Author: David Penn

Jack Henry & Associates Inks Deal with First State Community Bank

Jack Henry & Associates Inks Deal with First State Community Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Jack Henry

Missouri-based First State Community Bank (FSCB) has selected Jack Henry and Associates’ Commercial Lending Center Suite for its digital growth plans, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Jack Henry’s ProfitStars division said FSCB already uses the SilverLake System for its core banking.

“We’re looking forward to leveraging a commercial lending platform that will automate manual processes and enhance efficiencies as we continue to scale,” said Ben Wasson, vice-president and senior credit administration officer for FSCB. “We’re not just rolling out new technology, we’re implementing a modern way of doing business.”

The suite is digital loan origination platform that includes automated decisioning and portfolio management workflow.

FSCB is the largest banking organization headquartered in Southeast Missouri. It selected ProfitStars’ lending platform “because of its intuitive borrower experience, data integration and advanced portfolio management capabilities”.

“Commercial lending is often the most paper-intensive process in banking, which is off-putting for both borrowers and bank employees,” added Russ Bernthal, vice-president of Jack Henry and ProfitStars.

Founded in 1976, Jack Henry & Associates demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2015. The company is headquartered in Monett, Missouri. With a market capitalization of $10 billion, Jack Henry trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker “JKHY.”

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Averon, Jack Henry, Jumio, Ninth Wave, Optimove, OurCrowd, Salt Edge, Turnkey Lender, Vymo

On Finovate.com

  • Jack Henry & Associates Inks Deal with First State Community Bank.
  • Salt Edge Teams Up with UK-Based PFM App Emma.

Around the web

  • Fintech solution provider Ninth Wave announces full support for FDX API within its Ninth Wave Platform.
  • Global investment platform OurCrowd marks $1 billion raised milestone.
  • Optimove launches Optimove Streams to give markets insight into campaign performance testing.
  • Former Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers joins Averon’s advisory board.

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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“Hello USA!” eToro Goes Live in America

“Hello USA!” eToro Goes Live in America
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: eToro

eToro is taking its social trading platform and cryptocurrency wallet to the States.

“For the first time, Americans can collaborate with other crypto traders when making buying and selling decisions,” eToro CEO Yoni Assia said. “Users can adjust their trading strategies by watching and learning from others on the platform.”

The company, a six-time Finovate Best of Show winner, demonstrated its CopyFunds for Partners technology at FinovateEurope 2017. Now known as CopyPortfolios, the solution enables investors to own a group of assets, aggregated based on specific market strategies. For the U.S. launch, three cryptoasset CopyPortfolios will be available initially.

eToro’s U.S. launch will enable customers in 32 states to trade and invest in six cryptocurrencies: BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, XRO, and XLM. Additional cryptocurrencies are expected in the new future, with as many as 13 different digital assets and multi-asset trading enabled by the first quarter of 2020.

Left to right: Tal Ben-Simon (VP of Product) and Yoni Assia (CEO & Founder) demonstrating social trading technology at FinovateEurope 2017.

eToro customers can access the wallet feature from their existing eToro accounts, and transferring coins from trading accounts to the wallet is just a one-click process. Users can also securely send and receive cryptoassets via QR code or by sharing their wallet address.

“(eToro) acts as a bridge between the old world of investing and a blockchain-powered future, helping our users navigate and benefit from the transition to cryptoassets for wealth building,” Assia said. “People create the eToro experience and now Americans will play a major role in shaping our community and future.”

With more than 10 million registered users, eToro enables traders and investors to leverage the insights of top traders in the community to make better decisions in the financial markets. The platform supports a wide range of assets, from stocks and ETFs, to currencies, indicies, and commodities – including cryptocurrencies.

eToro makes it easy for traders to follow the best performing traders with its CopyTrader technology, and gives eligible winning traders the opportunity to earn as much as 2% annually on their assets as part of eToro’s Popular Investor Program.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, eToro has raised $222.7 million in funding. The company includes Spark Capital, Social Leverage, BRM Capital, Cubit Investments, and CommerzVentures GmbH among its investors.

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GreenKey Technologies Secures Strategic Investment from IPC

GreenKey Technologies Secures Strategic Investment from IPC
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Green Key Technologies

GreenKey Technologies (GK) and IPC have strengthened their relationship with a strategic investment that gives IPC exclusive rights to GreenKey’s machine learning voice solutions. The deal combines GK’s markets and customer insight extraction technology with IPC’s trading communications background and cloud-based financial ecosystem of more than 6,400 market participants.

“IPC and the OTC market at large have recognized the value in our patented natural language processing solutions,” GreenKey CEO Anthony Tassone said. “GK’s rapidly growing team looks forward to refining the exclusive synergies created by this partnership. He thanked IPC CEO Bob Santella for his “mentorship and guidance through the next phase of GK’s evolution.”

Tassone will become an IPC advisor as part of the strategic investment, with Santella joining GK’s board of directors. Former GreenKey CEO Nader Shwayhat will return to the company’s advisory board.

IPC and GreenKey have a history. The two companies collaborated as recently as last month to develop technology that will convert real-time voice into useable data for financial market participants. GreenKey’s speech recognition and natural language processing platform turns complicated financial jargon and terminology embedded in real-time audio and text into actionable insights. The platform also helps sell side firms automate sales and trading workflows by converting unstructured communication streams into structured data solutions.

IPC will deploy GreenKey’s technology to its IPC Unigy 360 platform to transform voice quotes and trades into a streaming transcript in real-time that is visible on the trader’s desktop. And by matching quotes and trades to conversational text, the technology provides an enhanced real-time price feed that unifies communications among market participants for greater visibility and more efficient trading.

“Our investment in GreenKey is a powerful step in furthering financial services market transformation through artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and data optimization innovation,” IPC’s Santella said.

GreenKey Technologies participated in our developers conference, FinDEVrNewYork 2016, demonstrating its voice software and VoIP network solution. Founded in 2014, and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, GreenKey – in partnership with IPC – won the 2018 American Financial Technology Award (AFTA) for Best Partnership or Alliance in December.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alfa-Bank, Arcanum Technology, Avaloq, CRIF, eToro, Green Key Technologies, Klarna, Ping Identity

On Finovate.com

  • GreenKey Technologies Secures Strategic Investment from IPC.
  • “Hello USA!” eToro Goes Live in America.

Around the web

  • Russia’s Alfa-Bank joins Marco Polo Network to offer blockchain-based trade and supply chain finance services to its clients.
  • Credit and business information systems specialist CRIF acquires majority stake in digital identity firm Inventia.
  • Klarna partners with Canadian e-commerce and in-store point-of-sale financing specialist PayBright.
  • Ping Identity wins Best Identity Management Solution at the 2019 SC Awards.
  • Arcanum Technology named a finalist in the competition for a spot in the TAG FinTech Innovation Challenge’s 2019 class.
  • Avaloq joins the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA).

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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TurnKey Lender Locks in New Investment from OSK Ventures

TurnKey Lender Locks in New Investment from OSK Ventures
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Turnkey Lender

TurnKey Lender, a Singapore-based digital solution provider for non-bank lenders, just closed a Series A1 round led by Malaysian private equity firm, OSK Ventures International. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.

The company plans to use the capital to support growth objectives in the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia. Vertex Ventures, who led the company’s previous $2 million funding round in 2017, and Western NIS Enterprise Fund also participated in the Series A1.

Company CEO Dmitry Voronenko called the funding a “vote of confidence” in TurnKey Lender and its momentum over the past year. Calling technology access the key factor in credit access, Voronenko said the goal of the company was to make it easier for “banks, non-bank lenders, and alternative lending companies around the globe” to access AI-powered digital lending technology.

Founded in 2014, TurnKey Lender demonstrated its SaaS solution at FinovateSpring 2017. The technology supports the complete loan lifecycle, from application processing to collection and reporting, fully automating the process for lenders. The platform readily integrates with both internal and external data sources and services, and leverages advanced scoring of applicants to reduce credit risk.

TurnKey Lender won Best SME FinTech SaaS Software Company in Singapore at Acquisition International’s Business Excellence Awards earlier this year. The company was also named a top auto loan origination platform by HCCResearch. Last month, TurnKey Lender co-founder and Head of Business Development Elena Ionenko was shortlisted for the Women in Credit Awards sponsored by Credit Strategy.

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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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