FinovateSpring Sneak Peek: LendingRobot

FinovateSpring Sneak Peek: LendingRobot

LendingRobot_homepage_Mar2016

FS2016-wdateA look at the companies demoing live to 1,500+ fintech professionals on May 10 and 11. Register today.

LendingRobot is the first robo-adviser for peer lending. It combines a user-friendly interface with sophisticated, machine-learning algorithms to help individual investors get steady returns.

Lending Robot features:

  • A new way to monitor investments in peer lending
  • Benefits from LendingRobot’s extensive experience in the field
  • 100% free, no commitment

Why it’s great
LendingRobot is really, really easy to use. But it uses some really, really fancy software to provide really, really good returns to individual investors.

Presenters

LendingRobot_EmmanuelMarotEmmanuel Marot, CEO

Marot is 27% financial quant, 25% entrepreneur, 20% designer, 18% in high tech, 12% in unconventional wisdom, and at least 2% wrong.
LinkedIn

 

LendingRobot_GiladGolanGilad Golan, President

Golan is a software developer and entrepreneur who loves building innovative products.
LinkedIn

Welcome to Day One of FinDEVr New York

FinDEVr_registration

It’s FinDEVr Day! After a pair of awesome developers conferences in Silicon Valley in 2014 and 2015, we are thrilled to share the show with audiences here on the East Coast.

The conference begins Tuesday morning with registration at 9 AM, and the first session kicks off just after 10 AM. The full schedule of presentations is available below.

Time

Stage 2 Presentation

Stage 4 Presentation

10:05 Flybits Markit
10:25 Avoka The Beast Apps
10:40 Intermission Intermission
11:10 Google Cloud Platform Praesidio
11:30 Sayula Aerospike
11:50 Financial Apps TokBox
12:05 Lunch Lunch
1:00 Mambu Braintree
1:20 Nostrum Group FairCom
1:40 Stealth Finicity
2:00 Thinking Capital Nexmo
2:15 Intermission Intermission
2:45 Hyperwallet Xignite
3:05 Stealth Forte
3:25 Stratumn OnDeck

The day ends with appetizers, an open bar, and the opportunity to meet, ask questions, and exchange ideas one-on-one with the presenters and fellow attendees.

Be sure to follow our Live Twitter feed @FinDEVr and if you join in the conversation, please add #FinDEVr to your tweets. We’re looking forward to a great first day of FinDEVr New York, and if you have any questions, visit our FAQ or email us at newyork@findevr.com for answers.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Welcome to Day One of FinDEVr New York”

Around the web

  • Irish Tech News interviews Bryan Clagett, Geezeo CMO.
  • The Columbus Dispatch profiles Klarna and its efforts to make online commerce easier.
  • New York Times column on companies helping employees retire student debt features Tuition.io.
  • BankNXT Fintech Podcast chats with Aire founder, Aneesh Varma.
  • GMC Software introduces its Inspire Mobile Advantage solution that helps create a responsive, interactive and regulatory-compliant mobile experience.
  • Vera launches new IRM-as-a-Service platform to allow developers to use Vera’s SDK.

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

Around the web

  • Fortune.com recognizes Shoeboxed among its five startup companies to watch in Durham, North Carolina.
  • Business Builders interviews Harper Reed, head of commerce at Braintree.
  • Kurtosys features Personal Capital, Wealthfront, LearnVest, and Betterment in a look at the future of roboadvisers.
  • Kasasa (formerly BancVue) launches Retail Portfolio Optimization solution with enhanced, data-driven account analysis.
  • New York Times column on apps that help you save highlights Qapital.

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 Alums Make Tech Tour’s 50 High Growth European Companies

Finovate Alums Make Tech Tour’s 50 High Growth European Companies

TechTourGrowth50_2016Tech Tour recognized seven Finovate alums in its 2016 Tech Tour Growth 50 (TTG50), a roster of the fastest-growing technology companies in Europe. Making this year’s cut were:

Managing Director of The Tech Tour William Stevens said that recognizing these companies was important in a world otherwise focused on “the billion-dollar unicorn successes.” He pointed out that the Tech Tour Growth 50 companies had “created more than 8,000 high-tech jobs, attracted $3.5 billion of investment, and have an estimated combined valuation of $14.2 billion.”

“This is a clear demonstration of Europe’s strength, potential and competitiveness in scaling-up tech businesses,” Stevens said.

A few additional metrics on the companies of the 2016 Tech Tour Growth 50:

  • 90%: percent founded in the last 10 years.
  • 22 months: the average time from formation to first funding
  • 66%: percent with at least one U.S. investor

This year’s list was chosen by a selection committee chaired by Jean-Michel Deligny, managing director of Silverpeak Investment Bank. Serving on the committee were representatives of:

  • Accel Partners
  • Amadeus Capital Partners
  • Bank of America Merrill Lynch
  • DN Capital
  • Earlybird
  • Highland Capital Partners Europe
  • Idinvest Partners
  • The World Economic Forum.

Companies for the TTTG50 were chosen based on “innovation potential, management team, and pedigree,” as well as factors such as sales growth. Candidates were required to have a minimum of €10 million in revenue, €20 million in total funding, and a valuation of at least €100 million but less than €1 billion.

The Tech Tour was founded in 1998 and is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Finovate Alums Make Tech Tour’s 50 High Growth European Companies”

On FinDEVr.com

Around the web

  • GreenKey unveils pilot version of its “voice quote capture” technology. See GreenKey at FinDEVr New York next week.
  • Boku announces new partnerships that will bring direct carrier billing to Google Play in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
  • InvestGlass and Hip Pocket presented their technologies as part of the Innovation Challenge buy Sony launched by Matchi last week.
  • Patch of Land reaches 3 key milestones in Q1: $100m in origination, over $25m returned to investors, new products introduced.

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.

Stephen Ritter Joins Mitek as Chief Technology Officer

Stephen Ritter Joins Mitek as Chief Technology Officer

Mitek_homepage_Mar2016

Mitek has hired Stephen Ritter as its new chief technology officer (CTO). Ritter joins the company after serving as SVP of engineering and research for Emotient, which was acquired by Apple in January.

“I am excited to lead the Mitek Labs and engineering teams, and help create the future of mobile commerce,” Ritter said. As CTO, Ritter will leverage his 25 years of experience and—in the words of Mitek CEO and president James DeBello—his “passion for creating game-changing technology” to drive development of Mitek’s mobile capture and identity-verification technologies.

StephenRitter_MitekPrevious to Emotient, Ritter (right) worked as CTO and VP engineering at Cypher Genomics, which was acquired by Human Longevity. Before that he was VP of engineering at Websense and senior director of engineering at McAgee. He is a graduate of University of California, San Diego, where he earned a B.S. in cognitive science.

The personnel news for Mitek comes at the same time that the company is taking its technology global. Earlier this month, Mitek announced that its Mobile Deposit solution was now available in the U.K., and that other countries would follow soon. March has also been a month of adoptions for Mitek, with a leading platform provider deploying Mitek’s Mobile Fill solution to improve its onboarding process, and a top-five U.S. bank choosing Mitek’s Mobile Deposit for business multi-check capture. Mitek’s Mobile Verify solution won the Innovation Showcase Award at the BAI Payments Connect event last week.

Founded in 1985 and headquartered in San Diego, California, Mitek demonstrated its mobile photo account opening for mobile web and its mobile photo driver’s license authentication technology at FinovateSpring 2015.

 

Finovate Debuts: OutsideIQ Heralds a Revolution in Due Diligence with DDIQ for Onboarding

Finovate Debuts: OutsideIQ Heralds a Revolution in Due Diligence with DDIQ for Onboarding

OutsideIQ_homepage_Mar2016

You say you wanna revolution in due diligence, but would love to see the plan?

OutsideIQ has leveraged its strengths in cognitive computing and natural language processing to deliver an automated due diligence solution, DDIQ. The technology uses web and deep web interrogation to produce individual and corporate due diligence reports quickly, potentially revealing information not readily available through more traditional techniques.

Since the technology was launched last March, Dan Adamson, CEO and founder of OutsideIQ, said from the Finovate stage that more than 30 financial institutions have adopted the technology—”including several leading global banks.” For their Finovate debut, OutsideIQ presented DDIQ for Onboarding. This implementation is designed make the onboarding process faster and less expensive compared to traditional methods. Moreover, in addition to enabling onboarding teams to “go deeper” in their investigations, DDIQ for Onboarding ensures that the process is “completely auditable to satisfy worldwide regulatory demands.”

Company Facts:

  • Founded in January 2010
  • Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Dan Adamson is CEO

OutsideIQ_stage_FEU2016

Pictured (left to right): OutsideIQ CEO Dan Adamson and COO Joe Oswald demonstrating DDIQ at FinovateEurope 2016 in London.

Explaining the technological “magic” behind DDIQ, Adamson described “thousands of intelligent crawlers” now analyzing the risk.

They are going through publicly available, open web content such as social media sites, blogs. They are going through deep web content, such as regulatory sites. They are going through premium content, such as watch list providers and PEP (politically-exposed-person) list providers. Combining all that together.

“The more they learn about the risk, the better (able) they are to make a true assessment of that risk,” Adamson said. “The whole key here is efficiency for the researcher.”

———–

DanAdamson_OutsideIQWe spoke with OutsideIQ CEO Dan Adamson briefly during rehearsal day at FinovateEurope. After the conference we followed up with a few questions by email about his company and how DDIQ can help financial institutions and others improve their ability to conduct due diligence.

Finovate: What problem does OutsideIQ solve?

Dan Adamson: DDIQ creates automated due diligence reports with premium, open web and deep web sources using cognitive computing and search algorithms that emulate an investigator. These reports are otherwise expensive and time consuming to produce manually. These report can be used for client onboarding, vendor onboarding, investigations, remediations, account refreshes, and other activities that require research.

 

DDIQ_CompanyProfile_1

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Adamson: DDIQ’s primary customers are financial institutions, Fortune 1000 corporate clients, leading consultancies, and insurance companies. These institutions use DDIQ for everything ranging from lighter KYC requirements, clearing alerts, sanctions screenings to deeper enhanced due diligence and investigations.

Finovate: How does DDIQ solve the problem better?

Adamson: Most technologies in this space are simply aggregators of content, while our system thoroughly scans and assesses sources for more accurate due diligence risk reporting. It learns about its subject, much like an investigator does, so it can assess if a piece of content is relevant and not just a keyword match.

DDIQ_PersonProfile_2

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

Adamson: OutsideIQ’s staff of data scientists, big data professionals, and software engineers have developed DDIQ. This system has been trained by some of the world’s leading authorities on regulatory compliance and financial crimes at Exiger, a leading GRC services firm. (Note: Adamson is a former Microsoft search-technology strategist.)

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

Adamson: Cutting-edge, automated technology is the only way to keep up with increasingly stringent regulatory requirements in an auditable, cost-efficient manner. We believe DDIQ will become the gold standard for clients’ automated due diligence research.


Check out OutsideIQ’s demo video from FinovateEurope 2016.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Finovate Debuts: OutsideIQ Heralds a Revolution in Due Diligence with DDIQ for Onboarding”
  • “Stephen Ritter Joins Mitek as Chief Technology Officer”
  • “Kreditech Lands $11 Million to Close Series C Round of $103 Million”
  • “Finovate Debuts: Valuto’s Open API Offers Multi-Currency Accounts”

On FinDEVr.com

  • “Destination FinDEVr: A Geography of Architects, Builders, and Engineers”

Around the web

  • CU Anytime to deploy channel management software solution from NCR and INETCO.
  • Let’s Talk Payments features Temenos, Strands, NYMBUS, and Infosys Finacle in a look at banking software companies. See NYMBUS at FinDEVr New York next week.
  • Entrust Datacard and Trend Micro team up to provide businesses with better data encryption and authentication technology.
  • American Banker features StreetShares.
  • Xerox and Tradeshift partner to deliver digital procurement and accounts payable services.

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.

 

CurrencyFair Raises €8 Million; Names New CMO

CurrencyFair Raises €8 Million; Names New CMO

CurrencyFair_homepage_Mar2016

P2P currency exchange CurrencyFair raised €8 million ($8.9 million USD) in a funding round led by Octopus Ventures. That brings the company’s total financing to more than €20 million ($22.3 million USD).

Also participating in the round were Proxy Ventures and Frontline Ventures.  CurrencyFair CEO Brett Meyers said, “Working with them will help us further develop our brand and the industry as something people and businesses can trust to save them money.” Meyers added that P2P currency exchange needed a “more mature voice” and that the new round of funding represented a “validation of the brilliant product and marketplace we have built.”

CurrencyFair_stage_FEU2013

Pictured: CurrencyFair co-founder and CEO Brett Meyers demonstrating his company’s iPhone app at FinovateEurope 2013.

In addition to the funding, CurrencyFair announced the hiring of former Unibet Chief Marketing Officer, Nils Andén, as its new CMO. As CMO of one of the largest online gambling businesses in Europe, Andén is credited for the commercial strategy that helped Unibet’s market cap grow from £300 million to £2 billion from 2010 to 2015.

Speaking about the similarities he sees between the P2P currency exchange market today and the online gambling industry when it was in its infancy a decade ago, Andén credited “the extortionate rates of the banks” as helping some of CurrencyFair’s rivals “make a lot of noise at the moment.” However, like Meyers, he said the industry is ready for a “more mature approach” as customers become more comfortable with P2P currency exchanges as an alternative to the banks.

“Style gets you noticed, but substance gets you remembered,” Andén said.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, CurrencyFair demonstrated its iPhone app at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. CurrencyFair won Best of Show for its presentation at FinovateAsia 2012.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Check out this week’s FinDEVr APIntelligence.
  • “Emailage Receives Strategic Investment from Wipro”
  • “CurrencyFair Raises €8 Million; Names New CMO”

Around the web

  • Xignite to provide free market data for FinTech Sandbox demo participants. Join Xignite in New York for FinDEVr next week.
  • 3dcart merchants gain access to end-to-end payment processing courtesy of Braintree. See Braintree’s presentation at FinDEVr New York.
  • PayPal to enable money transfers to Cuba via its Xoom acquisition.
  • Markit to supply FinTech Sandbox with fixed-income pricing and reference data.

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.

 

StreetShares Raises $4.5 Million in Series A Led by Fenway Summer Ventures

StreetShares Raises $4.5 Million in Series A Led by Fenway Summer Ventures

StreetShares_homepage_Mar2016

The Series A round for online small business lender, StreetShares, is off to a strong start with lead investor Fenway Summer Ventures putting $4.5 million into the company. The funding news comes just days after StreetShares announced that it had earned Regulation A+ approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), enabling the company to use public investments to back loans to small businesses.

StreetShares’ total funding stands at more than $8 million. Also participating in the financing round, which remains open, are Endeavor Equity Holdings and Pivot Investments.

StreetShares_stage_FEU2015

Pictured (left to right): StreetShares co-founders Mickey Konson, COO, and Mark Rockefeller, CEO, demonstrating their platform at FinovateEurope 2015 in London.

StreetShares, a P2P lending platform, specializes in connecting investors and small business borrowers from within the same community. For StreetShares, the first community it engaged with its affinity group lending approach were small businesses run by veterans and their families. Loan terms range from 3- to 36-months on amounts from $2,000 to $100,000, and the company charges a one-time origination fee of 3.95% or 4.95% based on loan term, risk, and amount.

An Air Force veteran, StreetShares co-founder and CEO Mark Rockefeller was interviewed by American Legion magazine last fall. The company added former SEC commissioner Troy A. Paredes to its board of advisors in November; in October, StreetShares announced a partnership with online marketplace, FedBid.

Founded in July 2013 and headquartered in Reston, Virginia, StreetShares demonstrated its platform at FinovateEurope 2015.