Author: David Penn

Indian Fintechs Get Funded; Finastra, Avaloq Bring New Leadership to APAC

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, Finastra, Finovate Global, Flywire, Nubank, SumUp

Join us in October as our annual Asia-Pacific fintech conference returns to Singapore! FinovateAsia is one of the best ways for fintech startups and innovative industry veterans from the region and around the world to showcase their latest technologies before an audience of C-level decision-makers, venture capitalists, all-star analysts, and more.

For information on how to participate in FinovateAsia as a demoing company, partner, or sponsor, send us an e-mail and we’ll tell you everything you need to know.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • A partnership between R3 and Dubai’s platform-as-a-service company Wethaq will help digitize Islamic capital markets.
  • Working capital solution provider Demica goes live with supply chain finance technology from Saudi British Bank.
  • National Bank of Bahrain unveils new bulk cash deposit machines with secured with a biometric scan.

Central and Southern Asia

  • BharatPe, a digital payments company based in New Delhi, raises $50 million in new funding.
  • Tech Mahindra teams up with Adjoint to launch blockchain-based enterprise financial management and insurance services.
  • Bangalore-based fintech CRED announces $120 million funding round.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican online lender Credijusto announces $42 million investment from Goldman Sachs and Point72 Ventures.
  • Brazilian online personal loan platform REBEL raises $42.2 million via financial loan securitization.
  • Forbes interviews Nubank founder and CEO David Vélez.

Asia-Pacific

  • Finastra taps Wissam Khoury as new head of its Asia Pacific (APAC) team.
  • Flywire partners with Vietnam Prosperity Bank to simplify international tuition payments  for Vietnamese students.
  • Avaloq appoints Imad Abou Haidar as its new Head of Asia.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South Africa’s Nomanini inks $4 million deal with Standard Bank.
  • Brink News looks at the “game-changing” potential of fintech in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • SME financing solution provider Nvoicia takes top honors at Seedstars Ghana competition.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Tremend Software Consulting announces strategic partnership with Mastercard Romania.
  • CIO of AXA Poland Oliver Schemberg talks about the “people-led strategy” behind the success of its digital transformation.
  • SumUp opens new office in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Top image designed by Freepik

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avalara, Finastra, Onfido, Plaid, Revolut

On Finovate.com

  • Tax Compliance Innovator Avalara Partners with Billing Automation Platform Ordway
  • Finovate Global: Indian Fintech Get Funding; Finastra, Avaloq Bring New Leadership to APAC

Around the web

  • Plaid becomes a Nacha Preferred Partner for account validation.
  • Finastra taps Wissam Khoury as its new head of its Asia Pacific (APAC) team.
  • Revolut teams up with the WWF and The Rainforest Alliance to raise support for the Amazon rainforest.
  • Frost & Sullivan names Onfido the winner of its 2019 European Technology Innovation award for its AI-based hybrid identity verification solution.

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.

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: ARM Insight

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: ARM Insight
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ARM Insight, FinovateFall 2019, FinovateFall 2019 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.

ARM Insight’s synthetic data process unlocks the value of data by delivering actionable insights from hard-to-access financial transaction data while ensuring privacy is protected.

Features

  • Privacy data protection: reduce the use of raw data
  • Regulation compliance: manage privacy and data obligations
  • Product innovation: use artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to enable data-driven innovation

Why it’s great
Synthetic data is the breakthrough data set for maximizing your data potential while minimizing your risk. It is the future of data and you should be using it now.

Presenters

Steve Shaw
Shaw is responsible for the overall marketing, branding, and communications strategy for the company. He has over 20 years of marketing experience at startups and Fortune 500 companies.
LinkedIn

Jonathan Chin
Chin oversees overall product strategy. He started building websites at the age of 13 and later developed professional experience in corporate finance and accounting for technology companies.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Horizn

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Horizn
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2019, FinovateFall 2019 Sneak Peek, Horizn

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.

Horizn’s award-winning platform equips frontline employees and customers directly with the knowledge needed to improve customer experience and dramatically increase digital adoption across all channels.

Features

  • Gets employees and customers fluent on the latest digital innovation
  • Improves customer experience and drives digital adoption
  • Combines simulation microlearning methodology with gamification and analytics

Why it’s great
Using Horizn, banks increased digital adoption by 25% and brought call center times down by 45 seconds. Using the in-branch demo with non-digital customers, up to 20% converted to digital banking.

Presenters

Steve Frook
VP of Sales, Frook is focused on working closely with financial service companies to significantly increase their adoption/awareness of new and existing innovation.
LinkedIn

Robin Dindayal
COO and well-respected leader, Dindayal joined Horizn six years ago and has been integral in helping Horizn develop into an industry leader.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Eigen Technologies

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Eigen Technologies
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Eigen Technologies, FinovateFall 2019, FinovateFall 2019 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.

Eigen’s NLP software goes to work on your documents, extracting information to answer your unique questions. Eigen puts the power of machine learning (ML) in your hands.

Features

  • Puts the power of ML in your hands
  • Enables you to build a ML model with 20 to 50 examples
  • Can be used by anyone

Why it’s great
Eigen’s natural language processing (NLP) software is highly flexible and easy to use.

Presenter

Lewis Liu
Liu co-founded Eigen Technologies in 2014 after earning his physics Ph.D at the University of Oxford. He started his career with McKinsey in London.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: BlueRush

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: BlueRush
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BLUERUSH, FinovateFall 2019, FinovateFall 2019 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.

IndiVideo is BlueRush’s interactive personalized video platform. IndiVideo improves marketing and sales performance across the buyer journey from acquisition to engaging statements and customer care.

Features

  • Seamless CX, improved conversions and ROI
  • Higher customer engagement and satisfaction for increased up/cross-sell
  • Data-driven customer insights for improved sales and marketing performance

Why it’s great
Predictive analytics and customer data flow through IndiVideo for intelligent video production. Customer interactions with each video are captured for data analysis and deeper customer understanding.

Presenter

Ted Mercer
From chartered accountant to sales consultant, Mercer leads the sales team at BlueRush, searching for new ways to drive value for leading financial institutions using interactive, personalized video.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Instnt

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Instnt
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2019, FinovateFall 2019 Sneak Peek, Instnt

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.

Instnt Inc. is the first customizable, risk and compliance liability insured, online account opening and onboarding service for businesses.

Features

  • Increase revenue by reducing your rejection rates
  • Shift your risk and compliance costs and loss liability for onboarding with a single line of code
  • Cut operating costs by outsourcing onboarding

Why it’s great
Instnt helps improve business’ approval rates

Presenters

Sunil Madhu
Madhu is a serial entrepreneur with IPO and acquisition exits including Socure (Series C, venture backed), Hopskoch (M&A exit to WPP), Securent (M&A exit to Cisco), and Netegrity (IPO).
LinkedIn

Mimi Salcedo
Salcedo was the first Product Manager at Simple Finance and went on to co-found WinWin (acquired in 2019). She is now Instnt’s co-founder and VP of Product.
LinkedIn

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LeasePlan Bank Opts for Ohpen’s Core Banking Tech

LeasePlan Bank Opts for Ohpen’s Core Banking Tech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ohpen

Cloud banking provider Ohpen has migrated close to one million Dutch and German savings accounts of LeasePlan Bank to its core banking engine in the bank’s major technology overhaul, reports Sharon Kimathi of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The project was completed by migrating the aforementioned accounts and more than 17 million historical records. The smooth transition was the result of a close collaboration between LeasePlan Bank and Ohpen, the vendor said.

“We set out to reduce our IT complexity and improve the flexibility, reliability and efficiency of our services, whilst wanting to avoid any negative customer impact as much as possible during the transition phase,” said Sander Frons, director at LeasePlan Bank.

Frons believes that the migration and implementation to the purely cloud-native Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution from Ohpen was a textbook example of how such an operation should be run.

Angelique Schouten, board member at Ohpen, observed that “more and more financial organizations want to increase the digitization of their technology stack, and at the same time want to decrease their IT complexity”.

In the case of LeasePlan Bank, the Ohpen Platform replaced a number of legacy solutions, including Flexcube from Oracle FSS, which were installed on-premise. The new platform is hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.

Ohpen demonstrated its core banking platform at FinovateFall 2012. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the Ohpen announced earlier this year that NPM Capital had acquired a 35% stake in the company. Ohpen began 2019 with a big change at the top, appointing its Chief Operational Officer Matthijs Aler as CEO. Aler replaced Ohpen founder Chris Zadeh, who will continue to serve as chairman of the company’s board of directors.

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Temenos Buys Kony to Boost its Digital Front Office Technology for Banks

Temenos Buys Kony to Boost its Digital Front Office Technology for Banks
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Kony, Kony Solutions, Logical Glue, Mergers & Acquisitions, MX, Temenos

Less than a month after securing a $37 million debt financing from BMO’s Technology and Innovation Banking Group, mobile application development platform Kony is back in the fintech headlines with even bigger news: the company has agreed to be acquired by digital banking technology giant and fellow Finovate alum Temenos for $559 million and an earn-out of $21 million.

The acquisition will bolster Temenos’ ability to compete in the digital front office solutions market, specifically strengthening the company’s Infinity offering – which currently has more than 500 banking customers and is widely recognized as a leading technology by industry analysts from Forrester and Gartner. Kony Chairman and CEO Thomas Hogan will serve as President of Temenos North America, post-acquisition, and will join the company’s Executive Committee.

“The power of the Temenos portfolio, combined with Kony’s digital banking applications and multi-experience development platform, will bring the industry’s most robust suite of applications for delivering service, value, and efficiencies from the digital edge to the modern core,” Hogan said. “The strength, scale, and commitment of Temenos will also help protect and extend our market-leading innovation.”

The acquisition is expected to be completed by Q4 2019, and is subject to standard regulatory approvals.

Calling Kony the #1 SaaS digital banking company in the U.S., Temenos CEO Max Chuard highlighted the synergies between Kony and his company. “We are acquiring a digital front office product that has already been successful in the U.S. market and is connected to most third party cores,” Chuard said. “We are also adding a significant amount of exciting functionality and ease of generating customer journeys and experiences that will accelerate Temenos Infinity, providing banks in both North America and internationally with an unrivaled customer experience and omnichannel banking product.”

A long-time Finovate alum, Kony first demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2010, and returned to the Finovate stage two years ago for FinovateFall 2017 to present its retail banking solution. Founded in 2007 and based in Austin, Texas, Kony launched its Conversational AI DevKit earlier this month to enable businesses to deploy new technologies to improve customer engagement. In May, Kony announced that its Quantum digital experience development platform would power the new CareLogic mobile app from Qualifacts, and unveiled a new partnership with multiple Finovate Best of Show winner and fellow alum, MX.

Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, Temenos demonstrated its Connect Mobile Banking solution at FinovateEurope 2015. The company is also an alum of our developers conference, having presented its B2B Financial Marketplace at FinDEVr Silicon Valley – also in 2015. More than 3,000 banks in 150+ countries – including 41 of the top 50 banks – rely on Temenos’ banking technology to process the daily transactions and interactions of more than 500 million banking customers.

Kony is the second major acquisition by Temenos this year. In July, the company announced its purchase of explainable AI innovator Logical Glue and plans to integrate the company’s machine-learning-as-a-service technology into its cloud-native banking solution. Aside from acquisitions, Temenos has been on an energetic partner-making pace, working with IIG Bank, who agreed to use the company’s Infinity digital front office platform earlier this month; as well as teaming up with FIs like Israeli bank Mizrahi-Tefahot, New Zealand’s TSB Bank, and Pakistan’s Bank of Khyber.

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From Start-up to Scale-up: Token Introduces New CEO Todd Clyde

From Start-up to Scale-up: Token Introduces New CEO Todd Clyde
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Token

The promotion of Chief Operating Officer Todd Clyde to the top job at Token marks the open banking technology provider’s transition “from start-up to scale-up,” the company noted in a statement today.

“Token has grown from an idea formed in the basement of Stanford into a commercially viable, leading fintech poised to change financial services forever,” founder and now-former CEO Steve Kirsch said. Kirsch, who introduced the company to fintech audiences at FinovateSpring in 2015, will assume the role of Chief Innovation Officer and focus on developing Token’s product roadmap. Featured prominently on that map is the company’s digital money business, including its digital currency for banks, Token X.

“Open banking is a huge opportunity for banks and fintechs across the world and Token has delivered a product with solid market fit,” Kirsch said.

New Token CEO Todd Clyde

With more than 30 years of experience in the enterprise and financial software business – including 12 years at Accenture – Clyde was responsible for all of Token’s commercial and financial operations during his three-year tenure as the company’s COO. In his new role as CEO, Clyde will drive the company’s open banking business worldwide, and build on a year that has seen Token forge partnerships with institutions like TurkishBank UK, Estonia’s Tallinn Business Bank, Sberbank Croatia, Omnio Group, Khaleeji Commercial Bank of Bahrain, and U.K. challenger bank Tandem.

“Open banking is already enabling the next generation of digital financial services,” Clyde said. “It’s one of the biggest disruptions to hit the payments and banking industries in decades.” He praised Token for “providing the infrastructure to power these services, at this crucial time.”

With more than 4,000 connected banks, Token offers financial institutions a single API and Smart Token technology that provides an easy route to PSD2 compliance, as well as a way to make multi-banking available to their customers. Merchants can leverage Token’s technology to connect directly to customer bank accounts, enabling direct payments and lowering costs.

Clyde is the second big C-level change for Token in 2019. The company began the year by hiring 15-year technology and payments veteran Gaurav Kohli as its new Chief Technology Officer. Kohli was previously VP of Product Development, Architecture, and Platform Engineering at Visa where he oversaw merchant and acquirer processing.

This summer, Token was honored at the second annual PayTech Awards, taking home the top prize for Best Consumer Payments Initiative. In March, the company announced a collaboration with Konsentus to launch a fast PSD2 compliance solution that combines a PSD2 API with automated third party provider verification.

Token has raised $32 million in funding – including more than $16 million raised in June in a round led by Opera Tech Ventures. Founded in 2015 and based in San Francisco, California, the company made its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateEurope 2017.

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DefenseStorm Launches New Fraud Monitoring Solution

DefenseStorm Launches New Fraud Monitoring Solution
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: DefenseStorm

Cloud cybersecurity specialist DefenseStorm announced the launch of its latest anti-fraud solution, DefenseStorm FI CyberFraud, this week. FI CyberFraud is designed to spot fraud risks in banking apps as well as identify potentially fraudulent activity in computer systems. The solution leverages designated specialists who work in collaboration with the institution to manage alerts, help in fraud investigations, and serve as an extension of the institution’s own internal operations, fraud, and IT teams.

“Until now, no solution has provided specific monitoring capabilities related to data and application protection, coupled with the ability to correlate events across data, applications, and server/network/workstation events,” DefenseStorm CEO Harold Brewer said. “DefenseStorm FI CyberFraud has the potential to reduce fraud-related costs, improve the financial institution’s risk management posture, and drive cost efficiency related to the required monitoring of cyber activities.”

More specifically, FI CyberFraud analyzes and correlates data from all electronic delivery systems to spot potentially fraudulent behavior and monitors and audits access and configuration changes to both core and ancillary systems such as data warehouses. The technology also tracks transaction activity and databases for atypical usage patterns. DefenseStorm will demonstrate its new solution at the upcoming CUNA Operations and Member Experience Council and Technology Council Conference in Chicago next month.

The new product announcement from DefenseStorm comes just one month after the company picked up a major investment of $15 million in a round led by Georgian Partners. The funding took the company’s total capital to more than $29 million. Also in July, DefenseStorm teamed up with digital banking provider Apiture to offer cloud-based cybersecurity and cybercompliance solutions to its 500+ community bank and credit union partners. This spring, DefenseStorm announced a collaboration with Heritage Trust Federal Credit Union (HTFCU) to help the 50,000-member institution more proactively manage cybercrime risk.

Named a Top 40 Innovative Technology Company by the Technology Association of Georgia at the beginning of the year, DefenseStorm was founded in 2014 in Seattle as Praesidio. The company changed its name to DefenseStorm two years later, and expanded its operations from Seattle, Washington, where it still maintains an office, to Alpharetta, Georgia, where the company is currently headquartered.

DefenseStorm demonstrated PatternScout, its anomaly detection engine, at FinovateSpring 2017. PatternScout uses machine learning to identify potentially fraudulent activity in networks, and provides automated alerts to enable IT professionals and operations teams to stop cyberattacks before they spread.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, Azimo, BeSmartee, DefenseStorm, Fiserv, Hip Pocket, Kony, Kony Solutions, Marqeta, PayActiv, SparkPost, Tink, Token

On Finovate.com

  • Trends at FinovateFall: The Big, the Small, and the Surprises
  • DefenseStorm Launches New Fraud Monitoring Solution
  • From Start-up to Scale-up: Token Introduces New CEO Todd Clyde
  • Temenos Buys Kony to Boost its Front Office Technology for Banks

Around the web

  • PayActiv partners with Fiserv to streamline access to earned wages.
  • ABN Amro teams up with open banking solution provider Tink to bring multi-banking functionality to the bank’s Grip app.
  • Avaloq appoints Imad Abou Haidar as its new Head of Asia.
  • BeSmartee launches its new Mortgage Loan Officer (MLO) Command Center for loan originators.
  • Marqeta to create 175 new jobs in 2019, growing its workforce beyond 400 people.
  • SparkPost unveils new SparkPost Recipient Validation service, a sender reputation protection service that helps eliminate harmful bounces.
  • Azimo’s Richard Ambrose moves from COO to CEO, replacing Michael Kent.

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.

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