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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.
FinFirst is an end-to-end financial services aggregator that pairs businesses and consumers with banks and NBFIs and offers fully automated onboarding, credit assessment, and fulfillment.
Features
Serves businesses and consumers as an AI-driven aggregator of financial services
Supports financial inclusion and serving the underbanked
Offers alternative lending and alternative investing
Why it’s great FinFirst is a one-stop shop for financial services.
Presenters
Omar Mehanna, Chief Executive Officer – UAE Mehanna is an award-winning, commercially-minded business leader with over 25 years of banking and investment experience with leading international financial institutions and early stage/growth businesses. LinkedIn
Abbas Hijazi, Chief Executive Officer Hijazi has originated and executed landmark transactions in M&A and corporate finance. He has expertise in fintech, private equity, venture capital, real estate, and M&A. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.
JuicyScore provides next generation device authentication and data analytics. The company makes the internet safer via improving end-user security and alternative data engineering without using personal or sensitive data.
Features
Robust device authentication technology stack and wide output data vector
End-user security that does not utilize personal data
Worldwide accessibility based on open API principles
Why it’s great Every online trace leads to valuable data which is safe, predictive, and extremely powerful for fraud prevention, risk management, and financial inclusion purposes.
Presenters
Alexander Akhlomov, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder Akhlomov has extensive experience in product development and information services for financial institutions, together with expertise in risk management and portfolio analytics. LinkedIn
Andrew Reddikh, Chief Technology Officer Reddikh has extensive engineering experience in multiple areas such as travel, banking, and finance. He has worked with many backend and frontend tools including GoLang, Java, PHP, NodeJS, JavaScript, and ReactJS. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.
DAPI is an API that connects applications to banks.
Features
Simple integration for MENA-wide bank connectivity
Access to end users financial information in their bank accounts
Payment initiation and automation
Why it’s great A one-stop shop for fintech infrastructure in MENA, DAPI is the first unified banking API in the region.
Presenter
Mohammed Aziz, Co-Founder and CEO Aziz is an innovator, tech entrepreneur and fintech expert who built successful tech startups prior to cofounding DAPI, which he is building with the vision to disrupt the fintech landscape in MENA. LinkedinA
A little over a year ago, U.K. challenger bank Starling and automated online insurance advisory Anorak Technologiesforged a partnership to bring personalized life insurance options to bank customers. Now, the two companies are back in the fintech headlines with a new offering. Starling announced that it will offer income protection insurance for the self-employed courtesy of its collaboration with Anorak.
“If you’re a freelancer, contractor, or sole trader, you may need income protection insurance to provide peace of mind if something happens that means you can’t work,” Team Starling noted on the company blog this morning. “Everyone has bills to pay, sometimes for a whole family, and if something goes wrong, an insurance provider could cover your outgoing when you don’t have a regular income.”
In order to access the insurance offering, Starling app users simply tap on the Anorak link in the Insurance category of the app. Anorak will guide the user through a quick, free, online assessment during which the user’s Starling Bank transactions are analyzed and the user is given advice on how much income protection and life insurance would be advisable. The technology also lets users know how long they should be covered and why. Starling Bank notes that the intention is to provide income protection and insurance coverage that is not just the most affordable, but is also the best choice for the consumer, as well.
“Bancassurance 3.0 is a reality,” Anorak wrote on its LinkedIn page today. “Technology redefines the way people access life insurance. With Starling Bank we help sole traders easily protect their biggest asset, themselves.”
Anorak demonstrated its Smart Life Insurance solution at FinovateSpring 2018. Embedded into the bank’s mobile app and leveraging bank data to provide quick insurance assessments, Anorak’s technology is designed to make it easy for partners ranging from challenger banks to online retailers to investment platforms to offer their customers personalized insurance options.
Named to FinTech Global’s list of the top 100 insurtech companies, Anorak teamed up with protection and mortgage advice company Albany Park over the summer. The partnership brought telephony protection advice to Anorak’s online platform. Anorak began the year with news that it was joining the FinTech Innovation Lab London’s 2019 cohort – along with fellow Finovate alums Exate Technology and FutureFlow.
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in London, U.K., Anorak has raised $11.5 million (£9 million) in funding and includes French insurtech startup studio Kamet among its investors. David Vanek is co-founder and CEO.
How serious is IBM about making an impact in fintech? The company, which demonstrated its wealth management technology at FinovateSpring in 2016, launched its first financial services-ready public cloud today and revealed Bank of America as its initial partner. The two companies have been working together on the project for more than a year, and the bank said it plans to host key applications and workloads on the platform to better serve its 66 million banking customers. According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, Bank of America currently has 80% of its IT workload on a private cloud and has been planning a move to a public cloud since 2012.
The IBM financial services public cloud will help banks and other financial services companies more effectively engage with qualified technology vendors. In its statement, IBM highlighted the fact that the cloud will also help financial services firms meet regulatory, security, and resiliency requirements for working with fintechs. The company added that the solution is the only industry-specific, public cloud platform to provide preventative and compensatory controls for financial services regulatory workloads, multi-architecture support, and proactive and automated security.
Bank of America helped IBM develop the platform’s control requirements which, for example, will help both ISVs and SaaS providers of all sizes focus on their businesses rather than security, infrastructure, and compliance issues once platform controls are established.
Calling the pact, “one of the most important collaborations in the financial services industry cloud space,” Bank of America Chief Operations and Technology Officer Cathy Bessant explained that the bank expects to give as much as it gets from the relationship. “This industry-first platform will allow Bank of America to use the public cloud, putting data security, resiliency, privacy, and customer information safety needs at the forefront of decision-making,” Bessant said. “By setting a standard that addresses the concern of hosting highly-confidential information, we aim to drive the public cloud to a safety level that is unmatched.”
The IBM financial services-ready cloud will run on IBM’s public cloud. IBM’s public cloud leverages open source technologies, including a managed Red Hat OpenShift environment, to support more than 1,000 enterprise clients. The platform leverages more than 16,000 production clusters, provides industry-leading compliance for data encryption, and relies on integration with IBM Security to deliver threat monitoring and management from a centralized security dashboard.
“The financial services-ready public cloud represents an ongoing focus from Bank of America, IBM, and Promontory to help develop a technology ecosystem where regulations can be addressed,” IBM SVP for Global Industries, Clients, Platforms & Blockchain Bridget van Kralingen said. “Together we plan to help our customers address their ongoing compliance requirements, coupled with highly scalable, standardized capabilities that will be built to help serve today’s modern financial services industry.” Promontory is an IBM business unit focused on financial services regulatory compliance consulting that was brought in to ensure an environment that was compliant with relevant regulations.
In addition to its FinovateSpring appearance in 2016, IBM also participated in our developers conference, FinDEVrNewYork 2017. The presentation by CTO Tom Eck discussed how thousands of developers were successfully building and monetizing “cognitive-enabled” financial services apps quickly and at scale.
Founded in 1911, IBM is based in Armonk, New York. The company is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker IBM, and has a market capitalization of $122 billion.
eToro’s Latest Acquisition Boosts its Crypto Presence
IBM and Bank of America Partner on Public Cloud for Financial Services
Around the web
DefenseStormnames Chief Revenue Officer Steve Soukup as its new President.
NICE Actimizeintroduces its new Federated Learning capability that offers higher fraud detection via Collective Intelligence.
Fiservinks global agreement with German grocery industry leader ALDI.
GoCardless to use TransferWise’s API, TransferWise for Business product, and provide TransferWise’s FX rates to its customers.
PayKeyformsSBI PayKey Asia, a joint venture with SBI Holdings that will support the sales and market launch of PayKey across the region.
ThetaRaytaps Moran Goldwein as SVP for Human Resources.
Infinex to integrateJemstep’sAdvisor Pro to deliver digital advice to Infinex’s client firms.
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.
The newly-announced partnership between Ephesoft and Tokio Marine Asia demonstrates how fintech and insurtech are playing a role in the advancement of Thai language recognition technology. Tokio Marine Asia, the regional headquarters of Japan’s first life insurance company, will collaborate with the enterprise content capture and data discovery solutions provider to bring greater automation to the Thai insurance market.
Ephesoft’s technology leverages supervised machine learning to automate the classification and extraction of key information from unstructured data. The technology is sensitive enough to recognize document types and the machine learning system requires only two to five samples of the data in order to perform. Faster data extraction, with fewer opportunities for manual entry-based error, gives businesses in a variety of industries lower costs, deeper insight into business trends, and the ability to offer improved service to customers.
“We hope that by using Ephesoft, we will be able to alleviate manual data entry and streamline processes, accelerating our claim processing to provide better customer service,” VP and head of digital strategy of Tokio Marine Asia Hidemi Harada said.
In addition to bringing digital efficiencies to the Thai insurance industry, the partnership hopes to break new ground in the analysis of Thai language unstructured data. Pledging to overcome data, document, and language challenges that are “prevalent throughout Thailand,” Ephesoft CEO and founder Ike Kavas said, “Ephesoft has a strong commitment to meeting our customers where they are and addressing their unique challenges, regardless of geographic location.” Harada added that the collaboration will help them “gain a deeper level of understanding for characters and language, which has been a long-time challenge to international business in Thailand.”
The deal with Tokio Marine Asia is the latest partnership from Ephesoft, which unveiled a major alliance with Grant Thornton over the summer. That partnership will enable Grant Thornton to make Ephesoft Smart Capture available to its customers to improve back office operations such as invoicing, accounts payable, and contract management.
Last month, Ephesoft announced that it had partnered with IT, BPO, and consulting services firm Hexaware Technologies to help businesses successfully undertake automation-led, process transformations. In September, the company announced that it was collaborating with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) specialist Automation Anywhere to help customers take advantage of the combined benefits of RPA and document capture technologies.
Ephesoft demonstrated its smart document capture and analytics platform at FinovateSpring 2018, highlighting how the technology leverages data mining and analytics to enhance mortgage document processing. Founded in 2010, the company has raised $15 million in funding and includes Mercato Partners among its investors.
The “everyday entrepreneurs” of GoDaddy just got access to a new financing option. The web hosting innovator has teamed up with online lending and technology platform Kabbage to enable its business customers to apply for and receive a Kabbage line of credit of up to $250,000 in a matter of minutes if approved.
“Our customers tell us all the time that flexible funding is critical to grow and run their businesses; new opportunities make it important to be able to access capital, quickly whether for online marketing, inventory or purchasing new equipment,” Kabbage CRO Laura Goldberg explained. “They simply can’t afford to wait weeks or months for a loan approval.”
The flexible lines of credit also mean that business borrowers are not obligated to make withdrawals. There is no fee for applying for Kabbage funding, and borrowers pay nothing until they access the funds. “Our customer base of over 200,000 small businesses across the U.S. understands the value of accessing the exact amount of funding they need when they need it,” Goldberg said.
In a statement, Kabbage and GoDaddy highlighted the role that a lack of capital played in undermining small business digital marketing efforts, in particular. Citing a survey of 500+ entrepreneurs, the companies noted that small businesses typically pointed to a lack of money as the main reason for not growing their presence online.
“We know that a lack of capital for marketing and other core activities remains a major roadblock to accelerate growth,” GoDaddy VP of global market operations Melissa Schneider said. “Our partnership with Kabbage is key in our ongoing mission to empower our customers and provide them with the resources they need to fuel their business needs.”
GoDaddy has more than 18 million customers and 9,000+ employees around the world. Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, the company had 2017 revenues of $2.2 billion and a net income that same year of more than $15 million. Founded in 1997, GoDaddy is publicly-traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker GDDY. The company has a market capitalization of $11 billion.
Founded in 2009, Kabbage demonstrated its Kabbage Card – which links directly to the customer’s Kabbage line of credit – at FinovateSpring 2015. More recently, the company announced that it was getting into the payments business with the launch of a new SME payments solution, Kabbage Payments. Also this fall, the Atlanta, Georgia-based company acquired fellow Finovate alum Radius, adding insights into millions of small businesses to its platform.
Kabbage is also an alum of our developers conference, FinDEVr SiliconValley 2015. At the event, the company’s Chief Technical Officer demonstrated how developers can use the Kabbage platform to accelerate the lending process.
Envestnetannounced today that it is adding five Yodlee FinApps to MoneyGuide’s MyBlocks client-engagement tool. This will give financial advisors new resources to improve customer engagement as well as their customer’s financial wellness.
An interactive, digital experience, MyBlocks helps advisors engage clients on topics such as social security and retirement compatibility by breaking them into “bite-sized blocks” that are easier to understand, navigate, and manage. By adding Yodlee Finapps, advisors will also be able to offer clients a holistic view of their assets, insurance, and other financial information, as well. “Get clients engaged faster and keep them engaged,” Envestnet | MoneyGuide president Tony Leal said. “That’s the foundation of MyBlocks.”
The new five blocks include:
AI Fintech: AI-driven virtual assistant that measures financial health
Cash Flow Analysis: financial tracker that forecasts future expenses and income
Investment Holdings: portfolio viewer with ability to examine sectors and individual holdings
NetWorth Summary: aggregated, continually-updated snapshot of assets and liabilities
OK to Spend: cash flow optimizer that provides transparency on future income and expenses
This week’s announcement furthers the initial integration between MyBlocks and Yodlee FinApps announced over the summer. The new blocks are currently available to MoneyGuide customers who are subscribers to MyBlocks and have licensed Yodlee data aggregation. The offering is expected to be extended to all registered investment advisors using the Envestnet | Tamarac platform in 2020.
“This is another step in our journey to create a unified advice network that allows advisors and their clients to build better financial futures,” Envestnet interim CEO Bill Crager said.
Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Envestnet| Yodlee demonstrated its latest financial wellness data offering at FinovateFall in September. The new app enables users to structure their financial data in repositories called “boards” that leverage notifications, alerts, and insights to make it easier for users to manage their finances. Among other recent offerings from the company are its Intelligent APIs, unveiled just weeks ago, which take advantage of data science and machine learning to empower the development of “hyper-personalized” financial solutions.
Envestnet has more than 99,000 advisors and 4,100+ companies using its data aggregation and digital analytics platform and services. The company’s customers include 17 of the 20 largest U.S. banks, 43 of the 50 largest wealth management and brokerage firms, and 500+ of the largest Registered Investment Advisers. Recent partnerships with Envestnet include working with Voya Financial over the summer to help the firm launch a hybrid roboadvisory solution, and announcing a $500 million acquisition of PIEtech – the mother company of MoneyGuide – this spring.
Envestnet acquired multiple-time, Finovate Best of Show winner Yodlee in 2015 for $660 million. The company is publicly-traded on the NYSE under the ticker ENV, and has a market capitalization of $3 billion.
The new prequalification solution from Finicity will make it easier for lenders to qualify borrowers and improve the quality of the sales funnel for loan officers. The company’s AssetReady Reportleverages consumer-permissioned data to identify a borrower’s assets during the prequalification process. This, as Finicity CEO Steve Smith explained, makes data available to lenders sooner “than ever before,” and paves the way for more personalization and customization in the borrowing process “from first interaction to close.” Finicity said its new offering provides a single-source solution for borrower verification that enhances lender workflow and maximizes ROI.
With the AssetReady Report, lenders will be able to access data like account balances without having to request personal borrower information such as a social security number or date of birth. Once qualified, borrowers can easily permission their data for Finicity’s verification solutions that leverage asset and employment information to continue the loan origination process.
The report features current account balances, as well as average balances over the past two and six months. AssetReady Reports also include any negative balances from the past six months and the most recent negative balance.
In the announcement, Lender Price CEO Dawar Alimi and Union Home Mortgage President and CEO Bill Cosgrove praised the prequalification solution for its ability to deliver “high-value data … earlier in the origination process,” and for its ability to work seamlessly with other Finicity verification solutions. “A single-source solution provider is a great fit for our business model,” Cosgrove said.
Finicity demonstrated its credit decisioning solutions at FinovateFall 2017. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, the company more recently launched its Verification of Income and Employment (VOIE) offerings which enables lenders to accelerate verifications via bank data and a scan of the borrower’s pay statement. This summer, Finicity introduced its Student Loan Account Verification solution, which helps streamline the verification process for employers who offer student loan repayment assistance programs.
Founded in 1999, Finicity has forged a variety of partnerships this year. The real-time financial data and insights company announced a collaboration with Pulte Mortgage this spring, teamed up with LendingQB over the summer, and last month partnered with American Financial Resources. Finicity has raised more than $79 million in funding from investors including Experian Ventures and Bridge Bank.
Digital challenger bank Revolut has chosen Singapore as its first entry into the Asian market. And now, after a successful beta period during which the company gained 30,000 new members and learned valuable lessons about the Singapore market and culture, Revolut is ready for business in Asia.
As of this week, Revolut Singapore customers will be able to instantly send and receive funds to and from fellow Revolut customers in Singapore, the U.K., Europe, and Australia for free. Revolut Singapore customers will also benefit from instant spending notifications, access to the real exchange rate in 150+ countries for fairer overseas spending, free international ATM withdrawals, and in-app currency exchange. PFM features like bill-splitting, round up payments, and budgeting and analytics will also be included.
“The journey to Singapore so far has been both exciting and challenging,” Revolut Head of Marketing and Communications Chad West wrote at the company blog. “For every new market into which we expand, there are different rules and regulations. The challenge for us is to build things that work as we, and our customers, want them to, while adhering to official guidelines. Not always easy, as you might imagine.”
The company’s expansion to Asia comes as Revolut fortifies its U.S. business via a partnership with Mastercard that will bring Revolut cards to the U.S. by year’s end. Other big deals for Revolut of late feature the company collaborating with Xero to enable real-time expense monitoring, teaming up with DriveWealth to offer commission-free trades to its cardholders, and working with financial API provider TrueLayer to support secure access of financial data via open banking.
This month Revolut announced that it had hired JP Morgan to manage its $500 million funding round, as well as issue the company a convertible loan for $1 billion. The company currently has more than $336 million in capital from investors including Index Ventures, Balderton Capital, DST Global, TriplePoint Capital, and Mastercard Start Path.
Founded in 2015 by Vlad Yatsenko (CTO) and Nikolay Storonsky (CEO), Revolut demonstrated its platform that same year at FinovateEurope. Since inception, the company has served more than eight million customers, and processed 350+ million transactions valued at more than $44 billion (€40 billion).
As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.
Fresh off a successful return to Singapore for FinovateAsia, we are happy to announce that FinovateMiddleEast will be back in Dubai next month, November 20 and 21. For more information about our upcoming fintech conference in the UAE, visit our FinovateMiddleEast page today.
Central and Eastern Europe
Berlin-based, pan-European digital debt marketplace, CrossLend, picks up €34 million in round led by Santander.
Bank of Lithuania namesIBM and Tieto as finalists in its LBChain technology initiative.
Islamic, mobile-only, challenger bank insha goes live in Berlin, Germany.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Partnership with Diebold Nixdorfhelps Lebanese Bankmed become first bank in country to introduce cash recycling.
Bloomberg Intelligence recognizes the UAE as the world’s top Islamic fintech hub, with Bahrain as a rising challenger.
MAGNiTT and ADGM launch new publication focusing on fintech and venture capital funding in the MENA region.
Central and Southern Asia
Pakistan’s JS Bank launches chat banking via WhatsApp.
Western Union enables real-time payments and money transfers to India.
Paytm president Madhur Deora encourages Indian fintechs to appreciate the differences between Indian and Chinese markets “and adapt accordingly.”
Brazilian fintech Nubank reaches 15 million customer mark.
Posnet, a First Data/Fiserv company, helps Argentine consumers make purchases using digital wallets and QR codes.
Asia-Pacific
Revolutlaunches in Singapore after successful 30,000 customer beta.
CIMB Bank Singapore completes first structured trade finance transaction on blockchain.
In partnership with Compass Plus, Mongolia’s largest bank, Trade and Development Bank (TDB) introduces the nation’s first instant card issuance project.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigerian digital SME lender Lidyaexpands to Poland and the Czech Republic.
Fintech Futures features Absa’s Thabo Makoko on the challenges and opportunities in the African payment industry.
Ghana government makes plans for a cashless future.
