Author: David Penn

nCino Lands New Customers from Stockholm to Sydney

nCino Lands New Customers from Stockholm to Sydney
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: nCino

Swedish SME lender DBT Företagslån is the latest fintech to team up with cloud banking leader nCino. The Stockholm-based company  will leverage nCino’s Bank Operating System to automate and digitize its own workflows, as well as enhance its customer journey.

DBT Företagslån CEO Alexis Kopylov underscored the importance of the latter in a statement announcing the partnership. “For DBT, all digital investments are made with the single focus on strengthening the customer journey. The nCino platform is an important enabler for this ambition.” Kopylov credited nCino’s experience in both banking and in working with innovative fintechs, which he said would help his firm “challenge the status quo.”

“nCino was the only system that we evaluated that did not feel like a cumbersome tool, but a solution that will strengthen the customer experience and enable further scalability of our operations,” Kopylov said.

The partnership announcement highlighted a handful of features of the Bank Operating System, including the Customer Portal and the nCino Community. The portal enables customers to interact with staff members via the channel of their choice. The nCino community provides an online ecosystem where users, developers, and analysts can access exclusive content, as well as discuss and share best practices.

Sweden is not the only country where nCino’s technology is being deployed this week. Australian commercial property lender Thinktank announced today that it has implemented nCino’s Bank Operating System to automate and digitize its own internal processes.

Thinktank CEO Jonathan Street, praised nCino’s background and experience in the banking sector, and the fact that the company “shared (Thinktank’s) financial services DNA.” This is important, Street explained, insofar as commercial property lending has unique features that differentiate it from most lending systems. The technology’s seamless integration with Salesforce was another strong point for Thinktank, he added, enabling the firm to be more efficient and have better control over its data.

Headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, and founded in 2012, nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. With average clients experiencing reductions of 92% in servicing costs and increased account opening completion rates of 127%, nCino works with more than 200 FIs around the world, including Navy Federal Credit Union, the largest member-based credit union in the U.S.

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

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CREALOGIX Helps Launch Mobile Banking for Hampden & Co.

CREALOGIX Helps Launch Mobile Banking for Hampden & Co.
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CREALOGIX

UK-based Hampden & Co has picked CREALOGIX’s Digital Banking Hub to launch mobile banking for high net worth clients, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The private bank’s new CREALOGIX mobile banking platform is now in production, and according to the bank, it is experiencing rapid uptake from its client base.

“Hampden & Co serves private banking clients who appreciate traditional values and also expect the best of a modern digital user experience,” said Graeme Hartop, the bank’s CEO. “By making professional, personal banking expertise even more convenient to access, we aim to build even more effective relationships with our clients.”

The bank describes the focus on quality of user experience as the factor which led them to pick CREALOGIX for the system design and implementation.

Hampden & Co plans to release more mobile banking updates in future as part of a roadmap to augment its personal banking digital channels.

“This solution will enable the private bank to curate securely authenticated integrations with third-party fintech apps, enabling clients to take advantage of innovative information exchange and payment initiation features in future,” explained Jo Howes, commercial director at CREALOGIX.

Headquartered in Edinburgh, Hampden & Co collaborated closely on the design and launch of its new solutions with teams from CREALOGIX.

Founded in 1996 and based in Zurich, Switzerland, CREALOGIX demonstrated its TimeWarp technology at FinovateEurope 2019, winning Best of Show.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Baker Hill, CREALOGIX, Featurespace, Fiserv, HackerOne, Kontomatik, nCino, Onfido, Temenos, ThetaRay, Turnkey Lender

On Finovate.com

  • nCino Lands New Customers from Stockholm to Sydney.
  • TurnKey Lender Locks in New Investment from OSK Ventures.
  • CREALOGIX Helps Launch Mobile Banking for Hampden & Co.

Around the web

  • Fiserv inks partnerships with HealthCare First Credit Union and Portland Local 8 Federal Credit Union.
  • Kontomatik earns license from Bank of Lithuania to operate as an AISP in 11 EU countries.
  • Palestine Islamic Bank to deploy Temenos Infinity and Temenos T24 systems as part of its digital transformation efforts.
  • ThetaRay and HackerOne named to Network World’s 10 Security Startups to Watch.
  • Retail finance technology provider Deko teams up with Featurespace to enhance security on its lending platform.
  • Onfido announces partnership with INTERPOL to help the international police organization better spot fraudulent IDs.
  • CAP Services chooses Baker Hill to support its lending initiatives for small businesses and low-income individuals.

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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Video Conferencing Specialist 24sessions Scores $1.1 Million

Video Conferencing Specialist 24sessions Scores $1.1 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: 24sessions, Funding

In a round led by Capital Mills, Dutch video conference innovator 24sessions has raised $1.1 million (€1 million) in new funding, The Series A investment will help the company expand internationally, and takes its total capital to more than $1.4 million.

“We’re really excited to partner with Capital Mills,” 24sessions’ CEO Rutger Teunissen said. “In the last year, we tripled our revenue, doubled our team, and grew to a leading position in the Benelux. This investment enables us to grow even faster by entering new markets and investing in sales.”

Above: 24sessions’ CEO and co-founder Rutger Teunissen demonstrating 24s Conversational Analytics at FinovateEurope 2019.

24sessions video conference technology supports 1-click video chat and both screen- and filesharing. Scheduling is easy via the platform’s automated self-service scheduling functionality that includes embeddable booking forms for leads and clients, as well as calendar integration with Google, Office365, and Outlook.

The platform also provides meeting analytics and the ability to record the video conference for compliance or training purposes. No downloads or installations are required, and users can participate in video calls with any mobile or desktop device. Video calls can be branded and embedded into the customer journey, as well.

“Until now, most enterprises have struggled to roll-out video calling as a major customer interaction channel, even though the ROI potential is tremendous and customers expect such a service,” said 24sessions’ CTO Konstantin Goncharuk. “This is because their existing systems, such as Skype and Webex, are simply not built for customer interaction.”

Founded in 2015 and based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 24sessions demonstrated its 24s Conversational Analytics platform at FinovateEurope 2019. The company includes Rabobank, ING, and Aegon among its customers.

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Voleo and Nasdaq Launch Second Student Equity Trading Contest

Voleo and Nasdaq Launch Second Student Equity Trading Contest
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Voleo

Canada’s Voleo is teaming up with the Nasdaq once again to promote financial literacy and awareness among college-age students. The Best of Show winning social investment platform and the Nasdaq have announced this year’s Student Equity Trading Competition – with cash prizes and the opportunity to attend a Nasdaq market opening for the winners.

“We are thrilled to team up with Nasdaq to provide students with an opportunity to invest in their futures,” Voleo CEO Thomas Beattie said. “We understand that there’s a steep learning curve to understanding financial markets, and our organizations are both strong believers in building financial literacy.”

The competition empowers teams of three or more to form or join an investment club on the Voleo platform. Once onboard, teams use Voleo’s Simutrader solution to manage simulated portfolios of $1 million, and can access Nasdaq Basic Data in order to guide their trading and investing decisions. The contest ends in April 2019.

Above: Members of the winning team from the 2017-2018 competition, the New Haven Bulldogs, at the Nasdaq with members of Voleo.

In the first year of the collaboration between Voleo and Nasdaq, more than 300 teams were formed. The team that came in first place, the New Haven Bulldogs from Yale University (pictured above at the Nasdaq with members of Voleo), gained 37.8% – more than doubling the gains of the second and third place finishers (the Baruch College Bearcats and the Colorado College Tigers, which finished with respectable gains of 16.3% and 15.3%, each). The top individual finisher produced a gain of 17.2% during last year’s competition.

“At Nasdaq, our mission includes encouraging greater market participation through education and access to market data,” said Nasdaq Director of Global Information Michael Taylor. “We believe that Voleo’s SimuTrader platform, combined with Nasdaq data, will provide students with a real investing experience that is innovative and social.”

Voleo’s technology – available on both iOS and Android – provides investors with a collaborative platform that supports social trading and investing by making it easy to join and manage investment clubs. Recently featured in the Financial Post, the Vancouver, British Columbia-based company demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2017, winning Best of Show.

In December, Voleo announced that it would partner with OP Financial Group to help launch a new social trading platform for the European market. The company began the year with news that B2B digital marketing executive Nicky Stenyard was joining its board of directors. Read our February feature on Voleo, including a Q&A with CEO Beattie.

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AI Foundry Launches New Automation, Mortgagetech Solutions

AI Foundry Launches New Automation, Mortgagetech Solutions
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AI Foundry

Accelerating the pre-approval and underwriting approval process is the idea behind the latest mortgagetech solutions from AI platform company, AI Foundry, which announced the availability of its Cognitive Business Automation Platform and new Agile Mortgage solutions today. Together, the new technologies bring greater problem-solving, decision-making, and time-saving capabilities to businesses.

“Competition in the mortgage lending industry is intense, and while many companies have deployed point-of-sale solutions for the customer, the back-end processes have not undergone a digital transformation, until now,” AI Foundry founder and General Manager Steve Butler explained.

The new Agile Mortgages solution is built on the Cognitive Business Automation Platform, and automates the many labor-intensive processes involved in the lending lifecycle. This not only accelerates the process for borrowers, the solution also helps lower the cost of mortgage processing for lenders. The new technology also gives consumers the kind of digital experience they have become accustomed to in other aspects of their lives.

 

Left to right: and Adam Lombardo, Chief Information Officer, Atlantic Home Loans; and Steve Butler, founder and CEO of AI Foundry; previewing AI Foundry’s Agile Mortgages solution.

The Cognitive Business Automation Platform leverages machine vision to extract and classify data from electronic images and documents with accuracy rates of 90% or greater, exceeding the performance of widely-used optical character recognition (OCR) technologies. The solution also features a rules engine that enables users to generate smart bots to automatically review documents for completeness, integrity, and compliance. These intelligent agents help spot issues early in the loan process in order to minimize delays and keeps remediation costs low.

“We will truly disrupt the ‘status quo’ by automating the mortgage application process and enabling lenders to complement those front-end capabilities with one-day mortgage approvals,” Butler said. “This not only opens enormous potential for acquiring and delighting new customers; it also drives down the cost per mortgage, so lenders can be more profitable.”

AI Foundry demonstrated its Agile Mortgages solution at FinovateFall 2018. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts, the company announced a partnership with fellow Finovate alum – and recent Thoma Bravo acquisition – Ellie Mae last month.

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Figo to Merge with Finreach Solutions

Figo to Merge with Finreach Solutions
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Figo

German banking service provider Figo and fintech platform Finreach Solutions plan to merge into one company, reports Antony Peyton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The merger is subject to the approval of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). The duo says their consolidation is the logical result of a pre-existing, long-lasting partnership.

“With our consolidation, we are responding to the growing market need for specific applications that go beyond data connectivity. Our goal is to become the leading fintech platform that delivers high quality [Software-as-a-Service] SaaS applications and API solutions – pan-European and PSD2-licensed,” said Markus Dränert, CEO of Finreach Solutions.

In the CEO role, Dränert will lead the company, which will merge gradually over the course of 2019, together with Cornelia Schwertner, chief risk officer (CRO) of Figo, and Taner Akcok, chief product officer (CPO) of Finreach.

André M. Bajorat, the CEO of Figo up until now, will soon join the supervisory board of the new company. He will also bolster the team at Finleap, a fintech ecosystem in Europe, where Finreach was developed.

As a lead investor, Finleap will also invest a “seven-digit sum” to finance growth.

Both company locations in Berlin and Hamburg will be maintained, as well as the respective teams. Dränert says the new team size will be about 90 employees.

FinTech Futures contacted the two firms to find out what the name of the combined entity will be.

A spokesperson said: “As of today, only the foundation for the merger is laid and the process of growing together just begins. This also means, that there has no decision been made concerning the company name yet.”

Figo demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2013. The company was founded in 2012.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: 24sessions, AI Foundry, CardFlight, Figo, Finastra, Modo Payments, ProfitStars, Voleo

On Finovate.com

  • AI Foundry Launches New Automation, Mortgagetech Solutions.
  • Video Conferencing Specialist 24sessions Scores $1.1 Million.
  • Voleo and Nasdaq Launch Second Student Equity Trading Contest.
  • Figo to Merge with Finreach Solutions.

Around the web

  • Modo launches its /Checkout solution to make payments easier for ecommerce merchants.
  • Al Taif Islamic Bank to deploy Sharia-compliant, core banking technology from Finastra, Fusion Islamic.
  • First State Community Bank picks ProfitStars’ Commercial Lending Center Suite.
  • CardFlight adds invoicing functionality to its SwipeSimple 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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Signifyd Unveils Chargeback Solution for Online Merchants

Signifyd Unveils Chargeback Solution for Online Merchants
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Signifyd

Malicious activity from cybercriminals tends to dominate the conversation about cyberfraud. But “friendly fraud” – the kid inappropriately making purchases on a parent’s credit card, for example – costs merchants more than $15 billion a year in chargeback losses.

Add to this both legitimate chargebacks on one hand and sophisticated criminal organizations that exploit chargeback processes to commit fraud on the other, and it’s easy to see how much of an issue chargebacks can be for e-commerce merchants.

To help merchants better manage with these challenges, antifraud solution provider Signifyd has unveiled a new offering Signifyd Chargeback Recovery to give companies the ability to respond to all types of chargebacks – from legitimate error to fraud, “friendly” or not.

“During business reviews with our merchants, we noticed that managing the remaining, non-fraud chargebacks was still a significant issue for many merchants,” Signifyd group product manager Gayathri Somanath said. “Analyzing the problem further, we believed that we could streamline the process for them to ensure their customers are treated well, while abusive consumers are stopped and revenue lost to them is recovered.”

Signifyd Chargeback Recovery is an expansion of the company’s Commerce Protection Platform for online merchants. The solution leverages advanced AI and the company’s data network of more than 10,000 merchants and 250+ million consumers around the world to analyze individual chargebacks in milliseconds.

The technology’s “intelligent targeting” differentiates legitimate shoppers from abusive customers and fraudsters. This ensures that the online merchants’ actual customers are treated well during the dispute process, while questionable chargeback requests are met with challenges such as customized evidence letters.

Founded in 2011 and based in San Jose, California, Signifyd demonstrated its Guaranteed Payments solution at FinovateSpring 2013. Guaranteed Payments provides an additional layer of security for CNP (card not present) merchants using Signfyd’s anti-fraud platform by assuming liability in the event of an error.

Earlier this year, Signifyd opened a new R&D center in Belfast, Ireland, which is expected to generate 150 new jobs. This was accompanied by a series of new hires designed to help the company’s global expansion efforts, and the company’s announcement of a new EMEA headquarters in London.

Named to CB Insights 2019 AI 100, Signifyd has raised $185 million in funding, and includes Menlo Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and PremjiInvest among its investors. Raj Ramanand is Signifyd’s CEO.

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Tink To Support Payment Initiation, PFM for Lunar Way

Tink To Support Payment Initiation, PFM for Lunar Way
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Tink

Danish fintech Lunar Way has partnered with Swedish fintech Tink to use the latter’s API platform to provide customers with an overview of their finances and initiate payments through the Lunar Way app, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

At the end of last year, Lunar received an account information service provider (AISP) license and a payment initiation service provider (PISP) license, the first fintech company in Denmark to do so.

These licenses commit banks to allow companies like Lunar Way to build new financial services on top of their data and infrastructure for the benefit of the users.

The partnership with Tink is aimed at accelerating this process, the firm says, making the most of its new licenses.

Lunar Way says that Tink’s entrepreneurial mindset and approach to the financial market are much like its own, which motivated the partnership.

Just under a month ago, Lunar Way received €13 million in funding to expand throughout the Nordics.

A few days before that, Tink was the one receiving a whopping €56 million to establish itself in Europe.

Tink demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2017, winning Best of Show honors for its independent, consumer PFM app that gives users a PSD2-compliant, virtual banking experience. Founded in 2012, the company is led by CEO and co-founder Daniel Kjellén.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Jumio, Signifyd, TickSmith, Tink, Tradeshift, Veridium

On Finovate.com

  • Signifyd Unveils Chargeback Solution for Online Merchants.
  • Tink to Support Payment Initiation, PFM for Lunar Way.

Around the web

  • Jumio wins trio of honors at 2019 InfoSec Awards: Market Leader in Compliance, Best Product in Biometrics, and Best Product in Fraud Prevention.
  • Tradeshift and Basware end takeover talk.
  • Veridium teams up with Blue Turtle Technologies to drive deployment of biometric technology in Africa.
  • TickSmith launches new transaction cost analysis (TCA) 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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Veridium’s InMotion Uses Behavior Analytics For Authentication

Veridium’s InMotion Uses Behavior Analytics For Authentication
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Veridium

The new software-only solution from Veridium, InMotion, leverages user behavior analytics to protect online identities and stop cyberthreats before the damage is done. The platform provides mobile biometric authentication by matching behavioral data from the user’s interaction with their smartphone with the user’s biometrics.

By collecting data from the smartphone’s motion sensors and applying machine learning techniques, InMotion develops a user baseline after just 10 authentications. Future authentications are then compared to this baseline – which refines itself over time as it learns the user’s behavior – and given confidence scores. Lower confidence scores can be used as triggers to begin follow-up authentication via other channels such as SMS, email, or phone.

The combination of low confidence scores and repeated failed authentication efforts, the company noted, could signal potential fraud and, in some instances, result in blocking the user’s access altogether.

“As data breaches and insider threats increasingly plague the enterprise, businesses are in need of a strong solution that can better recognize and verify users’ identities,” Veridium head of product development Ionut Dumitran said. He pointed out that user behavior analytics make it difficult for fraudsters because while obtaining someone else’s phone may be hard, and obtaining their fingerprints even harder, replicating a person’s unique mannerisms is a far greater challenge for fraudsters and other malicious actors.

“By tapping into the power of behavioral biometrics, Veridium InMotion can help businesses diminish the risk of identity as an attack vector and strengthen authentication in a way that is both transparent and frictionless for the user,” Dumitran said.

Founded in 2015 and maintaining offices in the U.S. the U.K., Romania, and Benelux, Veridium demonstrated its VeridiumID with 4 Fingers Touchless ID solution at FinovateEurope 2017. The technology provides greater reliability in biometric authentication by using four fingerprints simultaneously. This adds to the complexity of the data and making the authentication effort more difficult to impersonate.

The company was recognized in nine Gartner reports in 2018, including as a vendor for biometric authentication in seven of Gartner’s Hype Cycle Reports. Earlier this year, Veridium announced that it had developed a biometric federated authenticator for WS02 Identity Server.

Veridium has raised $16.7 million in funding, and includes Citrix Systems, as well as Michael Powell and Michael Spencer among its investors.

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