Here's a look at the press coverage from FinovateAsia 2012 last week in Singapore:

Here is the live Twitter transcript from @Finovate during FinovateAsia last week:

Entries appear in chronological order.

Session 1

Our first FinovateAsia wrapped up a few hours ago. At the end of the packed day, the Singapore audience voted for their favorite three demos from among the 35 contenders. The top four overall were named Best of Show (see notes).

The winners (in alphabetic order):

• CurrencyFair showed off its new Marketplace for peer-to-peer international transfers
• Finantix launched Sharp digital banking platform to improve sales and service interaction
• SocietyOne debuted its ClearMatch technology used to streamline the loan application process 
• Ubank, a unit of National Australian Bank (NAB), launched its  peer-spending comparison tool, People like U

We'll have videos of all 35 demos posted at Finovate.com within two weeks.

Thanks to everyone who presented, attended, tweeted, networked, blogged, and helped push fintech forward in Asia and beyond. You were a great audience!

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Notes on methodology: 
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.    
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during the day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their their favorites.   
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: "Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed." 
4. The four companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named Best of Show. 
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners.

"Finantix Sharp is a multi-channel platform for digital banking that introduces a new and exciting approach to customer interactions. Sales and service processes are made engaging, effective and paperless by applying user-friendly interfaces, gameful simulators, social and multimedia content, and natural language commands. Special focus is devoted to smooth collaboration of customers, banks and third parties in helping customers address their financial needs and reach their goals." 

"Clari5 iRM brings extreme real-time intelligence to Relationship Managers (RMs) on the move. Typical RM apps are the extensions of CRM screens on the RM's tablet or phone. As these are not connected in real-time to the underlying core systems, RMs are the last ones to know when a significant moment of truth event happens. Clari5 iRM is a next generation product that interprets customers' structured/unstructured events in real-time and provides an inference instantly empowering RMs to provide more personalized services. 

Clari5 iRM also leverages the full power of the mobile/tablet by using its real-time push, GPS, voice recognition, video, and screen sharing capabilities. Through Clari5 iRM, RM would not only be the first person to know of a potential fraud or Non-Sufficient Funds (NSF) situation, but also would be able to modify/stop the transaction."

"Peer-to-peer lending platform that connects borrowers with lenders through a robust credit risk management system that understands different customer demographics within China. 

For our lenders:

• High fixed-income returns (12-15% p.a.) for lenders through investing as little as 100 RMB
• High liquidity through loan transfers on a homogenous platform
• Platform and borrower transparency through our convenient web platform 

For our borrowers:

• Fair-priced products based on borrower demographics risk profile
• Build credit over the long term, garnering lower-priced loans
• Convenient online platform for application and payment

Moreover, with our robust credit management system and customized loan product design, Pandai.cn also is a platform for trying and testing alternative credit models."

"bancapp seamlessly delivers mobile banking together with sales, marketing, and communications providing an all-in-one mobile banking and marketing channel. Available as iOS and Android native apps as well as a supporting dedicated mobile website, bancapp integrates with numerous banking and marketing systems to provide individual banking services and personalised marketing communications. 

bancapp provides a unique communications capability that allows financial institutions to keep in touch with customers through the expanding mobile channel. The product presents financial institutions with a solution to challenges being faced by the changing nature of retail banking, as consumer demand for on-the-go banking increases."

"TradeHero leverages mobile real-time push notifications, mobile-optimized and deep social-network integration with creative and addictive game-play elements, and we operate across the breath of the mobile space from Android through to iOS and HTML5. Key USPs include the core concept of our platform as an information-brokerage: no trade execution, no regulatory constraints; professional-grade trade modeling and verification; and access to global equities markets through our partnerships with multiple market data providers.

Unlike our competitors, our proprietary trade-validation algorithms guarantee meaningful user-generated trade content. Taken together, these unique advantages form the key components of our intellectual property and are subject to ongoing proceedings to establish legal protection across the largest possible range of key territories."

"BankFiling is an innovative solution that saves banks millions by automating the timely collection of financial information from business customers with credit exposure to the bank."

"Sandstone is showcasing its 'next generation' consumer banking solution combining internet and mobile banking, personal financial management, and loan origination capabilities to form a powerful end-to-end customer acquisition and retention tool. 

Building on the "anytime, anywhere" capabilities of emerging tablet and smartphone platforms, we will show how consumers can interact with their bank for a range of integrated banking services."

"Our innovative Blink Mobility Platform is a radical new Platform-as-a-Service, underpinned by a fundamentally new software architecture called the Interaction-oriented Architecture. The power behind this approach is the ability to rapidly build, deploy, and manage new intuitive and intelligent systems for staff and customers, utilising existing web-based information and business systems. 

The interaction-oriented approach focuses only on what the specific user needs and has the ability to contextualise data depending on time, location, authority, weather, etc. BlinkMobile services are also accessible on all internet enabled devices, from smartphones to tablets, kiosks, smart appliances and SMS-only phones."

"The third generation of ayondo brings social trading to a complete new level in terms of usability, social interaction, and guidance of top traders."

"The EFL Credit Scoring Tool is a credit scoring and management platform that seamlessly integrates into and expedites existing bank lending processes. EFL's 45-minute credit application can be taken on a PC or mobile tablet device at a bank branch or in the field. The completed application is processed by EFL within 30 minutes into a 3-digit credit score. 

The EFL Score is posted on EFL's Web Suite, allowing the credit team to simply log on to approve or deny the loan. EFL's Web Suite offers a 365-view of the applicant and loan portfolio, allowing the bank to track loan approvals and disbursements, measure turn-around-times, arrears data, review applicant GPS, photos and biometrics and much more by branch and region. The EFL Credit Scoring Tool provides the simplicity, speed, and insight needed to make informed credit decisions that lead to higher growth and lower risk in information scarce markets."

"ZFraudShield is a fraud-risk intervention solution that leverages mobile contextual information and the collective intelligence of users. In short, we tie the user's credit/debit card to their mobile phone and send them an authentication message via a custom branded channel on their mobile to confirm the transaction in real-time. Users are able to flag potential fraudulent transactions and share the information with other users in real-time. ZFraudShield is designed to drastically reduce false-positives, improve fraud discovery, and fully automate the resolution process where required."

"PocketSmith is the comprehensive personal finance app with cashflow forecasting. It empowers you to make smart financial decisions by creating what-if scenarios. The product combines day-to-day and financial planning, projecting daily bank balances up to 30 years in the future. It offers you an interactive, flexible and creative experience and connects to over 11,000 banks worldwide. PocketSmith's underlying software has also been adapted for online banking.

At FinovateAsia 2012, PocketSmith shows you how it generates a meaningful and easily adjustable cashflow projection for anyone with bank transactions. This innovation provides users with an instant perspective on their financial future, as well as the ability to make immediate changes to improve their outcomes. "

"BankBazaar.com is demoing its 7-minute eApproval process highlighting the platform's real time integration with bank underwriting engines, loan origination systems, net-banking systems, identity bureaus, and online payroll management tools. Combined with a full service CRM system powering credit and sales work flow management, the platform delivers 7-minute eApproval via online, mobile, and tablet interfaces.

The demo applicant will interact with the 3 stage online credit processing platform by providing eligibility details, reviewing and selecting a custom product offer, and completing a real time credit application, which includes secure processing of bank statement data from 21 net-banking systems. The platform's advanced decision engine processes the case information from up to 15 independent data sources in real time and provides the applicant with an eApproval letter in 7 minutes."

"The InterAcct product suite encompasses self-care, mobile banking/payments, direct handset reload, authentication and secure messaging for Mobile Network Operators and financial institutions."

"ScoringLab is simulation-based classroom training for bankers that addresses the usage of credit scores in retail banks. In ScoringLab, players are pitted against each other to operate virtual banks. That's right - flight simulators for bankers! Although scores are used globally, it can be difficult to diagnose and understand customer trends, shifts, and impacts to model efficacy. 

First, players must make portfolio underwriting decisions, and as the portfolio matures, manage the effects of external influences on customer behavior and model performance. The challenge is to run the most profitable bank with the most satisfied customers. May the best team win!"

"The Wipro SmartOffers Solution powered by Intuition Intelligence's iCube Super Relevancy engine provides bank customers with the right digital offers at the right moment that they can redeem at merchants for benefits/discounts at the time of purchase. 

These offers are merchant or bank funded at the bank's preference. The main differentiator of the SmartOffers solution is that unlike the aggregator-centric models currently in practice in the market, the solution champions the bank-centric offer model. Wipro believes the aggregator-centric model does not bring significant benefits to the bank or the bank's customers and banks actually face significant disadvantages since the aggregators control the entire lifecycle of offer creation and consumption. 

Aggregators can also access significant customer spend and preferences data, which they may or may not be willing to share. Banks, therefore, are left only as participants in the entire value chain. The Wipro solution intends to give the power back to the bank."

"BellaDati is an agile analytics and reporting cloud tool that reinvents the way in which business users can interact with data. All you need is a web browser or mobile device. 

It turns ATM, mobile, e-banking, sales or fraud data into the visualized reports and dashboards. BellaDati data-warehouse includes ready connectors for huge databases and services like Oracle, SalesForce, Facebook, Intuit Quickbooks or a simple Excel spreadsheet. 

The solution brings three layers of innovation-- for management, analyst and developer. Heads of retail and operations in banks can consume and comment on charts and tables in reports via their iPad/iPhones. Analysts can drill-in and slice data to create regional ATM reports without coding."

"DemystData's Credit-in-a-Box suite enables financial institutions to leverage the power of big data and machine learning to make better lending decisions. As customer information becomes available, the DemystData API provides for real time aggregation of thousands of publicly available attributes from sources including social networks and online searches and returns this data in a structured, easy to comprehend format. Transparent, modern day scores analyzing factors such as customer identity and behavior provide lenders with an additional mechanism of knowing who their customers are and measuring financial risk and customer value."

"In the last 4 years, Tagit Mobility Platform, Mobeix, has been adopted by several leading enterprises. But, we believe mobility should be for all - large, medium and small enterprises. 

With this vision, we started our journey to build the "Mobeix Open Platform" through which enterprises can build, launch and manage apps on their own. Using the Tagit Open Platform, merchants and enterprises will be able to develop and deploy apps for their customers and employees in no time. We will demonstrate how easy it is for anyone to register on this platform and start building apps."

"Econography is the study of spending profiles of a population of a region and the culture of its people, down to the postcode level, including consumer and business spending by age, location, family status, income, and spend. Econographic trends describe the historical changes in spending (for example, the average spending in a category such as "Eating Out" may increase or decrease over time). People Like U is an econographic tool that gives consumers the ability, for the first time, to compare their own spending to the actual spending habits of other Australians."

"Figlo announced the global launch of their tablet solution for Financial Product Advice. Figlo offers insurance companies a leading edge tablet application for financial product advice which gives a quick overview of the client financial situation and facilitates product advice and sales. 

The tablet solution will push the boundaries of current financial product advice in the insurance and bancassurance industry, and shows how it can help advisors and sales agents to provide more transparent and interactive advice to their customers. The application integrates with Figlo's applications for personal financial planning and personal finance management for complete financial insight. Through a secure connection with an existing CRM system, mid- and back office basic client data is already pre-filled."

"SocietyOne is launching a smartphone loan application channel solution that simplifies the process of applying for a loan and minimizes manual data entry requirements by leveraging the customer's third party data. ClearMatch's credit decision engine is being enhanced to cater for new metrics and behavioral attributes of consumers in the loan provisioning and pricing process."

"Mobiliti from Fiserv is the world's most deployed mobile banking and payments platform. Mobiliti Reach aims to make financial services simultaneously available to banked and unbanked consumers alike in emerging and fast-growing markets. It includes a comprehensive payments engine to enable person-to-person payments, bill presentment and payments, and top up and merchant payments."

"CurrencyFair has completely upgraded the interface on its MarketPlace, making the process of order execution even simpler and more efficient. The new layout allows customers to easily and clearly view the market depth, helping them choose an appropriate exchange rate for their MarketPlace order.

Using CurrencyFair's new MarketPlace, it is possible for customers to achieve an exchange rate approaching, and in many cases even better than, the market interbank rate otherwise only available to market professionals dealing in millions."

"Strands Finance is presenting new "What If" functionality that takes PFM historical data and makes it relevant for the future. Users will gain greater insight and control of their financial health with little to no effort. For banks, the data is invaluable to better advise their customers. Strands has developed and leveraged pattern identification algorithms that help model future scenarios and the impact to the user's short-term cash flow and long-term net worth."

"Pendo has the first cross vertical global investment accounting cloud solution. We provide services to capital markets across banking, asset management, wealth management, insurance, and corporate treasury. 

The landscape today consists of products that are vertically focused on industry (mutual fund, investment management insurance, etc.) & regionally (Asia Pacific, Europe, US). This has caused firms to have silos of investment accounting data - resulting in the same asset being valued differently with a variation of up to 25 basis points. It also is the inhibitor to transparency as the ability to drill down & view total exposure to a given sector, industry, currency, or cost basis cannot be done in a single database and instantaneously. This is a problem that our product solves. 

BasisPoint solves the issues for the verticals and provides for complete multi-jurisdictional processing for capital markets firms (insurance, mutual fund, asset managers, wealth managers, pension funds, and corporations)."

"Retaining a customer is said to be 5 times cheaper than acquiring a new one. But the problem for banks has always been getting the right product in front of the right customer.

The Hook is a targeted ad platform that solves this problem. It helps banks to intelligently monetize web and mobile traffic by displaying the right products based on existing users' needs, employing data points from its PFM and other sources.

With a single line of code and flexibility to self-host, integration is a breeze and e-banking as a profit centre is no longer a distant dream."

"Utilizing the power of email; Striata's next generation interactive PDF eBill can be read and paid on any email-enabled device. Our paperless adoption technology eliminates registration and allows customers to switch off paper in just one click. This results in optimal adoption and faster ROI. Striata will demonstrate the powerful interactive bill which is encrypted, has integrated eConsent, shared password security, instant dispute capability, and mobile one click pay."

"Backbase Launchpad is a new and unique banking experience, based on Backbase Portal technology. Launchpad offers the latest innovations and best practices in user experience design and cross device customer journeys. The goal of Launchpad is to drastically bring down time-to-market for online and mobile projects.

Launchpad is immediately optimized for use on regular browsers, tablets, and smartphones and is entirely manageable by the e-business and digital teams using the Backbase Portal Manager. Launchpad is seamlessly integrated with the Backbase App Center and includes apps such as Accounts Overview, Payments, PFM, Stock Portfolio Manager, Message Center, etc. Other apps (developed by the bank, by Backbase, or by third party vendors) can be easily added to Launchpad.

Launchpad and its apps come with universal integration architecture to hook up existing core banking systems with the new Bank 2.0 front-end."

"Metaforic is demonstrating its latest technology that can detect, respond, and report on a range of security threats to mobile financial applications. The product works on a per-app basis at the application layer to inform operators of the real-time security state of the application and device. 

For example, a Metaforic protected application can detect an application repackaged with a malicious payload, alert the institution if the app connects to its service, and mark any transactions with a higher risk profile. Another example is if the device is jail broken, it will be reliably reported."

"The eWise MyFin mobile banking application combines the most powerful elements of PFM, account aggregation, and eAuthentication into a single, integrated solution. The groundbreaking functionality of the eWise MyFin application transforms the consumer's online banking into a simple, fast, and powerful experience that delivers unprecedented value to Financial Institutions through an integrated ROI engine."

"Heckyl is a real-time financial information platform connecting brokerages and traders. Heckyl provides real-time news analytics and sentiment mining dashboards that collect information from millions of trusted sources, including government websites, company filings, patent offices, high courts, twitter, etc.

Heckyl FIND's dashboard is integrated with brokerages' trading terminals. This makes trading terminals immensely powerful as traders have access to real-time news analytics, sentiments, research ideas, economic events, rating updates, and results that are directly streamed into the trading terminals."