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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Is this another instance of open banking, American-style?
One of the major topics of discussion at FinovateFall Digital last week was how the open banking phenomenon that is sweeping the globe will manifest itself in the U.S. The consensus was that open banking will not be driven by regulations in the U.S. as it is in many parts of the world. Instead, the ability of U.S. consumers to access third-party financial solutions via their primary banking partner more likely will be driven by consumers themselves. Another key driver will be companies looking to distinguish themselves from rivals by providing better, more diverse solutions from which to choose.
This is very much top of mind as we receive the news that Wells Fargo has entered a data exchange agreement with major financial data aggregation and analytics platform Envestnet | Yodlee. The partnership will enable the bank’s customers to seamlessly and securely share their data with the 1,400 third-party financial apps available on the Envestment | Yodlee Financial Data Aggregation Platform.
The agreement is also a large step for APIs (another major theme at FinovateFall Digital last week). Wells Fargo announced that it will also transition virtually all of its current third-party financial app screen-scraping to API-based data exchange, and added that the partnership with Envestnet | Yodlee represented the bank’s commitment to forge more API-based data exchange agreements with third-parties going forward.
“As we help customers navigate these uncertain times, we want to enable them to seamlessly connect with and use third-party apps that help them manage their finances and do so in as secure a way as possible,” Wells Fargo Strategy, Digital, and Innovation Group SVP Ben Soccorsy said. “Wells Fargo’s agreement with Envestnet | Yodlee does just that. In the future, our customers will be able to share their financial information with Envestnet | Yodlee-supported apps with enhanced ease, security, and control.”
Wells Fargo customers will be able to access third-party services via the bank’s Control Tower digital experience, which sits inside Wells Fargo’s banking app and is also available online. Control Tower enables both consumer and small business banking customers to manage their finances more efficiently, providing a single, unified view of their accounts with Wells Fargo. Importantly, customers will not only be able to turn the data sharing option on and off, they also will be able to designate the specific data they wish to share with third parties.
“API-based connectivity in the United States is leading to an increasingly connected financial ecosystem, spearheaded by the partnerships like the one we now have with Wells Fargo,” SVP of Data Access & Management at Envestnet | Yodlee Chad A. Wiechers said.
With more than 27 million users around the world, Envestnet | Yodlee demonstrated its Insight Solutions at FinovateFall Digital last week. The new offering enables financial services providers to build and scale hyper-personalized financial wellness experiences for their customers. Long-time Finovate alum Yodlee was acquired by Envestnet five years ago for $660 million. Envestnet was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California.
News this week that Russia’s Yandex had agreed to acquire the country’s biggest online bank Tinkoff was a reminder of how vibrant fintech is not just in Europe, or even just in Central and Eastern Europe, but in Russia, as well.
As our Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn noted in her coverage of the news, “This is a pretty big deal, not necessarily because of the size of the transaction, but because of the players involved. Yandex is essentially the Google of Russia– it is a tech giant in the region. And Tinkoff Bank is the world’s largest digital bank in terms of customers, boasting more than 10 million clients.”
With this in mind, we want to send out a shout-out to the many fintech companies based in Russia that have demonstrated their technologies live on the Finovate stage over the years. Here’s a look at our Russia-based alums going back to our first European conference in 2012.
PayReverse – FinovateAsia 2018. Founded in 2017. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a white label cashback service.
Ak Bars Digital Technologies – FinovateFall 2018. Founded in 2016. Headquartered in Kazan. Offers a payments via face recognition technology, Face2Pay.
Tinkoff – FinovateFall 2018. Founded in 2006. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a digital ecosystem of financial and lifestyle products and services.
JuicyScore – FinovateMiddleEast 2018. Founded in 2016. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a digital risk-management-as-a-service solution for the financial industry.
SMART Valley – FinovateEurope 2018. Founded in 2017. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a distributed innovation platform that enables key players to collaborate effectively.
Speechpro – FinovateSpring 2017. Founded in 1990. Headquartered in St. Petersburg. Offers a voice biometric technology, VoiceKey.FRAUD for use in contact centers. Finovate Best of Show winner. U.S.-based subsidiary of Russia’s STC Group.
Sberbank – FinovateSpring 2016. Founded in 1841. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers banking and financial services as the core bank of an international financial group. One of the largest banks in Russia and Europe.
C24 – FinovateEurope 2015. Founded in 2013. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a multi-channel platform that enables users to connect and aggregate their accounts with different banks. Became Paysend.
LifePay – FinovateEurope 2015. Founded in 2012. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers payment services as one of the largest mPOS EMV chip and pin companies in Russia.
My Wishboard – FinovateEurope 2014. Founded in 2013. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a social crowdfunding platform to help users fund their goals along with the help of friends, family, and subscribers.
SoftWear Finance – FinovateEurope 2014. Founded in 2012. Headquartered in St. Petersburg. Offers a platform that enables banks to provide their customers with the best possible user experience regardless of platform or device.
Yandex.Money – FinovateSpring 2013. Founded in 2002. Headquartered in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Offers a fast, reliable way for online businesses to collect payments for Russians and customers in Russian-speaking countries. The solution, since sold to Sberbank, originally was launched by Yandex, the leading IT company and search engine in Europe.
LifePAD – FinovateAsia 2013. Founded in 2012. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a “personal online bank manager” in a table, providing customer service 24/7.
A little over a month after announcing a $200 million investment from D1 Capital Partners as part of its Series G round, the Millennially-targeted stock trading app Robinhood is back in the fintech funding headlines with another $460 million in new capital raised. The investment gives the company a valuation of $11.7 billion, and brings the Series G’s total to $660 million.
The company’s total funding stands at $2.2 billion.
The financing comes from a quintet of investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, DST Global, Ribbit Capital and 9Yards Capital. A Robinhood spokesperson said that the funds will be used to support Robinhood’s core product as well as “new offerings like cash management and recurring investments.”
Robinhood has been on an impressive fundraising pace this year, locking in more than $1 billion in 2020 alone as a rapidly advancing stock market – and the blunting of sports gambling due to pandemic restrictions – have brought new investors and traders to the platform. Robinhood offers commission-free trading in stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and options via Robinhood Financial, as well as the ability to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with its Robinhood Crypto platform.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Robinhood has more than 13 million users. Earlier this month, the company announced a set of updates on its options trading offering, giving investors and traders greater control over exercising options, and adding improvements to the early assignment process, as well as enhancing both education and eligibility criteria for options trading. In August, Robinhood introduced a pair of new Chief Compliance Officers – Norm Askhenas for Robinhood Financial and Kelly Zigaitis for Robinhood Securities – who are veterans of Fidelity and Wells Fargo Advisors, respectively.
Below is a guest post from Shubhradeep Nandi, co-founder and CEO of PiChain.
The current pandemic has brought the whole world to a standstill and created grave economic issues. The finance and banking sectors have slowly started to experience the tremors, too. With almost all sectors struggling to keep up in these economic conditions, all eyes are on financial sectors who are the drivers of the economy; it is only them who can prevent an economical holocaust. According to research from Wakefield Research and Concur, almost 84% of small businesses rely on manual processes for most of their work. Being one of the sectors that still needs a lot of manual work, the financial institutions need to bring significant changes in their operations to keep up with the new rules of social distancing.
How is COVID affecting the financial industry?
Various companies across different sectors are trying to avoid a situation of bankruptcy, there is very little that the banking and financial industry can do to help. Several companies have opted for employee layoffs and change in investment strategies with the aim to survive this crisis. In spite of all the crisis, digitization is the only way the whole of the finance industry can get back on its feet and start controlling the economy again. But the banks cannot opt for these options as they have to deal with a fall in demand, lower income, and production shutdowns.
Given the current pandemic situation, a transition to the digital world was very inevitable for the finance and banking sector. The pandemic gave a boost to digitization which led to more and more people engaging in digital and online banking. The finance industry has undergone a digital revolution. Banks and financial institutions who are head-on entering the financial market with digital platforms are experiencing an increase in profitability and market share.
Customers have already adopted digital means for performing various transactions. Fintech is becoming increasingly common as a majority of financial institutions find themselves using technology to advance their services. New technologies are extensively being implemented in the finance sector. Cloud computing, Big Data analysis, machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain etc., which were exposed to a fraction of players in this particular sector, are slowly starting to spread their reach bringing a large number of institutions under their umbrella. The increased security practices in the digital payment sector are also making the digital finance industry more and more appealing.
Increase in risk exposure due to the pandemic
According to FinScan’s May 2020 report, those professionals dealing with anti-financial crimes like auditors, regulators, compliance professionals etc. are finding it hard to keep the financial crimes under control. This has led to an increase in the overall risks of money laundering, compliance and other financial frauds. Among the main reasons to fuel the sudden increase in compliance risks is the “remote working” policy. This has resulted in a lack of monitoring systems and proper digital connectivity leading to minor disruptions in working schedules. Moreover, most employees have an inadequate IT structure to carry on full-fledged work. There were a lot of security risks involved as the systems were moved out from state-of-the-art firewall securities in the office to the basic securities of personal networks.
Another commonly heard reason is that, like all other industries, the financial industry was also not ready to roll out online in such short notice. In an industry where even today most work happens manually, there was a huge gap created when, all of a sudden, they were forced to get all their operations to perform digitally. This created a lot of opportunities for criminal masterminds to install backdoors and capitalize on this opportunity. Thus with an increase in cybercrimes, the risk of non-compliance increased as well. The drastic shift of a majority of the customers to digital transactions provided a safe haven for hackers to monitor transactions and perform data breaches. It has also become very difficult for the compliance and regulations department to monitor activities because of scattered data and disruptions in the overall working network of the organization.
Dealing with the growth in compliance risks
With all fields of technology advancing to help other industries, many fintech and regtech firms have come up with automated compliance and risk management solutions. Even though these solutions are state-of-the-art, tech companies mainly focus on the technical and security aspect of it. This is indeed necessary because of the ginormous amount of data on the web; most tech companies can’t deliver on the level of regulations and compliance that needs to be followed by the financial institutions. However, regulations and compliance being the two most important aspects of any financial organization, these finance companies have to look towards those handfuls of fintech companies who deliver both on the technical and finance regulations aspect. These firms leverage regulatory technology to monitor and regulate compliance laws and lead the company to a steady rise in the market.
Looking toward a post-COVID world
The world getting back to normal may be difficult and changes made during COVID-19 will slowly become the new normal. The finance industries will continue to face major challenges unless companies have deployed thought- through and well-defined resilient strategies. Regulators will need to be able to track every transaction being made. Customers will want every transaction quicker and safer. Thus, an effective sustainable digital governance, due diligence and compliance management with risk assessment strategy would be of great value to the BFSI sector.
The sector, with the help of its employees, would need to redo their relationship with customers and provide assurance in terms of service. Evolution to meet changing socio-economic conditions is the prime need of the sector which can only be bolstered with strategic digital transformation.
Shub, co-founder & CEO of PiChain, is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about business growth. On a quest to achieve sustainable compliance for 500 Entities by 2025, he has 10+ years of experience in building and selling software for finance and regulatory compliance management. At PiChain, Shub provides organizational leadership with his unique combination of business understanding and technical acumen.
Will digital identity be for 2020 what customer experience was for 2019?
Multiple Finovate Best of Show winner iProov announced today that it has teamed up with Singaporean digital government transformation company Toppan Ecquaria to enable four million Singaporeans to securely access government services online.
“This pioneering service enables citizens to live in a world of trust online,” iProov founder and CEO Andrew Bud said. “By iProoving themselves, the people of Singapore can have even greater confidence in their safety, privacy, and security on the Internet.”
The partnership will enable users of SingPass, the country’s national digital identity system, to use facial verification to authenticate themselves in order to access government services, including filing and completing tax returns. Part of GovTech of Singapore’s National Digital Identity (NDI) program, SingPass is used by Singaporeans to securely access more than 150 digital services and 180+ government agencies and businesses.
“This marks a tipping point for facial verification,” Budd added. “The technology has advanced so much in recent years that it can now provide the highest levels of reliable security for the authentication of a national digital identity program.” In a statement, the company noted that the implementation represented the first time that a cloud-based facial verification technology has secured a national digital identity network.
Leveraging the camera on a mobile device, computer, or kiosk, iProov’s Genuine Presence Assurance technology scans the user’s face, while the screen simultaneously illuminates with a cryptographic sequence of colors for a few seconds. This provides confirmation not only that the user is the rightful owner of the national identity number presented, but also that the user is a real person rather than a photograph or mask, and that they are present right now rather than being a deepfake or video.
Unlike facial recognition, to which facial verification is often compared, the technology used by iProov requires the knowledge and assent of the user. As such, it does not have the social stigma some attach to other biometric technologies that focus on the face. iProov’s solution is easy to use – with or without a mobile device – and supports inclusivity by being effective with older Singaporeans with limited mobility and access to technology.
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in London, U.K., iProov demonstrated its technology most recently at FinovateEurope in Berlin earlier this year. The company’s partnership news comes only weeks after launching its threat intelligence system for biometric assurance, the iProov Security Operations Centre (iSOC).
The goal of FinovateFall Digital was straightforward: combine the dynamism and excitement of a Finovate conference with the flexibility and scalability of an all-digital event.
And if the response from attendees is any indication, the result was a job well done by all parties: event planners, event participants, and event attendees.
FinovateFall took the idea that the future of finance is digital to heart. For five days, via a blend of live addresses and panels on the one hand, and pre-recorded, on-demand discussions and presentations on the other, FinovateFall Digital was built to bring not only the kind of insightful commentary and innovative technological demonstrations our attendees have come to know and expect, but also something more.
For example, we all know that Finovate VP Greg Palmer spends a great deal of time working with demoing companies to ensure that they are able to put their best foot forward when the lights come on and it is their time to shine on stage. This year, by adding an interview component to the fintech demos, we get to learn about more than just the demoing technology. With an engaged interviewer as part of the presentation, we get these insights not from a stranger, but from someone who has spent the time to get to know the innovators and their vision as well as their innovation. The end result is something that is in some ways quite different from what Finovate has ever provided before.
Our all-digital format also provided greater access to our conference speakers and panelists. The increased availability throughout the day and the ability to schedule meetups digitally helped us provide the kind of socially-active environment that has always been a key part of the Finovate experience. Features like Meet at the Cafe, sponsored by Google Cloud, gave attendees, speakers, and analysts the opportunity to hangout before the start of each conference day, chat about the top fintech news and trends of the day, and make new connections. And our Scavenger Hunt incentivized attendees to check out a wide variety of FinovateFall Digital’s of live and on-demand content.
With FinovateWest only a few months away, we’re already looking forward to coming back with a whole new slate of innovative fintech companies. We’re also thinking about a new bunch of clever ways to ensure you get the most out of our conference and accentuate “the social” part of finance’s digital future.
Learn more about our upcoming, all-digital, FinovateWest event! And for a recap of some of the themes and conversations of this month’s conference, check out our daily summaries, Best of Show announcement, and more below.
In a round led by Canapi Ventures, digital identity management innovator Alloy raised $40 million in Series B funding last week. The round featured participation from Avid Ventures, Felicis Ventures, as well as a trio of existing investors: Bessemer Ventures, Primary Venture Partners, and Eniac Ventures. The investment takes the New York-based company’s total capital to more than $55 million.
“Our mission is to help our customers deploy safe and seamless digital customer experiences,” company CEO Tommy Nicholas wrote on the company blog. “This investment will help us continue to support our growing customer base, while expanding our product offerings and scaling marketing, sales, and customer efforts.”
More specifically, Nicholas noted that the investment will help the company bring new products to market in the areas of transaction and credit decisioning, as well as document verification. He added that Alloy will also continue to invest in its onboarding decisioning system and build a new learning portal to help users maximize their use of Alloy’s technology.
Alloy’s platform enables financial institutions to increase the number of customers they can safely and quickly onboard, automate manual processes to reduce error and manual review burden, and reduce fraud and financial risk. The technology allows FIs to access more than 60 KYC and identity vendors via API, and leverages data from a variety of sources in order to provide real-time risk decisioning. The company includes Ally Bank, Evolve Bank & Trust, and Brex among its partners.
In a blog post titled “Why Canapi is Leading Alloy’s $40M Series B Financing,” the Series B’s lead investor makes a strong case for investment not only in Alloy, but also for investment in digital identity innovation in general. The post discusses the challenge that financial services companies face in meeting compliance and regulatory standards that “were not designed for a digital-first world,” and points out that the arrival of the public health crisis has only made this challenge more acute. “What was costly and ineffective in the past has become unsustainable in the COVID-19 era,” the authors write.
Founded in 2015, Alloy presented “KYC: The Customer Killer – Solved!” at our developer’s conference, FinDEVR Silicon Valley, later that same year. At the event, Nicholas and company CTO Charles Hearn showed how Alloy’s technology enabled businesses to create fully-customizable APIs for customer identification and compliance.
Day Five of FinovateFall Digital featured our Power Panel: Latin America – The Future of Fintech and the Dawn of a New Opportunity. Participating in the conversation were Christopher Carmine, Director of Development, FinTech Connector; Laura González-Estéfani, founder and CEO of TheVentureCity; and Manuel Silva, Partner and Head of Investments for Santander InnoVentures.
The panelists, led by moderator Greg Palmer, discussed the biggest opportunities in Latin America presently, emphasizing that fintechs should focus on local issues rather than on big technology themes. They noted that Latin America has a great deal of variation and that it is problematic to discuss the region without focusing on the differences between nations as well as within nations. They also pointed to the low number of “banked” Latin Americans (approximately 30%) and examined ways to bring this number up.
Among the areas of opportunity, the panelists underscored remittances – noting that the corridor between the U.S. and Mexico is one of the biggest in the world. Helping small businesses get their operations running with sound basic business management services was also talked about, as was the challenge of overcoming outdated financial infrastructure. “If you understand the particularities of the market, and understand that it is a work in progress,” González-Estéfani said, “it is a land of opportunity, indeed.”
Turkey is the King of Cryptocurrencies in the Middle East according to a report from Chainalysis. The 2020 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report, published this month, noted that Turkey has the highest total transaction volume in cryptocurrencies in the MENA region. The report cites volatility in the country’s currency, the lira, as helping encourage more savers to adopt cryptocurrencies as an option to maintain their wealth.
The cryptocurrency market in the Middle East is not large. In fact, it is the smallest in the world second only to Africa’s. And while Turkey tops the list in MENA, it ranks 29th out of 154 countries in the Global Crypto Adoption Index. The report notes that Turkey currently has no cryptocurrency regulations, although the country’s Capital Markets Board is developing a framework.
Pakistan introduces online banking solution for expatriates, the Rohsan Digital Account.
Indian e-commerce deals website CashKaro raises $10 million in Series B.
Dialog Axiata, a mobile operator based in Sri Lanka, adopts the country’s national QR code to enable payments at more than 50,000 merchants.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Digital identity leader Jumiobrings its identity verification technology to Latin American delivery startup Rappi.
Oyster founder and CEO Vilash Poovala makes the case for a fintech operating system for Mexican SMEs. The company raised $14 million in seed funding this week.
dlocal, a cross-border payment solutions provider based in Uruguay, becomes the region’s latest unicorn courtesy of an $200 million investment round led by General Atlantic.
Asia-Pacific
U.S. and Vietnam-based fintech Fvndit raises $30 million in debt financing to support its P2P lending company, eLoan.
Malaysia’s Merchanttrade acquires digital remittance service provider Valyou.
Philippines-based fintech JazzyPay secures $500,000 in seed funding.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigeria’s OPay partners with WorldRemit to offer mobile money transfers.
TechCabal looks at the relationship between the growing influence of China on sub-Saharan Africa’s fintech industry.
Disrupt Africa profiles Kenyan fintech startup Zagace, which offers business management solutions via API to micro-businesses.
Central and Eastern Europe
Polish e-commerce platform Allegro readies for the country’s – and the region’s – biggest IPO.
Digitally or in-person, the live fintech demos continue to be one of the most popular and worthwhile features of our fintech conferences. This year was no different. FinovateFall Digital featured fewer demoing companies than in years past to better accommodate our COVID-induced, all-digital format. But, as always, the quality of demos was absolutely on point.
With that, let’s take a look at the companies that our attendees have awarded with Best of Show trophies at this year’s event.
Finzly with its BankOS open banking platform that helps banks innovate at speed by transitioning away from legacy technology. Video.
Horizn for its ability to help financial institutions accelerate digital adoption with customers and employees. Video.
Lendsmart for its AI-driven technology that solves for the lack of automation, transparency, and communication in the lending process. Video.
Monit for its finance application that gives small business leaders the insights and personalized guidance they need to manage their businesses successfully. Video.
Q2 for its online digital marketplace that makes collaboration between fintechs and financial institutions easier and more efficient. Video.
Thanks to all the companies that participated in FinovateFall Digital! And thank you, our FinovateFall Digital attendees, for making your voices heard and for being part of a very special event this year. We look forward to seeing many of you in a few months for FinovateWest!
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 each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their five 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 five 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 through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2020 conferences are below:
We opened Day Four of FinovateFall Digital with a panel looking at the future of innovation in a post-COVID world. Among the highlights of the conversation was a discussion of the challenge in distinguishing between permanent and temporary shifts in customer behavior as a result of the pandemic. Our Deep Dive also discussed the positives, negatives, and uncertainties about the rise of platforms as players on the fintech scene. Lastly, the group emphasized how the rise of borderlessness creates new challenges and opportunities for companies looking for both new customers and new markets.
Our second panel on Day Four looked at the phenomenon of Open Banking. Here our panelists considered open banking as a subset of open finance, and noted that while open banking began in many ways as a regulatory initiative, progress increasingly has been driven by consumer behavior. This last point was especially relevant for fans of open banking in the United States, where any effort to encourage cooperation between banks and third party financial services and fintech providers is more likely to come about via customer demand rather than by legislation from Washington.
Day Four also marked the beginning of our Discussion Days content which offered a variety of special, themed tracks covering topics in banking, financial crime, payments and digitization, wealthtech, and futuretech. With an eye toward how technology is shaping innovation in these areas, our Discussion Days tracks looked at the rise of banking-as-a-service, the role of biometrics and identity in an increasingly digitized society, and the latest applications of cutting edge technologies like conversational AI and natural language processing in fintech and financial services.
The fourth day of FinovateFall Digital also featured our Best of Show awards. Our attendees selected five companies – Finzly, Horizn, Lendsmart, Monit, and Q2 – to receive Finovate’s highest honor. Read more about our FinovateFall Digital Best of Show winners in our announcement post.
And, of course, we started the day with our Meet in the Cafe interactive morning hangout – sponsored by Google Cloud. This morning featured a number of interesting insights and observations from cafe visitors including the idea of data itself as being as important as any enabling technology like AI or the blockchain when it comes to fintech. Those gathered also discussed the idea of the pandemic as a Black Swan event that has helped smaller financial institutions, such as credit unions, get back in the business banking game.
Sound interesting? Join us tomorrow morning at 9:30am Eastern for our final installment at Meet at the Cafe!
A pair of recent Finovate alums have made the cut for the Fintech Europe Innovation Program sponsored by Plug and Play. Moxtra, most recently appearing on the Finovate stage in 2017, and Subaio, which made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope in Berlin, will join six other startups in the program’s sixth cohort since it was launched two years ago.
“Even though COVID-19 has brought uncertainty to the market, it has also given way to a wide range of opportunities,” Program Director of Plug and Play’s Fintech Europe program Fernando Zornig said. “Embracing innovation in finance is now more important than ever. We are seeing a lot of changes in Europe and I am confident that these solutions will help our corporate partners adapt to these changes faster.”
Companies participating in the program will engage with Plug and Play’s 13-member, financial institution partner community, which includes Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, and Raiffeisen Bank International. The startups will have the opportunity to pursue pilot projects as well as investment opportunities. Joining Moxtra and Subaio at the Frankfurt, Germany-based program are:
ABAKA
CARTO
Delio
Envio Systems
SESAMm
Vizolution
Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Moxtra offers a OneStop Customer Portal that gives businesses a “digital branch” through which they can engage and collaborate with customers. Moxtra’s solution provides an all-in-one suite of services including secure chat and video meetings, document collaboration and task management, video conferencing and transactions, and more. This spring, the company was named to Fintech Global’s second annual Wealthech 100 roster.
Subaio provides a white-label, subscription management platform that enables users to get a complete overview of their existing subscriptions. The technology makes it easy for users to cancel subscriptions they no longer want and keep track of any changes in the subscription services they wish to keep. Headquartered in Denmark and founded in 2016, Subaio has a number of live bank integrations of its solution, including a just-announced partnership with ABN Amro.
Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, Plug and Play is a worldwide innovation platform that offers accelerator programs, corporate innovation services, and its own in-house venture capital team. More than 30,000 startups have benefitted from Plug and Play’s resources and support, with companies in its ecosystem raising $9+ billion in funding to date.
With welcoming remarks from Finovate VP Greg Palmer, Day Two of FinovateFall Digital got underway on Tuesday with a pair of addresses that looked at ways that fintechs and financial services companies can make the most out of the current health and economic challenges.
In his opening keynote, HSBC Head of Innovation Jeremy Balkin emphasized that understanding how the current environment has changed customer behavior is critical for businesses looking to adapt to both those changing behaviors and the needs they represent. This has been underscored during this quarantine/lockdown/shelter-in-place era. But Balkin is quick to note that these behavioral changes have impacted not only consumers, but workers and employees, also.
“We spend a lot of time thinking about the customer experience. We need to think about the employee experience, as well,” he said.
He also talked about the historical tendency to think of partnerships and “borrowing technology” as an initiative of last resort. Balkin pointed out that successful companies have turned this idea on its head to put collaboration and partnership at the forefront of their efforts to better serve their current clients and engage new potential customers.
Our Mastermind Keynote featured Adam Dell, Head of Product for Marcus by Goldman Sachs. Dell discussed how the adoption of digital tools is accelerating and compared the current moment to other recent instances of rapid technology adoption by the public. He pointed to a “vibrant demand for digital banking services,” and said that the winners will be those that can offer a delightful digital experience, a fair deal for the consumer, and the lowest cost means of delivery.
“Individuals who sit in the value chain and don’t create value really risk being eliminated,” he said.
Dell also discussed the opportunities created by the convergence of banking services and PFM. This comes as Goldman Sachs announces that Marcus will now feature a suite of PFM tools to complement its digital banking functionalities. Marcus Insights, as the new offering has been dubbed, was spearheaded by Dell, founder of PFM innovator Clarity Money which was acquired by Goldman Sachs in 2018.
After our noon break for lunch and networking, we began the day’s round of technology demos.
Q2 demonstrated its partner marketplace and app store that solves the challenge of banks and fintechs working together.
Monit presented its mobile predictive cash flow and financial optimization solution that gives small business owners the personalized insights into and guidance on their finances they need to manage their business successfully.
payever demonstrated its solutions that help small businesses access and take advantage of the same technology that big companies do.
Obsecure showcased its technology that authenticates digital actions to ensure that digital experiences are as safe and simple as in-person interactions.
Mostly AI demonstrated its synthetic data platform that enables companies to take advantage of AI and Big Data while maintaining customer privacy protections.
The second round of demos slated for today– including Glia, Illuma Labs, Envestnet | Yodlee, Microsoft, and Horizn— have been rescheduled for tomorrow due to technical difficulties. Stay tuned for more details on timing.
We would be remiss not to mention that Day Two began with our new interactive, networking session, Meet at the Cafe. Sponsored by Google Cloud, our first edition Tuesday morning featured a spirited, interactive conversation on Klarna’s$650 million fundraising, the fate of challenger banks, and the impact of new customer behaviors in the age of COVID-19.
Meet at the Cafe returns Wednesday morning, with a special guest: David Andrzejek, Head of API Ecosystems with Google Cloud. So meet us at the cafe and join in the conversation!
