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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
It may be a fintech cliche that “every year is the Year of the Customer.” But the obsession over customer experience that is sweeping through financial services is showing no signs of slowing down.
Steven Van Belleghem, author of The Internet of Customer Value, How Web3 and the Metaverse Are Changing the Game in Customer Experience, will deliver a keynote address on Day One of FinovateEurope this year that tackles this topic head-on. An expert in the future of customer centricity, Van Belleghem emphasizes the relationship between enabling technologies, customer-centric thinking, and the human touch in his work. This work includes four international best-selling books, as well as co-founding inspiration agency Nexxworks and social media agency Snackbytes.
Find out more about how to attend FinovateEurope at the O2 in London and catch Steven Van Belleghem’s keynote address live on Tuesday, March 14, at our FinovateEurope hub.
An engaging speaker and colorful writer, Van Belleghem has impressed audiences and readers with his insights into what it truly means to put the customer first – and why it is imperative for companies to do so in order to succeed. In a recent blog post, Van Belleghem explained how “customer culture” has “replaced technology as the holy grail” as a growing number of businesses recognize the value of “really try(ing) to understand what people want and then help them.” He wrote:
“Over the years, software has even become quite good at being creative, but empathy remains that last beacon, something that is typically human. And so a positive culture of being kind, of being human, of saying ‘yes’ to your customers will become a true differentiator. That’s what will bridge the most of that last 10% to get great CX.”
Read his full discussion, which includes Van Belleghem’s explanation of why this last 10% is always the most difficult to achieve, as well as a helpful strategy for keeping even the most promising of enabling technologies in the proper perspective.
Then stop by our FinovateEurope 2023 hub to save your spot at our upcoming fintech conference, March 14 through 15, featuring author Steven Van Belleghem’s keynote address on Day One.
Uplinq, a company that offers advanced bookkeeping solutions to SMEs, has raised $5.6 million in funding.
Headquartered in Arizona, Uplinq will use the capital to scale its marketing efforts to better serve fintech’s “underserved bookkeeping” market.
The funding was led by Arizona-based AZ-VC, and included a strategic investment from Live Oak Ventures.
Uplinq, a technology company that leverages automation and machine learning to provide businesses with advanced bookkeeping solutions, has secured an investment of $5.6 million. The funding, announced in early December, was led by Arizona venture capital fund AZ-VC and included a strategic investment from Live Oak Ventures. Live Oak Ventures is the fintech-oriented venture capital arm of Live Oak Bank. Also participating in the funding were Merus Capital and members of the Kuwaiti Royal Family.
“With continued economic uncertainty, new automated fintech like Uplinq helps businesses take advantage by keeping track of changing costs and financials more efficiently than ever before to make smart business decisions fast,” Uplinq CEO Alex Glenn said. “This funding round will accelerate the next phase of Uplinq’s growth plans and expand our reach across this lucrative $15 billion industry.”
The capital will be used to help scale Uplinq’s marketing efforts, sales power, engineering capabilities, and customer delivery departments in order to better serve what the company calls fintech’s “underserved bookkeeping” market.
Uplinq leverages its proprietary technology to gather, organize, and categorize business transactions to provide small businesses with review-ready, real-time analysis “at the touch of a button.” With seamless integrations with more than 10,000 financial institutions, Uplinq provides its customers with weekly updated financial data – instead of monthly or quarterly – and said that more solutions for SMEs are planned to go live in 2023.
“We offer businesses a better way to get professional help through our proprietary technology, that not only makes bookkeeping worry-free for the business owner, but also provides them with powerful data automation and machine learning to better understand their finances and how their business can improve,” Glenn said.
Founded in 2020, Uplinq is headquartered in Tempe, Arizona.
Income data verification company Argyle has secured accreditation from the Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA).
The 880+ membership organization was founded in 2003 and helps keep screening firms up to date on new legislation and industry best practices.
Argyle made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in May of last year.
Real-time income data platform Argyle has received accreditation from the Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA). This accreditation provides Argyle with a “seal of approval” as well as “national recognition” that its income data verification technology complies with industry standards with regards to both compliance and consumer protection.
“Argyle is committed to automating employment verifications in the background check industry,” Argyle CEO Shmulik Fishman said. “For our consumers and end users, we operate under rigorous standards and don’t compromise or cut corners. We’re pleased PBSA’s accreditation confirms those commitments.”
PBSA Executive Director Melissa Sorenson credited Argyle for joining the 880+ member organization and for supporting the PBSA’s efforts to “advance excellence within the background screening industry.” Founded in 2003, PBSA helps keep member firms in the United States and abroad informed about legislation that potentially impacts screening, as well as helps companies access practical guidance on industry best practices, news, and trends. The organization’s member organizations are defined as “consumer reporting agencies” under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and are regulated by both the FTC and CFPB.
Making its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring, Argyle is a New York-based technology company that enables consumers to connect their employment records to companies’ apps and websites. This secure connection allows businesses to access the income and identity data required in order to offer and deliver a range of digital experiences. At the same time, consumers benefit from access to more financial products and total control over the use of their data.
At FinovateSpring in 2022, the company demoed a design update for its Link technology to improve the tool’s usefulness for end users. Link is the front-end interface that lets consumers grant access to their payroll information. The 4.0 upgrade demoed last spring is designed to make it easier for users to connect their accounts, reduce drop-off rates, and improve the overall look and feel of the solution.
Argyle was founded in 2018. The company has raised more than $77 million in funding from investors including Bain Capital Ventures and SignalFire. Last fall, Argyle announced a partnership with Dallas, Texas-based payments company Highline to give lenders across the U.S. access to payroll-linked lending and billpay functionality.
“True financial inclusion begins with the recognition that there is a shortage of non-predatory options available for many Americans who need access to relatively small dollar loans,” Highline CEO Geoff Brown said. “The team at Argyle recognizes this as well and, like Highline, is committed to helping more consumers gain access to credit in a way that also makes sense for lenders and fits their business objectives.”
To close out 2022, we highlighted our upcoming FinovateEurope Alumni Alley showcase. This event, part of FinovateEurope in London, March 13 through 14, will feature the companies that made their Finovate debuts at our annual European conference. Find out more about Alumni Alley and how you and your company can take advantage of this unique opportunity.
We commemorated the announcement of Alumni Alley with this multi-part look back at some of FinovateEurope’s earliest alums. Click the image to enjoy a little stroll down fintech’s memory lane.
St. Mary’s Bank, a credit union headquartered in New Hampshire, has teamed up with credit risk specialist AKUVO.
The nation’s first credit union, founded in 1908, St. Mary’s Bank will deploy AKUVO’s Aperture to automate and enhance its collection operations.
With $1.5 billion in assets, St. Mary’s Bank said goodbye to its eighth CEO in December, as CEO and President Ronald Covey announced his retirement after 14 years leading the firm.
New Hampshire-based St. Mary’s Bank has teamed up with AKUVO, a credit risk specialist headquartered in Pennsylvania. St. Mary’s Bank will deploy AKUVO’s Aperture platform to streamline and enhance its collections operations, including bankruptcy, repossession, and foreclosure.
“We are committed to providing state-of-the-art banking services,” St. Mary’s Bank EVP and Chief Lending Officer Jan Raymond said. “With the amount of automation and integration we plan to leverage in Aperture, our team will have more time and the right tools to offer a first-class member experience while also managing risk and lowering delinquency.”
AKUVO’s Aperture platform helps banks and credit unions move away from the traditionally reactive, tactical approach to managing collections. Instead of static workflows, inefficient workspaces, and little customer personalization, AKUVO’s Aperture leverages analytics and automation to give financial institutions a streamlined, cloud-based solution. Not only does Aperture make day-to-day operational tasks easier, the technology also predicts behavior and provides insights to help head off delinquencies before they occur. Aperture helps banks and credit unions manage a wide range of collection and loss mitigation operations ranging from credit disputes and debt settlement to bankruptcy, foreclosure, and repossession.
“I think all service providers feel a tremendous sense of pride when they are chosen by the nation’s first credit union, and that is certainly the case at AKUVO,” AKUVO Chief Revenue and Operating Officer Steve Castagna said. “We look forward to assisting St. Mary’s in leading the credit union movement with its superior service and commitment to innovation.”
With $1.5 billion in assets, St. Mary’s Bank has the distinction of being the nation’s first credit union. Founded in 1908 and headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire, St. Mary’s Bank is a not-for-profit, member-owned institution that offers financial products and services to both consumers and businesses. St. Mary’s Bank has eleven branch locations in Manchester, Hudson, Londonderry, Milford, Nashua, and Portsmouth, and supports a mortgage center in Concord.
St. Mary’s Bank ended 2022 with an announcement that Ronald Covey, who had served as the credit union’s president and CEO for 14 years, was retiring. Under Covey’s tenure, St. Mary’s Bank grew in membership from 60,000 to 98,000 members. Assets grew from $652 million to nearly $1.5 billion. Covey was also credited for helping the institution adapt to the “rapid technological advances in the financial services industry,” according to St. Mary’s Bank board of directors chair Steve Grzywacz.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global showcases some of the fintech founders and CEOs we’ve had the good fortune to interview this year. From embedded finance to the emerging data economy to the connection between open banking and serving the world’s un- and underbanked, fintech innovators in developing economies continue to deliver for both their local communities as well as for consumers around the world.
Finovate Global Egypt: Cartona CEO and Co-founder Mahmoud Talaat
Cartona embraces the vision of a cashless society, investing in embedded finance and payments. We offer pay after four days or pay in four equal installments every 7-10 days. We have made sure our product is easy to use and seamlessly integrated into the ‘check-out’ section for ordering, with collection being all digital or through our supplier network.
Providing retailers with this technology-integrated financial solution not only boosts financial inclusion but also enables them to grow their business and provide customers with essential products at affordable prices. To supplement our core ordering business, embedded finance is what we believe is a key challenge and we see a clear need for it by retailers in the industry.
Finovate Global Finland: Building a Strong Data Economy with ReceiptHero’s Chris Moore
We are surrounded by data in our daily lives, most of it is unstructured and in hard to reach places. Receipts printed on paper are just that: unstructured and, as a customer, it’s hard to apply that purchase data to good use. Part of my opening remarks at FinovateEurope was that we are showered by amazing digital payment innovations and sadly the post purchase experience has mainly been left to stay in the analog world.
Purchase data is core to building a strong data economy, as this data has so far been siloed and in a format that is hard to receive in real-time. It’s not really been leveraged or valued as it should be. ReceiptHero is breaking down those silos and enabling a world where a consumer can have this data instantly in their banking app or in an approved service where the data is used to better the customer experience.
Finovate Global UAE: Abdulla Almoayed of Tarabut Gateway on Open Banking in the MENA Region
MENA’s young and tech-savvy population is still underbanked, and a driving factor behind Open Banking’s growth are companies and regulators who are keen to facilitate this huge opportunity in a responsible manner.
Moreover, banks in the region understand the benefits that Open Banking brings to their institutions. Open Banking enables them to stay relevant and to compete in today’s banking sector by providing enhanced digital offerings and customer-centricity.
Tarabut Gateway acts as the matchmaker between service providers and customers, creating a competitive fintech ecosystem where users receive the best, personalized products, and services.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Ghana-based fintech Bezo Money raised $750,000 in new funding.
TechCabal featured an interview with Ibrahima Kourouma, co-founder of Paylia and payments platform for African merchants and consumers.
The first graduates the new fintech-focused journalism training program sponsored by pan-African banking organization Ecobank Group and AMA Academy were announced this week.
A partnership between the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and cybersecurity firm ISSP will help improve digital security for SMEs in Moldova.
Estonian greentech company Single.Earth announced a partnership with regtech Salv to help fight financial crime.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Egyptian fintech PayMint teamed up with Egypt’s Commodities Exchange
Israel-based fintech Nilus that helps companies better monitor their payment data raised $8.6 million in seed funding.
Central and Southern Asia
India’s Cashfree Payments launched its Buy Now, Pay Later offering.
Akhtar Fuiou Technologies (AFT), a fintech headquartered in Pakistan, secured approval from the country’s central bank to begin pilot operations for an Electronic Money Institution license.
J.P. Morgan made a strategic investment in India-based payment solutions provider, In-Solutions Global (ISG).
This is a sponsored post from Tim FitzGerald, EMEA Financial Services Sales Manager, InterSystems.
Innovation undoubtably will help firms keep up with market volatility, changing customer demands, and the competition – not just today, but in the future. This is reflected in the thoughts of financial services leaders themselves as almost three-quarters (73%) believe innovation is vital to their survival as a business. Yet, despite widespread recognition of the critical nature of innovation, financial services firms are facing difficulties in successfully executing their innovation initiatives.
In particular, firms cite skills gaps and integrating disparate data sets as significant barriers to innovation. With the uncertainty and upheaval of the last few years showing no signs of slowing down as we head into 2023, finding ways to better leverage their people and data to further innovation, therefore, must be front of mind.
Obtaining a 360-degree view
Data has a vital role to play in innovation initiatives. Being able to access and use accurate, real-time data from all business units to obtain a holistic 360-degree view of the enterprise and its customers will enable firms to better identify and respond to growth opportunities, address challenges in an agile manner, and make more informed, in the moment decisions. This requires firms to address the data integration challenges they are currently facing and connect their myriad data and application silos.
One way of doing this is by adopting a smart data fabric which accesses, transforms, and harmonizes data from multiple sources, on demand, to make it usable and actionable for a wide variety of business applications. Ideal for complex data environments, the smart data fabric eliminates delays which lead to errors, missed opportunities, and decisions based on stale or incomplete data.
This approach allows existing legacy applications and data to remain in place, thereby enabling firms to maximize the value from their previous technology investments, including existing data lakes and data warehouses, without having to “rip-and-replace” any of their existing technology.
By obtaining this instant insight into their organization and customers, financial services firms will be able to make better, more accurate decisions to drive innovation, improve customer experiences, and get ahead of the curve.
Power to the people
Implementing new technology alone is not enough to help firms overcome the barriers that are currently standing in the way of successful innovation. People also have a significant part to play in innovation initiatives, so giving them the capabilities to conquer current skills gaps and to use data effectively to drive innovation are also key. Firms can achieve this by implementing a holistic innovation strategy which brings together all the critical elements required for successful innovation – people, processes, and technology – and identifies how to empower business users with data.
By putting data directly into the hands of business users, firms will be able to mitigate some of the impacts of skills gaps and help people to actively contribute to innovation initiatives. Self-service analytics capabilities embedded within smart data fabrics will provide immense value here. These capabilities will enable business users to freely explore the data, ask ad hoc questions, and drill down via additional queries based on initial findings.
In doing so, not only will firms be able to leverage their data more fully, but also they will be able to mitigate the impact of skills gaps by empowering employees to read and interpret data and make the data-driven decisions needed for successful innovation. This also will reduce reliance on IT teams to surface and interpret data, while avoiding the need for business users to learn a whole host of new skills and tools.
New year, new approach
As firms look to 2023, likely with a mix of excitement and trepidation about what the year may bring, ensuring they address the barriers currently standing in the way of innovation success is essential to help them respond to whatever comes next. By addressing issues with data integration and skills gaps head on, financial services organizations will be able to make more effective use of both their data and people to drive forward innovation initiatives.
Arming themselves with a clear innovation strategy and a team of empowered and data-enabled employees will give firms the capabilities overcome any challenges that may arise, but also critically, to grow their offering, future-proof their organization, and meet changing customer demand. Ultimately, adopting this approach will help firms to set themselves up for long-term innovation success, not just for 2023, but beyond.
Many of Finovate’s most storied alumni made their Finovate debuts at our European conference, FinovateEurope. Next year at FinovateEurope (March 14 through 15) we will feature the event’s alums in a special showcase called Alumni Alley. For those companies that first demoed their innovations at FinovateEurope, Alumni Alley is a great opportunity to show the world their latest innovations and accomplishments.
Is Alumni Alley for you? Visit our Alumni Alley hub today and find out!
This week, we shine a light on another set of three companies that made their first Finovate appearances at our first FinovateEurope conference in 2011: a digital advertising platform for banks, an innovator in data-driven digital banking, and an e-billing/billpay pioneer.
Cardlytics Delivering Relevant Rewards Before it was Cool
Cardlytics was a young company when it made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in London in 2011. The Atlanta, Georgia-based firm already had gained significant traction for its technology: a transaction marketing platform that helped banks and retailers offer rewards to customers based on their individual buying behavior. During its demo, Cardlytics noted that its technology reached tens of millions of consumers via hundreds of retailers in the U.S. who were leveraging the platform to deliver what have now become table stakes in the loyalty and rewards business: precise targeting and highly relevant offers. Cardlytics returned to the FinovateEurope stage a year later, earning a Best of Show award for its latest loyalty management solution.
From a company with 100 employees and more than $27 million in funding in 2011, Cardlytics has grown into a leading advertising platform for banks and other financial institutions. The company boasts more than 184 million bank customers on its platform and more than $650 million in customer rewards paid. Cardlytics went public in 2018, and currently trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker CDLX. The company has a market capitalization of more than $169 million.
Scott Grimes and Lynne Laube, Cardlytics’ first and second CEOs, demonstrating the company’s technology at FinovateEurope.
“We delivered solid double-digit growth despite the serious challenges present in the economy,” Cardlytics CEO Karim Temsamani said in November when the company shared Q3 financials. “While the economy may be uncertain, I believe there is inherent resiliency in platforms that prove return on ad spend, and I am positive we can grow profitably.” Temsamani joined the company as CEO this summer, taking over from co-founder Lynne Laube who is retiring from the leadership post. Temsamani comes to Cardlytics from Stripe, where he worked as Head of Global Partnerships and, before that, Head of Banking and Financial Products.
Lodo Software, D3 Technology, and the Road from PFM to Data Driven Digital Banking
These days, the idea of fintechs coming from places other than Silicon Valley is increasingly commonplace. But in 2011, there was something more than a little novel about the fintech innovation that was coming out of places like Omaha, Nebraska – courtesy of startups like Lodo Software.
Making its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2011, Lodo Software demoed a cross-selling solution that helped banks leverage the data gathered by the PFM component of the platform to personalize offers and marketing campaigns. The product, OurCashFlow, organized and analyzed customer data to ensure that financial institutions are sending the right messages to the right customers at the right time. The platform’s messages and notifications are scheduled within the platform and are delivered to customers via their PFM dashboard.
D3 Technology CEO Mark Vipond demoing the company’s technology at FinovateEurope 2011 in London.
Lodo Software rebranded as D3 Technology in 2014 in a move that CEO Mark Vipond said reflected “the company’s evolution from a personal financial management software provider to the creator of one of the market’s only true omnichannel, data driven digital banking solution.” The company created D3 Banking to help financial institutions deliver a consistent, personalized, banking experience anywhere, at any time, and on any device. Five years later, in the summer of 2019 , fellow Finovate alum NCR announced that it would acquire the company.
“NCR is a great fit for D3 and the timing is right for us to combine forces to create a powerful digital transformation platform for large financial institutions,” Vipond said when the acquisition was announced. “This transaction enables us to capitalize on new market opportunities and bring top-tier capabilities to our mutual and future clients.”
AcceptEasy: A Pioneer in E-Billing and Billpay via Email
Enabling secure and straightforward e-billing and payments via email was the innovation championed by Netherlands-based fintech AcceptEmail at FinovateEurope in 2011. Founded in 2006 and launching its solution less than a year later, AcceptEmail offered a three-click process for customers to pay bills directly from their email accounts without requiring manual data entry and re(entry). The company’s technology brings convenience to the billpay process for consumers and helps billers realize lower DSO (days sales outstanding) due to more customers paying their bills faster as well as less collection activity. The platform also supports credit management (notifications and reminders) as well as smart SEPA Direct Debit notifications.
AcceptEmail (now AcceptEasy) CEO Peter Kwakernaak introducing his company to Finovate audiences at FinovateEurope 2011.
The company was acquired by Serrala in February 2020 for an undisclosed amount and announced a rebrand to AcceptEasy. The rebranding was designed to reflect the fact that the company had evolved beyond email to become a bill service provider that enables payments in all digital channels. “The flexibility and architecture of our technology is perfect for all sorts of transactional messaging,” AcceptEasy CEO Peter Kwakernaak explained. “The payment moment is becoming a personalized and interactive contact moment .. (it) is one of the most important steps in the customer journey.” He added, “Our services make it possible for enterprises to provide consumers and small businesses an optimized brand experience and save costs in the process.
London-based regtech Sumsub has partnered with Paris-based money transfer company Tempo.
The partnership will help Tempo enhance its user identity verification operations and reduce fraud in line with French regulations.
Sumsub made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin, Germany.
London-based regtech Sumsub – which stands for Sum & Substance – has teamed up with Paris-based money transfer company Tempo. The partnership will enable the French fintech to leverage Sumsub’s technology to verify user identities and secure customer data in line with KYC and AML regulations. Tempo will benefit from access to a range of KYC services and the partnership already has enabled Tempo to meet AML compliance requirements as established by French regulators.
“We are glad to offer our all-in-one verification platform to global digital payments providers like Tempo, making money transfers more accessible to people worldwide,” Sumsub CEO and co-founder Andrew Sever said. “With Sumsub’s KYC. KYB, transaction monitoring and AML solutions, it’s easier for businesses to expand to international markets and increase their client base while staying fully compliant with regulations and ensuring bulletproof fraud protection.”
Sumsub made its Finovate debut two years ago at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin, Germany. At the conference, the company demoed its KYC/AML Checks and Risk Management Toolkit, which enables businesses to accelerate verification, and lower costs by as much as 6x, as well as detect and eliminate digital fraud. The company offers global coverage of more than 200 markets and combines best-in-class technology with human legal expertise to enable Sumsub to help companies in diverse regulatory regimes.
In a statement, Tempo France CEO Alla Zhedik highlighted the fact that Tempo is licensed by the Bank of France. “This imposes strict compliance obligations,” Zhedik said. “And that is where KYC plays a great role and is also why the joint project with Sumsub is so important for us.” Zhedik added that the partnership not only helped minimize fraud and money laundering risks, but also gives Tempo “access to the most advanced customer data processing solutions.”
With more than 2,000 customers in verticals ranging from fintech and digital assets to transportation and gaming, Sumsub claims to have achieved some of the highest conversion rates in the industry, reaching more than 91% in the U.S., and more than 95% in the U.K. The company said that is is able to verify users in less than 50 seconds on average.
Sumsub’s partnership news comes one month after the company announced that it was joining Brazilian fintech association, ABFintechs. Also in November, Sumsub reported that Markor Technology, provider of B2B and B2C technology solutions for iGaming operators, had selected Sumsub to provide enhanced verification and fraud protection.
Glia and Jack Henry announced a partnership this week that will integrate Glia’s Digital Customer Service into Jack Henry’s Banno digital banking platform.
The integration will enable a wider number of banks and credit unions to interact with their customers via digital channels such as voice and video banking.
Glia and Jack Henry are both Finovate alums. Jack Henry made its Finovate debut in 2010. Glia has won Best of Show at Finovate conferences six times.
A newly announced partnership between a pair Finovate alums will bring some of the latest innovations in digital customer service to more bank and credit union customers. Digital Customer Service specialist Glia announced this week that its technology is now available via Jack Henry’sBanno Digital Platform.
The integration will give financial institutions using the platform the ability to engage customers across all digital channels – from SMS and chat to voice and video banking. Glia’s acquisition of fellow Finovate alum Finn AI in June adds innovative virtual assistance technology to Glia’s offering – technology that will now be available to banks and credit unions on Jack Henry’s platform. The integration was facilitated by the Banno Digital Toolkit, which uses the same set of APIs upon which the Banno Digital Platform is built.
“Glia is making Digital Customer Service accessible to a growing number of banks and credit unions, empowering them with powerful tools to digitalize and transform customer service,” Glia SVP of Alliances Steve Kaish said. “Our integration with Jack Henry accelerates that mission, allowing more institutions to facilitate digital-first engagements within the digital domain.”
A six-time Finovate Best of Show winner, Glia most recently demoed its Digital Customer Service technology at FinovateSpring last year. At the conference, Glia showed how its latest innovation automatically connects customer inbound calls to the customer’s associated online browsing sessions to give customer service representatives context when handling the customer query. This helps improve the quality of the session, making it easy for the representative to collaborate online with the caller via features like co-browsing, screensharing, and one- or two-way video. This, according to Kaish, will help “community institutions create competitive advantage” versus their national and international rivals.
Founded in 2012, Glia is headquartered in New York City. Daniel Michaeli is CEO and co-founder.
With more than 9,000 customers in the U.S., Jack Henry offers banks and credit unions an ecosystem of innovative financial services solutions, as well as the ability to integrate with leading fintechs. Headquartered in Monett, Missouri, and founded in 1976, the company made its Finovate debut in 2010 and has since grown into a major technology and payment services company with $1.7 billion in revenue for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021. Jack Henry is a publicly traded entity on the Nasdaq under the ticker “JKHY,” and has a market capitalization of $13 billion.
A Finovate alum since 2010, Jack Henry & Associates was featured in Computerworld’s “Best Places to Work in IT” list for 2023. This week, the company announced that it was adding automated policy management technology to its Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Suite. David Foss is President and CEO.
One of the more compelling presentations at FinovateFall this year was the keynote address from BOND.AI CEO Uday Akkaraju. Titled “Why the Future of Finance is Beyond Finance, And How to Get There,” Akkaraju’s discussion looked at the wave of digital transformation in financial services and asked “is there a radically smarter path to profitability while staying relevant to customer expectations?”
We pick up on this conversation in today’s extended interview with the BOND.AI CEO. Akkaraju has leveraged his background in interaction design and cognitive science to help make machine intelligence more empathetic and human-oriented. The result is the world’s first Empathy Engine for finance – a technology that helps bridge the gap between consumers struggling to meet their financial needs and banks that are eager to engage these consumers with new technologies that offer greater personalization and effectiveness.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, BOND.AI won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2018. We talked with the company’s CEO about the how the company is helping financial institutions better serve their customers, as well as what to expect from BOND.AI in 2023.
You recently spoke at FinovateFall on Why the Future of Finance is Beyond Finance. Can you tell us a little bit about what you shared with our audience in that keynote?
Uday Akkaraju: It was my pleasure to be asked to speak again at FinovateFall this year. A lot has changed since I spoke last time in 2018! And a lot has changed for the better in terms of banking.
The pandemic spurred investments in technology and digital channels to reach customers—a benefit for the banking and fintech industry. However, we must now utilize opportunities accelerated by the pandemic to create a future of better financial health for everyone.
I wanted to use my keynote speech to highlight the “Empathy Gap” between what customers need and what banks can offer today, especially given the fast-changing economic environment. For me, it’s essential we discuss how fintech can help bridge the communication gap between banks and customers. Banks need to strategically implement discourse analysis tools with measurable KPIs to ensure they don’t return to past mistakes.
That’s where human-centered AI comes in. In this case, AI is our chatbot-powered Empathy Engine that can converse with customers via an app to get a deeper understanding of their needs. Through conversation, banks can grow their revenue using customers’ contextual information. With more customer data, individual banks can meet and even predict an individual’s needs, improving financial health as they tailor their products and services as a result. Of course, conversational data is only a part of it. You still need the bank data – otherwise, you only get half the truth.
BOND.AI won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2018 with a live demo of its Empathy Engine. You’ve also talked about something you call the “Empathy Gap.” For the uninitiated, what does the “empathy gap” mean?
Akkaraju: The Empathy Engine is our main vehicle for closing the gap between customer needs and a bank’s inability to meet those needs, which we’ve labeled the “Empathy Gap.” We quantify this gap between what banks offer and what individuals need to be worth roughly $34.2 trillion. I like to say the only thing that changes faster than technology is consumer expectations. Unfortunately, banks’ inability to keep up with those expectations leaves them with a lot of money left on the table for them and a lot of lost opportunities for consumers.
The Empathy Engine helps banks to better communicate with and service consumers to close this “Empathy Gap.” We use its ability to talk directly to customers and deliver personalized service at scale. This aids banks in seeing a holistic picture of each individual and better meeting their financial needs.
The main point of my presentation, though, was to make it clear it’s not going to be possible for one fintech or financial institution to close that gap alone. That’s why we created The BOND Network, to connect banks, employers, and fintechs and make it a true network—not just a marketplace—to balance the needs of all three stakeholders.
How does BOND.AI’s Empathy Engine flow from this?
Akkaraju: We launched the world’s first Empathy Engine for finance in 2018. It’s designed to bridge what the consumer needs against what the bank can offer to give a holistic view of customers, including their needs, strengths, weaknesses, and potential.
Right now, for customer segmentation, banks only consider financial data, and that information remains too broad. It fails to keep up with fast-changing consumer expectations or recognize an individual’s circumstantial information. Segmentation should consider both financial and non-financial data to be effective and offer a hyper-personalized approach that talks directly to the customer.
The BOND.AI Empathy Engine was developed in response to this insight. Instead of considering massive amounts of data with lots of noise, the engine moves to a small-data approach, where segmentation happens based on actual and observed behavior rather than traditional correlations and predictors.
Who is BOND.AI’s primary market and how do those customers use your technology?
Akkaraju: Our primary market is currently made up of financial institutions to whom we provide a white-label solution for insights, analytics, and customer communication. These are our core customers, and they are also members and contributors to The BOND Network.
We also have employers on the network who provide our mobile app to their employees as a financial benefit. At this point, we have 28 employers bringing about 300,000 employees into the network, which is set to grow next year.
What makes BOND.AI’s technology unique in the way it solves problems for your customers?
Akkaraju: Our Empathy Engine is the first-of-our-kind, human-centered technology focused on increasing the financial health of institutions and individual consumers. It also powers The BOND Network, which nurtures an ecosystem of financial institutions, fintechs, employers, and employees that all benefit. The engine identifies stakeholder needs and connects the dots to fulfill those needs, thus making this a network rather than a marketplace.
This is how our efforts move ‘beyond finance’. We believe to bridge the Empathy Gap it will take collaborative action to understand people as more than just transactional data and talk to them instead to establish their needs and situational context. With AI tools, we can speak directly to customers from the comfort of their own home or on the go with our mobile app. This intimacy builds trust and strengthens the customer’s relationship with their bank, so people feel able to share their problems.
The best part? Insights are there for everyone across the network to see how they can further close the Empathy Gap.
I think some would be surprised to learn that BOND.AI has headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas. What does Little Rock offer a company like BOND.AI?
Akkaraju: There’s a lot we feel Little Rock can offer us, which is why we moved here! We were previously based in New York but chose Little Rock strategically for both the company and our employees. The work-life balance is good here. There’s also barely any commute considering most places can be reached in 20 minutes. That’s ideal for a fast-growing start-up where time is money.
There has been a move away from the coast, but tier-two cities are also getting a little cramped. People are happy to explore other options at this point, and Little Rock is an interesting place where both company and employee dollars stretch further.
There are also a lot of possibilities here for us as a start-up looking to connect with employers and their workers. Walmart’s headquarters is here, and many of its vendors are nearby. You don’t need to move to the city to find talent and opportunity. The next thing we’d like to do is start consciously investing in the local talent we think is out there to really prove that to people.
What can we expect from BOND.AI in 2023?
Akkaraju: In 2023 we’re excited for our app to be going direct-to-consumer via employers and expanding our partnerships for The BOND Network. We’ll be using these acquisitions to grow the company organically. These developments will also aid us in our mission to give the power of data back to the consumer and show banks what types of data they can leverage more effectively.
We want to focus on alternative wealth building, giving more people the tools they need to take control of their finances confidently. Budgeting is good, but it doesn’t fix the bottom line and, in many cases, more support is needed. We want to extend the possibilities of financial inclusion by giving everyone access to the tools used by high-net-worth individuals and sharing guidance on how to use them.
Alumni Alley is the latest addition to our upcoming FinovateEurope conference in March. This new feature is exclusively for FinovateEurope alums, and will give these companies a unique opportunity to share their latest innovations in a special showcase at the event. Learn more about FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley and see if it’s a fit for you!
This week we continue our commemoration of FinovateEurope’s earliest alums with a look at SaaS accounting platform innovator Xero, digital communications provider Striata, and digital identity pioneer miiCard – now DirectID.
Your Cloud Accounting Platform Hero, Xero
Believe it or not, there was once a debate about whether or not accounting technology truly qualified as fintech. Helping make the case were companies like Xero, a Wellington, New Zealand-based startup, founded in 2006, that was bringing its SaaS accounting solution to small businesses and their accountants around the world. When the company made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2011, the five-year old firm had raised $35 million and had 27,000 customers in 50 countries. Today, Xero is a cloud-based accounting powerhouse with more than $680 million in equity capital raised, and more than 3.5 million subscribers to its technology around the world.
Xero’s new CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy
Founded by Rod Drury, who was CEO of Xero until 2018, Xero offers small businesses the tools they need to manage many critical financial operations including accepting payments, billpay, inventory and project tracking, expense claim and invoice management, and more. A partnership with fellow Finovate alum Gusto enables Xero users to calculate pay and deductions, as well as make payroll payments to employees.
Earlier this month, Xero announced that Sukhinder Singh Cassidy had been appointed as the company’s new CEO. Cassidy will take the reins from Steve Vamos, who has served in the position for almost five years. Xero Chair David Thodey praised his new CEO as a “purpose-driven and human-centered leader who is passionate about supporting our customers and is committed to growing and nurturing Xero’s unique and vibrant culture.”
Striata Becomes Tilte: Beyond the Business of eDoc Delivery
The business of edocument delivery has changed significantly over the decade-plus since FinovateEurope 2011. But New York-based customer communications specialist Striata, which made its Finovate debut at our European event that year, has continued to innovate in this space, transforming complex customer communications systems and leveraging multi-factor authentication and encryption key management to ensure both security and compliance.
This helps explain why the company caught the eye of customer communications management (CCM) software and services company Doxim who, in 2020, acquired Striata for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition integrated Striata’s technology into Doxim’s CCM Platform, helping move the solution closer to Doxim’s goal of offering an “integrated SaaS CCM platform” that supports the entire omni-channel customer communications lifecycle.
Striata CEO Michael Wright introducing his company to audiences at FinovateEurope 2011.
“For over 20 years, Striata has been innovating in the CCM space by delivering digital-first solutions across multiple industries, channels, and devices,” Striata CEO Michael Wright said when the acquisition was announced. “As the world evolves into a digital community, a platform approach to scalable and secure yet personalized communications will be critical.”
In October, Striata underwent another transition as the firm’s South Africa team, under the leadership of Wright, launchedTilte.cx. The new venture is an IT services and consulting company that helps businesses enhance customer engagement via solutions ranging from digital communications and chat commerce to customer journey orchestration and data analysis.
Innovations in Digital Identity: from miiCard to DirectID
The FinovateEurope 2011 demo from Edinburgh-based miiCard (now DirectID) helped introduce many fintech observers to the challenges – and opportunities – in the field of trusted online identity.
Founded in 2010, miiCard appeared on the FinovateEurope stage with an identity-as-a-service solution that enabled users to prove that they “were who they said they were” online in minutes. The verification was as authentic as a physical passport or photo ID, establishing identity to level of assurance 3+, as well as meeting both KYC and AML compliance requirements.
Company founder and CEO James Varga introducing miiCard – now DirectID – at FinovateEurope 2011.
Founded by James Varga, who continues to serve as the company’s CEO, miiCard rebranded to The ID Co. in 2016. The move reflected the growth of the company’s B2B DirectID service, which, launched in 2014, provided an “all-in-one” embedded, integrated verification solution that was especially valuable for financial institutions processing high value transactions online.
“Our mission is to create a layer of trust online, a digital world where you can trust that people really are who they say they are,” Varga said when the rebrand was announced. “Our new company name represents who we are, and better reflects our mission to help solve one of the greatest challenges of our time.”
Four years later and the impact of DirectID on the company’s business was so profound that another rebrand was launched, this time naming the company after what had clearly been demonstrated to be the firm’s most accomplished solution. “The market has changed so much, and data has become such an important part of our offering, that this change in focus was required,” Varga explained in a blog post.
Since the latest rebrand, DirectID has forged partnerships with a wide range of companies including authentication company Trust Stamp and credit hire organization AX. More recently, DirectID teamed up with U.K. payments company ShieldPay and secured $3 million in new funding.
