CEO Interview: Jumio’s Stephen Stuut

CEO Interview: Jumio’s Stephen Stuut

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A few weeks ago, we sent some questions to Jumio CEO Stephen Stuut (pictured). The digital ID-verification company he runs made headlines a little over a month ago with news that it had raised $15 million from its new owner, Centana Growth Partners. A Best of Show winner from FinovateEurope 2015, Jumio fell on challenging times this spring when it filed for Chapter 11 protection. Stuut, who took the helm at Jumio in May jumio_stephenstuut2015, struck a positive tone, saying that the “restructuring process will allow us to strengthen the company’s financial structure and extend our leadership position in ID verification.”

So far so good. In addition to its recent funding, Jumio has forged ID verification and KYC/AML partnerships with companies ranging from European online gaming operator, Tipico; to the Paris-based mobile scooter-sharing network, Cityscoot; to Spanish crypto-currency specialist Krypto Commerce—all in the past few months alone. Combined with Jumio’s summer announcement that it has completed more than 30 million ID verifications, and it looks like the comeback trail for Jumio is clear.

Here’s what CEO Stuut had to say about his company, its current initiatives, and what we can expect from the Palo Alto-based security specialist in the months and years to come.


Finovate: Where will ID scanning and technologies like FaceMatch make the biggest impact in terms of replacing passwords and security codes?

Stephen Stuut: With the rise of online and mobile transactions, the growth of banking transactions like mobile account opening, money transfer, and bitcoin, and the rapid adoption of shared services, individuals are at greater risk to protect their security, and companies are further challenged to provide processes that will both build trust with their customers, while ensuring safety and security by helping reduce fraud.

Multifactor-authentication methods are missing the mark; the use of a password or security code is not a secure enough way to verify an individual is in fact the owner of the account. Passwords and codes passed via mobile devices can be hacked, and there is no proof that the mobile device is in the possession of the owner.

A recent report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology referred to this process as insecure because the phone may not be in possession of the number and the SMS may be interrupted.

However, for a better approach, utilizing a combination of one or two government-issued IDs, with live photo and facial recognition, companies can ensure that an ID is valid and the person in possession of the ID is in fact the genuine ID owner.

Finovate: As much as most people hate passwords, they are a fairly embedded part of online and mobile culture. What will it take to start moving people away from passwords and toward these new technologies in significant numbers?

Stuut: To enable these markets to foster, regulations are being put in place that force compliance with KYC (know your customer) and address AML. These issues are driving the need for more robust ID-verification models that move beyond common passwords and security codes to more robust verification like ID scanning with Face Match.

Finovate: What is unique about Jumio’s approach to ID verification?

Stuut: Jumio replaces laborious and unreliable systems including knowledge-based authentication (KBA), inferred verification, and in-person verification by untrained individuals. The Jumio technology platform is industry-leading, providing computer vision technology, and face-match with human ID experts. This process provides the optimal combination of accuracy and user convenience while providing KYC requirements.

In addition, Jumio is PCI Level 1 compliant and regularly conducts security audits, vulnerability scans and penetration tests to ensure compliance with security best practices and standards. To ensure our security remains PCI compliant year after year, we have a yearly on-site validation assessment by a Quality Security Assessor (QSA).

Finovate: What are the advantages to working in so many different verticals—from financial services to travel to online gaming—beyond the opportunities for growing the company?

Stuut: Our work with companies in varying verticals has led to many opportunities for Jumio, but this opportunity, most notably and arguably most importantly, has allowed us to transform a more robust solution.

As varying industries seek ID-verification solutions to aid their business processes, success via these technologies may look different. For example, many of Jumio’s customers in the travel vertical use our ID-verification solution to deliver great mobile customer experiences with mobile check-in. Conversely, Jumio customers in the financial services vertical utilize our solution to help verify customer identity while also improving remote account-opening completion rates.

Because Jumio is focused on meeting the requirements and regulations of specific verticals, each industry benefits from the added expertise gained across these major markets. As a result both our platform and our customers have immensely benefited. Instead of a solution that is adequately built to address needs in one industry, Jumio’s solution is built to meet the needs of varying verticals, allowing for a more robust solution.

Finovate: You’ve been on the job as CEO for Jumio for just over a year. What accomplishments in this time are you most proud of and what do you hope most to accomplish in your second year?

Stuut: Over this past year I have been exceptionally proud to work with the talented individuals across the Jumio organization. Our team of highly skilled developers and seasoned executive team have been leading the industry, delivering on our vision of the next generation of digital ID-verification solutions.

The team is delivering great success and we recently closed out Q2 2016 with a greater than 65% growth in recurring revenue year-over-year, and a record 30 million transactions completed to date. Jumio’s customer base continues to expand, closing more deals than at any other time in company history, with Q2 2016 resulting in a more than 50% increase in deals year-over-year. This high momentum has been fueled by continued growth across every aspect of its business.

In addition, in August of 2016, Jumio continued its momentum, securing a $15 million round of financing from Centana Growth Partners LP and Millennium Technology Value Partners. The investment will enable us to continue to lead the digital ID verification space, aggressively expand sales and marketing, and accelerate product development and international expansion.


Check out Jumio’s Best of Show demonstration from FinovateEurope 2015.

WealthForge to Raise $2.5 Million in New Convertible Note Offering

WealthForge to Raise $2.5 Million in New Convertible Note Offering

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WealthForge will raise $2.5 million in new capital using the same convertible note strategy the company used last year to raise $2.2 million. Bill Robbins, who took the helm as CEO at WealthForge last December, said the funding will help WealthForge build its core business, as well as make investments in “sales, marketing, and support.” Characterizing the initial response to the convertible note offering as “extremely positive,” Robbins expects to complete the fundraising by the end of the year.

WealthForge has raised more than $5 million in total equity funding, and includes CIT GAP Funds, NRV, and SenaHill Partners among its investors. The current convertible note investment is structured as debt that can be converted into equity. Reporting on WealthForge’s SEC filing, Richmond Biz Sense noted that WealthForge is looking for minimum investments of $25,000 from outside investors.

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C0-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Mat Dellorso demonstrated the WealthForge Network at FinovateSpring 2016.

A pioneer in bringing financial technology to the process of raising private capital, WealthForge connects issuers, investors, and their intermediaries within an online platform that provides a new level of transparency and efficiency for all parties. Issuers can present their offerings to registered intermediaries in an online showcase, while giving intermediaries the ability to provide investors with a branded investment experience. The company’s innovations include their “invest button technology” that enables anyone seeking to raise private capital to allow their investors to invest with a simple click, as well as the Dynamic Tombstones of its WealthForge Network that make it easy for anyone raising capital to market and advertise their offerings online in a safe and compliant way.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, WealthForge demonstrated the WealthForge Network at FinovateSpring 2016. More than $240 million and more than 5,500 investments have been transacted on its platform. WealthForge is a UBS Future of Finance Challenge winner, a runner-up in the Benzinga Fintech Awards for 2016, and was named the fourth most active broker-dealer in U.S. private placements in 2015.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • WealthForge to Raise $2.5 Million in New Convertible Note Offering

Around the web

  • Green Dot unveils Visa credit card for thin-file consumers.
  • First National Bank of Pennsylvania upgrades its mobile banking and payments platform from Fiserv to enable debit card management.
  • Martech Advisor interviews Radius CEO and co-founder Darian Shirazi.
  • PYMNTS.com talks with Hyperwallet VP Tomas Likar about the challenge of payments in the on-demand workforce. See Hyperwallet at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, October 18 & 19.
  • Radius announces the Radius Customer Exchange (RCX), a solution to advance co-marketing for B2B marketers.

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.

Symbiont Completes Proof of Concept with R3, Credit Suisse, Ipreo

Symbiont Completes Proof of Concept with R3, Credit Suisse, Ipreo

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With FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016 only a few weeks away, it was great to hear that one of our FinDEVr alums, Symbiont (FD16), has just completed the initial stage of a proof of concept that uses its blockchain and smart contract technology to improve the syndicated loan market. “Smart contracts can revolutionize the entire lifecycle of a loan, from creation to settlement in secondary market trading,” said Mark Smith, CEO and Symbiont co-founder. “The payoff isn’t just cost savings, but the potential to create entirely new business opportunities for financial institutions.”

The project involves Credit Suisse, the Lab and Research Center at R3, and uses technology from Synaps Loans, the product of a new partnership combining Symbiont’s smart contract technology with Ipreo’s business process solution. Synaps gives loan investors access to an “authoritative system of record for syndicated loan data” which reduces the amount of time spent doing manual reviews, data re-entry, and systems reconciliation. The technology paves the way for even more efficiency gains in loan data processing, including the ability to process loan data entirely on the distributed ledger.

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Symbiont CTO and co-founder Adam Krellenstein presented “Distributed Ledgers and Smart Contracts” at FinDEVr New York 2016.

Enthusiasm for the PoC was widespread among the participants:

“This project demonstrates the potential for blockchain technology to fundamentally reshape the syndicated loan market and the capital markets more broadly. —Emmanuel Aidoo, director and blockchain/cryptocurrency strategy lead, Credit Suisse

“This partnership with R2 members, non-members and Synaps has gone a long way in demonstrating that distributed ledger technology can significantly benefit the syndicated loans market.” —Tim Grant, CEO, R3’s lab and research center

“There’s been a lot of hype around how distributed ledgers will drive efficiencies in the syndicated loan space. We’re excited to prove the technology works with players throughout the loan ecosystem to truly understand its value.” —Robert Berk, SVP/COO, U.S. Bank capital markets

In addition to buy-side firms—AllianceBernstein, Eaton Vance Management, KKR, and OakHill Advisors—the following FIs also participated in the initiative:

  • BBVA
  • Danske Bank
  • Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)
  • Scotiabank
  • Society Generale
  • State Street
  • Wells Fargo

The Proof of Concept project adds to a busy second half of 2016 for Symbiont. The company added Caitlin Long, former Morgan Stanley managing directorsymbiont_caitlinlong (pictured), as its new board chair and president in August. Long was a member of Morgan Stanley’s distributed ledger technology working group, and has earned praise from Institutional Investor for her expertise in pensions. She has called Symbiont’s technology “multiple orders of magnitude better than competing systems,” adding that “Symbiont offers the only smart contracts platform purpose-built for financial services.” In addition to her service at Morgan Stanley, Long was a managing director at Credit Suisse and an associate at Saloman Brothers. She is a graduate of the University of Wyoming, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard Law School.

Earlier this month, Symbiont demonstrated the insurance use case for its smart contracts platform, executing a live catastrophe swap contract and showing how the platform managed a variety of different processes, such as payments and automatic updates. Symbiont also announced in September that it was working with Delaware to help the state use blockchain technology to improve back-office operations.

FinDEVrNY-2016_AlumniV1Founded in 2015 and headquartered in New York City, Symbiont made its FinDEVr debut at FinDEVr New York 2016 in March. Company CTO and co-founder Adam Krellenstein led a presentation titled “Distributed Ledgers and Smart Contracts” explaining the differences between his company’s technology and traditional distributed databases. Symbiont has raised $7 million in total funding, and includes Atlantic Merchant Capital and Celeridem Capital Management among its investors. In addition to Krellenstein and Smith, the company’s founding team includes Robby Darmody and Evan Wagner, managing director.


If you dig distributed ledgers, cryptocurrencies, and the blockchain, then FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016 is for you! Check out our FinDEVr page today to discover more about our upcoming developer’s conference, October 18 & 19. Tickets are on sale now, so stop by our registration page and save your spot today.

Qumram Unveils Compliant WhatsApp Social Media Recording Solution

Qumram Unveils Compliant WhatsApp Social Media Recording Solution

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Qumram launched a new solution designed to record end-to-end social media interactions via WhatsApp in a fully compliant manner. “We are excited to reveal this extension to Qumram’s fully compliant social media recording suite,” Qumram CEO Patrick Barnert said. “Financial institutions can now satisfy client demand for WhatsApp interactions, without risk of breaching regulatory requirements for digital record keeping.”

Qumram made the announcement during its presentation at Sibos Geneva 2016, underscoring the opportunity to support FIs who want to use social media like WhatsApp, but fear potential violation of regulatory requirements as they relate to digital record-keeping. Barnett added that using social media to interact with customers is already a phenomenon among FIs in Europe and Asia, and said that the high growth rates of WhatsApp and WeChat suggest that communicating with customers via social media “will undoubtedly become important for North American banks, too.”

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CTO and co-founder Simon Scheurer demonstrated Qumram’s technology at FinovateFall 2016.

Qumram’s technology provides a 100% digital audit trail across all channels, including online, social, and mobile. Its platform records all digital activity—including every keystroke, swipe, and mouse movement—and replays it on-demand in video form. This ensures evidence of regulatory compliance for businesses and other institutions while maintaining data-privacy for clients. Qumram’s customers range from financial services and global wealth-management giant UBS to health insurer CSS Versicherung to the online portal for the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), Swissinfo.ch.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, Qumram demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2016. The company announced in the days leading up to its return to Finovate earlier this month that Russell Investments selected its technology for compliant, digital recording and retention. In August, Qumram won the Swisscom Startup Challenge 2016; in July, the company was named “Startup of the Month” by Swiss Finance Startups. Qumram opened offices in London and San Francisco in May, and in April, Qumram won a spot in the European Fintech Top 100 along with 29 of its fellow Finovate alums.

Wave Mechanics: FT Partners Report Highlights Trends Driving Rise of Insurtech

Wave Mechanics: FT Partners Report Highlights Trends Driving Rise of Insurtech

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“Insurtech” isn’t about providing financial assistance to distracted gamers who injure themselves playing Pokemon Go (though there is that). It’s a growing, thriving aspect of financial technology that is becoming a category of its own, apart from the world of payments, robo-advisers, and PFM that characterizes much of what we call “fintech.”

The new report just released from FT Partners (and available for free download) helps financial services execs better understand the rise of insurance technology. Prepare for the Insurtech Wave: Overview of Key Insurance Technology Trends is a 247-page research report that details trends in insurance distribution and administration, data and analytics; and sales, marketing, and engagement; and puts into context the opportunities from the “new technologies and transformative business models” that are “targeting all areas of the multi-trillion dollar global industry.”

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A few key metrics from the report:

  • Total premiums for all insurance sectors in 2015: $2.0 trillion
  • More than 6,000 insurance companies in the U.S. employ more than 2.5 million.
  • Property and casualty (P&C) insurers generated $64 billion in net income in 2014. Life and health insurance companies generated $38 billion.

What makes insurtech especially interesting is where it sits at the nexus of the pace of technological innovation and the reality of an ever-evolving regulatory landscape. Prepare for the Insurtech Wave reveals an industry responding to this challenge in a variety of ways from starting ventures arms to teaming up with startups tackling key pain-points, as well as those best poised to take advantage of new technologies such as the internet of things. This, the report notes, has “huge implications across the insurance value chain.”

The report highlights the “disruptors” of insurtech, a group of 40 startups that includes Finovate alums CoverHound and Sureify, as well as what it calls “established tech-enabled companies” such as insurance-software developers Ebix and even 3D aerial measurement services and reports startup from Seattle, EagleView Technologies. Also listed are major recent insurtech M&A and financing transactions such as the $500 million raised by Zenefits and the $160 million to Clover.

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Prepare for the Wave underscores the importance of convenience, speed, and transparency for the modern insurance consumer, encouraging the industry to embrace multi-channel engagement and new products like micro insurance. The report also looks at the role of the insurance agent, noting that a growing preference for insurance-shopping online—61% of consumers between the ages of 18 and 54 say they would purchase life insurance online in a recent PwC poll—is one of many factors likely to undermine one of the industry’s historically most relied-upon distribution channels. “At a time when life insurance ownership is plummeting,” the report reads, quoting the PwC poll, “life insurers are waking up to an inconvenient truth: Decades of relying on an agency-distribution system have left them woefully unprepared to survive in today’s consumer-driven economy.”

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At the same time, the report notes that “the incumbents do not have their heads in the sand.” Note that:

  • Among traditional insurers, 43% are planning to “acquire, or have already acquired, innovative startups to help expand digital capabilities.”
  • More than half have “already invested” in social media, data mining, and predictive modeling
  • Approximately 68% are embracing mobile technology.

Additionally, Ptolemus Consulting is cited for pointing out that insurance companies have “launched nearly 230 telematics programs worldwide, in twice as many countries as two years ago.” Telematics is the intersection of telecommunication and informatics, and is a part of the internet of things (IoT). Specifically, it refers to the collection and transformation of data via sensors in a “connected” vehicle or building for the purpose of risk-assessment. The report concludes with an extensive Selected Transactions section, detailing fundraising, mergers, acquisitions, and other relevant deals involving insurtech companies.

About FT partners

Founded in 2001 by Steve McLaughlin, CEO, Financial Technology Partners is the only investment banking firm dedicated exclusively to financial technology. FT Partners—named Investment Banking Firm of the Year in 2016 and Deal Maker of the Year in 2015—is a long-time sponsor of Finovate events and has offices in San Francisco and New York.

FinDEVr Preview: Smartwave

FinDEVr Preview: Smartwave

FinDEVrSV16-withdateFinDEVr Previews highlight companies presenting new developer tools, platforms, and integrations at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, October 18 & 19. Tickets are on sale now. So visit our registration page and save your spot today.

Smartwave PaaS is a bridge between legacy systems and a newly digitized front-line. Smartwave decreases time to market and keeps robust back office. The Smartwave platform provides a simple and powerful interface to build, change, and improve business-process apps without coding.

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Why it’s a must-see

The current system of software development and implementation uses 20% of the developer’s time to fix bugs and keep maintenance of existing software. Would you be interested in cutting it to 10%, and use other 10% to develop new ideas? Smartwave can make it happen, come and see how.


Check out more of today’s FinDEVr Previews:

FinDEVr Preview: Kyckr

FinDEVr Preview: Kyckr

FinDEVrSV16-withdateFinDEVr Preview highlights companies presenting new developer tools, platforms, and integrations at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, October 18 & 19. Tickets are on sale now. So visit our registration page and save your spot.

Corporate identity, and proof of same, is critical in today’s world. Kyckr shows how its traditional APIs, which provide global access to company house information—combined with blockchain technologies—can work together symbiotically to provide immutable proof of a company’s information at the time of any given transaction.

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Why it’s a must-see

Several in-house APIs will be outlined through a custom interface in order to practically demonstrate: a) retrieval of live company-identity information; b) creation of a proof of that identity; and c) deployment of that proof to various blockchains through an API, which provides an abstraction layer over multiple technologies.


Check out more of today’s FinDEVr previews:

FinDEVr Preview: Alloy

FinDEVr Preview: Alloy

FinDEVrSV16-withdateFinDEVr Preview will highlight companies presenting new developer tools, platforms, and integrations at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, October 18 & 19. Tickets are on sale now. So visit our registration page and save your spot.

Alloy will be presenting a new way to create and optimize customer onboarding applications. The company will graphically create an API to verify customer information for KYC/AML purposes and then optimize it to increase conversion rates for “good” customers.

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Why it’s a must-see

Until now, KYC services have been a black box. If your business is turning away good customers because identity services are denying them, there is no recourse. Alloy gives you full visibility and write-access to the decision-logic and allows you to test, optimize, and instantly modify existing onboarding logic in production.


Check out more of today’s FinDEVr previews:

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Financeit Recruits CFO from Capital One Canada
  • Wave Mechanics: FT Partners Report Highlights Trends Driving Rise of Insurtech

Around the web

  • Fiserv inks deal with FCTI to provide transaction processing for 8,000 ATMs in 7-Eleven convenience stores in U.S. Video of Fiserv’s recent live demo from FinovateFall is now available.
  • NCR launches cloud-based developer portal.
  • ACI Worldwide and Vocalink partner to provide real-time payments solution.
  • Let’s Talk Payments interviews Tom Burgess, Linkable Networks founder and CEO.
  • Visions FCU signs with MX for money-management app.
  • Zopa releases its first-ever rating of a batch of securitized Zopa loans.
  • Sezzle Wins $10,000 from Securian in Minnesota Cup Startup Competition.
  • Aurionpro joins Temenos MarketPlace.
  • OnDeck launches marketing campaign featuring Shark Tank judge Barbara Corcoran.
  • RightCapital launches Leads, a tool to help financial advisers turn leads into clients.

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.

CrowdFlower Brings AI to Business Processes via Partnership with Microsoft

CrowdFlower Brings AI to Business Processes via Partnership with Microsoft

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Best of Show winner CrowdFlower is leveraging Microsoft’s Cortana Intelligence Suite to bring new AI functionality to its human-in-the-loop platform for data scientists. With CrowdFlower AI, the company will apply artificial intelligence to a range of business processes including support ticket classification and sentiment analysis, accessing Microsoft’s technology via its Azure Machine Learning cloud service.

“With the Azure Machine Learning offering, the CrowdFlower platform now allows data-science teams to train and deploy machine-learning models with humans-in-the-loop,” says CrowdFlower CEO Robin Bordoli. “This is an exciting step toward making AI a business reality rather than a science project.” Writing at the CrowdFlower blog, Bordoli described CrowdFlower AI as the product of a “shared vision” between his team and the team from Microsoft Azure Machine Learning to bring machine learning to the enterprise that is a year in the making.

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Bordoli, who took over the helm as CEO in February 2015, also emphasized that the combination of human and machine intelligence was a critical factor in what makes CrowdFlower’s solution unique. He added that it was also a better description of the likely future of AI compared to the way AI is portrayed in the media and even the way it is used by the “technology elite” like Apple, Facebook, Google, and Uber. “Machine learning without human-in-the-loop leads to bad outcomes,” Bordoli wrote, referencing the incident this summer when Facebook fully automated its Trending feature only to have its algorithms publish fake news stories. “AI is machines augmenting humans, not replacing humans,” the CrowdFlower CEO explained. “Machine and human have complimentary strengths. AI is about the art and science of combining the strengths of machine learning and human intelligence.”

A data-enrichment platform for data scientists, CrowdFlower specializes in managing data from an on-demand workforce of more than five million contributors. The company’s platform automates management tasks like data categorization, image annotation, and transcription that require human intelligence, and has been used, for example, to help automate data collection, learning and labeling from financial transaction data. CrowdFlower’s customers include Flickr, Bloomberg, and Home Depot.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, CrowdFlower demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall 2014, earning a Best of Show award. The company has raised a total of $38 million in funding; its most recent investment was a $10 million Series D completed in June.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • CrowdFlower Brings AI to Business Processes via Partnership with Microsoft
  • Fintech Trending: Bots Break Out, AI Gets Personal, and Blockchain Buys the Farm
  • SocietyOne Strikes Up Partnership with Beyond Bank, Reeling in $1.5 Million

Around the web

  • Payoneer to facilitate cross-border payments for e-commerce marketplace, Rakuten, in new partnership.
  • eWise unveils its new financial transaction Categorization-as-a-Service (CaaS) API for FIs.
  • Let’s Talk Payments interviews Swych CEO Deepak Jain. See video of Swych’s Best of Show winning performance at FinovateFall.
  • Bank of America, Santander, and the Royal Bank of Canada to form global blockchain payments network with distributed ledger technology from Ripple.
  • Azimo’s Facebook Messenger bot is now live.
  • Project Juno highlights Featurespace in its European Machine Intelligence Landscape.
  • Larky partners with Credit Union Association of the Dakotas (CUAD).

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.