Finovate Debuts: BlueVine

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. Today’s feature is BlueVine, which demonstrated its credit line for small businesses at FinovateFall 2014.

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BlueVine provides small businesses (SMBs), who often have uneven cashflow, with financing to manage operations. By automatically connecting with the SMB’s accounting software, BlueVine furnishes cash for business’ unpaid invoices in as quickly as a day.

Stats

    • 17 employees
    • $5.5 million in funding
    • Founded July 2013

Top 3 benefits

1) Fast funding
To minimize manual input, BlueVine connects to the small business’ accounting software to access unpaid invoices.

The screenshot below shows the user dashboard, which lists all invoices available for instant financing, indicated by the Get paid now button on the right.

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The first time the SMB requests funds, they indicate where to send the money, which can arrive as quickly as 24 hours. Subsequent funding requests take only minutes.

2) Simple and transparent
BlueVine’s payment calculator is an example of its simplicity. It requires only two inputs, the amount of the invoice and the due date.

It also shows the advance payment, which equals 85% of the invoice, and is the maximum amount they can receive upfront, alongside the rebate, the amount the SMB receives once the invoice is paid.

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BlueVine has no set up or subscription dues, and is transparent about its fees. The Funded section of the dashboard details the cash advance, repayment history, and total fees.

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3) 100% online; no paperwork
The BlueVine application process requires two forms, one for business details (see below) and another with personal information.

BlueVineBusinessform.jpgSMBs upload additional information, such as bank statements, online.

BlueVine demonstrated at FinovateFall 2014, check out the video here.

TransferWise Launches “Stop Hidden Fees” Campaign

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A few weeks ago we reported how international money transfer innovator, TransferWise was taking to the streets of London on the eve of Halloween to protest hidden fees in the money transfer industry.

Today, we’re back to report that the fight is still on.

On Thursday, TransferWise launched the next stage in its offensive to bring greater transparency to bank and brokerage fees. The company hosted an event at Westminster, unveiled an online petition calling for the end of hidden fees, and earned a statement of support from Chi Onwurah MP, Shadow Cabinet Minister for Digital Government:
“After the Libor and forex scandals, public confidence in foreign exchange transactions is at an all time low. So I welcome TransferWise’s campaign for greater transparency. I want UK holiday makers to get the best deal possible – and know what they are being charged.”
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TransferWise issued a three-point manifesto calling on banks and brokers to:
    • Provide a clear breakdown of the costs associated with every transaction
    • Publish the difference between the exchange rate offered by the provider and the true, mid-market rate
    • Put an end to the use of misleading terms such as “free” and “0% commission” where hidden charges are applied.
Co-Founder of TransferWise Taavet Hinrikus said, “In fact, hidden fees are so pervasive in the industry, we sometimes struggle to convince potential customers that ‘free’ or ‘0% commission’ services aren’t free at all.”
“Our polling shows that 58% of Brits would consider shopping around for their financial services if they could compare prices more easily,” he added.
Based in London and founded in 2010, TransferWise was last on the Finovate stage for the London conference in 2013. See a video of the company’s demonstration from FinovateEurope here.

Alumni News– November 21, 2014

  • Finovate-F-Logo.jpgUmbrella.co.uk migrates client base of 1,000+ freelancers and contractors to the FreeAgent platform.
  • Uber helping drivers manage and pay back their student loans by partnering with Tuition.io.
  • Actiance recognized in Gartner 2014 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving.
  • Bloomberg: CAN Capital to weigh IPO with up to $2 billion value.
  • Intuit’s Quickbooks and Xero coming to Square App Marketplace.
  • PayStand sets flat fees for e-check payment option.
  • Virtual Piggy, provider of Oink, launches the Oink Discover prepaid card for teens.
  • Fiserv links its Popmoney P2P payment solution to charitable giving.
  • Yodlee wins top honors at Citi Mobile Challenge Latam 2014.
  • Bazaarvoice announces plans to relocated to new corporate HQ in North Austin.
  • Kashoo announces enhancements to its web app, including more P&L options and increased security.
  • VoiceTrust launches strategic partnership with German biometric cloud security company, BioID AG.
  • The Washington Post features Bionym’s Nymiband.
  • Accenture mentions Thinknum as an innovation that is helping to change the banking industry.
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 Debuts: SelfScore

Finovate Debuts: SelfScore
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The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. SelfScore demonstrated its consumer analytics service designed to supplement FICO scores with its “scoring as a service” approach.

SelfScore

SelfScore.com is a consumer analytics service that uses a proprietary algorithm to combine online profiles, phone and sensor data, psychometric questions, and 360-degree feedback from one’s network to provide insights. The resulting SelfScore can be used in a variety of consumer and business contexts, such as credit scoring, to yield a broader picture of a potential applicant, consumer, or business partner.
The Stats
    • Founded in January 2013
    • Headquartered in Palo Alto, California
    • Kalpesh Kapadia is CEO and Co-Founder
    • 10 employees
    • Partnerships include: AT&T, Fenway Summer, GradGuard, International Student Insurance
The Story
Consider the case of international students who come to the United States for graduate school. Many of these students were the smartest and hardest workers from their home countries and, further, have been vetted in many ways en route to being admitted to American universities and securing visas. International graduate students disproportionately pursue degrees in science, technology, and business fields that tend to yield high starting salaries.
But despite all these indicators of future success, international students who are new to the U.S. experience many difficulties and have a hard time finding fair deals on the services that are essential to life in modern America: things like credit cards, affordable health insurance, and smartphone contracts.
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And while international graduate students are only a small portion of the underbanked in America, SelfScore’s research suggests that college students from the US face many of the same challenges. They have many predictors of financial success, but they face the same chicken and egg problem – you need credit to get credit.
“We believe that with new advances in social web and smartphones, it is now possible to attain a complete, timely, and accurate picture of consumer behavior that benefits both consumers and businesses,” said SelfScore CEO and Co-Founder Kalpesh Kapadia. In the long term, Kapadia thinks that tools such as SelfScore can be used to augment FICO and other traditional scoring methods. As more and more institutions begin to see what their current scoring strategies are missing, the demand for dynamic, comprehensive scores that incorporate social data could grow.
The Solution
To get a free SelfScore, users answer 24 questions at SelfScore.com. The questions range from the financial (“Does your credit card limit affect your spending habits?”) to general attitudes about life (“Do you believe that most people are more or less trustworthy?”) to the more personal (“What do you do when you are stressed?”). 
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After you’ve answered the questions, SelfScore reveals your score and presents a set of offers you qualify for. My SelfScore of 457 merited an offer for a credit card and another to save $500 on a smartphone. 

Each offer is designed to be relevant to the needs of the current target demographic for foreign graduate students. SelfScore also provides a peer ranking as well, in which I learned that my financial score of 73 is above the average of 50, but my 250 Facebook friends is below the average of 340.
“In a sense, we are giving the user a comprehensive measure of their life and various dimensions of their life, and relative strengths,” Kapadia said.  He notes that some attributes may be more valuable than others, and suggests this reflects the great flexibility of the platform. 
The Future
SelfScore is working to establish mutually beneficial partnerships.The company is especially interested in meeting with lenders, insurers, and companies in the post-paid billing space that might be interested in “supplementing” their current financial metrics. “We want to serve tomorrow’s prime customers today,” Kapadia said.
Another objective is to expand their portfolio of  offers. The company currently features an AT&T subsidized smartphone offer and a credit card program, and affordable health insurance will be added soon. 
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“There are 75 million underbanked customers in the U.S. right now,” Kapadia explained. “A third or 25 million of which would otherwise be categorized as ‘good apples’ who are generally being ignored because of a lack of credit history. At SelfScore, it is our mission to serve this deserving but underserved population.”
Watch a video of SelfScore’s live demo from FinovateFall 2014

Advanced Merchant Payments Brings in $5 Million in First Funding Round

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Yesterday, as we began looking forward to FinovateEurope, we heard news from a 2014 alum, Advanced Merchant Payments (AMP).

AMP, a company that provides banks with alternative lending options for small-and-medium (SMB) businesses, pulled in a fresh $5 million this week. The funding, a first for the Hong Kong-based company, comes from SBT Venture Capital.

AMP operates in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines, and has recently expanded into the UK, participating in London’s Level39 fintech accelerator. It plans to use the funding to further internationalize and scale the business.

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Founded in 2009, AMP helps financial institutions offer financing to small business customers by managing some or all stages of the loan process, including:

    • Qualification
    • Verification
    • Credit scoring
    • Approval
    • Disbursement
    • Daily repayment
    • Risk monitoring

AMP debuted its small business lending solution for banks at FinovateEurope 2014.

Fintech Fundings: 16 Companies Raise $82 Million Week Ending Nov 21

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With no blockbuster fundings ($25 mil+), the weekly total of $82 million was the fourth-lowest since we began tracking August 1. However, the overall number of companies was 16, making it a busy week. 
And we were glad to see one Finovate alum, Advance Merchant Payments ($5 mil) on the list. In addition, there was a future Finovate alum, Buttercoin. The hot cryptocurrency startup will be demoing at FinovateEurope in February. 

Here are the deals in order of size from Nov. 15 to Nov 21

Value exchange technology
Latest round: $21 million
Total raised: $21 million
Tags: Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, blockchain, payments, Montreal, Canada
Source: Crunchbase
Merchant advances in the digital media industry
Latest round: $15 million
Total raised: $50 million
Tags: Lending, merchant, credit, underwriting, Beverly Hills, California
Source: Crunchbase
Zibby, integrated lease-to-own financing for online purchases
Latest round: $10 million (includes some debt)
Total raised: $10 million (includes some debt)
Tags: Lending, ecommerce, shopping, credit, New York City
Source: FT Partners
Digital currency technology
Latest round: $7.2 million
Total raised: $7.2 million
Tags: Bitcoin, payments, cryptocurrency, remittances, San Francisco, California
Source: Crunchbase
Home search platform
Latest round: $6.0 million
Total raised: $7.1 million
Tags: Real estate, home buying, mortgage, Mountain View, California
Source: Crunchbase
Powers small unsecured SMB loans at banks
Latest round: $5.0 million
Total raised: $5.0 million
Tags: Lending, Alt-lending, SMB, underwriting, installment loans, Hong Kong, Finovate alum
Source: Finovate
Working capital financing through accounts payable financing
Latest round: $4.7 million
Total raised: $4.7 million
Tags: Financing, billing, credit, accounts payables, London, UK
Source: Crunchbase
Commercial loan and lease information provider
Latest round: $4.4 million
Total raised: $10 million
Tags: Commerial lending, underwriting, data, real estate, New York City
Source: Crunchbase
French online and mobile payments processor
Latest round: $4.1 million
Total raised: $6.8 million
Tags: Payments, mobile, digital, merchants, acquiring, SMB, Paris, France
Source: FT Partners
Automated hedge fund investing
Latest round: $2.0 million
Total raised: $2.0 million
Tags: Investing, hedge funds, San Francisco, California
Source: Crunchbase
White pages directory for Bitcoin
Latest round: $1.5 million
Total raised: $1.6 million
Tags: Cryptocurrency, bitcoin, identity, New York City
Source: Crunchbase
Automated investment research
Latest round: $1.5 million
Total raised: $1.5 million
Tags: Investing, information, Palo Alto, California
Source: Crunchbase
New Zealand equity crowdfunding platform
Latest round: $100,000
Total raised: $100,000
Tags: Crowdfunding, SMB, P2P, lending, credit, investing, Wellington, New Zealand
Source: Crunchbase
Open-source digital trading engine
Latest round: Undisclosed
Total raised: $1.3+ million
Tags: Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, payments, YC, Palo Alto, California, Finovate alum (see at FinovateEurope 2015)
Source: FT Partners
Pricing and profitability analytics for financial institutions
Latest round: Undisclosed
Total raised: Unknown
Tags: Analytics, big data, pricing, management, Australia
Source: Fortune
Coinffeine

Spanish Bitcoin company focusing on P2P transfers
Latest round: Undisclosed
Total raised: Undisclosed
Tags: Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, payments, remittances, Bankinter (investor), Spain
Source: FT Partners

Kensho Announces Strategic Partnership with NBCUniversal

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Global analytics and intelligence systems specialist Kensho has entered into a strategic partnership with NBCUniversal News Group. As part of the arrangement, Kensho has formed a “multi-faceted content and product agreement” with financial news network, CNBC.

Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

Touting the agreement as a first-ever in the business, NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Pat Fili-Krushel suggested that while the company was committed to “innovation from within”, the opportunity to work with Kensho would provide “unique analysis” to its viewers. SVP and General Manager for CBNC Digital, Kevin Krim, added “our transformative collaboration with Kensho enables us to empower our audience to make sense and money from any event, whether expected or unexpected.”

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Talking about the partnership, Kensho CEO Daniel Nadler put his company’s technology in the broader historical context of efforts to provide financial information to investors. Citing CNBC’s role in helping bring televised stock tickers to investors back in the 1990s, Nadler credited the company for “advancing the movement toward more transparent markets.” What Kensho will add, he explained, was “the power of statistics to gain context and make better, faster, more-informed decisions.” 
The specific components of the partnership include the debut of Kensho Stats Box, a technology that will be made available to CNBC’s journalists and anchors. The Stats Box, launching November 20, will provide research and analytics insights geared toward actionable, market-moving events. In return, CNBC will give Kensho access to its breaking news and financial market coverage, which will be integrated into the Kensho Professional Platform for FIs.
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Kensho combines “massively-parallel” statistical computing with innovations in unstructured data engineering to provide financial professionals with a unique analytics platform for guiding investments. By providing real-time solutions to complex, natural language, financial questions posed to it, Kensho aims to bring both greater transparency and deeper insight to the relationships between geopolitics, the natural and business worlds, and the markets.
Founded in 2013 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Kensho demoed an implementation of the technology called Warren at FinovateEurope 2014 in London. In January, Kensho raised $10 million in seed funding.

Alumni News– November 20, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgPrivatbank customers can now use MoneyGram to send and receive funds courtesy of new partnership.
  • Financial Times Technology section looks at UK fintech startups TransferWise and Azimo.
  • CurrencyTransfer recognized by Secret Tel Aviv as Olim Business of the Week.
  • USA Today column on millennials and saving featured Tom White, CEO of iQuantifi.
  • TransferWise helps lead fight for foreign exchange fee transparency.
  • iBillionaire’s Index has increased 16.5% since launching in November of last year
  • Swipely now managing $4+ billion in annual sales, doubles sales under management in 6 months,  and provides businesses with insights on 20+ million customers.
  • Numerous Finovate and FinDEVr alums make AWI’s list of top 50 fintech innovators.
  • Advanced Merchant Payments brings in $5 Million in First Funding Round.
  • Kony helps Farmatodo increase customer loyalty and deliver new services via mobile apps.
  • Coinbase teams with Rewardspay to create workaround to make purchases on Facebook and iTunes with Bitcoin.
  • TSYS offers merchants and partners an omni payments solution with more ways to accept payments.
  • $493 million in P2P loans originated on Prosper in Q3 2014.
  • Credit Sesame wins 2014 U.S. Mobile and App Design Awards in Financial and Information Tools category.
  • BancVue wins four MarCom Gold awards.
  • Kensho launches strategic partnership with NBCUniversal.
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.

FinovateEurope 2015 Presenting Companies Revealed. Get Your Ticket this Week for Very Early Bird Pricing!

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In eleven weeks, more than 70 companies will step onto the FinovateEurope stage at Old Billingsgate Market Hall in London to demo the freshest solutions in fintech.

Come join us on February 10 and 11. Right now, you can save £200 on a ticket with Very Early Bird pricing.

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This has been our most competitive show outside the U.S. so far. The tall stacks of quality demo applications made it difficult to decide who should showcase their newest technology at FinovateEurope.

Without further ado, here are the presenting companies for FinovateEurope 2015:


AdviceGames develops gamified tooling based on data models, specialized in motivational risk games.
Aire is an alternative credit score to help people without any past credit history.
Akamai provides cloud services for delivering, optimising and securing online content and business applications.
AlphaPoint powers the top global digital currency exchanges with its white-label technology platform.
Avoka delivers SaaS-based customer experience management, enhancing multi-channel digital transactions around financial products and services.
Backbase is launching Backbase Journey Manager, giving banks insight and power to optimize omni-channel customer journeys.
Barzahlen – Cash Payment Solutions replaces traditional banking branches through offering consumers to cash-in / cash-out at 3,400 POS or 15,000 cashiers nationwide.
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank is Australia’s most customer-connected bank.
BizEquity is the ultimate lead generator for banks and 
financial advisors serving small business owners.
C24 is a “smart” digital money platform for managing your bills, transfers and wishes.
CashSentinel enables secure, large payments with mobile phones, all in real time.
CoinJar makes digital currency accessible and simple, for the everyday, and the extraordinary.
CPB SOFTWARE’s expertise, creativity and flexibility are the bases to solutions for its partner banks.
CREALOGIX offers digital banking with added value for the customer and the bank.
Delta Bank is a fast developing Ukrainian bank with a focus on universal payment services.
ebankIT is a software banking company, specialized in multichannel innovation – mobile banking, internet banking on wearable tech, among others.
Encap Security is the only internet scale, device-based, banking-grade authentication platform provider in the world.
eRipple redefines mentorship. We change the fabric of corporates by helping talent and experts connect.
EVRY’s Spendific is the personal trainer for your finances. Know your money. Spend Freely.
Financial Media Solutions brings financial content and analysis to life, in a mobile world.
Fiserv continues to lead the way in digital banking and electronic payment innovations.
Five Degrees invigorates banks with Matrix; banking out-of-the-box and in the Cloud.
FOBISS develops Artificial Intelligence-powered technologies that drive smarter business decisions within the retail banking industry.
IDmission offers the modern enterprise an identity-initiated means of engaging with their customers and partners.
Intelligent Environments provides secure mobile and online solutions for financial service providers.
investUP is the future of crowdfunding, ensuring that investors never miss out on debt and equity deals.
InvoiceSharing enables improved invoice processing and cash flow by sharing free electronic invoices.
iSignthis keeps your identity secured, your payments made safe.
Ixaris Systems provides the components and tools needed to build complex payment solutions rapidly and cost-effectively.
Jumio is a next-generation payments and ID software-as-a-service company utilising proprietary computer vision technology.
Luminous solves problems for banks, its aim is to drive transformation and innovation in banking.
mBank & i3D mBank is the third Polish retail banking group with over 4.5M customers – consistently deemed as a financial sector innovator.
Meniga is the European market leader of white-label PFM and next-generation online banking solutions.
Mobino enables mobile payments for 5 billion people, from any phone, no credit card required.
MoneyHub empowers users to make better financial decisions and plan more effectively for their future.
mydesq provides solutions for wealth managers. It powers your success.
NICE Systems gets you closer to your customers, analyzing every interaction and transaction to build a detailed picture of the customer journey.
Nostrum Group’s technology makes lending cheaper, faster and safer.
Novabase strives to make people’s lives simpler and happier through technology and a co-creative design approach.
onlinepay.com enables users to securely and quickly transfer or share money with their friends on social networks, such as Facebook.
PhotoPay is the easiest way to pay bills and enter payment data on mobile devices.
Pirean is a leading software and services provider for people-focused Identity and Access Management solutions.
Quantitative Credit Research delivers next generation technology for smarter credit risk management.
Quisk enables banks to offer cash-less transactions for anyone with a mobile phone number.
Revolut is your personal money cloud.
SAS Games develops TiViTz College $avings Game-a-thon – a fully-automated, activity-based, fundraising tool for financial savings vehicles.
Sedicii delivers strong authentication for mobile and web enabled services without ever exposing your password.
Smart e-Money’s LockByMobile is the world’s first mobile-based anti-fraud security solution for prepaid, debit, ATM and credit card accounts.
SOFORT Banking is the leading non-bank Online Banking ePayment system in Europe and works instantly.
Strands is a global provider of personalization and recommendation solutions that empower banks to offer a superior customer experience.
StreetShares.com is a social-lending marketplace where retail and institutional investors compete to fund loans to U.S. small businesses.
Taulia transforms supply chains, enabling organisations to create a healthy relationship between suppliers and buyers.
Telenor Banka powered by Asseco will present an innovative financial product offering, driven by telco-bank synergy, powered by Asseco SEE digital banking technology.
Temenos is the market leading provider of banking software systems to financial institutions across the globe.
Topicus provides premier innovative, cloud-based banking software, under the guiding principle: we challenge, you win.
TradeRiver Finance is a secure, non-bank, online solution which finances and executes global trade transactions. 
TransferTo enables value remittance across borders.
Trunomi’s innovative B2ME technology transforms the Know Your Customer market using secure online identity management.
VIPERA is a market leading enabler of mobile financial solutions and customer engagement.
Wipro is leading IT, Consulting and Business Process Services company that delivers solutions to enable its clients do business better.
WS Integration solves complex data processing issues in the post-trade execution.
Xignite provides real-time and reference financial market data to fuel FinTech innovation.
Xsolla is re-inventing e-commerce.

Yoyo is the first app that seamlessly blends payments, loyalty, and discovery – done right.

We’ll announce several stealth companies as we get closer to the event. And be sure to stay tuned for our Sneak Peek series to get to know each company in advance of the show.

Join us in London! Get your ticket to FinovateEurope before November 21 for Very Early Bird savings.


FinovateEurope 2015 is sponsored by: Life.SREDA and more to be announced.

FinovateEurope 2015 is partners with: Bank Innovators Council, BankersHub, bobsguide, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Datamonitor Financial, The Trading Mesh (formerly HFT Review) and more to be announced. 

Jemstep Launches Advisor Pro, Announces Integration with TD Ameritrade’s Veo Platform

Thumbnail image for JemstepLogo2.jpgWhen the going gets good for online investment advisory innovators, the good online investment advisory innovators go pro.

Jemstep announced the launch of Jemstep Advisor Pro this week at the T3 Enterprise Conference. The technology is a plug-and-play platform that helps financial advisors better onboard, engage, and serve their clients.
Kevin Cimring, Jemstep CEO, cited his company’s relationships with financial advisors as playing a key role in the development of Advisor Pro. “As a result of that process,” he said, “I am excited to announce that our advisor platform has evolved into a comprehensive solution for advisors looking to efficiently scale their businesses.”
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The platform lets advisors offer prospective clients free analysis of their current investment portfolio and see how that portfolio compares to those recommended by Jemstep’s algorithms. Again, the goal is to give advisors the tools for growth. “These features are designed to increase conversion of prospects into long-term clients,” Cimring explained.
Jemstep also announced that the company had been approved as a partner on TD Ameritrade’s account management and trading platform, Veo.
According to Jemstep vice president of product, Mark Richards, more than 10,000 investors have linked accounts on Jemstep, representing $3 billion in assets. “People will do this,” he said.
Founded in 2008, Jemstep is headquartered in Los Altos, California. The company has raised $15 million in funding, with the most recent round in October 2013 bringing in $4.5 million. At the company’s last Finovate appearance in the Spring of 2013, Jemstep demoed its Portfolio Manager solution. See video of the presentation here.

Alumni News– November 19, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgeFLOW Crowdbridge from Top Image Systems voted one of the three best ECM Solutions for 2014.
  • Technocular interviews WePay founder and CEO, Bill Clerico.
  • Allied Payment Network launches its new small business payments solution, BizPay.
  • Kapitall and Motif Investing both referenced in Investment News column on data visualization.
  • Kahuna Payment Solutions chooses e-SignLive by Silanis, bringing e-signatures into its lending platform for retailers.
  • Syd Youth partners with CSI globalVcard to promote Spend Secure.
  • Banking 20/20 interviews EyeVerify EVP of Global Sales & Marketing, Chris Barnett.
  • Silicon Republic features Fenergo software developer, Marcio Duarte.
  • Business Insider reviews FutureAdvisor.
  • Credit Sesame wins IMA Outstanding Achievement Award in Financial Services.
  • FinovateEurope 2015 Presenting Companies Revealed. Get Your Ticket this Week for Very Early Bird Pricing!.
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 Debuts: WorkFusion

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The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. At FinovateFall 2014, WorkFusion launched its active learning automation solution.

WorkFusion

WorkFusion combines machine learning with crowdsourcing to automate data handling. The company’s technology is used by leading financial data vendors and financial services firms for a wide variety of applications including compliance, corporate actions, customer onboarding, loans, and private equity. WorkFusion is a product of CrowdComputing Systems.
The Stats
    • Founded in June 2010
    • Headquartered in New York, NY
    • Raised $23 million in total funding
    • Builds and refreshes data products for seven out of the top 10 financial data providers
    • Has 68 employees
    • Max Yankelevich is CEO and Co-Founder
    • Launched WorkFusion’s Active-Learning Automation in September 2014
The Story
WorkFusion began as part of a research project at MIT. The original goal was to combine crowdsourcing and machine learning to detect fraud in online transactions. But as the research progressed, they realized that there was a much bigger opportunity in applying the same combination of automation, crowdsourcing, and “employee experts” to meet broader challenges of enterprise data work.
“We solve a problem around massive data collection and maintenance for financial institutions,” explained WorkFusion CEO Max Yankelevich from the Finovate stage in September. “And we do it for 50% less cost and on a much larger scale.”
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The initial edition of WorkFusion launched in 2012 and put the company’s thesis to work automating the process of procuring, training and quality-controlling online workers handling “core enterprise knowledge processes” such as reporting corporate actions and tax accounting information. The solution worked, being both more accurate and less costly compared to a traditional, in-house workforce.
“Giddy disbelief” is how WorkFusion characterized the initial response to their proof of concept, a reaction that encouraged them to scale the project.
The second stage in development was to build algorithms to replicate patterns that were identified as workers completed tasks. One example is pulling stock dividend payout information from a variety of data sources. The first iteration of the platform helped a company marshal human resources from Elance, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and oDesk. The second version uses an algorithm watching for patterns in a given data extraction task, learning which patterns could be automated, and then automating those patterns in the algorithm.
“Each worker is not just getting work done,” Adam Devine, VP Product Marketing said in a Finovate briefing. “They are training our software on how to automate that work.”
WorkFusion refers to this as the “virtual loop.” Human workers perform data-intensive tasks. Algorithms learn how to do the tasks. Human workers are then are available to retrain the algorithms when there are significant changes to the data. This “loop” helps overcome one of the major challenges of automation: adapting to changes in data sets, formats, or flow. 
In another example shared with attendees at FinovateFall last September, a WorkForce customer was able to automate the work that had burdened six FTEs. The cost?  Just $54. More importantly, the automation reduced the turnaround time involved from 5 minutes per task to less than 5 seconds.
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The technology is workforce-agnostic. That means that the human data analysts involved can be traditional, in-house employees, an outsourced workforce or a crowdsourced one. And the company’s technology makes it the only platform that provides “learning automation” as a service (LAaaS anyone?). There are a platforms that help companies source and/or manage  “distributed workforces”, but WorkFusion’s “virtuous loop” keeps human intelligence as a key part of the process, helping set it apart. 
The Future
WorkFusion is robust enough to require IT teams to deploy and configure. But the technology is designed to be used by business people rather than technical staff. Typically, clients tend to be larger enterprises. But the solution is “totally scalable”, they say. In one case, a customer is using the technology to start a data science group by himself.
The company’s work has traction: seven out of the top 10 financial information providers currently use it. This spring, WorkFusion announced both a partnership with uSamp integrating 12 million mobile workers, and a successful, $15 million Series B round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. 
And the company’s work is being noticed. American Banker listed CrowdComputing Systems, provider of WorkFusion, among its top 10 fintech companies to watch. Barclays ranked WorkFusion in the top 5 of the 36 seven companies invited to participate in its Open Innovation Challenge, and in October, WorkFusion was featured in an article at Inside Market Data touting the platform’s automation recommendation feature
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Discussing his participation in the spring investment in WorkFusion, former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer said earlier this year that the company “very well could be a billion-dollar plus IPO company.” Rather than just being the kind of company that develops a technology and then sells it only to become “a small cog” in some other company’s engine, WorkFusion in Glocer’s opinion is a peek into the future of work: “Ultimately, it will optimize the tasks being done by human beings all around the world,” Glocer said.
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n concurs. Going forward, the company plans to expand the size of its business process template library to make it even easier for businesses to find the processes they need without having to create them. The goal is to allow large businesses to elevate the application of human intelligence to higher order work, and automate the work that human’s shouldn’t be doing. And to deliver all this via one-click custom automation.
WorkFusion is the kind of technology that does a great job of showing us what lies right at the edge of the horizon, an example of just how symbiotic the nexus of human intelligence and machine learning can be. And for all the fears of “robot overlords” and AIs run amok, building on that symbiosis seems like the better bet compared to betting against.