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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
B2B payments and invoice networking operator TreviPay announced a partnership with B2B cashflow specialist Cloudfloat.
The goal of the partnership is to help stimulate business opportunities for both companies. TreviPay serves the enterprise market. Cloudfloat specializes in serving small and medium-sized businesses.
TreviPay made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall in New York.
B2B payments and invoice networking innovator TreviPay has partnered with B2B cashflow specialist Cloudfloat. The collaboration is designed to bring new business opportunities to both parties: TreviPay – with $7 billion in transaction volume across 34 countries – serves mostly the enterprise market while Cloudfloat specializes in serving small and medium-sized businesses. Via the partnership, the companies expect to serve as valuable references for each other’s respective customer type.
“TreviPay is delighted to be a referral partner with Cloudfloat,” TreviPay Managing Director, APAC, Piers Gorman said. “As the B2B payments landscape matures, there is a significant runway to support all areas of the B2B economy. With opportunities for merchants of all sizes, our referral relationship with Cloudfloat will help bring best-in-class payment options to businesses of all sizes.”
Cloudfloat, founded in 2020 and headquartered in Australia, provides small and medium-sized businesses with time-of-purchase financing, enabling them to make full, timely purchases without immediately impacting cashflow. The financing comes with terms up to 90 days, with no interest charged. The company has realized month-on-month growth of 10% since inception, serving businesses in verticals ranging from hospitality and construction to retail and digital services. “This partnership presents a tremendous opportunity for our business because it unlocks business opportunities which have the potential to help us grow exponentially,” Cloudfloat founder and CEO Aleem Habibullah said.
TreviPay made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall in New York. At the conference, the Overland, Kansas-based fintech demoed its Small Business Supplier Payments Network (SBSN). The network provides a way for banks to grow their small business product suite via a solution that enables them to tap into the small business, B2B trade credit market.
Trulioo unveiled a new global identity verification platform this week.
The new offering combines both individual and business verification with no-code workflow building, low-code integrations, and more into a single platform.
A Finovate alums since 2014, Trulioo won Best of Show in its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateEurope last March.
Identity verification specialist Trulioolaunched a new global identity verification platform this week. The new offering combines individual and business verification solutions with no-code workflow building, low-code integrations, and more in a single platform. The platform will give companies the ability to provide a streamlined onboarding experience, as well as the kind of intuitive user experiences that help build both trust and inclusivity.
“Trulioo is the identity platform businesses turn to in order to solve the inherent complexity in onboarding customers globally,” Trulioo CEO Steve Munford said. “We enable businesses to offer their goods and services in nearly every country in the world and remain compliant. We provide our customers with industry-leading capabilities backed by best-in-class customer success so they can focus on their business and customers.”
With a single contract, the new offering will enable Trulioo customers to readily access:
Personally identifiable information matching
Identity document verification
Utility data for proof of address
Business verification for in-depth person-of-significant-control
Ultimate-beneficial-owner verification
Watchlist screening and monitoring
Anti-fraud capabilities
“Trulioo is the only company that delivers an integrated, high-performance platform with comprehensive capabilities, out-of-the-box processes and models, easy no-code configurability, and the ability to customize and amend functionality,” Trulioo Chief Product Officer Michael Ramsbacker said. “We are giving our customers the power to create verification workflows that best meet their needs with just one contract and in one intuitive platform.”
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, Trulioo has been a Finovate alum since 2014. Demoing its latest technology on the Finovate stage most recently at FinovateEurope 2022 in London, Trulioo won Best of Show for its GlobalGateway Business Verification to Identity Verification workflow. This functionality, using Trulioo’s GlobalGateway Orchestration, enabled easy-to-do business verification, simple verification of owner identities, and world-class orchestration and workflow building.
The company’s new product launch this week comes as a growing number of businesses are pursuing opportunities in online commerce, mobile payments, and digital currencies. And while these avenues represent significant innovation and progress, they also bring with them new concerns over fraud and financial crime. Being able to know your customer, know your business, identify money laundering and more have become critical – and complex – compliance issues for businesses of all sizes. As such, it is as important for growing companies to have a verification solution that is customizable to their particular needs and workflows, while at the same time providing the requisite scale to support rapidly expanding enterprises. This is especially true when it comes to international expansion.
Trulioo’s platform reaches more than five billion consumers in 195 countries, and enables companies to access more than 450 data sources globally to provide broad, comprehensive identity and business verification. The company has raised more than $474 million in funding from investors including TCV, which led Trulioo’s $394 million Series D round in 2021; and Goldman Sachs, which led the company’s $52 million Series C in 2019.
Digital communications platform Eltropy and collections platform provider AKUVO announced a new partnership, integrating Eltropy’s texting functionality into AKUVO’s Aperture solution.
The integration will enhance the collections process for community financial institutions (CFIs).
Eltropy made its Finovate debut in 2017 and returned to the Finovate stage last year for FinovateFall in New York.
A newly-announced partnership between digital communications platform Eltropy and cloud-based collections platform provider AKUVO will enable credit unions to leverage the texting capabilities of Eltropy’s platform to enhance collections operations. Now, credit unions, community banks, and other community financial institutions (CFIs) will be able to access Eltropy’s texting communications platform from AKUVO’s Aperture solution.
“Integration between Eltropy and AKUVO’s Aperture will provide collectors with a powerful texting platform to guide their account holders through a proactive, effective collections experience,” AKUVO Chief Revenue and Operating Officer Steve Castagna said.
Headquartered in California and founded in 2014, Eltropy made its Finovate debut in 2017 and most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2022 last September. At the conference, Eltropy demoed its Eltropy One offering, an all-in-one omni channel solution that lets financial institutions manage both inbound and outbound member and customer communications from a single console. Text, secure chat, video, voice, co-browse, chatbot, and secure file exchange are among the functionalities Eltropy provides – all in a secure and compliant fashion.
In addition to facilitating the delivering of seamless omnichannel customer experiences, Eltropy’s platform leverages AI to help CFIs better resolve issues and consumer inquiries. The technology detects both subjective conditions like consumer sentiment and mood as well as objective data like specific relevant keywords and phrases to provide real-time guidance and personalized recommendations. The company’s partnership with AKUVO, according to Castagna, underscores a shared “visionary approach” to using both data and analytics to help enhance the financial wellness of members and customers.
“One of our primary goals in 2023 is to build stronger integrations with vendors who have strengths in areas of need from our CFI customers, so we look forward to partnering with AKUVO who is making waves in the collection industry with their Aperture platform,” Eltropy VP of Strategic Partnerships Jason Smith said.
With $25 million in funding, Eltropy closed out 2022 with new partnership announcements with digital banking solutions provider Tyfone and credit union lending technology company Origence. Also last year, Eltropy acquired both video banking company POPi/o and AI conversational intelligence platform Marsview.ai. Ashish Garg is Eltropy’s founder and CEO.
This week on Finovate Global, we feature an extended conversation with Paga founder and CEO Tayo Oviosu.
Serving more than 21 million unique users in Africa, Paga is a payments and financial services ecosystem that makes it easy for people to request, send, and receive money; pay bills; get remittances and more. Founded in 2009, Paga is Nigeria’s leading mobile money company.
We caught up with Tayo Oviosu to discuss the current state of fintech in Nigeria and in sub-Saharan Africa, in general. We also talked about how Paga is helping boost financial inclusion and empowerment in the region, and what we can expect from the company in 2023.
Paga was recently recognized with placement on the CB Insights 250 list – one of seven African start-ups featured. What is going right with fintech in sub-Saharan Africa these days?
Tayo Oviosu: It was an honor to be ranked by CB Insights in its Fintech 250 list and, as one of only seven African start-ups featured, it speaks to the pioneering approach we are introducing to the world – revolutionizing payments and creating a financial services ecosystem for Africa.
As sub-Saharan Africa gains recognition on the global stage, we are seeing innovative and pioneering products emerge and rise in popularity amongst consumers, diversifying the products they can choose from.
In 2020, we saw Stripe acquire Nigerian fintech Paystack – which disrupted the ecosystem and spoke to a future-oriented outlook that has validated the region as an exciting space, full of potential. This speaks to the increase in funding and investment opportunities in the region.
As the ecosystem continues to rapidly grow, the vision of an integrated African market is closer to being realized, with new opportunities constantly emerging. At Paga, this is something particularly pertinent to our mission of making life possible for businesses and individuals. Our consumer ecosystem (Paga) helps people send, pay, and bank digitally. We now serve over 21 million unique users at our agents and consumer direct channels. We developed our seller ecosystem (Doroki) to help businesses digitize their payments and to manage their business operations digitally. Our Platform-as-a-Service offering enables ecosystem businesses and developers to build, launch, and grow, via our API infrastructure.
Looking at Nigeria specifically, what is the most interesting thing going on in fintech in Nigeria right now?
Oviosu: We are seeing more options for customers come to fruition through a growing market. Fintechs are competing innovatively to meet customers’ different needs with various tailored products.
Subsequently, there are more lending products and services, which are crucial in affording consumers more flexibility, and options to help them reach their goals and needs, and unlock their potential.
Overall, the landscape is improving in terms of communication between companies and regulators – helping firms overcome short and long-term obstacles in compliance.
The recognition of Paga amongst such a global cohort speaks to the innovation we are driving – and the calibre of our ecosystem. Our market potential, investor profile, technological innovation, and business relationships are on a global scale. To have a Nigerian platform lauded globally is an achievement in the Nigerian fintech space in and of itself.
Let’s talk about Paga. What services does Paga offer and who is the company’s target market?
Oviosu: Paga offers an extensive, hybrid payments ecosystem for online and offline customers. We make it easy for people to send, pay, and bank digitally.
For the individual customer, we allow simple seamless payment transactions, transfers, and bill payments – embedding our services into the daily needs of our users. We also help businesses to achieve their goals; powering reliable, real-time transactions, allowing online payment collections, and bill payments – all with minimal transaction charges. For Paga agents in our offline channels, we create jobs and incentives for those helping serve their communities – and also offer financial support via our overdraft offering. We also help developers to build, by enabling them to leverage our extensive platform via our (payment) APIs and providing them with the needed technical support.
In November, we launched our cards in partnership with Visa – both physical and virtual cards – enabling our consumers to pay at over 100 million merchant locations globally, anywhere Visa is accepted. This is just another example of how we make life possible for all our users.
Our current target market is largely contained in Africa, and driving accessibility to what is still a comparatively under-served market. That said, we have plans to expand beyond this and we will keep you posted on our journey.
What makes Paga unique in the payments business?
Oviosu: Paga emerged within the context of a largely cash-dependent economy, with both individuals and businesses suffering from this inefficiency. We took on the mission of improving financial accessibility in Africa as part of the digital payments revolution – and our growth is ever-accelerating as we do so. Our transaction values are soaring: from achieving our first two trillion Naira (over $4 billion based on current official exchange rates) from January 2012 to March 2020, to achieving our most recent two trillion Naira from February 2022 to September 2022 – in just eight months!
Our ecosystem aims to solve payments and services for consumers and sellers, but what makes us unique is our ecosystem approach. We understand that cash is still popular in Africa, and so we provide onramps and offramps in order to increase our reach. Our on-and-offline infrastructure makes us accessible and we pride ourselves on our deeply connected ecosystem – connecting our users to all the banks, enabling seamless transactions to individuals and merchants, and ensuring convenience for our users in their day-to-day lives.
Our customer-first approach is embedded into our DNA, and as we enter new phases of innovation, we strive to solve problems and provide opportunities for our users – whether that be helping people to save, helping businesses digitize, or offering lending services to consumers and SMEs amongst others. Foundational to this is our Platform-as-a-Service and our strong infrastructure – for consumers, sellers, and third parties.
You recently launched a Visa-branded virtual naira card. Why virtual first?
Oviosu: We wanted to address the need in Nigeria for effective virtual cards. As a digital financial services company, we felt a digital product would adhere to our mission and address our customers’ needs quickly and effectively. We have always sought to simplify the use of and access to payments and financial services.
Customers are able to activate their digital cards in less than 20 seconds – immediately gaining access to Visa’s global network. Moreover, for both physical and virtual, we offer benefits unique to Paga’s digital platform, such as real-time transaction notifications, seamless payments via unique ‘JustPaga.me’ pages, and unique Nigerian Uniform Bank Account Numbers (NUBANs) that serve as added protection for the card.
Paga and Visa have worked together before. What makes Visa a good partner for Paga right now?
Oviosu: On our mission to power payments and accessibility, our partnership with Visa has facilitated the growth of our reach. Visa’s significant coverage means we can reach even more consumers and diversify our offerings for our existing consumers. Through our strategic partnership, we can carry more Africans into the financial system and bridge the accessibility gap.
The partnership has also further strengthened aspects such as reliability and security – facilitated in collaboration with Visa’s Cybersource in launching our direct online card processor. The partnership has been instrumental in bettering the user experience.
What can we expect from Paga in 2023? New services? New markets?
Oviosu: We are focused on deepening our current offerings in our ecosystem. We are staying true to our customer-focused mission and are constantly seeking to better serve all our users.
In 2023, we expect to see more significant partnerships occurring in the fintech space, as well as more niche focuses. This will widen options for businesses and consumers to meet their needs. More widely, this will accelerate economic growth as jobs are created, and infrastructure is improved. We are also looking to increase our reach. Currently, our customer base stands at over 20 million, with 140,000 agent points. We are projected to reach 40 to 50 million users in Nigeria – but are also looking beyond this. Earlier last year, we announced our operational license in Ethiopia – in partnership with the Bank of Abyssinia – and as we continue to work towards making it simple for people to send, pay, and bank digitally, we invite you to watch this space!
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Germany-based fraud prevention and AML solution provider Hawk AI has raised $17 million in Series B funding this week.
The round was led by Sands Capital and featured participation from DN Capital, Coalition, BlackFin Capital Partners, and Picus Capital, and adds to the $10 million Hawk AI raised in 2021.
Hawk AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022.
In a round led by Sands Capital and featuring participation from DN Capital, Coalition, BlackFin Capital Partners, and Picus Capital, Germany-based fraud prevention and anti-money laundering solution provider Hawk AI has raised $17 million in Series B financing. The capital adds to the $10 million in Series A funding the company raised in June of 2021, and will be used to help fuel both product development and global expansion.
“My co-founder Wolfgang Berner and I started this business based on the strong belief that only leading edge, real-time surveillance technology can deliver the change needed to fight financial crime,” Hawk AI CEO and co-founder Tobias Schweiger said. “This contrasts (with) the obvious, drastic deficiencies in legacy technology. Hawk AI’s growth will continue to be fueled by industry-wide demand for AI, cloud outsourcing, and a convergence of fraud and AML technology.” Schweiger added that this week’s investment would help Hawk AI “become the leading global surveillance platform faster.”
Founded in 2018, Hawk AI made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. At the conference, the company demoed its AML Surveillance Suite, which combines explainable AI with traditional rule-based strategies to monitor transactions for fraud and evidence of potential money laundering in real time. The technology alerts financial crime specialists when suspicious behavior is detected while at the same time significantly limiting the number of false positives – by more than 70% – compared to legacy systems.
In its funding announcement, Hawk AI noted that more than $2 trillion is laundered every year, with U.S. fraud losses in 2022 topping $41 billion. Additionally, for what the company referred to as “high-growth markets,” fraud increased by more than 37% over the past 12 months. This has put additional pressure on institutions as both the volume and sophistication of financial crime continue to grow. Complicating matters further are an ever-changing array of regulations which Sands Capital’s Chris Eng said has made fighting financial crime “historically” challenging. To this end, Eng noted that, “Hawk AI’s sophisticated technology and use of explainable artificial intelligence present critically needed straightforward solutions for institutions across the payments landscape.”
Hawk AI’s funding news comes in the wake of a year in which the company realized year-over-year revenue growth of nearly 3x. Hawk AI also expanded its operations to Singapore last year, and now operates in more than 60 countries across Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America. Hawk AI includes fellow Finovate alums VISA, Diebold Nixdorf, and Mambu among its partners.
Finovate alums raised more than $2.7 billion in equity funding in 2022. The sum makes the $8.4 billion raised in 2021 seem all the more an outlier as our alumni funding levels return to those common in 2020 and before.
The fourth quarter of 2022 saw Finovate alums secure more than $380 million in funding. This amount recalls the relatively modest fundraising haul from Q4 2020, with a comparable number of alums raising capital.
Previous Quarterly Comparisons
Q4 2021: More than $1.2 billion raised by seven alums
Q4 2020: More than $472 million raised by 17 alums
Q4 2019: More than $876 million raised by 21 alums
Q4 2018: More than $800 million raised by 19 alums
Q4 2017: More than $730 million raised by 23 alums
Outsystems’ $228.4 million fundraising was easily the quarter’s standout investment. Also raising sizable amounts in the final three months of 2022 were Moneyhub, which raised more than $61 million over the course of the quarter, and Banyan, which secured $28 million in funding.
Top Quarterly Equity Investments
Outsystems: $228.4 million
Moneyhub: $61.6 million
Banyan: $28 million
Cinchy: $14.5 million
Buckzy: $14.5 million
Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q4 2022.
October 2022: More than $316 million raised by eight alums
If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the fourth quarter of 2022, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.
Continuous product design platform company Quantum Metric launched its Atlas solution this week.
Atlas provides enterprises with a library of pre-built industry guides to help them turn digital opportunities into new products and solutions for customers.
Quantum Metric won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope n 2021.
Quantum Metric, the continuous product design platform company that won Best of Show in its Finovate debut in 2021, unveiled its latest solution this week. The Colorado Springs, Colorado-based firm announced the launch of Atlas, a structured and accelerated solution to help organizations respond to “critical business questions” with “outcome-driven insights.” Atlas provides companies with a comprehensive library of pre-built industry guides that give businesses a tailored set of dashboards, metrics, anomaly detection, and alerts, providing them with a stepwise approach to improving digital use cases.
“Organizations consistently struggle to know if their teams are asking the right business questions and working hard to drive their experience forward to the benefit of both their business and their customer,” Quantum Metric CEO Mario Ciabarra said. “With Atlas, we are empowering every member of digital teams to focus on what matters most, winning the hearts of their customers.” Ciabarra called the launch “a defining day” for the company.
Quantum Metric helps enterprises negotiate the distance between recognizing new digital opportunities and turning those opportunities into revenue-generating, customer-engaging products and services. The company estimates that the average enterprise “leaves up to $220 million on the table per year in inefficiencies” and suggests that, by using Atlas, these companies can boost efficiency by up to 90%. “Atlas completely reimagines what we know about building and optimizing digital experiences today,” Ciabarra said.
At present, the Atlas library consists of 90 guides, and includes customized use cases for verticals such as consumer banking, insurance, telecommunications, travel, and retail. Quantum Metric indicated that it will offer cross-industry guides to common digital use cases in the future.
Founded in 2015, Quantum Metric offers businesses a way to recognize customer needs, quantify the financial impact, and assess priorities based on both customer impact and meeting business objectives. The launch of Atlas comes just days after Quantum Metric announced a year of “record-breaking” growth, including a 98% customer retention rate and customer base growth of 41%. The company today captures experiences from 40% of the world’s Internet users and offers insights from more than four billion user sessions each month. Quantum Metric includes 20% of the Fortune 500 among its customers.
Payments platform Trustly announced a strategic partnership with Sweden’s Nordnet.
The partnership will enable Nordnet customers to easily and securely deposit funds using Trustly pay-ins.
Trustly, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013, was acquired by Nordic Capital in 2018.
A new strategic partnership between open banking, account-to-account (A2A) payments platform Trustly and Nordnet will enable customers of the Swedish savings and investment solution to easily and securely deposit funds in their accounts. The pact brings instant deposits to the whole Nordic region, including markets where instant payments are not yet available.
The new service is going live in Sweden initially, and will be available to all new customers who sign up for a Nordnet account. The service will launch in Norway in the first quarter of this year, and in Denmark and Finland later in 2023.
“Trustly’s technology and customer focus made them a natural choice and good fit for Nordnet in our ongoing work to build the best platform for savings and investments,” Nordnet Chief Product Officer and Deputy CEO Rasmus Järborg said. “With Trustly, our customers are able to fund their accounts instantly and start discovering what stocks or funds they want to buy.”
Founded in 1996 as Sweden’s first Internet broker, Nordnet currently provides savings, investment, lending, and pension services to customers in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. Nordnet operates the region’s largest social investment network, Shareville, which boasts more than 300,000 members.
The company also offers margin lending, residential mortgages, and unsecured personal loans both under its own brand and under the subsidiary Konsumentkredit. As a pension solutions provider, Nordnet offers endowment insurance in Sweden and Norway and, for Swedish customers, provides a digital pension management service. Headquartered in Stockholm, the firm reported total assets of more than $22.8 billion in 2021.
Trustly made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in London in 2013 and returned to the Finovate stage four years later for FinovateEurope 2017. The company was acquired by Nordic Capital for an undisclosed sum in 2018, and has since forged partnerships with companies ranging from Alibaba.com to NACHA to IKEA. Last year, Trustly acquired U.K. open banking vendor Ecospend (terms not disclosed). In November, the company welcomed back Alex Gontheir as CEO of its Americas division. Gontheir founded and led PayWithMyBank as CEO. PayWithMyBank merged with Trustly in 2019 and Gontheir became Executive Chairman in 2021.
Ping Identity has forged a partnership with device identification platform Fingerprint.
The partnership will integrate Fingerprint’s device identification technology into Ping Identity’s identity orchestration service, DaVinci.
Ping Identity made its Finovate debut in 2016 at FinovateEurope in London.
Ping Identity, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2016, announced a partnership with U.S.-based identity tech innovator Fingerprint. The collaboration will integrate Fingerprint’s device identification technology with Ping Identity’s DaVinci no-code identity orchestration service to enable users of DaVinci to accurately identify devices and stop fraud.
Fingerprint’s device identification platform provides 99.5% accuracy and, upon integration with PingOne DaVinci, will enable companies to enhance the customer experience by reducing the need for friction-producing multi-factor authentication for known users. The integration will enhance onboarding for new customers, as well. “Our mission is to empower developers to build safe and seamless Internet services,” Fingerprint CEO Dan Pinto said. He said that the partnership with Ping Identity would help show the effectiveness of the company’s device identity technology in a broad range of digital user journeys.
Fingerprint teamed up with Ping Identity as part of the latter’s Global Technology Partner Program. Growing the program and adding companies like Fingerprint is part of Ping Identity’s goal of delivering “better, more frictionless customer experiences” according to company SVP of Product Management Loren Russon. “Our partnership with Fingerprint leverages PingOne DaVinci’s seamless orchestration to ensure dynamic user journeys are delivered quickly and efficiently at every stage of the user journey,” Russon said.
PingOne DaVinci enables users to design secure and seamless customer experiences across an entire technology ecosystem. The platform’s no-code orchestration and drag-and-drop interface mean that anyone who can whiteboard an experience can orchestrate it using DaVinci. Users build, design, and refine workflows, and then easily optimize these workflows with A/B testing and, where necessary, quickly deploy fixes and changes.
Named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management for the sixth consecutive year, Ping One was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. The company was acquired by Thoma Bravo last year in an all-cash $2.8 billion transaction. When the deal was closed in October, Ping Identity founder and CEO Andre Durand credited the way that “identity security and frictionless user experiences have become essential in the digital-first economy.” Durand added that, “with the support of Thoma Bravo, Ping Identity can further accelerate innovation to deliver the easy and secure digital experiences customers demand from every industry.”
Finovate Podcast host Greg Palmer wrapped up a year’s worth of fintech conversations with this handful of episodes featuring Finovate Best of Show winners, innovative bankers, and insightful venture capitalists.
“What you should understand about our fund is that it’s all B2B. There are four themes that we specifically focus on – the key one is modernizing financial institutions. And whether that’s banks or insurers or asset managers or wealth managers, I think it’s all about bringing the technology, the digitalization, and more to these institutions to increase their competitiveness.”
Michael Ruttledge, Chief Information Officer and Head of Technology Services, Citizens Bank
“We set out a bold vision to modernize the technology platforms and infrastructure through something we called Next Generation Technology Strategy. What I’m most excited about are some of the key critical businesses we have been able to enable. We’ve done a tremendous job moving to the cloud; we partner with both AWS and Azure and, with AWS, we’ve actually built a platform that’s really been able to unleash developers.”
Melanie Pickett, Head of Asset Owners, Americas, Northern Trust
“I joined Northern Trust specifically to launch a fintech within the bank called Front Office Solutions, where we serve the world’s largest and most complex endowments, foundations, family offices, and pensions, and help them with the very complex portfolios that they’re managing and some of the very complex data management challenges that they have.”
Neepa Patel, Founder and CEO, Themis
Finovate podcast host Greg Palmer talks with Themis founder and CEO Neepa Patel on expecting more from your compliance department. Episode 153.
“Themis is a collaboration tech platform. Think of something like Airtable or Jira or Monday, but specifically created for governance, risk, and compliance workflows. Our modules represent different workflows that your company is already doing, but are probably doing it in the most inefficient way possible. We’ve brought all those tools that you’re using (and) put that information into one holistic view so that you get a better sense of what’s going on with compliance in your company.”
Don Shafer, Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist, Quilo
Finovate’s Greg Palmer talks with Quilo co-founder and Chief Evangelist Don Shafer about the company’s transformative approach to funding loans. Episode 152.
“We need(ed) to build a platform that would enable a banker or credit union to provide all of their customers (with) a way to get a loan quickly. And so with Quilo, we’ve timed it over and over. If you’re already a customer of a bank or a member of a credit union, you can get your phone and apply, go through approvals and get funded, and have the money show up in your debit card in less than 70 seconds.”
Earnix, an Israel-based company that provides insurers and banks with real-time, dynamic pricing and rating solutions, introduced a new Chief Executive Officer this week. Robin Gilthorpe will take over the top spot at the firm effective February 1st, replacing outgoing CEO Udi Ziv, who served as Earnix’s CEO for six years.
“Today’s end-customer demands unparalleled experience, alongside highly personalized and customizable solutions,” Gilthorpe said in a statement. “Earnix solutions serve as the go-to platform for financial services companies to address the growing demands of the world’s leading financial and insurance companies.”
Gilthorpe is a finance and insurance industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience at firms such as TIBCO, Vertexone, and Watersmart Software. He was most recently Chief Operating Officer at insurtech company Salty where he helped generate a “nine-figure outcome” in the firm’s sale to CDK Global.
Founded in 2001, Earnix made its Finovate debut in 2016 at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. In the years since then, the company has forged partnerships with companies like AI cloud platform DataRobot, cloud insurance software company Majesco and, last fall, J.D. Power. Also last fall, Earnix unveiled its Underwrite-It solution which helps businesses build and manage rules and decision logic to enhance decision-making during the underwriting process.
Earnix has raised more than $100 million in funding. The company includes Insight Partners, Israel Growth Partners, and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) among its investors.
The seed funding round was led by Team8 and featured participation from ZIM Integrated Shipping Services. ZIM also was the entity behind the $100 million credit facility 40Seas received this week. The agreement comes with an option to extend the credit facility to $200 million.
40Seas leverages AI and data analytics to determine creditworthiness, and offers flexible payment arrangements to provide small importers and exporters, freight forwarders, and sourcing agencies with critical working capital. The company made its soft launch in October of last year and says that it already has financed transactions for “dozens of SMEs.”
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that small businesses represent more than 40% of all cross-border trade volume. Nevertheless, compared to large, multinational corporations, SMEs are “seven times more likely to be denied trade financing,” according to the World Trade Organization. Among the obstacles to these firms are siloed banking jurisdictions, working capital constraints, legacy processes, and more. To this end, 40Seas helps exporters get paid as quickly as possible and gives importers payment options that enable them to grow their businesses without incurring sizable additional debt.
“Given today’s harsh macroeconomic conditions, now more than ever, SMEs need easy access to financing to have the best chance of survival,” 40Seas co-founder and CEO Eyal Moldovan said.
40Seas is headquartered in Tel Aviv and has offices in New York City, Toronto, and Shenzhen.
Last month CTech published a short list of what it called the “five most promising early-stage fintech startups” in Israel. The list was based on the opinions of “prominent investors in the Israeli market” and looked at both “business potential” and “managerial depth.”
The businesses represented included travel insurance (Faye), an automated accounting platform (Trullion), a compliance platform (Sedric), a loan exchange for SMEs (Lama AI), and a payments workflow automation company (Nilus). Combined, the five companies have raised more than $47 million in funding from investors including Viola Ventures, F2, Third Point Ventures, Greycroft, Homeward Ventures, StageOne, Foundational Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners.
We’ll keep an eye on these and other innovative fintechs that are helping build Israel’s unique fintech ecosystem.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
What are the biggest obstacles to digital transformation in banking and financial services? For Leda Glyptis, self-described “recovering banker” and author of the new book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, the fault lies not in the stars, but in bankers themselves.
Fortunately, Glyptis sees bankers as the solution, as well.
“For years I have been blogging and speaking about how the biggest obstacle to progress inside banks is people. And that the only hope for change are also people,” Glyptis told Fintech Futures as the date of the world premier of her book was announced earlier this month. “What is so often approached as a technology journey often falls down or triumphs around the humans that keep on keeping on, the dreamers, the builders, the plumbers, and the storytellers of banking transformation.”
Leda Glyptis will discuss her experiences and insights as a veteran of the banking business in an afternoon keynote address on Day One of FinovateEurope, March 14 through 15 in London. Titled “The Problem With Digital Transformation is You,” Glyptis will discuss the human and structural obstacles to digital transformation with a focus on the kind of mentality and leadership bankers need to embrace in order to bring about the changes in banking and financial services that consumers increasingly demand.
For Glyptis, there is no reason – and no time – to wait for the rise of a younger, more digitally-native generation to do the work of transforming financial services. The time to act is now, and the ones to act are bankers — with “grit, determination and energy to drive change,” Glyptis insists. “Like us.”
Bankers Like Us will be available for pre-order on Friday, January 20th, and is expected to ship after February 10th. This provides plenty of time to get your copy of the book ahead of Glyptis’ keynote at FinovateEurope in March. At the event, after Glyptis’ afternoon keynote address, we will also host a special Networking Break & Book Signing with the author.
In addition to her work as an author, Glyptis is the Chief Client Officer at 10x Banking, a cloud-native core banking platform provider based in London. She is also a Non-Executive Director at leading U.K. cash deposit platform, Flagstone. Glyptis has a PhD in Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and shares her thoughts on banking and financial services as a columnist – and “resident thought provocateur” – with Fintech Futures. Her latest columns have tackled topics such as the importance of preparation, the role of pain in learning, and the challenge of maintaining the courage of convictions.
Be sure to visit our FinovateEurope 2023 hub to save your spot at our upcoming fintech conference, March 14 through 15 – featuring author Leda Glyptis’ keynote address on the afternoon of Day One.
