Author: David Penn

Overbond Launches COBI Matching in Pivot to Analytics

Overbond Launches COBI Matching in Pivot to Analytics
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Overbond

When the going gets good, the good go analytic.

That’s one takeaway from the pivot – more than a year in the making – bond market analytics platform Overbond announced today. With the launch of its COBI-Matching solution, the company is reintroducing itself not just as a specialist in new bond issuance, but as a source for real world trading opportunity and liquidity in both traditional and non-traditional fixed income markets.

“We are excited to offer enhanced liquidity sourcing to our buy-side clients as well as global issuers and dealer underwriters,” Overbond CEO Vuk Magdelinic said. “Issuers (and) dealer underwriters now can systematically identify non-traditional liquidity pools and investors can benchmark their portfolio rebalancing decisions.”

COBI-Matching (COBI stands for Corporate and Government Bond Intelligence) is an advanced AI algorithm family which monitors investor behavior, buying patterns, and rebalancing events; identifies traditional and non-traditional bond buyers; and generates best-fit bond buyer recommendations.

The algorithms focus on factors like sector concentration, cross-currency classifications, and credit rating profile. They analyze 2,900+ investor portfolios, and rank investor interest based on both existing holdings and quarterly rebalancing. Trade ideas, pricing tension, and buyer preferences are among the new recommendations available via the new algorithm-based solution.

Solutions like COBI-Matching will enable fixed market income participants to take advantage of growing markets including the Chinese renminbi (RMB) fixed income market (also known as Panda bonds), the market for Asian infrastructure bonds, and the Green Bond market. Issuers can use COBI-Matching for the technology’s pre-issuance analytics, which offer insights into international pricing demand.

Overbond demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall 2017. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the company won Most Innovative Third Party Technology Vendor (Front Office) at the American Financial Technology awards at the beginning of the year. Overbond’s customers include buy-side institutions with more than $2 trillion in assets under management, as well as global corporate and government bond issuers with $20+ billion in bonds outstanding.

Founded in 2015, Overbond has raised $3.3 million in funding (CAD $4.5 million), and includes Gaingels and Morrison Financial Services Limited among its investors.

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Tandem Chooses Token as Open Banking, PSD2 Partner

Tandem Chooses Token as Open Banking, PSD2 Partner
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Token

Digital U.K. challenger bank Tandem is working with open banking platform provider Token.io to ensure PSD2 compliance and take advantage of the opportunities of open banking. Tandem will integrate a variety of solutions from Token, ranging from PSD2 compliant APIs to direct payment options like Token BankPay, into its core platform in order to better serve its more than 500,000 customers.

Tandem CEO Ricky Knox differentiated his bank’s approach to open banking, saying that Tandem goes “much further” than simple account aggregation and basic PSD2 compliance – especially thanks to the partnership with Token. “This means we can focus our efforts on differentiating ourselves with an improved user experience,” Knox said, “leveraging both AISP and PISP use cases to provide smarter, more personalized banking products that solve real people’s problems with money.”

“Our turnkey, cost-effective PSD2 compliance and open banking solutions will enable Tandem to accelerate growth through new and better products,” Token founder and CEO Steve Kirsch said. “Token offers the industry’s simplest and most secure transaction-based open banking API, which, being cloud-based, gives Tandem both flexibility and scalability when initiating and managing transactions.”

Tandem offers consumers a money management app, credit card, and fixed-rate savings accounts. Founded in 2011, the challenger bank launched its Autosavings account earlier this month. The new feature automatically sets aside user-determined amounts using “round ups” from transactions and “save to save” calculations based on the user’s income and anticipated spending. Autosavings also pays 0.5% interest, and users can add to their Autosavings account whenever they choose.

Token demonstrated its PSD2 compliant, open banking platform at FinovateEurope 2017. The company began the year with the hiring of new Chief Technology Officer, Gaurav Kohli. Back in December, Token announced a partnership with MENA-based infrastructure development company Almoayed Technologies to help drive open banking on the Arabian Peninsula. Also that month, the company partnered with thinkmoney to support PSD2 compliance and open banking for the U.K.-based current account provider.

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Capsilon and Blue Sage Drive Automation in MortgageTech

Capsilon and Blue Sage Drive Automation in MortgageTech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Capsilon

Blue Sage’s lending clients are about to get some help when it comes to managing loan originations. The company has announced a partnership with Capsilon that integrates document recognition and data extraction technology into its digital lending platform.

“Capsilon IQ perfectly and seamlessly complements our robust workflow tools and enhances our ability to deliver a truly unique, digital mortgage experience,” Blue Sage CEO Joe Langner said. “Not only will Capsilon’s technologies help save our lending clients time and money, but they will also improve quality and efficiency at every stage of the mortgage lifecycle.”

Blue Sage offers a browser-based Digital Lending Platform that can be deployed over a variety of mortgage channels, including retail, wholesale, and correspondent lending. Capsilon IQ, Capsilon’s flagship digital mortgage solution, will be integrated into the platform via Blue Sage’s APIs to capture mortgage data from relevant documents and reduce the amount of manual labor involved in the process.

Capsilon CEO Sanjeev Malaney praised Blue Sage’s solutions as “(the) cutting edge of today’s mortgage origination technology, and noted that the two companies both aim to “help drive down origination costs while helping our mutual customers take on more volume, scale appropriately, and create key competitive advantages that drive their business growth.”

A pioneer in end-to-end web-based loan origination system development, and a multiple-time recipient of HousingWire’s HW Tech100 Awards, Blue Sage is based in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The company’s technology was developed by the core team of Palisades Technology Partners in 2011, and has since expanded to include support for consumer direct and mobile lending.

Capsilon demonstrated its Mortgage Velocity Platform at FinovateSpring 2017. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Capsilon announced the beta launch of its digital underwriter solution earlier this month. At the beginning of the year, the company announced that Capsilon IQ enabled companies to save more than five million people hours in 2018. Capsilon has raised $21.4 million in funding and includes Francisco Partners among its investors.

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BioCatch Teams Up with Entersekt

BioCatch Teams Up with Entersekt
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BioCatch, Entersekt

A new partnership between behavioral biometrics innovator BioCatch and fintech solution provider Entersekt will help financial services companies offer more secure digital banking and payment experiences for their customers. With options like passwordless login and enhanced remote user registration, the collaboration will give clients a “one-stop-shop” for continuous and multi-factor authentication.

Entersekt SVP for North America Sherif Samy called BioCatch’s technology “an exciting alternative” to the biometric-based security solutions already provided on its platform. “It will add value for our customers, especially in usability, by helping to determine when step-up authentication is really required and when we can safely leave the user to go about their business uninterrupted,” Samy said.

BioCatch analyzes the interactions between users and their devices to reduce fraud and provide online identity verification. The partnership means that when BioCatch’s biometric behavioral technology identifies anomalous behavior, it sends an alert to Entersekt’s security platform for an out-of-band, multi-factor authentication (MFA) via device validation.

“Our combined approach with Entersekt answers the call,” Avi Turgeman, BioCatch founder and CTO said of the challenge of simultaneously providing a seamless customer experience and strong online security.” The collaboration, he said, joins “(b)ehavioral biometrics as ‘who you are,’ the mobile device as ‘what you have,’ and the additional elements required to step up a transaction in real time if there is a problem.”

BioCatch demonstrated its Passive Biometrics technology at FinovateFall 2014. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Israel, the company announced earlier this month that it was adding touchscreen pressure to its set of behavioral biometrics. At the beginning of the year, BioCatch unveiled a new solution designed to help fight “vishing,” a form of automated push payment fraud.

With investors including Blumberg Capital, OurCrowd, and Maverick Ventures Israel, BioCatch has raised $41.6 million in funding.

South Africa-based Entersekt presented Securing Mobile Applications Through Transport Layer Diversity at our developers conference, FinDEVr SiliconValley in 2014. The company’s technology is deployed in 45 countries around the world, and defends 150 million transactions a month from cyberfraud.

Last month, Samy was recognized by One World Identity (OWI) as a top influencer in the field of digital identity. Entersekt began 2019 with a number of major hires, bringing on digital identity and business development specialist Jennifer Singh, as well as adding a country manager for South Africa and a VP of engineering services.

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Instarem Raises Capital; TurnKey Lender Goes Live in Malaysia

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CustomerXPs, Finovate Global, Tinkoff Bank, Turnkey Lender, wipro

Finovate Global 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

  • TurnKey Lender opens new office in Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
  • Instarem raises $41 million to fund global expansion.
  • Singapore FinTech Association and FinTech Australia ink Memorandum of Understanding.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Nigerian online lender OneFi to acquire Nigerian payment solutions company Amplify.
  • Finextra features its list of the top South African fintech startups to look out for in 2019.
  • Born2Invest highlights the fintechs in Africa’s emerging startup industry.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Tinkoff Mobile, a subsidiary of Tinkoff Bank, announces service in six new regions.
  • CEE fintech watchers are keeping an eye on the pending launch of the “first bank for the Russian Internet” VR_Bank.
  • Vienna, Austria-based fintech Bitpanda adds its first stablecoin, Tether, introducing the new asset class on its trading platform.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Egypt’s central bank sets aside $58 million to fund fintech startups in the country.
  • Arabian Business looks at the continued dominance of cash in Saudi Arabia, despite the growth of the country’s fintech sector.
  • ZDNet reviews how new technologies like AI and automation represent challenge and opportunity for countries in the MENA region.

Central and South Asia

  • Wipro launches its AI and machine learning-powered accounts payable, KYC, and other solutions on Amazon Web Services.
  • Sri Lanka’s Bank of Ceylon goes live with Clari5 Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Solution to address money laundering threats.
  • Fintech Futures looks at Indian micro lending startup, Spoon, as it prepares to go live.
  • PakWired reviews the likelihood that Pakistan will legalize cryptocurrencies by the end of the year.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Analysts cast a wary eye at new cryptocurrency regulations from the Bank of Mexico.
  • Bob’s Guide features a deep dive into the evolving Brazilian payments market.
  • New Cayman Islands-based fintech consulting firm, Cartan Group, opens for business.

Top image designed by Freepik

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Project BankNorth Partners with nCino Ahead of 2020 Launch

Project BankNorth Partners with nCino Ahead of 2020 Launch
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: nCino

Project BankNorth, a U.K.-based SME lender, has teamed up with nCino, and will leverage the fintech’s Bank Operating System to better serve the financing needs of small businesses when it goes live in 2020.

nCino International Managing Director Pullen Daniel praised BankNorth as an “up-and-coming challenger.” He said, “The BankNorth team is extremely experienced and well-regarded, and were able to identify a gap in the SME market upon which to build their unique offering.”

Customer experience was at the heart of BankNorth’s decision to partner with nCino. Founder and CEO Jonathan Thompson underscored the value of working with nCino at the early stages. “It’s critical we provide a smooth and intuitive interface for our customers and introducers in order to deliver a fantastic customer experience,” Thompson said. “Working with nCino early on in our development allows us to tailor our whole business around delivering an engaging and differentiated customer experience.”

BankNorth is backed by veterans of Atom Bank, HSBC, First Direct, Santander, and RBS, and represents a blend of both traditional and challenger banking worlds. At the beginning of the year, the company announced four new senior hires, including a chief technology officer. Backing BankNorth are GrowthFunders and G.Ventures, the trading arms of Growth Capital Ventures. The challenger has yet to secure a banking license.

nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. The cloud-based technology combines customer onboarding, CRM, account opening, loan origination, workflow, credit analysis, ECM, and instant reporting, to help banks drive revenue and leverage analytics to better serve their customers.

Earlier this month, nCino announced that Swedish SME lender DBT Företagslån and Australian commercial property lender Thinktank are leveraging nCino’s Bank Operating System to automate workflows and enhance customer journeys. In February, the company and partner Accenture said they would broaden the scope of their alliance to reach FIs in the Asia-Pacific and EMEA regions.

Founded in 2012, nCino has raised $133.2 million in funding. The company includes Salesforce Ventures and Insight Venture Partners among its investors.

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ACI Worldwide Partners with Solutions by Text

ACI Worldwide Partners with Solutions by Text
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide

ACI Worldwide is bringing text-to-pay technology to billers courtesy of a new partnership with Solutions by Text. ACI will integrate Solutions by Text’s Pay-by-Text software into its UP Bill Payments solution, enabling businesses to receive payments from customers via SMS. The new option will give customers new payment flexibility, make on-time payments more likely, and keep collection costs low.

Pointing to the high open rate of text messages (98%) and the positive response customers tend to have toward text billing reminders, Solutions by Text founder and CEO Danny Cantrell highlighted the way the partnership will improve the “overall digital experience” for the customer.

“As smartphone use continues to advance,” Cantrell said, “offering customers the option to pay-by-text is quickly becoming a necessity as it improves the payment experience through payment reminders and mobile-enabled payment systems.”

ACI business leader for biller solutions Andrew Sajeski echoed Cantrell’s sentiments. He called the smartphone “the device of choice for digital payments,” and said the integration with Solutions by Text would “increase consumers’ ability to pay their bills on time in a more convenient way.”

A division of Marketing Response Solutions, a multi-service consulting firm which was founded in 1995, Solutions by Text was launched in 2008. The company streamlines and improves client communications by creating advanced, mobile-enabled business solutions using SMS. A member of the Inc 5000, the company is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

ACI Worldwide presented Simple, Global, and Secure eCommerce Payments with ACI Worldwide’s Next Generation API at FinDEVr SiliconValley 2016. The company also demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2011, partnering with MShift to offer mobile delivery of ACI Enterprise Banker.

Last month, ACI Worldwide announced that it had agreed to acquire Speedpay, the U.S. billpay business of Western Union, in a deal valued at $750 million. Back in December, the company teamed up with fellow Finovate alum BioCatch to help provide enhanced online and mobile fraud detection using BioCatch’s behavioral biometrics technology.

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Prepaid Technologies Acquires Dash from Karmic Labs

Prepaid Technologies Acquires Dash from Karmic Labs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Karmic Labs, Mergers & Acquisitions

Business payment solutions provider Prepaid Technologies has acquired Karmic Labs’ Dash, as well as other select assets, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication.)

The Dash prepaid purchasing card portfolio and expense management solution will be added to Prepaid Technologies’ existing suite of services. Several members of Karmic’s key personnel will join the Prepaid Technologies team.

Prepaid Technologies provides customers with a mobile-focused platform enabling business owners to move money in real-time to individual cards and accounts for everyday purchases.

“This cardholder portfolio more than doubles our existing expense management business, elevating purchasing to the level of our payroll, incentive and rewards lines of business,” said Prepaid Technologies CEO, Stephen Faust.

Over the coming months Prepaid Technologies will integrate the Dash portfolio and will provide clients with access to additional solutions, including: payroll card programs that it claims will improve bottom-line performance and value for employees; reward and incentive cards; state-of-the-art API Payment Integrations that will support faster, more efficient internal operations.

Current Karmic and Dash customers will also receive an expanded range of services, including Prepaid Technologies’ dedicated customer support.

Karmic Labs demonstrated Dash at FinovateSpring 2015. The company was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, AlphaPoint, Capsilon, CustomerXPs, DocuSign, Envestnet, Insuritas, Jack Henry, Karmic Labs, Kinetica, MX, NetGuardians, Onfido, Personetics, SWITCH, Tinkoff Bank, Turnkey Lender, WorldPay

On Finovate.com

  • ACI Worldwide Partners with Solutions by Text.
  • Envestnet to Acquire PIEtech for $500 Million.

Around the web

  • Prepaid Technologies Acquires Dash from Karmic Labs.
  • Switch launches its issuer-branded CardUpdatr app.
  • Kinetica unveils its active analytics platform that makes it easier to deliver smart analytics applications at scale.
  • Forbes interviews co-founder and CEO of Onfido, Husayn Kassai.
  • Tinkoff Mobile, a subsidiary of Tinkoff Bank, announces service in six new regions.
  • DocuSign launches its DocuSign Agreement Cloud to help companies better manage business agreements digitally.
  • Capsilon announces the beta launch of its digital underwriter solution.
  • AlphaPoint adds DiamondBack stablecoin to its crypto exchange.
  • Sri Lanka’s Bank of Ceylon goes live with Clari5 Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Solution to address money laundering threats.
  • PYMNTS: Amazon and Worldpay team up on one-click commerce.
  • NetGuardians‘ AI fraud-prevention software available on Microsoft Azure.
  • TurnKey Lender signs partnership agreement with Refinitiv.
  • MX and Personetics partner to bring AI-driven insights to financial institution customers.
  • ICBA and Jack Henry’s ProfitStars expand preferred service provider program with remote deposit capture solutions.
  • Insuritas and Oregon Mutual announce partnership to offer auto and home insurance solutions through meta-agency platform.

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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Alternative Data Platform Thinknum Raises $11.6 Million

Alternative Data Platform Thinknum Raises $11.6 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Thinknum

“I still think I’m the first person with dreads to raise $11.6 million.”

That’s how Gregory Ugwi, co-founder and CEO of alternative data provider Thinknum, summed up the company’s just-closed Series A funding round in a tweet earlier today. The firm, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2014, enables investors to access non-traditional data on company performance and behavior that can provide actionable insights.

“Over the past couple of years, we have helped hundreds of data-driven companies and investment firms derive valuable insights from alternative data,” Thinknum co-founder Justin Zhen wrote at the company’s LinkedIn page today. “We believe that the greatest challenge any society has to face is how to efficiently allocate resources. The movement of commercial activity to the web provides important data sources that businesses need to make smarter decisions.”

He added, “By helping companies track that data, we’re helping businesses make critical strategic moves ahead of their competitors.”

Thinknum gives non-programmers the ability to query large datasets quickly, using intuitive tools and advanced visualizations to make data easier to understand. The platform enables users to scan open source data on 400,000+ of companies, and alert users when specific metrics are triggered.

Today’s funding comes as the company announces that it has been cash flow positive for “the past few years” and doubling revenues every twelve months. Green Visor Capital led the Series A, which takes Thinknum’s total capital to $12.6 million.

The company plans to use the new capital in three main areas: make it easier for non-programmers to use external, alternative data; build its business and engineering teams; and “spread the word” about the actionable insights available via alternative data.

“We will continue to share our economy-changing findings with the world and reach out to decision makers and analysts and show how they can leverage these new information sources to solve their specific problems,” Zhen wrote.

Founded in 2013, Thinknum was featured last fall in TechCrunch’s look at 14 seed-stage startups. The company, which includes Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch among its clients, is headquartered in New York City.

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SigFig Appoints Anne Morrissey as its First CFO

SigFig Appoints Anne Morrissey as its First CFO
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: SigFig

Asset management platform SigFig has hired its first Chief Financial Officer. The company announced today that Anne Morrissey, a finance and technology veteran with experience growing startups like Fitbit and LeapFrog, will join SigFig as CFO.

“Anne joins us at a pivotal moment in SigFig’s growth trajectory as we unveil new products, expand into new regions, and grow our range of clients across the financial services sector,” SigFig co-founder and CEO Mike Sha said.

In addition to her work at Fitbit (Senior Director of Finance) and LeapFrog (Director of Finance), Morrissey worked at Yahoo! as Director of Investor Relations. For nearly ten years she worked in financial services with both JPMorgan Chase & Company and Salomon Smith Barney. Morrissey is a graduate of DePauw University and Harvard Business School.

“I’ve always been passionate about my work in technology and financial services,” Morrissey said. “(With) SigFig’s pioneering vision for the industry, I see this as an opportunity to work with Mike and his team to scale the business with strategic financial management.”

SigFig demonstrated its roboadvisory and asset management platform at FinovateFall 2011. Founded in 2007 (as Wikinvest) and headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company introduced its digital wealth platform for financial advisors, CoPilot, back in October. CoPilot automates administrative tasks – including compliance processes – makes onboarding new clients easier, and provides a more personalized experience.

With more than $114 million in assets under management, SigFig purchased SmartWealth roboadvisory technology from UBS in 2018. The company has raised $117 million in funding, and includes DCM Ventures among its investors.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, eToro, Kofax, Modo Payments, SigFig, Thinknum, Turnkey Lender, Vymo

On Finovate.com

  • Alternative Data Platform Thinknum Raises $11.6 Million.
  • SigFig Appoints Anne Morrissey as its First CFO.

Around the web

  • Modo taps Matt McBride as its new Chief Information Security Officer.
  • eToro to end commissions for U.K. customers trading on its platform.
  • Avaloq joins Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.
  • Kofax launches its Robotic Process Automation (RPA) 10.4 solution.
  • Vymo wins FICCI (The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce) Award for Innovation in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics.
  • TurnKey Lender opens new office in Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

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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