FinovateEurope 2018 Best of Show Winners Announced

FinovateEurope 2018 Best of Show Winners Announced

If there is one theme that unites all of our FinovateEurope Best of Show winners this year, that theme may be summed up in one word: data. As Finovate senior research analyst Julie Muhn pointed out during a recent conversation, the ability to leverage data to create more meaningful, more personalized, more secure experiences for consumers of financial services underlies much of the innovation that we see not just on the Finovate stage, but across fintech writ large, as well.

In this way, financial technology is turning the old adage – it’s not what you know, it’s who you know – on its head. The connections between us and the things we do, the places we go, the transactions we make, are in many ways the Holy Grail for companies that are constantly seeking out better ways to serve us. And for those companies that do win our trust and gain access to what we know and do, the rewards could not be greater.

With this in mind, we present to you a small sample of those companies that may be best positioned to take advantage of this Golden Age of Data: the Best of Show winners of FinovateEurope 2018.

Backbase for its Customer OS, the next generation of the Backbase Digital Banking Platform, which is laser-focused on providing customer-first journeys. Video.

 

Be-IQ for its holistic and gamified approach to risk profiling and financial well-being that accounts for the very contradictions that make us human: our behaviors. Video.

 

CREALOGIX for its customer banking platform, Gravity, which is breaking new ground with its intuitive and user-friendly, self-service insights application. Video.

 

iProov for its liveness-protected, facial biometric authentication technology which is fully-automated for fast, easy and ultra-secure mobile and PC on-boarding. Video.

 

 

Meniga for its digital banking solution that helps banks around the world use data to personalize digital channels and drive customer engagement. Video.

 

Microblink for BlinkReceipt, its SDK for real-time extraction of all purchase data from retail receipts and OCR technology which eliminates typing from mobile apps. Video.

 

 

W.UP for its digital banking sales and engagement solution that uses pre-built customer insights to build relevant, personalized, and timely interactions with clients. Video.

 

Please join us in thanking our sponsors and partners who help us make FinovateEurope a huge success year in and year out. And be sure to stay tuned for coverage of our new extended format on Thursday and Friday as we take deep dives into some of the most pressing issues and fascinating trends in fintech today. For more information about the keynote addresses, panel discussions, and fireside chats coming up on Days Three and Four, our full agenda is available on our FinovateEurope 2018 page.


Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The seven companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2018 conferences are below:
FinovateEurope 2015
FinovateSpring 2015
FinovateFall 2015
FinovateEurope 2016
FinovateSpring 2016
FinovateFall 2016
FinovateAsia 2016
FinovateEurope 2017
FinovateSpring 2017
FinovateFall 2017
FinovateAsia 2017
FinovateMiddleEast 2018

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • FinovateEurope Best of Show Winners Announced.
  • Welcome to Day Three of FinovateEurope.

Around the web

  • Ripple partners with Japanese banking consortium to launch mobile payments app, MoneyTap.
  • S&P Global to acquire Kensho in cash and stock deal valued at $550 million.
  • Banque du Caire to deploy core banking technology from Temenos.
  • TransferTo and Sentbe team up to provide real-time money transfers from South Korea to more than 60 countries.
  • Coinbase unveils new index fund to provide investors with exposure to all digital assets on its GDAX exchange.
  • Entersekt launches Connekt, a digital commerce enablement solution that makes it easy to add new payment services to banking apps.
  • Finicity partners with MortgageHippo to streamline and accelerate the verification process in mortgage lending.
  • Baker Hill announces strategic alliance with Built Technologies, a Tennessee-based construction lending software provider.

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.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

Around the web

  • Two-time Best of Show winner Finn.ai launches Spanish-speaking virtual banking assistant with Nicaragua’s biggest bank, Banpro.
  • Fiserv to offer Mastercard’s anti-fraud solution, Decision Intelligence.
  • Former LinkedIn executive, Emilie Choi, joins Coinbase as VP of Corporate and Business Development.
  • Kabbage and Citi commit to new cybersecurity-based consortium for fintechs and data aggregators established by the World Economic Forum.
  • Onboarding friction and security concerns remain as obstacles to wider mobile banking adoption for consumers across age groups according to joint review by Javelin and identify verification specialist Jumio.

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.

Welcome to Day One of FinovateEurope

Welcome to Day One of FinovateEurope

We are off and running at FinovateEurope 2018! Come in from the cold, grab a cup of hot coffee and a pastry, and join us for what promises to be a fantastic first-day of live fintech demonstrations.

Day One will feature more than 40 companies demonstrating a variety of fintech solutions ranging from mobile payments and authentication to digital banking and wealth management. If you haven’t already, pick up your ticket today and join us at ExCel London on the historic Royal Victoria Dock as FinovateEurope brings you the latest in fintech innovation.

Here’s today’s lineup.

Registration begins at 8am

8:00 to 9:00: Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00 to 10:15:

10:15 to 10:45: Intermission and Refreshments

10:45 to 12:00:

12:00 to 13:00: Lunch and networking

13:00 to 14:15:

14:15 to 14:45: Intermission and refreshments

14:45 to 16:00:

16:00 to 18:00: Cocktail reception and networking
Best of Show winners will be announced tomorrow.

All demo videos will be available for free in a few weeks in our video archives.

Yorkshire Building Society Leverages nCino’s Bank Operating System to Drive Corporate Lending

Yorkshire Building Society Leverages nCino’s Bank Operating System to Drive Corporate Lending

The U.K.’s Yorkshire Building Society has deployed nCino’s cloud-based digital Bank Operating System for commercial lending operations, reports Antony Peyton of Banking Technology (Finovate’s sister publication).

This is nCino’s second triumph in the UK – as reported in June 2017 challenger bank OakNorth deployed the same system. In the U.S., ten of the top 30 banks by asset size and the world’s largest credit union, Navy Federal, rely on the Wilmington, North Carolina-based fintech’s cloud-based banking technology.

In this latest deal, Bradford-based Yorkshire Building Society, will use the system to lets its employees make faster decisions and provide funding more quickly to its customers. According to nCino, it completed the deployment in less than 90 days.

Phil Green, head of commercial lending and social housing at Yorkshire Building Society, said: “We invested in the nCino Bank Operating System because it helps automate tasks that were previously paper-based and manual, allowing colleagues more time to deliver differentiated and personalized service.”

The nCino Bank Operating System is built on the Salesforce platform that combines customer relationship management, loan origination, account opening, workflow, enterprise content management, business process management, digital engagement and reporting.

Last month, nCino reeled in investment from Salesforce Ventures. The amount of funding was undisclosed, but the investment adds to the company’s known total capital of more than $81 million.

nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. Pierre Naudé is CEO.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Excuse Me, Europe, Your Finovate is Showing.

Around the web

  • Avaloq wins its first Thai customer in Kasikornbank. See Avaloq at FinovateEurope in London this week.
  • Finicity adds verification reports to Advanced Data’s fraud prevention and enhanced verification tools for mortgage lending courtesy of new partnership.
  • Simility announces new VP of Business Development, Eric Newman.
  • FactoryNet profiles the new service processes app from Zuhlke Engineering. (in German).
  • McCullough Robertson Lawyers deploy Riverbed Technology’s SteelCentral Aternity solution to enhance productivity and boost innovation.
  • Kyiv Post highlights Softjourn among world’s top outsourcers.
  • Currencycloud introduces Richard Arudel as North America GM.

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.

FLEETCOR Launches Blockchain-Based Payments Pilot with Ripple

FLEETCOR Launches Blockchain-Based Payments Pilot with Ripple

For all the buzz around blockchain technologies, few companies have seized the moment like Ripple. And this week, the enterprise blockchain solution provider announced a new partnership with FLEETCOR Technologies. The two firms will launch a pilot program to test the viability of Ripple’s digital asset XRP to improve the efficiency of international payments.

Cambridge Global Payments, the B2B international payments provider owned by FLEETCOR will execute the pilot, using XRP in payment flows through Ripple’s on-demand liquidity solution, XRapid. Cambridge processes more than $20 billion in cross-border, B2B payments each year for its 13,000 business customers. This newly-announced initiative adds to the work Cambridge and Ripple have already done together with the latter’s real-time messaging and transaction settlement for the enterprise solution, xCurrent.

“We are excited for the insights this pilot program is expected to deliver, and we will use that information to help both Cambridge and FLEETCOR develop our use case for blockchain in international payments,” Cambridge Global Payments COO Mark Frey said. Speaking for Ripple, Danny Aranda, Director of Business Development, praised Cambridge as a company that “understand(s) the benefits of digital assets and (is) serious about using XRP to overcome the inefficiencies in the global payment system.”

Making its Finovate debut at OpenCoin at FinovateSpring 2013, Ripple has been recognized as both a pioneer and a critical company in the bringing the benefits of distributed ledger technology to the enterprise. In recent months, the company has forged a wide variety of partnerships with FIs and financial services firms such as UAE Exchange, Banco Santander, and MoneyGram to help establish pilot programs and use cases for blockchain technology in areas ranging from international payment facilitation to the Internet of Things.

Ripple has raised more than $93 million in funding and includes IDG Capital Partners, SBI Investment, Core Innovation Capital, and Santander Innoventures among its investors. Both founder Larsen and current CEO Brad Garlinghouse were featured in Forbes.com’s article Prophets of Boom: Meet Crypto’s Richest, “a list of the richest secretive freaks, geeks, and visionaries” in the world of cryptocurrencies,” earlier this year. The company was founded in 2012 and is based in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney, Australia.

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • TechCrunch talks with HackerOne CEO Marten Mickos on bug bounties and the value of white hat hackers.
  • Cardlytics bolsters executive ranks with pair of new group presidents: Randall Beard and Shannon Johnson.
  • American Banker interviews new SoFi CEO Anthony Neto.
  • First Data goes live with Clover Mini and Clover Flex smart terminals in Germany and Austria.
  • Chetu earns Best Custom Business Software Developer Award from US Business News.
  • Ivan Nabalon, CEO and founder of Best of Show winning Electronic IDentification discusses the mainstream potential for cryptocurrencies.
  • ChartIQ teams up with Trading Central to provide technical insights and tool to traders.
  • Blockchain healthcare platform HealthCombix partners with NuCypher.

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.

Kore.ai Unveils New Bots Platform, Adds Former Citi CIO as Strategic Advisor

Kore.ai Unveils New Bots Platform, Adds Former Citi CIO as Strategic Advisor

Developer of conversational AI solutions for the enterprise, Kore.ai has launched the latest version of its Bots Platform. Version 6.1 not only enables enterprises to build high-value chatbot solutions faster and more efficiently, but also gives companies the ability to better understand how their chatbots are performing compared to user expectations.

The new platform includes usability enhancements such as a collapsible sidebar navigation and revised layouts. Version 6.1 also provides better bot insights by analyzing how user utterances are processed by the platform’s natural language processing engine and graphically displays how these utterances are classified against various bot tasks. Additionally, the platform enables developers to combine individual bots into a multi-purpose, branded universal bot or VPA (virtual personal assistant) that can communicate with many bots on behalf of an individual. Other features include smart alerts, IVR voice support, new channels including telegram and live person, and a bot sharing facility across users of different domains.

“Our promise has always been to design an end-to-end platform, running in the cloud or on-prem, creating secure, smart, conversational and quick-to-market bots for enterprises,” Raj Koneru, CEO and founder of Kore.ai said in a statement. “We’ve bolstered our Kore Bots Platform with rich new capabilities for enterprises, and are also bringing in fresh thinking into how AI-powered conversational solutions could be engineered better for specific industries.

This “fresh thinking” comes in the form of Devendra Kumar Sharma, former CIO of Citigroup International, who has joined Kore.ai as a strategic advisor and will, in the words of Koneru, “advise us on how to create strategic digital value through great customer engagement.”

Sharma praised the company’s “powerful and unique combination” of growth potential and what he called “strategic relevance in an emerging technology space.” With almost three decades of experience in working with consumer banking technology platforms and operations capabilities, Sharma led initiatives on core operating platforms, digital transformation, and more while working at Citigroup International. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and an MBA in Information Systems and Finance from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, and founded in 2013, Kore.ai demonstrated its Bots Platform at FinovateFall 2016. With strategic partners ranging from Facebook to SAP to Cisco, Kore.ai has developed more than 150 pre-built bots that use machine learning, natural language processing, AI, and speech recognition to provide actionable, “human-like” communications to the interactions between businesses and their customers, employees, systems, and things.

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • Opentech ranked third in the Mastercard’s worldwide Directory of Digital Wallet providers. Come see Opentech’s live demo at FinovateEurope next week.
  • Yoyo named Best Mobile Payment Solution at MPE Awards. Come see Yoyo’s demo at FinovateEurope next week in London.
  • CapitaWorld launches smart loan disintermediation ecosystem for micro, small, and medium (MSM) enterprises.
  • Unison launches 5% down payment program in conjunction with an 80% LTV mortgage.
  • Sberbank adds Google Pay and Samsung Pay services for the customers using its business cards.
  • Railsbank partners with Carta Worldwide.
  • Lendio Franchise Announced in Clemson Region.

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.

Signifyd Partners with Corra to Provide Guaranteed Fraud Protection to E-commerce Merchants

Signifyd Partners with Corra to Provide Guaranteed Fraud Protection to E-commerce Merchants

Fraud prevention specialist Signifyd announced a strategic partnership with e-commerce website designer Corra that will bring guaranteed fraud prevention technology to Corra’s high-end enterprise retail customers.

“Corra embraces the same deep commitment to merchants that Signifyd does,” Lee Hadsock, head of partnerships for Signifyd, said. “We believe in doing what needs to be done to ensure that merchants are successful – and to provide fraud-protection services, technology and tools that mean they don’t have to be distracted by issues and operations that are outside the core of their businesses.”

The partnership, announced at the eTail West conference, will give Corra clients both full financial protection from fraud costs, as well as the technology merchants need to establish the legitimacy of customer orders within milliseconds. Corra is a digital agency that builds commerce experiences for fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands around the world. Signifyd’s partnership with the company is in some ways an extension of the relationship the company developed with Magento Commerce last fall.  The press release accompanying the announcement noted that both companies had been honored by Magento in 2016 – with Corra being named Magento Omnichannel Partner of the Year and Signifyd earning plaudits as Magento Best New Technology Partner of the Year.

Director of Global Strategic Alliances for Corra, Martina England praised Signifyd as an “enterprise-ready partner that can help us help our customers grow and succeed.” England referred specifically to the fraud fighter’s technology and domain expertise, as well as the firm’s sizable customer roster and history of success in supporting e-commerce. “We examined the full complement of guaranteed fraud protection players and found that Signifyd, far-and-away, met the needs of our clients,” England said.

Leveraging big data, machine learning, and human intelligence, Signifyd’s technology protects more than 5,000 online merchants and more than $37 billion worth of products against fraud. Available as an e-commerce platform plug-in as well as via an API, Signifyd automates back office operations including auto-fulfill and auto-cancel on orders, and makes it easy for merchants to get paid for chargebacks within 48 hours. Additionally, Signifyd offers a 100% financial guarantee in the event that an order approved by Signifyd’s technology proves ultimately to be fraudulent.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Signifyd demonstrated its Guaranteed Payments solution at FinovateSpring 2013. Earlier this month, the company’s co-founder and CEO, Rajesh Ramanand, was named to One World Identity’s Top 100 Influencer’s list (along with 19 other Finovate alums). Signifyd partnered with Authorize.Net to bring its fraud protection technology to that firm’s U.S.-based e-commerce merchants last summer, less than one month after being added to CB Insights’ Fintech 250 list. The company has raised more than $89 million in total capital, including picking up $56 million in funding last year in a Series C round led by Bain Capital Ventures.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Signifyd Partners with Corra to Provide Guaranteed Fraud Protection for E-Commerce Merchants.

Around the web

  • Estonian financial group LHV to leverage technology from FICO to fight money laundering.
  • Klarna announces double-digit sales growth thanks to more retailers using the company’s solutions.
  • CNBC quotes MaxMyInterest head of business development and partnerships Michael Halloran on cash strategies for investors during times of market volatility.
  • Dynamics unveils enhanced functionality for its connected Wallet Card. See its latest demo at FinovateEurope next week.
  • TSYS Extends Existing Agreement with Capital One UK.
  • Mastercard to use Facebook Messenger to help small businesses in Africa and Asia drive mobile and electronic payments acceptance.
  • Worldline teams with Total to launch TOTAL eWallet.
  • FutureTech Podcast hosts Capitalise CEO Shahar Rabin on using natural language to automate trading strategies.
  • NopSec Awarded Most Innovative Cybersecurity Company 2018.

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.