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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Backbase has forged a new partnership with New England-area financial institution, Eastern Bank.
Eastern Bank will leverage Backbase-as-a-Service and Backbase Digital Sales technology to streamline its new account opening process, as well as create and release new financial products and services.
With $24 billion in assets and more than 120 locations, Eastern Bank serves customers in eastern Massachusetts, southern and coastal New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
A new partnership between engagement banking innovator Backbase and Eastern Bank will bring a fully digital account opening experience to the Boston-based financial institution’s customers. Eastern Bank ($24 billion in assets) will deploy both Backbase-as-a-Service and Backbase’s Digital Sales solutions, which will give Eastern the technical infrastructure it needs to create and deliver new products and services faster.
The deployment of Backbase’s Digital Sales solution will enable Eastern Bank to combine Backbase’s out-of-the-box accelerators and integrations with solutions from third-party fintechs to offer their customers personalized digital banking services – as well as remove much of the complexity customers encounter when opening new accounts. Eastern Bank expects to offer Backbase’s Digital Sales capabilities in the first half of this year to new retail customers. The bank’s new commercial and business banking customers can expect a similar offering later in 2022.
“We are thrilled Eastern Bank chose to collaborate with us around this commitment to technology and innovation,” SVP of Americas at Backbase Vincent Bezemer said. “Like us, they are passionate about delivering the best digital experience possible for customers.” Bezemer complimented Eastern Bank’s team as “agile and digitally-focused” as well as having a “human-centered approach” to collecting and incorporating customer feedback to ensure high-quality customer experiences.
Founded in 1818, Eastern Bank offers banking, investment, and insurance products and services for retail consumers and businesses in parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. The bank earned the 2021 Impact Innovation Award for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics by Aite-Novarica Group and was a finalist in the Best Small Business Banking Solution category at the 2021 Finovate Awards.
A multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner, Backbase is one of Finovate’s oldest alums, having made its debut on the Finovate stage in 2009. More recently, the company participated in Finovate’s return to live events last September as part of FinovateFall in New York. At the conference, Backbase demonstrated its complete customer onboarding technology that consolidates customer finances via direct deposit, billpay auto linking, and debit card account opening.
Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Backbase was named “Best in Class” among digital banking platform vendors in Javelin’s 2021 Digital Banking Platform Scorecard. In addition to its partnership with Eastern Bank, Backbase has collaborated in recent months with Wyoming-based Blue Federal Credit Union and St. Louis, Missouri-based, family-owned First Bank.
A week before FinovateEurope’s in-person event begins on March 22nd, our annual Europe-based fintech conference will feature a special Digital Kick Off. This afternoon session on March 15 is accessible from anywhere and 100% virtual. The day will feature a mastermind keynote, a fireside chat, a set of digital demos from fintech innovators, and a power panel on the future of fintech.
Here, we will introduce two of our Digital Kick Off speakers – Zennon Kapron, founder and director, Kapronasia; and Malin Lignell, VP of Digitalization & Innovation, Handelsbanken. For more information on FinovateEurope, including both the Digital Kick Off on March 15 and the in-person event on March 22 and 23, visit our FinovateEurope hub.
Zennon Kapron
Founder and Director of Kapronasia, Zennon Kapron will lead a Mastermind Keynote on our Digital Kick Off day titled The Trends & Opportunities Shaping Fintech in Asia. Kapronasia provides research and consulting services with a focus on financial and blockchain technology.
Previous to Kapronasia, Kapron was Intel’s Global Banking Industry Manager and, before that, CIO for Citigroup Portugal. He has extensive experience with fintech and Asia, currently serving as an instructor in fintech at the Singapore Management University, an ambassador with the Emerging Payments Association of Asia, and founder and director of China Fintech, which works with startups, financial institutions, and investors to build an ecosystem that develops innovative solutions for China’s financial industry.
Kapron is also the author of Chomping at the Bitcoin: The History and Future of Bitcoin in China. He earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Syracuse and an MBA from INSEAD.
Malin Lignell
Vice President of Digitalization & Innovation with Sweden’s Handelsbanken, Lignell will provide a Fireside Chat as part of our Digital Kick Off event on March 15th. A 20+ year veteran of the Swedish bank – the oldest company on the Swedish stock exchange – Lignell has served in leadership roles, including as Deputy Branch Manager, for more than half of her tenure at Handelsbanken. She joined the Digitalization and Innovation team at the bank in the fall of 2019, where she works at both the strategic and operational level to help drive the institution toward greater innovation as it pursues its digitization objectives.
With a special focus on the way that emerging technologies shape and change customer behavior and business models, Lignell has spoken frequently on the challenges that financial institutions face as they undertake digitization. She has noted that while behavioral changes are often the most difficult component of technological transformation, often the forces that help propel change (for example, the global pandemic) nevertheless serve as a powerful and effective incentives to solve new problems in new and creative ways.
Lignell is an alum of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where she received a diploma in Accounting and Finance. She also earned a Master of Science in International Business Studies and Economics from Ekonomihögskolan i Växjö, and a degree in Business Administration and Economics from The University of Graz.
Leading market data API company Xignite launched its cryptocurrency API, XigniteCrypto API, this week.
The new offering helps wealth managers and brokers serve clients interested in trading or investing in digital assets.
The XigniteCrypto API provides real-time and historical data on more than 900 different cryptocurrencies.
Market data API provider Xignite has launched a new solution to help its broker and wealth management customers take advantage of the cryptocurrency revolution. This week, the San Mateo, California-based fintech introduced the XigniteCrypto API, the first API of its kind to combine the large and growing universe of cryptocurrency information with the stock, exchange-traded fund (ETF), and options data that brokers and wealth managers rely upon to serve their clients.
Xignite CEO and founder Stephane Dubois highlighted the challenge of working with cryptocurrencies for the average broker or wealth manager. “Cryptocurrencies tend to operate in their own world,” he explained. “This means that if you want to offer integrated equity, option, and crypto trading or analytics for your clients, you are going to have to cobble up a lot of heterogeneous data from many disparate sources, and that’s a pain.”
The new cryptocurrency API provides real-time and historical quotes for more than 900 different cryptocurrencies, including coins and tokens. The solution features unique API endpoints to help brokers and wealth managers engage digital traders and investors, and provides data and tools such as price alerts, historical charting, currency conversion, and news to help customers make sound trading and investing decisions using cryptocurrencies.
“With our new crypto API, you get the depth of coverage, the quality, and the reliability across all asset classes you need to grow your business – all in one integrated solution,” Dubois said.
A market data innovator for nearly two decades, Xignite launched the first commercial REST API and has since grown into one of the leading providers of market data API solutions to brokers, wealth managers, and fintechs. Today, the company’s APIs are used by 700+ companies more than 500 billion times a month to serve their digital investing clients. A Finovate alum since 2014, Xignite has raised more than $37 million in funding from investors including StarVest Partners and Japan-based QUICK.
As part of our commemoration of African American History Month, our Alumni Profile feature for this week showcases two African Americans who represented their companies at Finovate events in 2021.
Nathan Gibbons
Nathan Gibbons is Chief Operating Officer of Innovation Finance USA, the company behind QuickFi, a fully digital mobile, self-service business equipment financing platform. QuickFi made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia during the summer of 2021 and returned to the Finovate stage later that year for FinovateFall.
“Businesses acquire new equipment as they grow, and most equipment is financed by banks or manufacturer finance companies through leases and loans, similar to the way that automobiles are financed by consumers,” Gibbons explained at the beginning of QuickFi’s demo last year. “In fact, roughly a trillion dollars of business equipment is financed each year in the U.S.”
“Unfortunately, the equipment financing process is lengthy, opaque, and takes days or weeks to complete. And this is a real problem. Because there are literally millions of businesses whose growth and success is stifled by a slow, antiquated, equipment financing process.”
Previous to joining Innovation Finance, Gibbons was an executive with First American Equipment Finance, serving as Vice President for five years and as Project Manager for six. Educated at the University of Rochester, where he earned a B.A. in Spanish, Gibbons received his MBA from the University’s Simon Business School. He is both a Certified Lease and Finance Professional (CLFP) and a Certified DISC Behavioral Analyst. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association and the CLFP Foundation.
Headquartered in Fairport, New York, and founded in 2018, QuickFi has partnered with companies like Johnson Controls, SANY America, and Juniper Networks. The company was recognized last November by the 2021 Asset Finance Connect UK Conference and Awards by Asset Finance International. The following month, QuickFi was named a 2021 Pan Finance Award winner in the Innovative Commercial Financial Platform, USA category.
Anthony Heckman
Anthony Heckman is Head of Business Development and Growth for and founding member of unitQ, a product quality monitoring platform that enables fintechs and other companies to pursue a data-driven approach to product quality and enhancement. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in New York last September.
“We’ve built a world-class, machine learning platform. And today, I’m going to show you how we help some of the best companies in the world – companies like Chime, BRD, Truebill, and Pinterest — fix the right quality issues faster,” Heckman said last year at FinovateFall. “And by doing so, (we help them) improve product quality, (and) important metrics like retention and app store ratings. We’re cutting ‘time to fix’ for some of the best engineering organizations in the world so they can win in hyper-competitive markets like fintech.”
A graduate of the University of Southern California, where he received his Bachelors degree, Heckman earned his JD from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He is mentor with Defy of Northern California, an organization that helps current and formerly incarcerated men, women, and youth develop the skills they need to pursue legal business opportunities and careers. Heckman is also a board member of Safe & Sound, an organization that works to prevent child abuse.
Based in Burlingame, California and founded in 2017, unitQ raised $30 million in Series B funding last fall in a round led by Accel. With partners including Chime, HelloFresh, NerdWallet and, most recently, PagerDuty, unitQ gives product managers a single, platform with which to observe and benchmark user feedback and product quality signals. Earlier this month, the company unveiled its February 2022 unitQ Scorecard of the highest-ranking apps with the best product quality across a range of different industries.
Marqeta and Plaid have teamed up to simplify and streamline the ACH transfer process to enable faster funding of financial accounts.
The collaboration is designed to provide both seamless account funding as well as additional security during data transfer.
Both Marqeta and Plaid made their Finovate debuts as part of Finovate’s developer conference series, FinDEVr.
A partnership between a pair of Finovate alums – card-issuing platform Marqeta and financial data network Plaid – will simplify ACH transfers to make it easier for customers to authenticate and fund their accounts.
Per the agreement, Marqeta customer cardholders will be able to transfer money seamlessly between customers and external accounts, as well as verify and link to external accounts faster. The company’s customers also will be able to keep cardholders informed on the status of fund transfers via real-time notifications, and better manage issues ranging from initiations to cancellations to return. Enhanced security is another benefit of the partnership. Marqeta customers no longer will need to store sensitive information from cardholders’ external bank accounts – relying instead on tokens while Plaid and Marqeta exchange necessary bank account information in the background.
“We’re making it as simple as possible for consumers to access their bank information from one application, and reduce the time it takes to fund and begin using their account,” Marqeta Chief Operating Officer Vidya Peters explained. “Through our Plaid integration, developers building on Marqeta can authenticate users’ bank accounts without the complexity and extra time associated with traditional ACH processing, creating an overall more seamless experience.”
Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Oakland, California, Marqeta is an alum of our developers conference FinDEVr Silicon Valley. The company’s card issuing platform provides businesses with the infrastructure, technology, and tools to build and manage their own payment programs. Last month, Marqeta announced that it has secured certification to operate in three countries in Southeast Asia – Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines – which means the company’s platform is now enabled in 39 countries around the world. Marqeta announced that, with its further expansion into the Asia Pacific (the company is also active in Australia and New Zealand), it will establish an Asia Pacific regional hub in Singapore later this year.
Also a veteran of our developers conference, Plaid began 2022 with the launch of its data privacy solution, Plaid Portal. The new privacy tool is designed for customers who have used Plaid to connect their financial accounts to apps and services in the U.S. Plaid Portal allows account holders to see which apps have accessed their financial data and to control where the data is shared. The company calls the new offering “one of many tools” under development to give customers both greater visibility into and control over how their data is shared. Ideally, this additional transparency will help allay data privacy concerns and provide users with greater confidence when it comes to taking advantage of increasingly open nature of the modern digital financial ecosystem.
Core banking technology innovator Thought Machine has signed a partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank by total assets.
As part of the partnership, the bank has invested $54 million (£40 million) in the U.K.-based fintech.
The partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo is the third bank partnership Thought Machine has secured this year.
U.K. based core banking technology company Thought Machine inked its third bank partnership of 2022 this week, teaming up with Italian Bank Intesa Sanpaolo. The collaboration will bring Thought Machine’s core banking engine, Vault, to the Italian financial institution, who will use the technology to power its new digital banking platform Isybank. The new platform will be geared initially toward the bank’s four million mass-market customers in Italy. Beyond that, Intesa Sanpaolo plans to further deploy Thought Machine’s core banking technology into its infrastructure more broadly, swapping out mainframe-based core technology in favor of the cloud.
Pointing to the digital preferences of its younger clientele, Intesa Sanpaolo CEO Carlo Messina said, “this new digital bank will evolve our retail business from incumbent to fintech challenger in the mass market, with the option to expand internationally.”
In addition to the technology partnership, Intesa Sanpaolo announced that it would invest $54 million (£40 million) in the U.K.-based bank technology firm. The funding takes Thought Machine’s total capital to more than $402 million.
“We chose Thought Machine as our partner due to its international standing as a fintech innovator,” Messina added. “We believe so strongly that Thought Machine is the right partners for this transformation that we are also announcing our investment in the company to be a part of its growth story.”
With 13.5 million customers in Italy and 7.1 million customers around the world, Intesa Sanpaolo and its subsidiaries are active in 12 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in Egypt. The bank is the largest in Italy by total assets and one of the 30 biggest banks in the world.
A Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateEurope in 2018, Thought Machine has sealed partnerships with three banks so far in 2022, including Intesa Sanpaolo. Thought Machine began the year announcing that Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia (ARBM) would leverage its technology to build an Islamic digital bank later this year. ARBM is a subsidiary of Al Rajhi Bank of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest Islamic bank by assets. The deployment of Thought Machine’s Vault is part of a multi-year digital transformation project begun last year by ARBM. The bank has credited Vault’s product building functionality for enabling it to create a full suite of Shariah-compliant banking products.
Also this year, Thought Machine announced that U.S. mutual savings bank Mascoma Bank will deploy Vault and migrate its customers to the new technology. A certified B corporation serving customers in the New England states of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, Mascoma Bank will use Vault to both innovate and add new solutions to its product line, as well as provide the institution with a single source of record by housing all of its data in a single location to more easily understand and serve its customers.
“We believe that modern technology is the key to unlocking superior customer service,” Mascoma Bank president and CEO Clay Adams said. “We are proud at Mascoma Bank to be different by design – we are adopting Thought Machine’s modern technology to deliver on our mission of better serving our customers and communities, to offer new products and be a leader in community banking.”
Tonik, a digital neobank based in the Philippines, has secured $131 million in a Series B round that will help the institution expand in the Philippines, as well as throughout Asia. The investment was led by Mizuho Bank of Japan, and gives the company $175 million in total funding.
Also participating in this week’s Series B funding round were Prosus Ventures, Sixteenth Street Capital, Nuri Group, and individual investor Rahul Mehta, co-founder of DST Partners. Valuation estimates were not immediately available.
Launched in the Philippines in the spring of 2021, Tonik has been one of of the fastest growing new banks, topping $100 million in consumer deposits in its first eight months of operation. The neobank has partnered with Finovate alums Finastrafor its cloud-based core banking proposition, NICE Actimizefor its AML technology, and Daonfor its biometric authentication solutions. In the Philippines, where more than 70% of the population is unbanked, Tonik sees a $140 billion retail deposit market and an unsecured lending opportunity of $100 billion.
“The partnership with Mizuho will provide Tonik with enhanced access to the international wholesale funding markets and world-class managerial talent, as well as serve as a fantastic platform for our future international expansion,” Krasnov said.
Tonik offers a variety of retail financial products, including deposits, loans, current accounts, payments, and cards. The first licensed, digital-only bank in Southeast Asia, Tonik began this year with a partnership with Google Cloud. The neobank will leverage Google Cloud’s platform as part of its strategic to boost financial inclusion and open banking in the Philippines.
EBANX Emerges from its First Decade
Last month we highlighted Latin American payments company EBANX and its expanded operations in Mexico. This month, we congratulate the Brazil-based fintech on its 10-year anniversary.
“In these 10 years, we have been able to witness important transformations in the digital market, in the payments industry, and in innovation ecosystems around the world,” EBANX co-founder and CEO João Del Valle said in a statement. “We are pleased to have actively participated in these movements in Brazil and Latin America, using cutting-edge technology and local knowledge.”
With nearly a billion total payments processed and offices in ten countries, EBANX notched more than 110 percent in processed volume last year. Also in 2021, EBANX launched its EBANX One payments platform that unites all of its payment solutions via a single integration, acquired a pair of Brazilian fintechs Juno and Remessa Online, and raised $430 million in Series B funding. Already in 2022, EBANX has opened new offices in Mexico City and appointed former Google VP Paula Bellizia as its new president of Global Payments.
“Today is the day to celebrate all the achievements so far,” Del Valle said, “but, above all, to outline the new challenges ahead, always with the clear mission of creating more access between people and companies from all over the world.”
FinovateEurope 2022 is just one month away. If you are an innovative fintech company with new technology to show, then there’s no better time than now and no better forum than FinovateEurope. To learn more about how to demo your latest innovation at FinovateEurope 2022 in London, March 22-23, visit our FinovateEurope hub today!
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Spreedly announced an integration that will expand the number of local payment methods available via Stripe.
Among the supported payment methods are IDEAL, Bancontact, Giropay, EPS, Alipay, Afterpay / Clearpay, Sofort, and Przelewy24, as well as Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Spreedly’s announcement comes in the wake of strong transaction volume growth from its operations in Latin America.
Payments orchestration platform Spreedly and payments processor Stripe have expanded their partnership to enable access to more local payment options. As part of the announcement, Spreedly underscored that its customers will have access to Stripe’s fraud fighting solution, Radar, as well.
“This latest integration allows joint Stripe and Spreedly customers to offer their customers a variety of payment methods and provides access to Radar, helping to manage the fraud risks associated with accepting payments online,” Spreedly Senior Director of Product Andy McHale explained.
By offering customers a broader range of local payment alternatives, merchants are able to reach more customers, bring down transaction costs, and boost conversion rates. Payment orchestration, such as that available from Spreedly, helps provide this flexibility, giving merchants and merchant aggregators the option of not only transacting with a wider variety of gateways and payment services, but also enabling them to test and experiment to find out which services work best for their customers.
First announced in November, access to Stripe’s Radar feature gives Spreedly customers the ability to bring machine learning to bear to detect and block fraud. Radar leverages data across millions of international companies processing billions of payments a year to assign risk scores and block high-risk payments. McHale noted that while many merchants and platforms do integrate fraud fighting solutions, working with companies like Spreedly can provide significant advantages.
“(Integrating) fraud tools and payment gateways via a Payment Orchestration Platform simplifies system complexity by reducing the number of direct vendor integrations and orchestrating them to work together,” McHale said.
Charitable giving app Daffy has received $17.1 million in funding.
Daffy was co-founded by CEO Adam Nash, former president and CEO of Wealthfront.
In the U.S., individuals gave more than $324 billion to charitable organizations in 2020.
Aside, the company behind charitable giving app Daffy, has secured $17.1 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Ribbit Capital and featured participation from XYZ Capital and Coinbase Ventures, along with more than 50 angel investors including Amy Chang and John Lilly. The company will use the funds to help scale Daffy and bring additional product innovations to market to help encourage more people to participate in charitable giving.
“People want to be generous and help those less fortunate than themselves, but we are all busy and life gets in the way,” explained Daffy CEO and co-founder Adam Nash. “My co-founder Alejandro and I believe that all of the innovations that have helped us shop, save, and plan, Daffy can also use to help people make giving a habit.”
Americans are often credited for being among the most generous charitable givers in the world. One study by Giving USA revealed that individuals in the U.S. gave more than $324 billion to charities in 2020. That said, Nash believes there remains a “Generosity Gap” between what Americans give to charities and what they would give if the process were easier. The company cites a study by the Stockholm School of Economics that suggested that something as simple as pre-commitment – agreeing in advance to make a charitable contribution – can boost an individual’s contribution amount by as much as 32%.
To this point, Daffy works by encouraging users to provide a charitable giving goal for the year and asking them to take the “Daffy Pledge” to set aside money on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis to reach that goal. As the funds accumulate, Daffy invests the money in one of nine portfolios – rather than having the money sit in low-to-zero interest-bearing cash accounts. When the goal is reached, user can access the funds to make their tax-deductible donation to one of more than 1.5 million U.S. charities available via the Daffy platform. The company said that 40% of its users take advantage of the “Daffy Pledge” option for regular contributions.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Daffy takes its name from the acronym DAF, which stands for donor-advised fund. These funds are tax-deductible accounts specifically designed for charitable giving. Assets from cash to stock to cryptocurrencies can be placed in a DAF and donors can take immediate tax deductions on those contributions.
“Daffy takes many of the amazing innovations we’ve seen in fintech to a large new space, charitable giving,” Ribbit Capital Managing Partner Micky Malka said. “Within seconds, you can donate to your favorite causes and charities from anywhere. By building a seamless and habit–forming giving experience, Daffy is not only creating a better way to give, but a better way to live.”
As part of Finovate’s continued commemoration of Black History Month, we’re showcasing some of the African American fintech and financial services influencers and leaders who are driving innovation and inclusion in our industry.
If you’ve ever lamented the lack of African Americans in the typical fintech influencer lists issued year after year, then hopefully this sampler of African American fintech entrepreneurs, technologists, and founders will help bring a little more color to the face of fintech.
Harry Alford III
Alford (LinkedIn) is Head of Institutional Sales at Coinbase Cloud where he is focused on sales and business development via partnerships and collaborations with financial institutions, businesses, and fintech startups. He is also co-founder of Humble Ventures, a Washington, D.C.-based venture development firm that supports and invests in founders and organizations that build solutions for diverse communities.
Jacqueline M. Baker
Baker (LinkedIn) is Vice President of Startup Programming at the AARP Innovation Labs where she leads a team dedicated to identifying promising startups via pitch competitions and accelerators. An expert in modern etiquette, leadership, and disruptive innovation, Baker is also founder and principal consultant at Scarlet Communications, an Upper Marlboro, Maryland-based firm that offers modern leadership guidance, professional training and coaching.
Marla Blow
Blow (LinkedIn) is President and Chief Operating Officer of the Skoll Foundation, an organization that invests in, networks, and champions social entrepreneurs and social innovators. In her role at Skoll, Blow leads the firm’s program, grants, investments, and financial management, including its operations, endowments and portfolio partnerships. She is also a member of the board of directors for Square Financial Services.
Asya Bradley
Bradley (LinkedIn) is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at First Boulevard, a neobank and fully inclusive financial services company dedicated to helping Black Americans build generational wealth. Also the founder of #HowSheWorks, an inclusive grassroots community of founders and allies from underrepresented communities, Bradley has previously worked as SVP of Revenue at banking-as-a-service innovator SilaMoney, and as VP of Partnerships at identity verification specialist – and Finovate alum – Socure.
Chris Brummer
Brummer (LinkedIn) is a professor and faculty director at the Institute of International Economic Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has lectured frequently on topics ranging from financial inclusion and equity to financial regulation and global governance. A member of the board of directors of Fannie Mae and the co-founder of the Fintech Beat Podcast, Brummer is author of a number of books including Fintech Law in a Nutshell and Cryptoassets: Legal, Regulatory, and Monetary Perspectives.
Thasunda Brown Duckett
Duckett (LinkedIn) is President and CEO of TIAA, a Fortune 100 financial services company that provides investing, retirement, and banking advice to academic, medical, non-profit and public sector professionals. Duckett has an extensive background in financial services, including executive tenures at JP Morgan Chase and Fannie Mae. She is a member of the board of directors at a number of organizations including NIKE, and the Economic Club of New York, as well as being part of the Dean’s Advisory Board for the Baylor University Hankamer School of Business.
Roger W. Ferguson, Jr.
Ferguson J. (LinkedIn) is the former President and CEO of retirement services company TIAA. He was previously Head of Financial Services at Swiss Re and a member of the company’s Executive Committee. He also served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors with the Federal Reserve from 1999 to 2006. A Harvard University graduate, earning a B.A. in Economics, a J.D., and a PhD in Economics from the institution, Ferguson Jr. also spent 13 years as an associate and partner with McKinsey & Company.
Jon Fortt
Fortt (LinkedIn) is Co-Anchor of CNBC’s TechCheck (previously Squawk Alley) where he specializes in the intersection of technology, finance, and innovation. Formerly a senior writer with Fortune, Fortt is an author, designer, and publisher of an educational course called The Black Experience in America that draws on diverse sources ranging from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison.
Donald Hawkins
Hawkins (LinkedIn) is co-founder and CEO of First Boulevard, the “unapologetically Black, digitally native bank” designed to help African Americans build generational wealth. An ICBA Bankers’ Choice 2020 recipient, Hawkins is a serial entrepreneur who, before launching First Boulevard, founded Griffin Technologies, a Kansas City, Missouri-based firm that helps community banks and credit unions improve customer engagement, boost sales, and compete with larger financial institutions.
Netta Jenkins
Jenkins (LinkedIn) is Vice President of Global Inclusion at Unqork, a no-code application platform that helps businesses build complex, customized software solutions faster while keeping costs low. Recognized by Forbes as one of the top seven anti-racism educators in the world, Jenkins is also co-founder of Dipper, a digital safe-space and community for professionals of color to share their experiences in the workplace.
Rodney Williams
Williams (LinkedIn) is co-founder and Chairman of SoLo Funds, a fintech that serves underrepresented communities in the U.S. by providing an alternative lending option that emphasizes equity and empowerment. Williams also co-founded ultrasonic data platform LISNR, a technology company that provides secure person-present authentication. A Henry Crown Fellow at The Aspen Institute and a Techstars Mentor, Williams received his MBA in Finance and Supply Chain Management from Howard University in Washington, D.C. Find out more about Williams and SoLo Funds in our interview from earlier this month.
Teri Williams
Williams (LinkedIn) is President and Chief Operating Officer at OneUnited Bank, the largest Black-owned bank in the U.S. She is responsible for both implementing the bank’s strategic initiatives as well as managing the day-to-day operations of the institution. She has led OneUnited Bank in its consolidation of four local banks into a cohesive, national brand that provides affordable financial services for all while supporting economic development and wealth building in urban communities. An executive with OneUnited Bank for more than 26 years, Williams was previously a Vice President at American Express.
Dana L. Wilson
Wilson (LinkedIn) is a professional speaker and consultant who helps financial services firms create inclusive workspaces. She is also founder and CEO of CHIP (Changing How Individuals Prosper), a B2B2C marketplace for companies seeking Black and Latino financial professionals. A Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Award Winner and self-described “FinServ Techie”, Wilson is also the host of The Included Series Podcast, a program that features people of color sharing their personal financial journeys.
“Crypto is here to stay and Betterment wants to live our promise of long-term diversification and to provide our customers with the best variety of assets in the marketplace,” Betterment CEO Sarah Levy explained. Levy praised the Makara acquisition as a unique opportunity to bring Betterment customers managed cryptocurrency portfolios “combined with the guidance and ease-of-use that have defined Betterment.”
Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Makara was founded in 2021 by Jesse Proudman and Sadie Raney. The company is the first crypto-based roboadvisor to be registered with the SEC, and offers investment exposure to the cryptocurrency market that is both automated and personalized to the investor’s goals and preferences. Makara investors can select cryptocurrencies organized into thematic baskets – Bitcoin, Blue Chip, Decentralized Finance, Ethereum, Inflation Hedge, Metaverse, Universe, and Web 3.0 – that cover the wide (and growing) range of digital asset offerings.
Betterment leverages passive index-tracking and fixed income ETFs to offer goal-based investing strategies via both taxable and tax-advantaged accounts such traditional and Roth IRAs. The addition of Makara will enable the New York-based investment platform to give investors the ability to diversify their accounts without having to worry about selecting individual digital assets. The acquisition will also make it easier for Betterment’s financial advisor customers to offer cryptocurrency exposure to their clients without those advisors having to be experts in the digital asset arena.
The acquisition is expected to close later in Q1 of 2022. Makara’s team of experts and engineers will join the Betterment team at that point.
“We developed Makara to bring an easy and accessible long-term investing approach to cryptocurrencies,” Makara co-founder and CEO Jesse Proudman said. “Combining our crypto expertise with Betterment’s scale will accelerate the growth of the platform with both retail investors and financial advisors.”
Betterment made its Finovate debut in 2010, winning Best of Show for its online savings and investment platform. In the years since, the company has grown into one of the world’s leading digital investment advisors, with more than 700,000 customers and more than $33 billion in assets under management. Last fall, the company announced raising $160 million in funding – including a $60 million in Series F equity investment – earning the New York-based firm a valuation of $1.3 billion.
Another year begins – and so does the latest round of podcasts hosted by one of fintech’s favorite conversationalists, Finovate VP Greg Palmer!
In his most recent discussions on the Finovate Podcast, Palmer has talked about the challenge of inclusivity when it comes to lending in financial services, as well as the hurdles innovative companies face when trying to turn inspiration into reality and promise into winning, marketable products that delight and engage customers. And with the new year just getting underway, the Finovate Podcast also took stock of some of the major trends in fintech in 2021 with an eye toward seeing how they will be resolved here in 2022.
Host Greg Palmer talks with Pinwheel co-founder and CEO Kurt Lin about the problem of inaccessibility and credit invisibility in our financial system and what Pinwheel is doing to innovate in the lending space. Episode 118.
“What we do at Pinwheel is pretty straightforward: we look at all the different income sources that exist – whether it be payroll systems, gig platforms, or future of work platforms like Etsy or ebay – and we combine it into a platform and make it really easy for anyone to connect their income account or their payroll account to any app for the purpose of sharing that data or to do things like update direct deposits.”
Steven Ramirez, CEO, Beyond the Arc
Host Greg Palmer sits down with Beyond the Arc CEO Steven Ramirez to discuss predictions for 2022, cryptocurrencies, fintech super apps, the Buy Now Pay Later revolution, and more. Episode 117.
“There is huge hype and excitement about crypto which is, of course, leading to greater adoption. More people are finding on-ramps to crypto and some of them are super simple. If you look at Coinbase or Paypal, they really could not make it any easier to acquire your first cryptocurrencies. However, there is a lot behind that initial purchase about how you actually use cryptocurrency and some real sticking points that I think are going to be nasty surprises for consumers.”
Alex Castro, CEO, M Corp
Host Greg Palmer and Alex Castro, CEO of M Corp and author of Measure, Execute, Win, investigate the challenge of navigating the “execution gap” by strategically examining the space between strategy and results. Episode 116.
“We’ve seen over the last 10 years a great surge in innovation and ideas that can really help grow industries and companies. All too often those ideas fall to the wayside during the execution process, and that gap between idea or strategy and execution still remains the largest roadblock for these great ideas to get to market. We’ve analyzed that issue and we have some very deliberate methods and products to help resolve that gap so that more ideas can be more successful.”
