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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A new global alliance between Ephesoft and Fortude will make it easier for businesses all over the world to unlock and extract enterprise data in documents and fulfill their digital transformation goals. The partnership, announced today, combines Fortude’s experience as an enterprise and technology solution provider with Ephesoft-powered Infor Document Management (IDM) Capture to help ensure that “customers get the data they need quickly,” Ephesoft founder and CEO Ike Kavas said.
“At Ephesoft, we focus on creating an exceptional customer experience from beginning to end. Partnerships with leading consulting and implementation organizations, like Fortude, enable us to expedite business process around the globe for our joint customers,” Kavas added.
Specifically, the partnership will draw upon Fortude’s experience in helping customers implement and manage Infor’s Cloudsuite and other solutions. Here, customers using IDM Capture will enjoy up to a 4x increase in processed invoices each day, and a faster process time of 36 seconds per invoice. Customers can be up and running with IDM Capture with minimal time and effort, enabling users to automatically capture, classify, and extract data and export it into any Infor solution.
“This strategic partnership with Ephesoft will allow us to accelerate implementations, and in turn provide customers a way to access information to make more insightful decisions and drive productivity,” Fortune Managing Director Arjuna Sirinanda said. “We help our customers optimize their product lifecycle and ensure business continuity. Offering businesses the ability to easily unlock their data with an intelligent document processing solution will help further our goals.”
Most recently demonstrating its technology at FinovateSpring 2018 (this year, FinovateWest Digital), Ephesoft has been an innovator in intelligent document processing since its founding ten years ago. Headquartered in Irvine, California, and maintaining offices throughout the U.S., EMEA, and Asia-Pacific, the company released a new version of its cloud-based document processing solution Transact in July. Shortlisted for the Global 2020 SaaS Award in August, Ephesoft announced that CEO Kavas had similarly made the finals in the Entrepreneur of the Year 2020 Pacific Southwest-Orange County Awards.
Lendit Fintech announced the winners of its fourth annual Lendit Finitech Industry Awards this week. And out of the 500+ entries competing for awards in 13 different categories, Finovate alums left the stage with nearly half of them.
Taking the highest honor as Fintech Innovator of the Year was Stash. The New York-based mobile-first investment platform made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2017, demonstrating its Stash Retire solution. This year marks the second year in a row that Stash has picked up Lendit’s top prize in this category. Fellow Finovate alum Marqeta was among the category’s finalists.
“Our purpose at Lendit Fintech is to elevate and celebrate the achievements of others,” co-founder and CEO of Lendit Fintech Bo Brustkern explained in a statement. “This year has been a hard year for many bank and fintechs, and the many enterprises that support them. Now more than ever we need a reason to come together – even if it’s virtually – to recognize and applaud excellence in these circumstances.”
Other companies earning awards were Upstart for Top Consumer Lending Platform, PeerStreet for Top Real Estate Platform, BlockFi for Emerging Lending Platform of the Year, Orrick for Top Law Firm, and Branch for Excellence in Financial Inclusion. Two individuals were also recognized: Colin Walsh, founder and CEO of Varo Money, as Executive of the Year and Nicky Goulimis, COO and co-founder of Nova Credit, as Fintech Woman of the Year.
A number of other Finovate alums earned finalist spots in this year’s competition. Both Lending Club and SoFi competed as finalists in the Consumer Lending Platform category. And BlueVine provided a strong Finovate alum showing in the Small Business Lending Platform group.
Credit is also due to Finovate alum Mambu as a finalist (along with Stash) in the Innovations in Digital Banking category, and to both Finicity and Ocrolus, which competed in the finals of the Top Technology Service Provider category.
It’s probably a good thing that many of us saw fintech’s Year of the Customer coming a mile (or at least several months) away.
There is no one who anticipated a year ago what the world would look like right now. But I suspect that fintech’s preoccupation with the customer experience going into this year has helped the industry make the necessary adjustments now that 2020 has actually arrived – in all its unpredictable craziness.
One of Europe’s most underrated fintech countries, Portugal, is home to this week’s latest Finovate webinar host: Celfocus, a company that is helping other companies offer a better customer experience. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Lisbon, Celfocus is a system integrator and specialist in digital transformation that works with businesses in a number of verticals to enable them to enhance their operations using automation and AI.
On Wednesday, September 30th, Celfocus’ Henrique Cravo (Digital Lead) and Carlos Domingos (Digital Channels and Integration Lead) will lead an interactive conversation that looks at how cognitive data insights can be the key ingredient – along with automated AI – that enables financial institutions to build and deliver “tailored experiences that trigger new targets, portfolios, and customer lock.” With the demand for greater personalization growing, Cravo and Domingos will show how financial institutions that customize offerings to meet their clients’ needs are likely to develop the deepest and most meaningful engagement. And the key to being able to deliver this high level of customization is being able to effectively manage and interpret customer data.
“From risk takers, tech-savvy, and hungry for innovation customers to tech avoiders that value human touch,” Cravo and Domingos wrote earlier this year, “banks must accommodate different engagement approaches and insights to differentiate customer profiles. This happens,” they wrote, “not because they don’t have the data, but because they can’t mine it.”
Learn more about Celfocus’ approach: Customer Knowledge Augmentation and Activation from their July 2020 guest post. And then join us on Wednesday for an in-depth conversation on how banks and other financial institutions can not only gain new insights into their data, but also leverage that data into actionable knowledge to provide better, more consistent, personalized customer experiences.
Big changes at the top continue for banking technology provider NYMBUS. The company announced on Monday that former Kony DBX EVP and General Manager Jeffery Kendall will take the helm as the NYMBUS’ new CEO. Effective October 1, Kendall will succeed Scott Killoh, who founded the company in 2015. Killoh will remain with the company as Executive Chairman of the Board.
In the company’s announcement of the news, Killoh praised Kendall’s “strong domain and go-to-market expertise” which he said comes at a “critical time” when financial institutions and financial services companies are rapidly attempting to digitize their backend and customer-facing operations. During his tenure at Kony DBX, Kendall was credited for growing the firm’s digital banking division by 5x in less than three years. Kony DBX was acquired by Temenos for $520 million a little over a year ago.
As CEO of NYMBUS, Kendall will be tasked with continuing the company’s success in helping financial institutions make their digital transformations. “In record time, NYMBUS has already delivered over 25 successful customer deployments,” Kendall said in a statement. “This is a powerful validation of the efficacy of our robust software and solutions, and the trajectory for continued success and growth by remaining focused on serving our clients, creating significant value for our shareholders, and providing exceptional opportunities for our employees.”
The Kendall hire is the second big C-suite move from NYMBUS in recent months. In June, the company tapped Jim Modak as its new President and Chief Financial Officer. Modak previously served as CFO at Tradex Technologies (sold to Ariba in 2000) and as both Chief Operating Officer and CFO at enterprise software provider DWL (sold to IBM in 2005). He is also a 12-year veteran of KPMG.
NYMBUS demonstrated its full-service, standalone, digital banking alternative, SmartLaunch, last year at FinovateFall in New York. The technology won the 2020 Best Solution for Customer Experience at the FinXTech Awards this spring. In what has been a busy year for the Miami Beach-based company, NYMBUS has inked partnerships with PeoplesBank, Transpecos Banks, fellow Finovate alum NCR, Pacific National Bank, and Payrailz.
Securing $12 million in growth funding in June, NYMBUS has raised a total of $45.4 million from investors including Vensure Enterprises, Insight Partners, and Home Credit Group.
A new study from McKinsey & Company suggests that European fintechs are experiencing an “existential crisis” as venture capital funding plunges “from surplus to scarcity.” The report compares the 11% drop in funding for fintech worldwide in the first half of the year with Europe’s far steeper decline in fintech funding of 30% over the same time period, and puts the blame squarely on the economic and social impact of the coronavirus.
But while the report anticipates a significant contraction in European economies – 11% this year with pre-crisis levels remaining elusive until 2023 – and that fintech is “already feeling the squeeze”, the authors note that there are a variety of advantages fintech has that could enable the industry’s most innovative players to emerge successfully if not stronger on the other side of the crisis. Among the main factors are:
The fintech sector has grown over the past six years by more than 25%.
Fintechs are native to the digital realm.
Fintechs are more efficient than many other businesses: with more efficient cost structures, “organizational agility,” and significant customer loyalty.
“As more incumbents struggle to adapt, the winners will be those that quickly recognize the changed context and that are most capable of responding with clear decisions and bold actions,” the report authors note. “Many organizations, both incumbents and startups, have adapted with surprising quickness and rapid decision making through the COVID-19 crisis. This new sense of possibility and potential should inform future action.”
Speaking of Europe – and on the heels of the big news of Yandex‘s agreement to buy Russian digital bank Tinkoff for $5.5 billion earlier this week – we took a look at our favorite Russian fintechs. Check out our Baker’s Dozen of fintechs from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and more.
To learn more about fintech in Russia, here’s an overview from last December that cites an Ernst & Young study that calls the country’s fintech industry “the third most developed market in the world.” This is based on the relatively high, 80% adoption rate of fintech services in Russia, and occurs despite a relatively low participation in fintech areas like securities investment, as well as savings and financial wellness.
“Basically we went from savings books to payments over mobile phone almost overnight,” said Roman Prokhorov, the head of the association Financial Innovations, who was quoted in the study. “Therefore, our consumers are more receptive to fintech innovations, and this explains the popularity of these services.”
Here is our look at fintech around the world.
Latin America and the Caribbean
JPMorgan Chase-based Brazilian fintech FitBank Pagamentos Electronicos plans expansion to the U.S. in the first half of 2021.
TechCrunch profiles Jefa, a challenger bank that caters to women in Latin America.
IFLR looks at the role regulators in Costa Rica will play in the development of the country’s fintech industry.
Asia-Pacific
Vietnamese credit scoring technology provider for micro, small, and medium-sized businesses Kim An Group secures Series A funding.
Could Malaysia be the “world pioneer” in Islamic fintech? Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation chairman Datuk Wira Rais Hussin makes the case.
The Business Times of Singapore highlights an S&P Global Ratings report on Thai consumers pushing Thai banks to embrace fintech.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Mono, a Nigerian API fintech startup that seeks to be the “Plaid of Africa,” raises $500,000 in pre-seed funding.
Lexology reviews the current state of fintech regulation in Kenya.
Innovation consultancy Beta-I partners with Angola National Bank to build the nation’s first regulatory sandbox.
Central and Eastern Europe
German fintech Vanta teams up with Marqeta to launch its credit card for startups.
Open banking platform Raisin partners with German financial solutions broker Procheck24.
Samsung, Visa, and Solarisbank AG work together to bring Samsung Pay to Germany.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Commercial Bank of Kuwait teams up with Thales Digital Solutions to drive mobile payments.
Could Saudi Arabia top Dubai in terms of fintech funding? Arabian Business looks at the growth of fintech in the Kingdom.
PYMNTS profiles Imad Aloyoun, CEO of Jordan-based payments platform Dinarak.
Central and Southern Asia
A joint project between U.K.-based Checkout.com and Pakistan’s National Institutional Facilitation Technologies (Nift) will bring new international payment options to the Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Silk Bank announces a partnership with MasterCard to boost credit card issuance in the country.
Times of India profiles Indian fintech MoneyTap, founded by Anuj Kacker.
When it comes to leveraging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence to enhance processes and improve business operations, many financial services firms know what they want but, to steal a line, “just don’t know how to go about getting it.”
One of the keynote presentations at the upcoming FinovateWest Digital conference in November is designed specifically to address this problem. Jeff Fried, Director of Product Management for InterSystems, will provide a address titled The 7 Steps to Using Machine Learning to Improve Your Business that will give stakeholders key insights into the steps they can take to get their machine learning- and AI-based projects underway.
“Continued advancements in ML and AI have huge potential in many domains,” he wrote in a blog post titled Maximize Today’s Downtime to Train ML Models for Tomorrow in August. “The key is to surface low-risk, high reward business solutions to ensure your organization continues to thrive, while also weathering the effects of an economic downturn.”
Specifically, Fried is cautioning companies against treating any COVID-induced slowdown in business activity as “downtime.” Encouraging companies to not let “the crisis go to waste,” Fried sees this year as a unique opportunity for companies to hone in and test out some of their ML-oriented projects. This is because while he considers machine learning and AI to be “high promise” technologies, the time and energy required to test and implement these initiatives is often hard to find when the usual, every day business concerns are often more “urgent and immediate.”
One factor in favor of companies looking to innovate using machine learning and artificial intelligence is that while there is a high demand for talent in these areas, the actual technologies themselves require relatively modest capital investment. This, at a time of heightened financial risk aversion by most businesses and combined with new tools that are making machine learning technologies more accessible to data scientists (and even those who aren’t data scientists), further argues for companies to make the most of the current moment when it comes to pursuing their more ambitious technology projects.
A self-described “long-standing data management nerd” and a former Chief Technology Officer for BA Insight, Empirix, and Teleoquent, Fried joined InterSystems in 2018 and is passionate about helping people build powerful data-driven applications. Learn more about Fried and his upcoming presentation at FinovateWest Digital in November.
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.
