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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Today we’re sharing our final set of conversations from our European fintech conference, FinovateEurope. This round of interviews expands beyond our recent look at embedded finance, open banking, and the customer experience in financial services to cover broader themes like AI, the intersection of geopolitics and finance, and the customer of tomorrow.
The truth about generative AI: What financial institutions really need to know about adoption
Author, Generative AI expert, and founder at Tamang Ventures, Nina Schick discusses the realities facing financial services companies when they adopt generative AI. Schick talks about lessons financial services companies can learn from early adopters of the technology in other industries, and why partnerships are the way forward for most companies in banking and finance to best take advantage of AI.
The geopolitical super cycle and what that means for financial services
CEO at London Politica, Manas Chawla talks about the geopolitical risks facing the financial services sector in 2024 – from Ukraine to Gaza to the upcoming Presidential election in the United States. Chawla also discusses the geopolitical supercycle and the challenge of “grey rhino” threats that leaders in both business and politics need to be aware of.
The blue dot consumer: What can financial services learn from Taylor Swift, Red Bull, and United Airlines
A consumer behaviouralist at The King of Customer Experience Ken Hughes introduces the concept of the blue dot consumer in his discussion of what he calls “the customer of tomorrow.” Hughes talks about the relationship between technology and the human experience, how successful brands build loyalty, and what banks and financial institutions can do to foster true loyalty.
BMO is bringing its Greener Future Financing program to the U.S.
Green Future Financing is BMO’s first climate financing program to help SMEs become climate-resilient.
BMO’s program offers both climate resiliency loan discounts and green business advisory.
Canada-based BMO is bringing its Greener Future Financing program to the United States.
The eighth largest bank in North America by assets, BMO announced the launch earlier this week. Greener Future Financing is the financial institution’s first climate financing program designed to help SMEs build climate-resilient operations. Specifically, the program will offer climate resiliency loan discounts and green business advisory to help businesses meet their climate sustainability goals.
BMO’s announcement means that it will commit $30 million in support of SMEs that are investing in technologies to reduce their carbon footprint and mitigate the potential impact of weather-related events.
“Business leaders and our customers are telling us that they value products, services, and incentives that will help reduce their carbon footprint – as well as insights to help them adapt and thrive in this evolving business landscape,” BMO Head of U.S. Business Banking Niamh Kristufek said.
A look at the two main components of the program reveals an emphasis on both financial and human capital. The climate resiliency loan discounts give a rate discount of 0.5% on qualifying lending products including business term loans, business flex loans, owner-occupied commercial estate mortgage loans, and investor-owned real estate mortgage loans ranging from $100,000 to $1,000,000. The loans must be used for program-approved purposes; for example, purchasing renewable energy technologies such as LED lighting, smart meters, flood proofing, and more. An additional 0.25% will be available for customers that set up automatic payments via a BMO business checking account when the loan is closed.
BMO’s green business advisory will help business owners get the information and capital they need to build climate resilient operations and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The advisory will help SMEs better understand emerging climate-related policies and regulations, as well as technologies and case studies to help them better manage climate risks.
The program is slated to go live in 24 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. In two of these states – Michigan and Texas – businesses participating in the program must be located within 100 miles of a BMO full-service retail branch in an adjacent state.
“BMO’s commitment to sustainability is guided by our Purpose, to Boldly Grow the Good in business and life, and our Climate Ambition to be our clients’ lead partner in the transition to a net-zero world,” Kristufek said. “Through our Greener Future Financing program, BMO is meeting these needs to help our customers make progress, advising them of climate-related risks and plans that future-proof businesses.”
A part of Landings Credit Union for nearly a decade, Lee has spent the last four years as CEO. He started as CFO of the Arizona-based financial institution and, before that, worked as both a regulator and in public accounting. Founded in 1953 as “Tempe Schools Credit Union,” Landings Credit Union today has more than 15,000 members and assets of more than $238 million.
Last year Landings CU received the Dementia Friendly business designation, which ensures members that credit union staff are trained to both recognize and support individuals with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. “In Arizona we are the fastest growing state for new cases for Alzheimers,” Lee explained, “so it’s a big deal here for us.”
This year, the financial institution garnered national recognition for its commitment to financial inclusion, earning the Juntos Avanzamos designation. The designation recognizes the work done by credit unions to serve and empower Hispanic, Latino, and immigrant communities. A national network launched in 2015, the Juntos Avanzamos program has a presence in 29 states, serving more than 12 million consumers at 141+ credit unions in the U.S.
In their Finovate podcast conversation, Palmer and Lee talk about using technology to bring new projects to life in the context of these recent successful outreach efforts. “How can we comb through our data and find these new data points that we’re looking for, aggregate (them), and say ‘Let’s be the ones who are going out and reaching out to people’,” Lee explained. “Whether from our own data or community data that’s out there: how do we use that to be able to serve more people?”
Check out Episode 213 of the Finovate Podcast and the rest of Greg Palmer’s conversation with Landings Credit Union CEO Brian Lee.
Impact asset manager Finance in Motion has teamed up with financial crime compliance specialist Napier AI.
Finance in Motion will deploy Napier AI Continuum as its anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CTF) platform.
London-based Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2018.
Financial crime compliance company Napier AIannounced a partnership with impact asset manager Finance in Motion this week. The partnership calls for Finance in Motion to deploy Napier AI Continuum as its anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CTF) platform.
Additionally, Napier AI will include its Client Screening solution and Client Risk Assessment module as part of the Napier AI Continuum platform deployment. The objective is to provide Finance in Motion with the tools it needs to continue driving public and private capital toward impact investments in emerging markets – while ensuring that capital does not end up financing illicit or criminal activity.
Finance in Motion Managing Director Sylvia Wisniwski explained: “Like any institution, we have a duty to ensure that the public and private capital raised is used exclusively for the intended objectives, in our case impact investments in emerging markets. Accordingly, regulation requires effective measures to prevent funds from being used to finance criminal activities. The collaboration with Napier AI allows us to efficiently query data through automated processes and integrated systems.”
Napier AI Continuum will provide Finance in Motion with API-enabled, cloud native, automated client screening, and supports transliteration of 22 languages. The platform also offers AI fuzzy matching and secondary scoring capabilities. Finance in Motion will benefit from customizable workflows, a sandbox environment for optimizing screening configurations, and configurable dashboards with no-code rule binding and AI insights to drive efficient decisioning.
“The key to dismantling criminal networks lies in cutting off their sources of revenue entirely by correctly identifying accounts, transactions, and behavioural patterns associated with financial crime,” Napier AI CEO Greg Watson said. “Napier AI’s cutting edge compliance solutions supercharge Finance in Motion’s mission to generate positive change in emerging markets with automated client screening.”
Headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany and founded in 2009, Finance in Motion specializes in development finance. An impact asset manager, the company structures, advises, and manage both private debt and equity investments in emerging markets. The company supports financing of projects ranging from sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, and biodiversity, to micro-finance, natural capital, and affordable housing.
Finance in Motion has $2.8 billion (€3.6 billion) in assets under management or advisory, and has active investments in 39 countries. Last month, the company was featured in the ImpactAssets 50 roster of the top 50 impact managers in the world. The recognition was the eighth consecutive listing for Finance in Motion, which was named “Emeritus Impact Manager.”
Founded in 2015, Napier made its Finovate debut three years later at FinovateEurope 2018. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its Customer Screening and Transaction Monitoring Enhancement tools help improve AML oversight. The technology reduces false positives by up to 80%, and can be used to supplement or replace existing customer screening systems.
Napier began 2024 announcing a partnership with Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) digital banking provider Satchel. The following month, Napier unveiled its Napier Continuum Live and Napier Continuum Flow services to facilitate the deployment of its AML platform. Napier Continuum Live is a plug-and-play hosted offering. Napier Continuum Flow is a headless API service.
Also in February Napier secured $56 million (£45 million) in funding from private equity firm Crestline Investors. The company said that the investment will help power business expansion over the coming years. The funds will also support Napier AI’s development of new NextGen screening and monitoring solutions powered by Explainable AI.
All three financial institutions announced this month that they are teaming up with small business lending platform JUDI.AI.
In a series of blog posts at the company’s website, JUDI.AI’s Director of Marketing Kyle Thom welcomed the three credit unions to what he called “our growing group of 35+ forward-thinking community lenders who are on a mission to reinvent small business lending.”
JUDI.AI offers credit unions and community banks an alternative approach to helping small and medium sized businesses secure the funding they need. The company enables financial institutions to digitally transform their credit decisioning and underwriting operations to assess the financial health of their small business customers and members on a continuous basis.
In addition to instant cash flow analysis, automated underwriting, continuous monitoring, and real-time portfolio reporting, JUDI.AI adds automated analysis of current banking data to supplement traditional financial data sources such as credit scores and financial statements.
Here’s a look at JUDI’s new partners:
Apple Federal Credit Union. $4.3 billion in assets. 240,000+ members, Twenty-one locations across northern Virginia.
Carter Credit Union. $722 million in assets. 55,000+ members. Eleven locations in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Fort Worth, Texas.
SCU Credit Union. $1.1 billion in assets. 67,000+ members. Eight locations in southern California and southern Nevada.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada, JUDI.AI made its Finovate debut at our all-digital fintech conference, FinovateWest 2020. Most recently, the company demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2022. At the event, Thom and JUDI.AI Chief Product Officer Su Ning Strube, demonstrated how the platform enables lenders to process 50% more SME loan applications without committing any additional resources, and approve 20% more loans with no added risk.
“What makes JUDI.AI unique in that we identify cash flow metrics that are predictive and correlated to future defaults, and we combine that information in our proprietary small business model with traditional credit scores to calculate the creditworthiness of any borrower,” Su Ning Strube explained from the Finovate stage.
In addition to the credit unions signed in April, JUDI.AI this year has also welcomed Canadian alternative lender Glasslake Funding and Hawaii’s Kauai Federal Credit Union to its client roster. Kauai FCU is the first and only certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) on the island of Kauai.
Data privacy vault Skyflow has raised $30 million in an extension Series B round led by Khosla Ventures.
The investment comes amid growth in the market for sensitive data protection for Large Language Models (LLMs).
Founded in 2019, Skyflow made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022.
Data privacy vault Skyflow raised $30 million in an extension of its Series B funding round. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, and featured participation from existing investors Mouro Capital, Foundation Capital, and Canvas Ventures. The investment takes the company’s total equity capital to $100 million, according to Crunchbase. Valuation information was not immediately available.
The investment in Skyflow arrives as the proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) raises the stakes when it comes to protecting sensitive data. Skyflow’s global network of data privacy vaults enables businesses to isolate, protect, and manage sensitive customer data across any app, data cloud, or LLM. Skyflow supports nearly a billion records of user data for its customers and processes more than two billion API calls a quarter.
“We see an urgent need for companies to make privacy a core part of their technology stack as LLMs and AI hurdle forward, ingesting more and more personal data,” Skyflow Co-founder and CEO Anshu Sharma said. “Skyflow is the only solution that allows companies to build privacy by design into their technological infrastructure without overhauling anything – anywhere in the world.”
Skyflow credits a proprietary technology – polymorphic encryption – for its ability to protect data without inhibiting its usability for critical business tasks. Skyflow’s technology serves as a “privacy trust layer,” blocking sensitive information from entering AI models, and making adoption of AI technology safer. Companies can personalize their own definition of “sensitive data” as needed, providing additional protection beyond PII, intellectual property, or other categories of critical information.
“With the advent of enterprise applications powered by AI, the need for trust and privacy infrastructure is key to protecting sensitive data,” Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla said. “Skyflow is rethinking how data can be managed and protected across any app, cloud, or LLM, making it a company that will be vital for every enterprise business.”
Founded in 2019, Skyflow made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022. At the conference, the company showed how its technology helps financial services companies securely orchestrate sensitive data and exchange it with third party providers without having to directly handle the data itself.
Interested in demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco in May? We are happy to read applications from innovative companies with new solutions that are ready to show. Visit our FinovateSpring hub today to learn more.
Happy Earth Day! Partnerships in payments and fundraising in the international investment/wealth management space are dominating fintech news headlines as the week begins.
Subscription management and billing platform Recurlyintroduces new dashboards with built-in benchmarks.
Klarnasells Hero, the virtual shopping platform it acquired in 2021, for $1.3 million (€1.3 million).
SplititunveilsFI-PayLater to empower banks to provide in-checkout installments for existing customers.
Identity verification
Financial crime risk data and fraud detection technology company ComplyAdvantageacquires knowledge graph builder Golden.
AU10TIXannounces $18 billion in business fraud prevented since 2021.
Small Business Tools
BaswareintroducesAP Protect, an AI-powered solution that empowers finance teams to protect their organizations against profit loss, invoice errors, and fraud.
Marqetapartners with OakNorth to offer commercial cards in the U.K.
Payroll
Ripplingraises $200 million in new financing with $13.5 billion valuation.
U.K.-based core banking platform 10x Banking announced a strategic alliance agreement with Deloitte.
As part of the agreement, 10x will build a series of Centres of Excellence in the U.S., U.K., and India to facilitate collaboration between the two firms.
10x Banking won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023.
SaaS core banking platform 10x Banking has inked a strategic alliance agreement with Deloitte. Effective in both the U.S. and the U.K., the agreement will power greater cooperation when it comes to helping financial institutions around the world access transformative technologies.
As part of the strategic alliance, the two firms will launch a series of 10x Centres of Excellence in the U.S., the U.K., and India. The centers will facilitate collaboration between 10x Banking and Deloitte, and should be fully-staffed with their initial 100-member teams by the end of the year.
Courtesy of the alliance, the 10x platform will also be fully integrated into BankingSuite from Converge by Deloitte. BankingSuite is a modern composable platform that enables banks to build new digital capabilities at pace. Introduced in 2022, Converge combines Deloitte’s software, industry expertise, and partner ecosystem to help Deloitte’s clients maximize the opportunities of digital transformation and emergent technologies. This collaboration, between 10x and Converge, will focus initially on serving credit unions, building societies, and mutual banks to help them fulfill their digital transformation goals faster and with less cost.
“By working with Deloitte, we will enable banks and mutuals across the U.S., U.K., and beyond to modernise their legacy tech and deliver financial products and services fit for the 21st century,” 10x Banking Founder, Chair, and CEO Antony Jenkins said. “With Deloitte’s global experience and our leading technological solutions, we have a strategy in place to enact widespread change in the pursuit of making banking ten times better.”
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in London, U.K., 10x Banking made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023. The company won Best of Show for its demo of its 10x Bank Manager, which offers a no-code interface to enable product teams to “build products, offerings, brands, and even enter new markets at speed,” as Product Marketing Manager Nicole Sanders explained at the conference. “Code less. Innovate more.”
10x Banking began 2024 partnering with mortgage origination platform Mast. The partnership will enable real-time connectivity between the two platforms, giving lenders streamlined data exchange and real-time mortgage servicing. Mast CEO Joy Abisaab said that working with 10x would “empower U.K. lenders to unlock new levels of operational efficiency and enable the delivery of exceptional customer experiences.”
10x Banking has raised $297 million in funding. The company includes JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock among its investors.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global reviews the latest fintech developments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
This region features a diverse range of countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. More than 250 million people live in the CEE, which has a combined GDP of $2.6 trillion.
Romania’s Salt goes live with Starling’s SaaS platform
Romania’s Salt Banklaunched this month, giving the country its first 100% digital bank. Salt Bank reported that more than 80,000 people signed up in less than three weeks to be a part of the new financial institution.
“By launching Salt, we are not only bringing the first 100% Romanian neobank to the Romanian market, but we are also offering a unique perspective that combines technology and finance,” Salt Bank CEO Gabriela Nistor said.
Salt Bank currently offers 3% yearly interest on current accounts as well as on Spaces, Salt Bank’s savings account offering, as long as customers make payments of 1,000 lei/month or more (equivalent to $215). Customers also get a multi-currency card that enables transactions in 17 currencies around the world. Users of the Salt banking app can take advantage of money management tools, in-app card controls, as well as Apple and Google Pay in-app provisioning.
Headquartered in Bucharest, Salt Bank is owned by the Banca Transilvania Financial Group. The institution also offers its customers the opportunity to become founders of Salt Bank and, ultimately, shareholders in the event that the institution goes public. Salt Bank notes that its Salt Founders Community currently has 2,200 members.
Powering the launch is Starling’s SaaS platform Engine, which helped the digital bank onboard 100,000 customers in the first two weeks of operation. And although AMP Bank in Australia has also announced that it will deploy Engine, the institution is not scheduled to do so until 2025, making Salt Bank the first bank to go live with the technology.
“Our work with Salt Bank shows just what our platform is capable of,” Engine by Starling CEO Sam Everington said, “Starling’s feature rich and highly personalizable banking products can be deployed around the world to attract impressive customer volumes, while our operational experience and cloud-expertise can help build, launch, and run a bank in less than 12 months.”
Latvian fintech inGain raises EUR 650,000
inGain, a no-code SaaS loan management system based in Latvia, has raised $692,000 (EUR 650,000) in funding. Participating in the investment were VC funds Trind VC and Fiedler Capital. The Latvian Business Angels network and other business angels were also involved in the round.
The funding announcement marked the first publicly announced investment in a Latvian startup in 2024. The company will use the capital to complete work on its SaaS-based loan management system that helps facilitate lending for products that banks traditionally have been reluctant to finance. inGain Co-founder and CEO Armands Liseks explained how inGain works, using the example of a family trying to decide whether or not to commit to their child’s efforts to become the next Mozart.
“Some parents are ready to buy a piano, but what happens if they spend several months trying to persuade their kids to play the piano, but their kids still refuse to play it?” Liseks asked. “It is with this kind of situation in mind that the seller would like to offer piano leasing. For parents, this means that the payment for the musical instrument will be higher. However, this also gives them two options: either the piano is eventually purchased in full or can be returned to the seller at any time.”
Liseks added that inGain’s solution even benefits those who know they are ready to buy. “How can the bank offer leasing for the piano?” he said. “Most likely it will advise the customer to use a credit card or take out a consumer loan with 20% interest, which makes no sense whatsoever.”
inGain is headquartered in Riga. The company was founded in 2011.
Bulgaria’s Paynetics acquires UK neobank Novus
Here is some CEE-based acquisition news in the payments space that slipped beneath our radar this spring. Bulgaria’s Paynetics has acquired Novus, a neobank based in the U.K., for an undisclosed sum.
A B-corp certified digital bank – and self-described “impact neobank” – Novus enables customers to monitor their carbon footprint and get cashback when they make sustainable purchases via the app. Additionally, Novus automatically directs a portion of revenue from every transaction to an NGO of the customer’s choice.
For Paynetics, the acquisition will enable the company to offer carbon- and climate-conscious solutions to customers as well as expand “the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ecosystem across Europe.” Paynetics will also leverage the acquisition to help its clients achieve their social and environmental goals via its own embedded finance solution.
“This deal not only reinforces our dedication to ESG but also marks a significant leap forward in revolutionizing the financial sector with our cutting-edge embedded finance suite,” Paynetics noted in a post on LinkedIn.
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria, Paynetics acquisition news comes a year after the firm was granted an electronic money institution (EMI) license from the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Last month, the company announced that it had promoted Hana Rolles from Chief Revenue Officer to U.K. Chief Executive Officer.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Latin America and the Caribbean
U.S.-based recurring payments platform Toku raised $93 million in funding to power its expansion in Mexico, Brazil, and Chile.
Core banking software provider Tuumannounced its expansion to the Middle East and the establishment of a regional headquarters at ADGM.
Israel’s central bank reported that it will launch a sandbox to enable private sector entities to experiment with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
UAE-based digital fintech infrastructure firm Fils teamed up with digital banking solutions company Aion to advanced ESG in the MENA region.
Central and Southern Asia
Amazon Pay introduced credit services to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform in partnership with the National Payments Corporation of India.
Bankjoy, a digital banking provider for banks and credit unions, announced a partnership with Pinwheel this week.
Bankjoy will help its more than 70 bank and credit union customers integrate Pinwheel’s digital deposit switching (DDS) solution, Pinwheel Prime.
Pinwheel Prime has been credited with increasing direct deposit enrollment by 32%.
Digital banking provider Bankjoy has partnered with Pinwheel to help financial institutions remove friction from the account activation process.
Via the partnership, Bankjoy will enable its 70+ bank and credit union customers to integrate Pinwheel’s digital deposit switching (DDS) solution, Pinwheel Prime. Pinwheel Prime offers a two-click deposit switch that enables customers to set up their direct deposit in seconds rather than dealing with a multi-step process that requires customers to exit the banking experience.
“By seamlessly integrating from Bankjoy online account opening through various tightly-knit third-party integrations like Pinwheel, we can equip our clients to excel in the competitive deposit market,” Bankjoy COO Weiwei Duncan said. “Our goal is clear: to ensure that our clients not only compete but win the deposit war, leveraging technology to streamline processes and enhance user engagement.”
According to research from Pinwheel, solutions that make deposit switching faster and easier can significantly impact deposit growth. Pinwheel’s own deposit switching technology can enable FIs to boost direct deposit enrollment by 32%, and reduce the amount of time before a customer makes their first direct deposit by 65%.
“With this collaboration, we can bring the ability to easily switch direct deposit settings to an even wider set of consumers, facilitating a fairer financial systems with greater choice and portability,” Pinwheel Co-founder and CEO Kurtis Lin said.
Headquartered in New York and founded in 2018, Pinwheel began the year teaming up with Finovate alum Jack Henry to imbed its direct deposit switching (DDS) solution into Jack Henry’s Banno Digital Toolkit. Pinwheel has raised $77 million in funding according to Crunchbase, and includes Indeed and Franklin Templeton among its investors.
A Finovate alum since 2016 , Bankjoy most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall last year. At the conference, the company, in partnership with Panacea Financial, showing how the fintech helped the digital neobank provide financial services to medical professionals.
So far this year, Bankjoy has added two new financial institutions to its customer base: Oregon State Credit Union, which teamed up with Bankjoy in February, and Emporia State Federal Credit Union, which partnered with Bankjoy in March. Oregon State CU ($2+ billion in assets; 142,000+ members) will deploy Bankjoy’s online account opening solution as part of its strategy to fuel new member acquisition and grow deposits. Emporia State FCU, headquartered in Emporia, Kansas, launched its online and mobile banking app in March courtesy of its partnership with Bankjoy. Emporia State FCU has more than $130 million in assets and 7,800+ members.
Founded in 2015 , Bankjoy is headquartered in Royal Oak, Michigan.
AI integration platform AI Squared raised $13.8 million in Series A funding this week.
Participating in the round were ANSA Capital (Allan Jean-Baptiste), NEA (Greg Papadopoulos), and Roger W. Ferguson Jr., former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve System and CEO of TIAA.
AI Squared made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2023 in San Francisco, California.
AI integration platform provider AI Squared has raised $13.8 million in Series A funding. The Washington, D.C.-based startup, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring last year, said that the investment will help the company fulfill its goal of “fostering widespread AI adoption by embedding AI-generated data insights directly into mission-critical applications and everyday workflows,” wrote AI Squared Founder and CEO Benjamin Harvey in a blog post this week.
“As we embark on the next phase of our post-Series A journey,” Harvey added, “AI Squared remains committed to advancing seamless AI integration and real-time feedback capabilities through the development of reverse ETL and lean AI functionalities.”
Participating in the Series A were ANSA Capital (Allan Jean-Baptiste), NEA (Greg Papadopoulos), and Roger W. Ferguson Jr., former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve System and CEO of TIAA. The investment takes the company’s total equity capital to $19.8 million, according to Crunchbase.
Founded in 2019, AI Squared helps companies integrate AI functionality into their applications. The company’s integration platform enables the integration of AI and machine learning technology into any web-based application, shortening integration times from eight months to eight hours. AI Squared enables companies to build seamless connections between data sources and applications; give their business teams easily consumable, relevant, actionable insights; and create feedback loops between consumers and developers that enhance data quality.
In his statement on the company’s recent funding, Harvey underscored that third point about AI Square’s technology, emphasizing it as a “core differentiation” from other providers. “By incorporating real-time feedback mechanisms, like survey questions, directly within business application workflows, we create a feedback loop between line of business employees and data science teams,” Harvey explained. “This allows for prompt improvements to the performance and accuracy of AI models and how insights are delivered to the business.” The result, Harvey said, was a gain in “confidence in AI’s effectiveness within business operations and workflows.”
Learn more about the company and its founder. Read our interview with AI Squared’s Benjamin Harvey from August of last year.
Interested in demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco in May? We are happy to read applications from innovative companies with new solutions that are ready to show. Visit our FinovateSpring hub today to learn more.
Our series on conversations with fintech experts from FinovateEurope continues this week. Today we feature three interviews I conducted with fintech professionals innovating in some of the more interesting areas of our field:
a discussion with everyoneINVESTED’s Jurgen Vandenbroucke on the challenge of embedding emotion into financial technology
a conversation with BBVA’s Jose Luis Navarro on open banking and the future of financial services
an interview with Katharina Lüth, Chief Client Officer and Managing Director at Raisin, on the importance of personalization in the customer experience.
Wealthtech: bringing investment solutions to banks and customers
Jurgen Vandenbroucke, Managing Director at everyoneINVESTED, talks about the unique challenges of innovating in the wealth management and investment space. He shares his thoughts on what digital engagement really means when it comes to serving investors, and discusses what changes he sees in the regulatory landscape for investors in the U.K. and Europe.
Open banking and the future of financial services
Head of Open Banking Strategy at BBVA, Jose Luis Navarro, discusses the different approaches to open banking in Europe, North America, South America, and beyond. He covers the role of regulation, the importance of understanding third party risk, and the way customer demand is shaping the perception of open banking.
Personalization and customer engagement in an international financial services company
Chief Client Officer and Managing Director at Raisin Katharina Lüth talks about the importance of personalization and customer engagement in an international financial services company. Lüth discusses how Raisin develops personalization strategies across multiple geographies, how to manage friction in the customer experience, as well as current economic trends in the U.K., Europe, and the U.S.
