Author: Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz)

Flybits Raises $6.5 Million to Help Banks Put Data to Work

Flybits Raises $6.5 Million to Help Banks Put Data to Work
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Flybits, Funding

Consumer data contextualization company Flybits pulled in $6.5 million this week, bringing the Toronto-based company’s total funds to $14 million.

The Series B funding was led by Information Venture Partners. New investor Portag3 Ventures LP also participated along with existing investors Robert Bosch Venture and Trellis Capital. As a part of the agreement, Information Venture Partners’ co-founders Robert Antoniades and David Unsworth will join Flybits’ board of directors.

“This funding will allow us to ramp up our sales efforts in the United States and Europe, reinforce our existing global presence and expand our product and engineering teams to strengthen Flybits’ unique machine learning capabilities,” said Dr. Hossein Rahnama, Founder and CEO of Flybits. “Our product focus now is simplifying how our customers leverage their data ecosystem and drive customer engagement.”

Jordanne Pavao, Product Manager (left) and  Hossein Rahnama, CEO & Founder (right) demo Flybits Experience Studio at FinovateSpring 2017

Founded in 2013, Flybits helps banks convert big data into business intelligence to offer consumers personalized experiences, promotions, and product recommendations. Earlier this year, the company debuted its Flybits Experience Studio at FinovateSpring 2017. The Experience Studio helps banks create and deliver personalized, digital experiences for their clients at scale. This helps banks waste fewer resources on IT complexities such as machine learning, semantic processing, and data contextualization and instead focus on delivering an exceptional user experience.

Rahnama was recently named to Forbes’ Top 40 under 40 for 2017. In 2016, the company earned recognition as a cool vendor in Gartner’s Platform-as-a-Service report and in 2015 received Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 Canada award as a “Company to Watch.” With offices in Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area, London, and Singapore, Flybits not only serves the financial services industry, but also travel and hospitality, retail, and events.

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Urban FT Acquires iParse

Urban FT Acquires iParse
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Urban FT

B2B digital banking platform Urban FT acquired Oregon-based iParse today. Urban FT plans to leverage iParse’s technology and its mobile banking-related patents.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Operations will continue as usual for iParse, which will function as a separate division from Urban FT. All staff (except for the founders, who are retiring) will continue as employees of Urban FT’s new unit. The company’s CEO, Richard Steggall, is calling the new deployment a “mobile banking plug-in solution” because it empowers financial institutions of any size to compete in the mobile banking space by plugging directly into their core, simulating integration. Urban FT estimates the mobile plug-in option will be available to clients within the next couple of months.

In the press release, Steggall said:

“The iParse tech strategically complements Urban FT’s suite of white-label mobile banking solutions by providing a proprietary way to bypass core processor integration, while delivering a robust mobile banking service for financial institutions to offer to their customers…. now credit unions and banks of any size can play—and play competitively—in the mobile banking space.”

Founded in 2013, Urban FT expects the number of bank clients it serves to double to more than 150 within the next year. Kasey Kaplan, Urban FT President said, “On the bank side, we size the market at approximately 12,500 potential targets, and we know that almost 42 percent of credit unions have yet to launch any form of mobile banking.”

At FinovateFall 2016, Urban FT debuted the Workshop, a real-time mobile app management platform that enables banks to quickly configure, brand, and launch mobile banking apps without coding. The company has 40 employees and, in addition to financial institutions, also serves clients in telecommunications, insurance, and travel. Among the New York-based company’s partners are Sprint, Boost Mobile, Yelp, Banc of California, and Sunrise Banks.

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Blend Launches Native Mobile App

Blend Launches Native Mobile App
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Blend

Blend, a startup that helps lenders make better mortgage lending decisions, announced a native mobile app last week. The San Francisco-based company’s launch of Blend Mobile aims empower loan officers to manage borrower requests and applications on their mobile device in order to facilitate communication between the two parties.

Founded in 2012, Blend has 30 clients and has raised $60 million. The company’s lender-facing system offers a digital, paperless mortgage application process. The customizable interface is designed to reduce friction in borrower interactions and aims to help loan originators close up to seven to ten days faster.

With Blend’s new native app, lenders can cater to borrowers by enabling them to complete a mortgage application when and where they prefer, with the ability to switch among channels. The app also leverages push notifications and alerts to facilitate communication between the two parties. For example, the app notifies lenders if they have a period of inactivity greater than 48 hours in order to decrease the time to close. The new app is available to all current and new Blend clients.

Blend demoed its data-driven mortgage at FinovateSpring 2016. The company was recently named to CB Insights’ Fintech 2015 list. Earlier this year, we highlighted Blend’s role in growing the mortgagetech scene and interviewed CEO Nima Ghamsari in a feature on Blend last year.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: banqUP, Blend, Expensify, Flywire, Revolut

On Finovate.com

Around the web

  • BanqUP announces alpha roll-out alpha of SME fintech bank.
  • Flywire announces record results in payments processed and institutions and students served in the past year.
  • Expensify ships 5 new travel integrations.
  • Revolut’s new feature allows users to generate their own IBAN for Euro transactions.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Summit View: Demands of Different Digital Market Segments

Summit View: Demands of Different Digital Market Segments
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2017 Summit Series

Our expanded FinovateFall conference is coming up on September 11 through 14, and we’re taking a look at each of the six summit discussions that will take place after the demos. Today, we’re examining digital markets.

Summit #5: Digital Markets

Know your customer is an important regulation to abide by. But it is also a key marketing principle. Because every market is different, the only way to successfully up-sell and cross-sell products and services is to know and understand how tastes and preferences can vary in different markets.

Here’s an examination of four major digital markets. Each section outlines the group’s preferred channels, thought principles, and a set of services generally important to that group.

Underbanked

  • Preferred channel: Mobile only
  • Key principles
    • Liquidity
    • Real-time money movement
    • Simple and transparent communication
  • Services needed
    • Prepaid
    • Check cashing
    • Credit building and education
    • Basic budgeting
    • Billpay
  • Company examples
    • Urban FT (pictured right)
    • PayNearMe
    • Refundo
    • Mobino
    • LendUp
    • Wipit

Youth

  • Preferred channel: Mobile first
  • Key principles
    • Fun
    • Simple and transparent language
    • Gamification and interactivity
  • Services needed
    • Financial education
    • Savings
    • Parent-loaded prepaid card
  • Company examples
    • FamZoo (pictured)
    • Oink (f.k.a. Virtual Piggy)
    • PlayMoolah
    • DoughMain
    • OnDot

Millennials

  • Preferred channel: Mix of mobile and web
  • Key principles:
    • Limited use of credit
    • Simple UI/UX
    • Easy access to move and spend money
  • Services needed:
    • Retirement saving and advice tools
    • Saving and budgeting tools
    • Debt repayment tools
    • P2P payment service
    • Billpay
    • Auto and home loans
  • Company examples
    • Moven
    • Qapital (pictured)
    • Tuition.io
    • Student Loan Genius
    • Roostify
    • FutureAdvisor (owned by Blackrock)
    • Acorns
    • AutoGravity

Seniors

  • Preferred channel: Mix of web and branch
  • Key principles:
    • Account security
    • Liquidity
    • Earned interest
    • Tax mitigation
  • Services needed:
    • Fixed income budgeting
    • Investing tools
    • Wealth management and advisory services
    • Estate planning
    • Tax planning and mitigation
    • Fraud protection
  • Company examples
    • TrueLink (pictured)
    • AARP
    • EverSafe
    • WiseBanyan

The upcoming Digital Markets Summit at FinovateFall will offer a day of discussions from industry thought leaders, top fintechs, and banks. Be a part of these live panel discussions at FinovateFall; register and save your spot at the show. A few summit highlights include:

  • Underbanked and financial inclusion
  • Youth (age 7-18) and their parents
  • Millennials
  • Seniors
  • Financial management in the gig economy

This is the fifth of our six FinovateFall Summit series. Stay tuned next week, when we’ll cover future technologies.

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Ephesoft Earns $15 Million Investment from Mercato Partners

Ephesoft Earns $15 Million Investment from Mercato Partners
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Ephesoft, Funding

Document capture and data analytics company Ephesoft landed $15 million in Series A funding from Mercato Partners. This marks the company’s first round of funding since it was founded in 2010.

“Mercato’s investment will help Ephesoft realize its vision of liberating meaning through machine learning technology,” said Ike Kavas, Ephesoft’s founder. “We view Mercato as a long-term strategic partner, and we appreciate their experience in helping visionary technology companies accelerate and manage growth. This funding will enable Ephesoft to help organizations improve business outcomes by identifying and rationalizing dark data, then understanding how it impacts their business.”

Ephesoft’s cloud-based, machine learning technology generates insights from unstructured content by capturing, extracting, and analyzing raw data for its 500 customers that operate in a variety of sectors ranging from financial services, Federal government, insurance, mortgage and healthcare. At FinovateSpring 2017, the company demoed how its platform can be used to comb through international transaction data to identify and catch money launderers.

(pictured left to right): Ike Kavas (CTO)and Alex Welsh (Vice President, Analytics Practice) at FinovateSpring 2017

The California-based company will use the investment to accelerate product development and expand operations, market presence, and sales. As a part of the investment, Joe Kaiser Principal at Mercato Partners, will join Ephesoft’s Board of Directors.

In a press release, Kaiser said:

“Organizations are struggling with the enormous volume of unstructured content, which represents upwards of 80% of all available content, and is growing at a rate of 43% per year. To provide tangible value, that information needs to be processed and analyzed. Ephesoft’s solutions are disrupting the advanced capture market with a definitive value proposition: apply machine learning to convert these unstructured information streams and repositories into actionable data.”

Earlier this month, the company announced the availability of its cloud services on Microsoft Azure. In June, Ephesoft established its Asia Pacific offices in Sydney, Australia. The company was named to the 2015 Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing companies in America and has recently received a patent for its machine learning technology.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, BancPass, BioCatch, Bright Funds, DemystData, Ephesoft, eToro, Expensify, FICO, Green Key Technologies, Hip Pocket, Jack Henry, Lending Club, Roostify, Segmint, Tradeshift

On Finovate.com

  • Expensfy Brings Auto Expensing to Lyft Business Riders.
  • Ephesoft Earns $15 Million Investment from Mercato Partners.
  • Summit View: What Drives Innovation in Regtech and Insurtech?

Around the web

  • LendingClub expands partnership with Opportunity Fund to help entrepreneurs access capital.
  • Gene Lockhart appointed Chairman of DemystData.
  • BioCatch receives patent for detecting the presence of remote access tools.
  • eToro launches Crypto CopyFund that includes top cryptocurrencies.
  • Segmint partners with IBM to enhance Financial Institutions’ data ACI Worldwide expands in Romania
  • FICO extends cybersecurity score to rate 4th party risks.
  • BrightFunds and Roostify named to Forbes Cloud 100.
  • GreenKey Technologies partners with Red Box Recorders to launch trading voice collaboration and compliance recording solution.
  • American National Bank selects Jack Henry Banking’s SilverLake System.
  • Hip Pocket graduates from Points of Light Civic Accelerator.
  • Financial Resources Federal Credit Union Teams with Roostify to Create Better Online Mortgage Experience.
  • Santander partners with supply chain finance startup Tradeshift.
  • Bancpass issued patent for its mobile payment technology.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Fidor Bank’s Digital Marketplace Features Nutmeg as Inaugural Partner

Fidor Bank’s Digital Marketplace Features Nutmeg as Inaugural Partner
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Fidor Bank, Nutmeg, Uncategorized

Fidor Group has been at the forefront of fintech innovation since it received its banking license in 2009. Today, the company’s U.K. challenger bank announced that Nutmeg is one of two inaugural partners for Finance Bay, the bank’s new marketplace that aims to offer clients access to alternative investment opportunities. The second inaugural partner for the launch of Finance Bay is equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs. The fintech marketplace will host additional partners, including a number of debt-based P2P lending platforms, in the coming months.

Katharina Rausch, Head of FinanceBay, Fidor’s Fintech marketplace, said, “Fidor has long welcomed affluent and financially curious customers to our digital bank and based on their investment appetites we have built an exciting suite of investment products made accessible to customers via a handful of carefully curated Fintech partners. Our fintech marketplace will be instrumental in offering exciting investment opportunities to many of Fidor’s UK based customers.”

Founded in 2011, Nutmeg’s online wealth management platform seeks to democratize saving and investing. The company manages portfolios, ISAs, and pensions and offers a range of fully managed and fixed allocation portfolios. Martin Stead, CEO of Nutmeg, said, “We are passionate about making quality wealth management available to everyone and initiatives like Fidor’s Fintech marketplace, make great strides toward this goal.”

U.K.-based Nutmeg showcased its technology at FinovateEurope 2012 in London. In 2016, the company was honored at Your Money Awards, ETF.com Awards, and FSTech Awards. The company has raised a total of almost $90 million.

Fidor has demoed at FinovateEurope 2011 and presented at FinDEVr New York 2016. The Munich-based company was recently acquired by France’s Groupe BPCE. Last month, Fidor Solutions appointed former ABN Amro exec, Geert Ensing, as its new Chief Information Officer.

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SocietyOne Surpasses $300 Million in Loans Issued

SocietyOne Surpasses $300 Million in Loans Issued
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: SocietyOne

Australian P2P lending platform SocietyOne reached a milestone this week. The company has surpassed $300 million in loans issued since it was founded in 2011.

During a time when P2P lending in the U.S. is under scrutiny, SocietyOne is reporting an increasing demand for P2P lending in Australia. In the first two quarters of 2017, lending on the SocietyOne platform is up 67% compared to the same period last year. In fact, the P2P lending environment seems to be healthy across Australia. SocietyOne competitor RateSetter recently reported that its funding amount has roughly doubled since December of 2016.

SocietyOne CEO Jason Yetton said that this “growing interest” proves that the company is “offering a better deal than the major banks and providing investors attractive risk-adjusted returns is making a real different in the marketplace for personal loans.” Yetton added, “Over the past 12 months, we have had more than 140,000 Australians enquire about a loan with SocietyOne which shows that consumers are responding in large numbers to the idea they can leverage their good credit history to get a better deal.”

SocietyOne presented its P2P lending platform at FinovateAsia 2012 in Singapore. The company offers borrowers personalized repayment programs with lower interest rates than major banks. Users can borrow between $5,000 to $50,000 for unsecured, personal loans for two, three, or five year terms.

The SocietyOne platform hosts 315 lenders offering to lend an aggregate of $68.3 million. The company was recently named to CB Insights’ Fintech 250 list and has aligned itself heavily with Australia-based Westpac Bank. In 2014, SocietyOne received a $5 million Series A investment from Westpac Bank. Since then, the company appointed a former Westpac executive as CEO in 2016 and another former Westpac executive as Chief Investment Officer in 2017.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Baker Hill, DefenseStorm, Fidor Bank, Fiserv, Nutmeg, SocietyOne, Zenmonics

On Finovate.com

  • SocietyOne Surpasses $300 Million in Loans Issued
  • Fidor Bank’s Digital Marketplace Features Nutmeg as Inaugural Partner

Around the web

  • DefenseStorm to serve as cybersecurity partner for Bank of Jackson Hole to enhance security.
  • Baker Hill NextGen to power consumer loan origination for CapStar Bank.
  • Zenmonics Teams Up With Queen City Fintech To Drive Fintech Innovation in Charlotte
  • Fiserv partners with Vestwell to add digital retirement planning to its wealth management network

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Volkswagen Finance Arm Invests in AutoGravity

Volkswagen Finance Arm Invests in AutoGravity
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: AutoGravity, Funding

Volkswagen’s finance arm, VW Credit, has agreed to make an equity investment of an undisclosed amount in auto financing platform AutoGravity. This will be the company’s fifth round of funding since it was founded in 2015, bringing its total raised to more than $50 million. Andy Hinrichs, CEO at AutoGravity, said the company will use the funds to “accelerate in the face of rapidly growing consumer and industry demand.”

Also of note, VW will be using AutoGravity to power its Volkswagen Credit iOS and Android app. The app, which matches users with financing options for their VW vehicle purchase, will offer Volkswagen dealers a new source of potential clients. Volkswagen credit options are also now available to the 400,000 users who have downloaded the AutoGravity app.

Horst Meima, President and CEO at VW Credit said, “Customers are becoming more demanding of mobile technology and the world of auto financing is no exception.” Meima continued, “We are ready to become a leader in shaping this part of the industry and believe that AutoGravity can help get us there.”

AutoGravity aims to simplify the car shopping and financing experience by offering access to transparent loan and lease offers on a user’s mobile device. CEO Hinrichs notes that offering the service via a mobile app “saves time and improves satisfaction for all parties.” The app gives consumers up to four personalized financing offers on a vehicle of their choice before visiting a dealer. By providing the customer with this type of information up front, AutoGravity is arming consumers with the information they need to make educated purchase decisions.

At FinovateFall 2016, AutoGravity took home a Best of Show award. The company recently began offering its auto loan financing app to car shoppers in New Jersey. Earlier this year, AutoGravity landed a multi-million euro investment from Daimler, adding to the $50 million the company raised in 2015.

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Ohpen Garners $17 Million Investment

Ohpen Garners $17 Million Investment
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Ohpen

Ohpen landed new funding to fuel its mission to develop the best core banking platform in the world. The Amsterdam-based company earned $17 million in Series B funding from Amerborgh this week, but its total funding remains undisclosed.

The investment boosts the company’s valuation to more than $114 million. Ohpen will use the funding to grow the company geographically, specifically to the U.K. where the company recently opened a new office. Ohpen received approval from the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority in January.

In a press release, Ohpen founder and CEO Chris Zadeh said, “The first step, back in 2009, was to actually develop a whole new core banking engine and offering it as SaaS using cloud technology,” Zadeh added, “The second step was to get a client and create a strong home base. After becoming the number one player in our home market, we knew it was time to enter new markets and truly scale up the company.”

Founded in 2009, Ohpen offers a cloud-based core banking API that gives banks a different option from legacy systems. At FinovateFall 2012, the company explained its multilingual cloud banking platform. Ohpen’s 100 employees have facilitated the execution of 14.6 million transactions in the past 12 months. The company recently won third place in the popular vote of the fintech impact awards at the NRC Live conference.

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