Author: David Penn

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BBVA, Comarch, IBM, Juvo, Lighter Capital, NuCypher, Prosper, Sberbank, Sureify

On Finovate.com

  • NuCypher and Sureify Earn Finalist Spots at Startup Battlefield, MetLife’s Collab.

Around the web

  • Mobile identity scoring innovator Juvo appoints Prosper president Ron Suber as strategic advisor.
  • BBVA unveils new chatbot providing basic financial information over Facebook and Telegram.
  • IBM opens the doors on its Blockchain Founder Accelerator program for blockchain startups.
  • Spanish tax agency, AEAT, certifies Comarch’s Accounts Payable solution.
  • Puget Sound Business Journal Features Lighter Capital.
  • NuCypher wins finalist spot at Disrupt NY 2017’s Startup Battlefield.

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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Market Earlybird Helps Market Professionals Identify Trading Opportunities First

Market Earlybird Helps Market Professionals Identify Trading Opportunities First
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Debuts, Market EarlyBird

 

With a lighthearted observation about the current President of the United States, Market Earlybird founder and CEO Danny Watkins acknowledged the power of social media like Twitter to broadcast ideas and gauge the sentiment of the crowd. But for many financial professionals, taking full advantage of Twitter presents a wealth of challenges in terms of regulations and compliance.

And that’s where Market Earlybird comes in. Market Earlybird is a cloud-based, Twitter platform designed specifically to handle the compliance issues faced by financial professionals like traders, researchers, and brokers. While recreating the Twitter experience on the platform, Market Earlybird is read-only, has no direct messaging functionality, and is fully recorded to meet compliance requirements. The platform is easy to integrate, requiring neither installation or firewall changes.

Pictured: Market Earlybird CEO Danny Watkins demonstrating the company’s technology at FinovateEurope 2017.

This leaves financial professionals free to take advantage of the analytics on the Market Earlybird platform to get faster and deeper insight into potentially market-moving events. This includes SmartTracks, which enable users to scan a set of preferred stocks, currencies, or news for financial relevance. The platform focuses on the qualitative, considering the Tweeter’s reputation and degree of engagement across the platform (retweets, likes, etc.) to determine which tweets are most likely to “go viral” and potentially have the most impact. The result is a Twitter experience that is designed to provide the most relevant tweets to the financial professional.

“We stop everybody (from) shouting at once. We really make sure you are able to get to the value of  Twitter,” Watkins said.” “We enable you to organize your follows, organize your priority feeds, get notifications. And we start to do that really clever stuff of not only seeing tweets as a flat structure,” he said, “but seeing tweets for the actual value they provide.”

Company facts

  • Headquartered in London, England
  • Founded in February 2012
  • Raised £250,000 in funding
  • Serves a dozen banks including two Top 10 global banks

We sat down with Market Earlybird CEO Danny Watkins during FinovateEurope and followed up with the company’s Chief Evangelist, Stuart Hunt (pictured) with a few questions by email. His responses are below.

Finovate: What problem does your EarlyBird solve?

Stuart Hunt: EarlyBird solves the problem of Twitter access in regulated financial environments. Twitter is now part of the very fabric of how political and financial news moves today, which makes it an essential tool for traders and analysts who need to see that news as it breaks. However, the challenges and risks of Twitter being used for market abuse, through its secret person-to-person channels, can be huge, and therefore it is often blocked from trading and research desks. EarlyBird solves this problem by providing a read-only Twitter service that is safe and optimized for financial professionals.

Finovate: How does your technology solve the problem better?

Hunt: EarlyBird blocks all outbound tweeting and messaging, and all tweets received by its users are recorded for compliance to review. All activity, such as who you follow and what you’re tracking, is also invisible to anyone outside your organization. But EarlyBird does much more than that. It’s a layered product, with increasingly rich capabilities to sift, filter, sort and analyze tweets. EarlyBird’s AI curated company searches, SmartTracks, cast a wider net than regular Twitter searches and return Tweets with real market relevance. It’s Twitter, but optimized for financial professionals.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of EarlyBird.

Hunt: We’re always delighted when we hear from traders, analysts and compliance teams about how EarlyBird is solving the problems it was designed for. Most recently, we had a lot of positive feedback about our $TRUMP SmartTrack, which we created ahead of his inauguration to enable users to easily track financially relevant tweets and news on Twitter regarding Trump. Trump has thrown a curve ball into financial markets with his fired-from-the-hip tweets, so it was pleasing to know we were helping our customers manage the uncertainty.

Finovate: What is your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Hunt: EarlyBird was created by our CEO, Danny Watkins, a chartered IT professional and former senior technologist at a multi-national investment bank. Danny’s extensive experience in the industry led to him recognizing the need for an FCA-compliant, read-only Twitter feed. The software was built independently of the bank, supplied under license and piloted on multiple trade floors for several years before its full commercial launch in 2015. Because EarlyBird was tested so rigorously before launch, we knew there was a strong need for the service.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Hunt: Our primary customers are investment banks and hedge funds. They are highly protective of their use of the service and we aren’t able to give names or specific details of how they use it. What we can say is that they are getting information using a combination of direct follows and our artificial intelligence curated feeds, which are giving them market insights that others are missing.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from your company that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Hunt: At the moment we’re putting the finishing touches to a new tweet translation feature for the platform. We’ve been working on this for the upcoming Europe elections so readers not only see the most relevant tweets, but can instantly see the content in their own language. We’re also going to be launching a brand new EarlyBird mobile app very soon as well.

Finovate: Where do you see Market EarlyBird a year or two from now?

Hunt: FinovateEurope was our first major conference after receiving funding from an Angel Investor at the end of last year. Since the event we’ve had many people approach us interested in EarlyBird, and off the back of those discussions have issued a number of new pilots which is really encouraging. In the coming two years, we hope to grow our user base, find new ways to enhance the software, and make EarlyBird the go-to platform for those looking to manage the risks and opportunities of Twitter in regulated finance firms.

CEO Danny Watkins demonstrating EarlyBird at FinovateEurope 2017.

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nCino Helps FIs Benefit from Cloud Banking

nCino Helps FIs Benefit from Cloud Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Debuts, nCino

nCino_homepage_April2017b

What makes the nCino Bank Operating System the cloud banking solution of choice for a growing number of financial institutions (including “more than 130 FIs of all asset classes and from multiple countries” in the words of nCino CMO Jonathan Rowe)?

As Rowe said during nCino’s live demonstration at FinovateEurope 2017 earlier this year, “with nCino your customers get a transparent, digitally-optimized process, quick access to capital, and a true valued long-term relationship with your financial institution.” And for financial institutions themselves, he added, nCino brings increased loan growth “while lowering costs and increasing productivity and maintaining the highest levels of safety and soundness.”

Pictured (left to right): Jonathan Rowe (Chief Marketing Officer), Trisha Price (EVP, Product Development & Engineering), and  Nathan Snell (Chief Innovation Officer) demonstrating the nCino Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017.

nCino used the example of a bank loan to demonstrate some of the features of the nCino Bank Operating System. Along with Product Development & Engineering EVP Trisha Price and Chief Innovation Officer Nathan Snell, the nCino team showed how a customer could apply for a small business loan using their smartphone, and get an instant real-time decision from the technology’s automated decisioning engine. The demo also showed how the platform provided workarounds like an automated counter offer when an applicant requested a loan amount that was too large. The technology also enables the customer to capture and upload images of documents like financial statements to help customers make the case for a larger loan.

On the bank’s side, the nCino team showed how the platform’s auto decision engine processed online loan applications and can be configured to match the FI’s own credit policies.  And by leveraging both the OCR and AI built into the nCino platform, bank professionals are able to quickly do deeper dives into applicant financials to find opportunities for funding that might have otherwise gone unfunded or cost the borrower more. “This is how banking and technology should work, and does work with nCino,” Rowe said, reminding the audience that nCino’s technology supports not just commercial banking, but also treasury management, and retail and consumer banking, as well.

Since nCino’s Finovate debut in February, the company has announced new enhancements to its platform that make it easier to serve small business borrowers. Named to Planet Compliance’s RegTech Top 100 Power List this spring, nCino partnered with North State Bank in April and teamed up with Valley National Bank in March to power commercial loan operations at both institutions.

Company Facts

  • Founded in 2012
  • Headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina
  • Raised more than $79 million in capital
  • Works with more than 130 clients
  • Maintains more than 275 employees

We met with the nCino team in London to talk about the company’s debut at FinovateEurope. We followed up with a few questions by e-mail for Nathan Snell, nCino’s Chief Innovation Officer. His responses are below.

Finovate: What problem does your technology solve?

Nathan Snell: nCino is the worldwide leader in cloud banking. Its Bank Operating System, built on the Salesforce platform, enables financial institutions to deliver the speed and digital experience that customers expect, backed by the quality and transparency that bankers need.

nCino’s Bank Operating System acts as a financial institution’s single source of truth, eliminating the need for multiple, disparate software systems by combining customer relationship management (CRM), loan origination, workflow, enterprise content management, business processing and instant reporting all in one secure, cloud-based environment. Sitting alongside the bank’s core, nCino’s Bank Operating System drives increased profitability, productivity gains, regulatory compliance and operating transparency across all business channels and organizational levels. The platform facilitates a seamless and secure interaction between bank employees, customers and other third parties, providing bankers with an efficient and configurable way to digitally operate their institution.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Snell: nCino’s client portfolio consists of more than 130 financial institutions in North America and Europe. Our customers span all asset classes – from $150 million in assets to over $200 billion – and include community and regional banks, credit unions, challenger banks and large enterprise institutions. Because of the flexible and scalable nature of our platform, the Bank Operating System is customizable for any size organization.

Pictured: The nCino Bank Operating System environments displayed on a laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone.

Finovate: How does your technology solve the problem better?

Snell: The nCino Bank Operating System is a comprehensive, end-to-end, cloud-based solution that offers a single platform across all lines of business (commercial, small business, retail), distinguishing us in a market category of our own. nCino was built from day one as an integrated solution on Salesforce’s Force.com platform, the world’s leading cloud computing platform.  Because of how we’ve built the nCino Bank Operating System, it’s also one of the first times a financial institution has a platform that can respond, in a configurable way, to their business needs as quickly as they come up as opposed to being constrained by their platform. While there are other companies that may offer point solutions or software systems that provide certain aspects of our technology, none combine our full spectrum of features and functionality into one cohesive offering.

Designed by bankers who understand the nuances of the marketplace, nCino revolutionizes the way financial institutions operate, helping them regain their competitive advantage and beat alternative lenders at their own game, while simultaneously satisfying customers’ demand for superior service in the digital era.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation.

Snell: It’s hard to pick a favorite implementation as they are all important; however, one that stands out is our successful implementation last year at SunTrust, a $205 billion-asset institution and a top 10 bank in the U.S. The implementation at SunTrust was a truly collaborative effort consisting of a multi-layered, multifunctional program team that included not only nCino, but also a system integration team from Accenture, and a large operational and technology team from SunTrust.

In less than 18 months, the nCino Bank Operating System was deployed to thousands of SunTrust teammates across sales, risk and lending operations. When asked about the process, Pam Kilday, head of operations for SunTrust, said, “This has been one of the finest implementations that we have had at SunTrust. We are now being looked at as a model of best practices to implement something of this range at SunTrust.”

Pictured: The automated decision engine of the nCino Bank Operating System.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Snell: Because nCino was designed specifically by bankers who understand both the challenges and opportunities in the marketplace, nCino is uniquely qualified to deliver a solution that best addresses a financial institution’s needs. In today’s environment, bankers are expected to do more with less, manage regulation, ensure data security, digitally engage with customers to foster stronger relationships, and deliver increased profit to shareholders. And, as customer demands and expectations rapidly evolve and non-traditional third parties enter the scene, the financial services industry is more competitive than ever before. nCino’s Bank Operating System enables a financial institution to improve efficiency, productivity and compliance across numerous departments and business lines, all while creating a more transparent and digitally engaging experience for customers.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from nCino that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Snell: This year, we’ll continue to expand the scope of the Bank Operating System. In 2016 alone, we added new functionality such as deposit account opening and automated decisioning that extended the platform to other areas of the bank – and that’s just the beginning. With additional functionality across small business lending and retail already in the pipeline, nCino continues to develop technology to help financial institutions save costs and increase productivity while simultaneously protecting their market share against emerging marketplace lenders.

There’s really so much opportunity in the financial services space today, that even beyond the next few months, we have quite a few exciting things planned that we believe will continue to help shape the landscape of banking.

Finovate: Where do you see nCino a year or two from now?

Snell: Over the past five years, we’ve experienced significant growth in our customer portfolio, technology roadmap and employee base – and we expect that growth to continue into the next year and beyond. We look forward to expanding our international presence in the U.K. and Europe, adding fresh talent to our workforce and introducing new and exciting functionality to our Bank Operating System as it touches additional areas of the financial institution.

Trisha Price (EVP, Product Development & Engineering), Nathan Snell (Chief Innovation Office), and Jonathan Rowe (Chief Marketing Officer) demonstrating the nCino Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BanQu, Insuritas, LendUp, Lighter Capital, nCino, Open Bank Project, TransferWise, Uniken, wipro

On Finovate.com

  • nCino Helps Financial Institutions Benefit from Cloud Banking
  • LendUp Gives the Underbanked What No Traditional Bank Will

On FinDEVr.com

  • Check out this week’s FinDEVr APIntelligence

Around the web

  • BanQu teams up with Eastern Congo Initiative to launch secure data storage network for farmers.
  • TransferWise announces operational profitability and monthly revenues of £8 million.
  • Lighter Capital adds Former Silicon Valley Bank’s Head of Risk, Marc Verissimo, to its Board of Directors
  • Wells Fargo selects Uniken for accelerator program.
  • Wipro launches Nine Solutions to Accelerate Adoption of Blockchain Across Industry Sectors
  • Societe Generale partners with Open Bank Project to launch internal Open Banking Hackathon
  • South Carolina-based Community First Bank hires Insuritas to install and manage insurance agency.

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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SoFi Unveils Digital Wealth Management Platform, SoFi Wealth

SoFi Unveils Digital Wealth Management Platform, SoFi Wealth
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: SoFi

Originally published at FinDEVr.com

Less than a month after announcing its new $105 million SoFi Prime Income Fund to help raise funds to issue loans, online lending innovator SoFi is making headlines again with the launch of SoFi Wealth. The new initiative, the company’s first digital wealth management offering, will allow investors in the U.S. to invest as little as $500 (or a $100 monthly recurring deposit) in automated, low-cost, ETF portfolios. But unlike many roboadvisors, clients of SoFi Wealth will have phone and/or chat access to human financial advisors.

SoFi believes that keeping human advisors as part of the overall investment picture is a plus for investors, especially the younger professionals that are a significant part of the company’s user base. “People love the low fees and automation of robo-advisors, but they struggle with not having an actual human being to talk to when facing big financial questions,” SoFi Wealth general manager, John Gardner said. “That guidance from a live advisor can help give them the confidence they need to start planning for a lifetime of financial success.”

Pictured (left to right): SoFi Wealth Head of Strategy Stephen Sikes and Quovo CTO and co-founder Michael Del Monte during their FinDEVr 2017 New York presentation, How Quovo & SoFi Perfected Bank Authentication.

In addition to providing live human advisors, low investment minimums, and access to low-cost automated ETF-based portfolios, SoFi Wealth also charges no management fees for clients who are also SoFi loan borrowers. Others pay a modest management fee of 0.25%, with no charge on the first $10,000 invested. Clients can access their accounts online, as well as via the SoFi Wealth app. Both Android and iOS versions are available.

The company also announced that it is developing a broader range of personal finance and financial planning solutions geared toward first-time home buyers and young families. SoFi anticipates rolling out these products and services over the summer of 2017.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, SoFi made its FinDEVr debut earlier this year at FinDEVr 2017 New York. The company, in partnership with Quovo, discussed the challenge of managing consumer financial accounts in a presentation titled, How Quovo & SoFi Perfected Bank Authentication. The presentation focused on how Quovo developed a bank authentication API for SoFi that both improved security and streamlined UX. FinDEVr attendees gave the presentation a FinDEVr Favorites awards in the Favorite FinDEVr Alum category.

A member of CNBC Disruptor 50 for 2017, SoFi has raised more than $1.8 billion in funding – making the company one of fintech’s true “unicorns” – and includes Baseline Ventures, DCM Ventures, Discovery Capital, East West Bank and Morgan Stanley among its equity and debt investors. With origins in student loan financing, SoFi has since expanded significantly to include mortgage lending, personal loans, life insurance, and wealth management among the services it provides. Mike Cagney is CEO.

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Best of Show Winner Alpharank Earns Spot in FIS Accelerator

Best of Show Winner Alpharank Earns Spot in FIS Accelerator
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alpharank

By the end of Alpharank’s Best of Show winning demo at FinovateSpring last month, few doubted that connectivity was the key to everything from customer retention to providing more personalized services. Alpharank CEO Brian Ley had just shown how his Customer Influence Mapping technology enables FIs to spot highly-networked “influencers” among their customer base, and how to leverage those influencers to build better engagement and a more customized UX.

“If you’re an aggregator of financial information, you’re sitting on one of the most valuable data assets in the entire world,” Ley said, “Alpharank can help make it significantly more valuable.”

And now, in addition to its Best of Show trophy, Alpharank can add earning a spot in the FIS 2017 VC Fintech Accelerator to its list of accomplishments. The company was one of ten selected for the 12-week program, emerging from a field of 295 applicants from around the world. All ten companies will get mentoring and training from FIS and the Venture Center, and will receive a monetary investment of $50,000, with a potential to earn an additional funding of up to $300,000.

Pictured: Alpharank CEO Brian Ley demonstrating his Customer Influence Mapping technology at FinovateSpring 2017.

“This program is a great example of how we are harnessing the spirit of entrepreneurship with the power of applied innovation to bring breakthrough products and services to our clients,” FIS president and CEO Gary Norcross said. Lee Watson, CEO of the Arkansas-based Venture Center, added “together we provide fintech startups with proven go-to-market training, C-suite level mentorship and access to top financial institutions.” The program, which began last week, will end with a Demo Day with potential investors, community leaders, and entrepreneurs on July 26 at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Alpharank demonstrated its data-as-a-service technology at FinovateSpring 2017. With a backstory of virus mapping and spotting top influencing “brand ambassadors” in retail, Alpharank emerged in 2015 as a builder of APIs that help FIs turn their transaction data into predictive social graph data. “We take two to three years of credit or debit card data. We pump it through Alpharank,” Ley said. “Alpharank then tries billions of network combinations to find the correct social graph. And we deliver that back to the FI.”  Alpharank only requires the customer ID, merchant ID, a time stamp, and a total to build the graph and the outputs can be visualized in a three-dimensional model that makes it easy to identify top influencers and their connections.

Pointing to one key influencer (“Sam”) in a graph produced during the company’s FinovateSpring demo, Ley explained how targeting key influencers and their connections can play a major role in improving engagement. “If you’re trying to spread something like a credit card or a mobile banking app, start with Sam first,” Ley said. He added, “Even if you have to take him out for dinner. He’s going to speed up your adoption curves throughout the network.”

Now in its second year, the VC Fintech Accelerator is sponsored by FIS and The Venture Center. Alpharank is the second Finovate/FinDEVr company to participate in the program; FinovateFall 2015 alum bleu was a member of the Accelerator’s initial 2016 class.

Joining Alpharank in the summer 2017 program are:

  • Alto IRA
  • Bond.ai
  • eGiftify
  • Hedge Hog
  • Plinqit
  • Omnetrium
  • Quotanda
  • WalletFi
  • Xplanr

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How to Make it in the Fintech Industry: Startup Success Stories Speak Out

How to Make it in the Fintech Industry: Startup Success Stories Speak Out
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Clinc, Envestnet, Moven, Yodlee

Join us on Wednesday at 11am Eastern as we sit down with representatives from three of fintech’s most innovative companies for our first webinar, How to Make It In the Fintech Industry: 3 Startup Success Stories. We’ll investigate what it takes for fintech startups to get their technologies seen, talked about, and ultimately bought and deployed by financial institutions, e-commerce merchants, and everyday consumers looking for technology-based solutions to their financial challenges.

Check out our How to Make It In the Fintech Industry panel:

Kumar Ampani, Chief Technology Officer, Moven

Before taking the CTO helm at Moven, Ampani was the company’s Chief Software Architect. Ampani is a technology leader with 25 years of experience in architecture, design, implementation, security, and successful delivery of high quality complex business and technology solutions. He is a graduate of Villanova University and Sri Venkateswara University.

 

Dr. Jason Mars, Founder and CEO, Clinc

A professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, Mars co-founded Clinc, the cutting-edge A.I. startup that created Finie, a financial personal assistant that emulates human intelligence and makes it possible to interact with your bank account in a natural, conversational way. His work building the world’s first open-source platform for constructing large-scale personal assistants has been recognized globally.

 

Jeff Cain, Director, Envestnet | Yodlee Incubator

Cain runs the Envestnet | Yodlee Incubator which helps developers, innovators, and entrepreneurs launch disruptive, data-driven companies and accelerate their growth. He is a corporate and business development professional, experienced in sourcing, structuring, negotiating, and closing a range of successful transactions. Cain was educated at Harvard University and Stanford Universities.

How to Make it In the Fintech Industry begins at 11am Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 17th. In addition to insights from our panelists, we’ll also have a brief Q&A session at the end of the webinar so you can ask the specific questions that matter most to you and your strategy for fintech success.

Remember spaces are limited. So visit our registration page today and save your spot.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alpharank, BanQu, BioCatch, Dorsum, Fiserv, Green Key Technologies, Misys, Mitek, Outsystems, Signicat, Trulioo

On Finovate.com

  • Best of Show Winner Alpharank Earns Spot in FIS Accelerator
  • Finovate Debuts: Dorsum Puts the AI in DAISY, its Onboarding ChatBot
  • Trulioo Bolsters Regtech Solution with Mitek Partnership
  • How to Make It In the Fintech Industry: Startup Success Stories Speak Out

Around the web

  • Trulioo partners with Mitek to add facial recognition functionality to its ID verification platform. Join Trulioo at FinDEVr London next month where the company will lead a lunch roundtable discussion, AML, KYC, OMG: How to manage compliance with a smaller team and a better UX.
  • Greenkey Technologies announces interconnection partnership with iMarket.
  • Misys launches FusionCapital Detect, an AI-powered, smart personal assistant that helps identify errors and anomalies in trade transactions.
  • Daily Fintech profiles blockchain innovator and Finovate Best of Show winner, BanQu.
  • FinDEVr alum OutSystems expands to Asia with new office in Japan.
  • Signicat teams up with Rabobank to launch new, Netherlands-based digital identity service provider.
  • Ohio-based First National Bank of Pandora chooses core account processing platform from Fiserv.
  • BioCatch Receives Frost & Sullivan New Product and Innovation Award for Continued Disruption in Behavioral Biometrics Landscape.

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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Trusona Launches #NoPasswords for Salesforce

Trusona Launches #NoPasswords for Salesforce
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Trusona

Ending the Password Paradigm is near the top of everyone’s technology wish list. This helps explain the enthusiasm for companies like cybersecurity specialist Trusona. During his Best of Show winning demonstration at FinovateFall 2016, company founder and CEO Ori Eisen, led an entertaining introduction to a world without passwords.

“You’re going to see the quickest demo of the day. If you blink you might miss it. For that reason, I’m going to do it a few times,” Eisen said. He then showed – seven times in seven minutes – how the company’s Trusona Essential solution enabled frictionless, password-free login. Using the free mobile app, Eisen demonstrated how the camera on a smartphone could be used to scan a unique QR code generated from a Trusona-secured website. After scanning the QR code the user receives a notification which, when confirmed, grants access.

“Why do we need passwords?,” Eisen asked the Finovate audience. “All these breaches and malware are trying to steal passwords because they are static. If we turn every interaction into dynamic, there is nothing to steal.”

Pictured: Trusona CEO and founder Ori Eisen demonstrating the Trusona Essential service of the  Trusona Cloud Identity Suite at FinovateFall 2016.

This week we learned that Trusona’s #NoPasswords revolution has been brought to the shores of Salesforce. The company unveiled Trusona for Salesforce on Thursday, a new, free app that will accelerate the authentication process for professionals at the more than 100,000 companies that use Salesforce every day.  “From our #NoPasswords Essential solutions, through the world’s first and only insured Elite solution that delivers NIST Level 4 (four-factor) authentication, we are working to expand our technology to fit the security needs of all organizations,” Eisen said. He added, “We are excited to now offer Trusona for Salesforce as yet another tool to rid the world of passwords and provide secure identity authentication.”

Much like the demonstration of Trusona Essential at FinovateFall, Trusona for Salesforce provides users with a unique QR code that is scanned and tapped to log-in. Once integrated by a company’s Salesforce administrator, anyone with a Salesforce account at the company can access the technology. Trusona for Salesforce is currently available on a free, trial basis for 14 days and will cost users $10 a year afterward.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, Trusona demonstrated its Cloud Identity Suite at FinovateFall 2016. The technology provides three levels of service (see below) that enable Trusona to provide secure authentication for everything from basic daily login to more sensitive environments including SWIFT wires, HNW individual accounts, critical infrastructure logins, and healthcare records. All three solutions – and Trusona for Salesforce – leverage Trusona’s TruSanAR anti-replay technology, specifically designed to prevent session replay attacks.

Essential

  • Proves identity via email verification
  • Provides free, two-factor authentication

Executive

  • Proves identity via remote driver’s license and/or passport scanning
  • Provides three-factor authentication designed for account openings, wire transfers, system administrator logins

Elite

  • Proves identity via multiple forms of ID, including driver’s license and ePassport.
  • Provides four-factor authentication for critical and sensitive assets that is insured by A+ rated insurance carrier at up to $1 million per transaction

Trusona has raised $8 million in funding and includes Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers among its investors. The company added Karen Dayan as Chief Marketing Officer in April, the same month Eisen was named to the One World Identity (OWI) Top 100 Identity Leaders for 2017. The company began the year winning Info Security’s Products Guide Global Excellence Award for Tomorrow’s Technology Today.

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KPMG Acquires Fintech Collaboration Specialist, Matchi

KPMG Acquires Fintech Collaboration Specialist, Matchi
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Matchi, Mergers & Acquisitions

Fintech matchmaker Matchi has made a major match of its own: The Hong Kong-based company agreed to an acquisition by KPMG this week. Terms of the deal were not immediately available.

Calling the combination of the two entities a “powerful fintech resource,” Matchi CEO David Milligan said that the acquisition will help Match “fulfill the promise of collaboration between financial institutions and fintech firms, which can ultimately benefit all consumers.” Global co-leader of Fintech for KPMG International, Ian Pollari called Matchi’s curated approach” as very different from the “fintech databases that merely provide lists.” He added “It is designed to identify, match, and enable collaboration with the most innovative fintechs and solutions to address specific issues being faced by financial institutions.”

Matchi’s platform featured more than 700 curated fintech solutions as well as a 2,500+ company database of fintech innovators that FIs can collaborate and work with. FIs can search for specific companies or technologies, and take advantage of Matchi’s Innovation Challenge feature by issuing a specific business issue or problem on the platform and see what fintechs are interested in pursuing a solution. “Finding fintech companies who are pre-validated, helps to reduce risks and can accelerate time to market,” Pollari explained.

Founded in 2013, Matchi demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2014. The company has played matchmaker for more than 100 leading banks and insurance companies worldwide, helping firms deploy a variety of technologies ranging from next generation payments to the blockchain. Last month, Matchi teamed up with ATB Financial and KPMG Canada to run a customer onboarding innovation challenge for fintech companies.

 

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Capital One, Fiserv, Matchi, Misys, Xero, Zopa

On Finovate.com

  • KPMG Acquires Fintech Collaboration Specialist, Matchi.

Around the web

  • Misys introduces cloud-based, retail banking platform for German market.
  • Xero announces new partnership with Capital One to give SMEs more control over their data.
  • Zopa wins full FCA authorization for P2P lending.
  • Ohio-based Apple Creek Bank chooses core account processing and back office solutions from Fiserv.

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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PayU Investment in Kreditech Marks Largest Funding for a German Fintech

PayU Investment in Kreditech Marks Largest Funding for a German Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Kreditech

In a funding round led by online payment service provider, PayU, Germany’s Kreditech has raised $120 million (€110 million). The investment is the largest equity investment in a German fintech company to date. Kreditech CEO Alexander Graubner-Müller said his company was looking forward to bringing “point-of-sale finance” to markets where “reliable credit risk assessment” is lacking. Graubner-Müller added “Teaming up with PayU provides underbanked customers new possibilities and supports our mission of providing financial freedom through technology.”

In addition the record-setting nature of the funding, the partnership between Kreditech and PayU also represents what the company called in a press release: “the first such strategic cooperation pact between a payment service provider and a technology driven consumer finance company.” Pointing to its commitment to bring credit and financial services to the underbanked, PayU CEO Laurent le Moal said his company’s “substantial investment” in Kreditech will “help to bring pioneering machine learning and AI technology to the many high growth markets around the world that need better access to financial services.”

Pictured (left to right): Co-founders Sebastian Diemer and Alexander Graubner-Müller demonstrating Kreditech’s platform at FinovateSpring 2014.

This week’s funding adds to the $10.4 million Kreditech raised in a round led by Japan-based Rakuten last December. With total capital of more than $280 million, the Hamburg-based online lender has earned a valuation of between $325 million and $540 million, according to an estimate in TechCrunch.

Kreditech has processed more than four million loan applications via its subsidiaries, leveraging its API-driven, lending-as-a-service approach to make it easy for partners to integrate and custom-fit a variety of consumer finance solutions. These include loan application and credit risk management products, e-signature and customer service, loan refinancing, processing, and collections. The company is active in more than five markets around the world – including Russia, Mexico, Spain, and Poland, where Kreditech and PayU recently completed an $11 million (€10 million), 12-month pilot program.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, Kreditech demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2014. Named to H2 Ventures and KPMG’s Fintech 100 in 2016, the company added a pair of new board members last month: former Vanquis Bank CEO Michael Lenora and OneSavings Bank CEO Andy Golding.

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