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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Revolutgoes live with support for Apple Pay in 12 additional countries in Europe.
TransferWiseunveils its borderless account in the U.S.
Salt Edgeannounces integrations with more than 200 banks across Europe.
CardFlightoffers Level 2 credit card processing support for SwipeSimple.
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.
MX, a provider of financial services data, has announced a $100 million financing round led by Battery Ventures, with participation from new and existing investors including the Tokyo-based venture capital firm, Digital Garage, reports Sharon Kimathi of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The Series B round brings the company’s total equity financing to $175 million. The new investment reflects the value of financial technology data to banks, credit unions and other fintech companies, while allowing MX to accelerate its already rapid product development and customer growth.
With this round, the company will continue to be focused on the power of data that is cleansed, categorized, presented and usable.
“The use of data is essential to every industry, including financial services, and we are thrilled to support MX in its mission to leverage data to help drive better customer experience and deeper engagement for banks, credit inions, and fintechs,” said Michael Brown, general partner at Battery Ventures. “(It) leads to financial strength for everyone.”
He added “The company is already powering some of the top financial institutions in the world and is uniquely positioned to provide the smart aggregation and insights that the financial industry will need.”
Aside from Battery Ventures, new investors HIG Capital, Point72 Ventures, Sorenson Capital, Pelion Venture Partners, and Cross Creek Capital, also participated in the round, alongside National Bank of Canada and Washington Federal.
“With our surge in growth, we are proud of the fact that we have operated profitably the past two years, leading naturally to this next round of funding,” said Ryan Caldwell, founder and CEO of MX.
“We could have raised several times this amount, but we simply didn’t need the capital. We are disciplined in our spending and building for the long term. This additional investment will be spent on continuing to grow MX’s high-performing sales team, building upon our industry-leading user experience and partnerships, releasing a new product category that will be forthcoming, and hiring more of the best talent in the industry.”
MX is scaling quickly, with 15% of banks and credit unions in the U.S. already adopting MX technology and user growth rising in the last 24 months.
Headquartered in Utah, MX most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2017. A multiple Finovate Best of Show award winner, MX was founded in 2010.
Automated document analysis platform, Ocrolus, has raised $24 million in funding in a Series B round led by Oak HC/FT. The new capital will help the company develop workflows for new document types, as well as improve the company’s analytic and fraud-detecting capabilities.
Ocrolus puts human empowered automation to work to help financial services firms and other companies make back office operations more efficient. Ocrolus’ technology leverages pattern recognition, crowdsourced data verification, and fraud detection to automatically analyze financial documents, digitize the data, and input it directly into the firm’s credit models. Even poor quality data scans from e-statements and smartphones can be effectively read by the technology and transformed into 99%+ accurate, validated datasets.
“Sometimes humans are better than robots,” Ocrolus CEO and co-founder Sam Bobley said. “We combine machine processes with live human intelligence to provide customers with a complete solution.”
Also participating in the round were FinTech Collective, and existing investors including Bullpen Capital and QED Investors. The investment takes the company’s total capital to more than $30 million.
Ocrolus demonstrated the Perfect Audit feature of its platform at FinovateFall last year. Perfect Audit provides cash-flow analytics from financial documents that have been digitized and analyzed by the Ocrolus platform. These analytics function as superior credit model inputs that enable lenders to price risk more effectively.
“Ocrolus is a unique company providing a rare combination of smart automation, analytics, and accuracy in its solution,” Oak HC/FT Venture Partner Dan Petrozzo said. “By combining its tremendous technology with an added human touch where required, the platform delivers amazing results for its customers.”
Last month, Ocrolus teamed up with inFactor to enhance the underwriting process for the small business financing platform. In April, the company partnered with fellow Finovate alum BlueVine to help accelerate financial application processing. Founded in 2014, Ocrolus is based in New York City.
CREALOGIX to power new digital and mobile capabilities for LGT Vestra’s wealth management app and client portal.
Strands announces achieving ISO 27001 certification in all offices.
Horizon Investments to implementFiserv’sUnified Wealth Platform for core portfolio management.
Personeticsannounces that users of Salesforce and Microsoft CRM platforms will be able to access the company’s data-driven actionable insights via new APIs.
Diebold Nixdorflaunches a new series of self-service, digitally-connected ATMs.
NetGuardiansappoints Swissquote co-founder Paolo Buzzi to its board of directors.
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.
In a round led by Temasek and General Atlantic, digital lending technology innovator Blend has raised $130 million in new funding. The Series E round boosts the company’s total capital to $310 million and will help power its development of additional consumer lending solutions as Blend pursues what it calls “a one-tap lending future.”
Also participating in the round were existing investors 8VC, Founders Fund, Greylock Partners, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Blend also announced that former Pixar CFO Ann Mather will join the company as an independent board member.
“Together with our partners, we’ve made significant strides in transforming lending experiences for consumers and institutions across the country,” Blend founder and CEO Nima Ghamsari said. “As we build toward a more transparent and frictionless future where lending transactions happen in one tap, we’re grateful to have the experience of Ann (Mather), along with the teams at Temasak and General Atlantic, in our corner for this journey.”
Blend’s funding news comes in the wake of the company’s latest product release, a new mobile-first deposit account solution that lenders can offer to loan applicants. The solution helps lenders build loyalty and convert mortgage customers into account holders, and integrates seamlessly into other Blend workflows, core banking, and CRM systems.
Speaking for Mountain America Credit Union, which partnered with Blend last spring, SVP Kelly Albiston highlighted the upsides of committing to Blend’s technology: “By partnering with them on multiple products, including deposit opening, we are providing a consistent and streamlined experience for our members across the board and taking friction out of the process,” Albiston said. Utah-based Mountain America CU has $8.5 billion in assets, and is the 12th largest credit union by membership in the United States with more than 740,000 members.
Blend demonstrated its Data-Driven Mortgage at FinovateSpring 2016. The company also participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, later that year. Founded in 2012, the company offers a digital lending platform for mortgage and home equity lending that reduces loan cycle times by as much as 50%. Blend has spent much of this year launching new products – including digital HELOC and HELOAN offerings – as well as expanding its partnership with Salesforce. The company currently processes almost $2 billion in U.S. mortgages daily, supports more than 150 lender clients, and has grown its customer base by 3x from 2017 to 2018.
Blend was named one of the best places to work by Inc. earlier this year, and was honored with a spot in the Forbes Fintech 50, as well. Also this year, the company added former Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos as President. Blend is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Credit union service organization, CU Solutions Group, is teaming up with NestReady to “expand and enhance the delivery of NestReady solutions to credit unions.” The Newcastle, Delaware-based mortgagetech, which debuted at FinovateFall last year, gives lenders an end-to-end digital homebuying solution that delivers better customer engagement and higher conversions.
“Using AI and machine learning to create transparent environments that allow loan originations at credit unions and real estate professionals to collaborate will create a stellar homebuying experience for members,” NestReady co-founder and CEO Mauro Repacci said. “Our platform eliminates pain points in the homebuying process and gives loan originators the chance to deepen their relationship with members.”
NestReady’s solutions integrate readily into the credit union’s current mortgage lending process. Intent-based marketing powered by machine learning, and automated sales activities driven by AI are among the benefits NestReady provides mortgage lenders. The mobile-first technology offers homeownership engagement platforms to identify when customers are ready to make the next move in their homebuying journey. The company also provides CRM-integrated actionable insights to help lenders best accommodate that moment.
With more than 3,400 customers in the U.S., CU Solutions Group said it will use its existing suite of solutions and its client base to coordinate the marketing and sales of NestReady solutions. The organization is based in Livonia, Michigan, and is majority-owned by the Michigan Credit Union League.
“In today’s changing market, credit unions are always looking for new and valuable resources to help their members,” CU Solutions Group President and CEO Dave Adams said. “Our agreement with NestReady will connect credit unions with a partner that not only provides the online home search capability that members have come to expect, but also resources that (simplify) the home buying process.”
The partnership also includes an investment – amount undisclosed – in NestReady. The company has raised $5.7 million in funding as of the end of 2018, and includes the National Bank of Canada, TechStars, 500 Startups, BDC Capital, 7Seas Partners, Stage1Ventures, and NXT Ventures among its existing investors.
Founded in 2012, NestReady made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2018, demonstrating its NestReady Total Homeownership Experience platform. The technology uses AI and machine learning to automate much of the mortgage lending process, and leverages consumer behavior analysis and psychographics, real estate transactional data, and other sources to give mortgage lenders insights during the customer lifecycle to ensure “the right action at the right time.”
Recent headlines for NestReady include the company’s partnership with Resource Financial Services, a mortgage banking company based in South Carolina, announced in March. Resource Financial is using NestReady’s machine learning technology and predictive analytics to help its loan originators better understand customer behavior and preferences.
Passport’s parking app now available at Grossmont and Cuyamaca Colleges.
Biometric Signature ID’sBioTect-ID gesture recognition platform has users draw their password.
Expensify becomes first fintech company to win a Cannes Lion for its Expensify This marketing campaign including a rap song featuring 2 Chainz and Adam Scott.
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.
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.
Asia-Pacific
CIMB Niaga and Liquid Group forge strategic partnership to drive cross-border QR payments between Singapore and Indonesia.
Active.Ai, developers of a conversational AI platform for financial services companies, raises $3 million in Series A funding.
Dianrong, a Chinese P2P lender, completes its latest funding round. The amount raised was not disclosed.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigerian lender Kudimoney rebrands as Kuda; picks up banking license from the country’s central bank.
Virgin Money South Africa to launch zero monthly fee bank account and low-cost cross border payments via its app.
Sixteen companies, fully one-third, in the Inclusive Fintech 50 of early-stage startups working on solutions to advance financial inclusion, hail from sub-Saharan Africa.
Central and Eastern Europe
CallVUteams up with Banca Transilvania to boost mobile banking.
Romanian consumer app Beez picks up more than $284,000 (€250,000) in new funding.
Russia’s Sberbankacquires stake in Islamic charity platform, PayZakat.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Egyptian fintech startup Paynas wins Visa’s FinTech pitch-off competition at the Seamless North Africa 2019 conference, taking home a prize of $50,000.
Libya’s Yaqeen Bank partners with Oracle FSS to deploy its core platform and digital banking experience.
What is the future of the bank branch in MENA? Khaleej Times takes a look.
Central and Southern Asia
National Bank of Pakistan partners with financial systems supplier Autosoft Dynamics to automate the branch’s operations in Bahrain.
India’s central bank to revisit regulations on the storage of payments data.
Could the success of Kenya’s M-Pesa show the way to higher fintech adoption in India?
Latin America and the Caribbean
Brazil launches regulatory sandbox for fintech and blockchain-related projects.
Colombian consumers are adopting fintech solutions at a faster rate than consumers in any other Latin American country according to the latest survey from EY Global.
Celcoin, a Brazilizian fintech that enables users to their smartphone into a hub for reselling mobile phone recharges, earns a spot in the Inclusive 50 list.
Faster loan processing and a better experience for mortgage borrowers is the goal of the new partnership between Finicity and SaaS loan origination technology solution provider LendingQB, which has integrated Finicity’s digital Verification of Assets (VoA) solution into its platform.
Demonstrated at Finovate two springs ago as part of Finicity’s growing inventory of credit decisioning solutions, Verification of Assets leverages consumer-permissioned transaction data to help lenders spot underwriting factors that can shave as many as six days off the typical mortgage origination timeline. The solution delivers reports in 30 seconds or less, and can be refreshed during the origination process.
“Digitizing the loan origination process is the key to the future of lending,” Finicity CEO Steve Smith said. “We’re proud to be one of the tech providers behind this movement and are glad to work with leading digital loan originators like LendingQB to help the industry evolve and improve the experiences for lenders and borrowers alike.”
Tim Nguyen, CEO of LendingQB’s parent company, MeridianLink, put the partnership in the context of the company’s determination to remain at technology’s cutting edge for the sake of all parties in the mortgage journey. “At LendingQB, we pride ourselves on our ability to seek out the best technology and partnerships to combine with our solution,” Nguyen said. “This creates a competitive advantage for lenders that delivers a more meaningful experience to the people that really matter: borrowers.”
Founded in 2011, LendingQB helps companies build digital mortgage solutions with its browser-based loan origination system and open API integrations to 300+ vendors and services. The company, which is headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, inked a deal with CoreLogic in June and, in April, was named to the HousingWire Tech100 for a second consecutive year.
In addition to Verification of Assets, Finicity also offers Verification of Income (VoI) as part of its suite of credit decisioning solutions. VoI provides confirmation on up to 24 months of historical income, and features confidence scores on income streams to help anticipate future income. Detailed information from both VoA and VoI is available via the company’s Finicity Reports.
Finicity most recently made fintech headlines when it announced its partnership with Pulte Mortgage this spring. Named one of the Best Fintechs to Work For by PaymentsSource at the beginning of the year, the Salt Lake City, Utah-based fintech has raised $79.9 million in funding and counts Experian Ventures and Bridge Bank among its investors.
ABN Amro has gone live with Temenos’WealthSuite in a first site as it seeks to roll out the digital platform for its international wealth and corporate banking, reports Martin Whybrow of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The project marks a shift by the Dutch bank to a single platform, with the aim of reducing IT operational costs and achieving an improved cost/income ratio.
The first international branch to go live with the system will be in Belgium, with another two countries lined up for implementation in the next multi-year phase. Temenos’ long-standing partner, Cognizant, is providing consulting and system integration services for the project.
ABN Amro is a long-term customer of Temenos. The T24 core banking platform was taken for its corporate banking activities in 2009 and is now live in nine countries. The bank was also a pioneer for Temenos’ Payments solution. It also selected the Temenos Continuous Deployment product to speed up its software delivery and rapidly launch new innovations.
Friso Westra, head of IT development core banking international at ABN Amro, said: “We selected Temenos as our technology partner to future-proof the ongoing growth of our private bank”.
Westra has been working closely with Temenos and their implementation partner, Cognizant. “We experienced a smooth go-live with Temenos WealthSuite [and] we are confident of achieving our ambition in offering the most innovative wealth management products and services in the industry,” added Westra.
Temenos WealthSuite provides multi-channel, 24/7 real-time capability to support wealth managers in delivering client services, while automating compliance and back office functions. Temenos claims WealthSuite currently helps advisors manage $12 trillion assets under management.
Temenos demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2015, presenting its Connect Mobile Banking solution. The company also participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, later that year, discussing its B2B Financial Apps Marketplace. Founded in 1993, Temenos is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
PlaidlaunchesInvestments to give developers and financial institutions the ability to build holistic views of customer investment accounts.
Equifaxforges strategic alliance with GIACT Systems.
PayPal COO Bill Ready to leave company at the end of the year to “pursue entrepreneurial interests” beyond PayPal.
CurrencyFairannounces its Come Home campaign offering Irish nationals living abroad the opportunity to win a €30,000 relocation package to return to Ireland.
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.
Courtesy of a partnership with identity verification specialist HooYu, NatWest has become the latest bank to enable new customers to open accounts with just a selfie. NatWest joins the ranks of HSBC and Lloyds who began offering “selfie banking” in 2016.
NatWest will use HooYu’s AI-enabled technology and real-time biometrics to compare the customer’s selfie picture with the image on their government-issued ID. The goal of the collaboration is to leverage faster, more convenient, and more secure identity verification to accelerate the account opening and onboarding process, overall. Today’s launch comes after a successful 60,000+ customer pilot that saw significant reductions in the number of fraudulent applications.
HooYu Marketing Director David Pope, who demonstrated the company’s verification technology at FinovateEurope last year, said it is critical that banks have faster, easier ways to onboard new customers. Rather than force them to visit a physical branch or to wait up to 48 hours to open an account, Pope said, the solution is an identity platform that “balances the twin demands of compliance and convenience” by streamlining and better securing the account opening process.
“We know customers want to be able to open accounts at a time and place that suits them and not have to worry about precious ID documents going missing in the post, or taking time out of their day to go to a branch,” NatWest Chief Digital Officer Frans Woelders said. “That’s why we’re making it easier, safer and faster to open and access accounts, allowing customers to get on with the things that matter.”
The partnership with NatWest is the latest – and most headline-grabbing – collaboration from a company that has teamed up with a variety of firms this year- from alternative banking solution provider Suits Me to esports wagering platform Luckbox. Other companies partnering with HooYu in recent months include gold-as-currency enabler Glint, online investment platform EasyMoney, and U.S.-based casino operator Bear Group.
Headquartered in London, U.K., and founded in 2016, HooYu made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017. The company’s two signature solutions are its global identity platform, HooYu Identity, launched in 2017, and its data visualization tool, HooYu Investigate, introduced in 2018.
