Brazil.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Braintri Drives Insurtech Innovation in Europe.
  • Plaid Acquires Quovo in $200 Million Deal.

Around the web

  • Salt Edge joins Temenos Marketplace as the community’s first data aggregator.
  • BBVA leads $12 million Series A round for payments startup Grabango.
  • Cardlytics CEO Scott Grimes appointed board chair of FinTech Atlanta.
  • FICO awarded five new patents for fraud, AI, and advanced analytics technologies.
  • PYMNTS.com interviews Ondot CEO Bharghavan Vaduvur.
  • Akamai Technologies reveals plans to acquire customer identity access management firm, Janrain.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazil’s Nubank announces debit options for its digital savings account.
  • Infocorp spinoff Bankingly raises $5.25 million in Series A funding in round led by Elevar Equity.
  • Vocalink to modernize Peru’s electronic payments infrastructure courtesy of new deal with the company’s automated clearinghouse, Cámara de Compensación Electrónica (CCE).

Asia-Pacific

  • UNPay expands QR code payments.
  • Indonesian lending and payments firm, Pohon Dana, picks up investment from Mayapada Group.
  • PaySend launches transfers to bank accounts and Napas cards in Vietnam.
  • Fenergo wins Fintech Exporter of the Year award from Asia Matters.
  • Juvo expands across Asia with regional headquarters in Singapore.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Experian purchases South African credit information and analytics firm Compuscan for $263 million.
  • Ecobank partners with MFS Africa to offer cross-platform digital payments to customers.
  • Emergent Technology acquires Ghana-based Interpay Africa.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Sberbank offers clients new strategies for investment life insurance.
  • Finastra opens new offices in Romania.
  • Backbase powers omni-channel digital services for Poland’s BGŻ BNP Paribas bank.
  • International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) to deploy technology from FICO to fight money laundering.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • UAE and Saudi Arabia launch blockchain-powered, cross-border payments proof of concept.
  • Temenos announces partnership with Tunisia’s Banque de l’Habitat.
  • Token brings open banking to MENA region.

Central and South Asia

  • James Finance, Ocrolus, Hydrogen, and iProov shortlisted for India FinTech Awards 2018.
  • Currencies Direct taps Ripple’s xCurrent for real-time remittances to India.
  • Fintech News Singapore features BankBazaar in its round up of 10 Hot Fintech Startups from India to Watch Closely.

Top image designed by Freepik

Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Central and South Asia

  • Visa takes minority stake in Indian payment gateway BillDesk.
  • Swift India partners with MonetaGo to pilot blockchain-based banking.
  • India FinTech Forum (IFF) announced the 20 companies recognized at its India FinTech Awards (IFTA), including Finovate alums Hydrogen, iProov, Ocrolus, and James Finance.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Elevar Equity leads $5.25 million investment round for Uruguayan fintech, Bankingly.
  • Banco Original, a Sao Paulo, Brazil-based FI, to deploy FICO Origination Manager and FICO Application Fraud Manager.
  • First Data launches Clover Mini and Clover Flex in Argentina.

Asia-Pacific

  • Finastra gives Singapore banks top marks in its inaugural Open Banking Readiness Index.
  • FinLab accelerator introduces its smart business transformation program for Thailand small businesses.
  • SmartPesa brings its softPOS contactless card acceptance via NFC phone running Android – to Singapore and South East Asia.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African financial services company, Discovery, to launch “behavioral bank.”
  • Nigeria’s central bank proposes fintech licensing regime to help manage cyber risk, capital adequacy, and operational oversight issues.
  • A “hands-off” attitude toward regulation is credited for helping boost Uganda’s emergent fintech sector.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Poland’s Braintri merges with iCompass.
  • The Polish Financial Supervision Authority names the Heart as one of operators for its regulatory sandbox for companies developing fintech solutions.
  • Ingenico Group teams up with Russia’s Sberbank to enable MOIR card payments for online purchases.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Study from Mena Research Partners calls for major gains in fintech funding in the MENA region over the next ten years.
  • Egypt Innovate features ten Egyptian startups “following the world’s fintech trend.”
  • The Tehran Times looks at the “challenges and opportunities” of fintech innovation in Iran.

Top image designed by Freepik

Experian, FICO, and Finicity Launch the UltraFICO Score

Experian, FICO, and Finicity Launch the UltraFICO Score

Three fintechs joined forces today to create a new credit scoring technology designed for thin-file customers. Experian, FICO, and Finicity are the triumvirate behind the new score, named the UltraFICO score.

The UltraFICO score leverages consumer-permissioned account data aggregated and distributed by Experian and Finicity. Unlike the traditional FICO score, which relies heavily on repayment data from users’ previous credit usage, UltraFICO looks at how responsibly consumers manage their finances. After gaining the user’s permission to access their bank statements, Finicity’s technology pulls consumer-contributed data from their checking, savings, and money market accounts, examining the length of time accounts have been open, frequency of activity, and saving data.

For its part, Experian pulls the consumer’s credit information and will integrate the new model into lenders’ existing operational workflow. Alex Lintner, president of Experian’s Consumer Information Services, said that this project has offered the company “a new way to use consumer-permissioned data that allows lenders to make better decisions and helps consumers gain access to credit.”

Accessing the additional data not only offers lenders a more complete picture of the prospective borrower’s ability to repay, it also improves access to credit for Americans who are typically below lenders’ preferred credit score threshold. This especially applies to thin-file borrowers and those working on rebuilding their score after a financial crisis.

Jim Wehmann, FICO EVP of Scores, said that UltraFICO “empowers consumers to have greater control over the information that is being used in making credit risk decisions.” He added, “It also enables a deeper dialogue between the consumer and lenders to help both parties make better financial decisions.”

UltraFICO will be piloted in 2019 to test the new model and determine consumers’ willingness to share their financial data. The group plans to make the new model generally available to lenders in mid-2019.

Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Experian most recently demoed its decisioning platform at FinovateFall 2018. The cloud-based platform enables organizations to combine data and analytics to improve the accuracy of their customer lending decisions. Earlier this year, Experian acquired U.K.-based ClearScore for $385 million.

Founded in 1956 as Fair Isaac Corporation, FICO presented “Rapidly Deliver Contextually-Powered Stream Processing” at FinDEVr New York 2016. Earlier this month, the company announced it will provide KYC and onboarding solutions for Belarus-based lender, Belgazprombank.

Utah-based Finicity demoed at FinovateFall 2017 where the company’s Co-founder and President of Data Services, Nick Thomas, showed how the company simplified access to its Verification of Income and Verification of Assets reports. Frequently in the headlines, Finicity announced last week it was selected as third-party service provider for Freddie Mac’s automated income and asset assessment solution, Loan Product Advisor. In September, the company aligned with intelligent process automation software provider Capsilon to modernize the mortgage origination process.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Open Bank Project Collaborates with Open Source Software Company Red Hat.
  • Ondot Lands Strategic Investment from Citi Ventures.
  • Experian, FICO, and Finicity Launch the UltraFICO Score.

Around the web

  • Bloomberg TV features Best of Show winner Bumped.
  • Envestnet | Yodlee launches new suite of developer tools.
  • ThreatMetrix partners with SAS, bringing digital identity intelligence to machine learning to help creditors fight identity fraud.
  • Finastra introduces its cloud-based instant payments offering for SMEs.
  • Sberbank inks Memorandum of Understanding with SWIFT.
  • Artivest appoints new Chief Compliance Officer, Kamal Jafarnia.
  • Featurespace unveils its ARIC White Label solution for advanced fraud and risk prevention.
  • Finextra: Fidor and GFT extend partnership to the Americas markets.
  • Kony acquires innovation subsidiary of Umpqua Bank.
  • Finextra: NTT Data plans pan-Asian federated trade information platform based on blockchain.
  • SuperMoney surpasses $1 billion in financing requests
  • Bluefin and TokenEx partner to strengthen payment security with PCI-validated P2PE and omni-channel tokenization.
  • ID.me launches KYC / AML identity verification solution and ID document verification solution.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Banco Fassil is the first Bolivian company to migrate its ATM network to TranzAxis from Compass Plus.
  • Legal Tech News reviews the improved opportunity for investment in the Mexican fintech market.
  • Can blockchain technology fix Argentina’s financial crisis? VentureBeat considers the challenge.

Asia-Pacific

  • Siam Commercial Bank is the first bank on Ripple’s RippleNet to pioneer multi-hop, a feature that allows payment settlement on behalf of other financial institutions on the network.
  • Singapore and Hong Kong-based digital private banking clients of Credit Suisse now can communicate with their bank via Apple Business chat.
  • Singtel launches electronics payments alliance with a pair of Thailand-based partners.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African fintech Centbee announces beta launch of its bitcoin cash wallet.
  • BitCoinke looks at funding for African fintech startups in 2018.
  • Fintech Association of Nigeria begins fintech learning series in partnership with the SEC.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Sberbank to offer loans of up to RUB 300,000 without proof of income as part of new pilot program.
  • FICO to provide KYC and onboarding solutions for Belarus-based lender, Belgazprombank.
  • Alfa Group of Russia plans to launch online insurance company, Mango.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Cameroon’s biggest bank, Afriland First Bank, to deploy Temenos’ T24 core banking platform.
  • Qatar Islamic Bank to leverage solutions from Volante Technologies to help meet PSD2 and open banking standards.
  • ICS Financial Systems completes blockchain proof of concept for Arab Jordan Investment Bank (AJIB).
  • Tunisia’s Banque de l’Habitat (BH) selects Temenos’ T24 core banking system.

Central and South Asia

  • KPMG releases its latest report: Fintech in India: Powering a Digital Economy.
  • Paytm secures 33% market share of UPI payments in India.
  • Medici looks at the state of financial inclusion in India.

Top image designed by Freepik

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Larky Lands Three: Mobile Engagement Platform Adds New CU Partners.

Around the web

  • Larky launches with Encompass Credit Union (Canada), BayCoast Bank (MA), and Oklahoma Central Credit Union (OK)
  • Insuritas announces partnership to launch digital insurance agency platform for 3Rivers FCU.
  • Fenergo creates new team to further develop and foster its partner ecosystem.
  • First Round Review analyzes Gusto’s brand.
  • Coast to Coast Motors dealership strikes deal with PayNearMe.
  • BlueRush announces partnership with Microsoft Azure.
  • FICO to provide KYC and onboarding solutions for Belarus-based lender, Belgazprombank.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • eToro Adds IOTA Cryptocurrency to Platform.
  • First Data Partners with Ellie Mae to Improve Security of Lending Payments
  • Check out our latest FinovateFall Sneak Peek featuring ebankIT.

Around the web

  • UMB Fund Services adopts Temenos tech for ETF drive.
  • EMIDA joins wireless independent dealer association.
  • InSpirAVE earns spot in Top 100 at the Innovate Celebrate Conference’s Startup of the Year competition.
  • Data-in-use security specialist Enveil announces technology integration with Gemalto.
  • Onfido adds new VP of Global Marketing, General Counsel, and Director of People.
  • FICO extends partnership with Equifax Canada.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.