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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
MeridianLink will leverage StreetShares’ Atlas Platform, an embeddable digital lending environment for banks.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Cloud-based software solutions firm MeridanLinkacquired small business lending technology provider StreetShares this week. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
StreetShares was founded in 2014 to serve as an alternative lending option for military veteran-owned small businesses. In 2019, the Virginia-based company pivoted, launching digital small business lending technology for banks and credit unions after piloting the offering with USAA in 2018.
The new tool, the Atlas Platform, enables banks to embed a digital business lending environment in 45 days or less. The platform enables community lenders to leverage their data to deliver a digital banking product experience to their small business customers. StreetShares built the platform specifically to serve the unique needs of small businesses and assist lenders with challenges such as underwriting.
“StreetShares’ commitment to providing lenders across the U.S. with state-of-the-art business lending capabilities, including business loans, automated decisioning, and business lines of credit, aligns with our focus on empowering more banks and credit unions to better serve consumers and communities,” said MeridianLink CEO Nicolaas Vlok. “Adding the StreetShares team, technology, and strong partnerships with organizations like Fiserv to the MeridianLink family will accelerate our small business lending capabilities and further strengthen our MeridianLink One platform.”
MeridianLink, which is owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, was founded in 1998 and offers cloud-based technology to its 1,900 financial institution clients. Nicolaas Vlock is CEO of the firm, which is listed publicly on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker MLNK and has a market capitalization of $1.47 billion.
Sales engagement platform Vymo has raised $22 million in Series C funding.
The investment round was led by Bertelsmann India Investments, and featured participation from existing investors Emergence Capital and Sequoia Capital.
The funding comes after a year in which the San Francisco, California-based company recorded quarterly growth of more than 20% and 142% net revenue retention.
In a round led by Bertelsmann India Investments, and featuring participation from existing investors Emergence Capital and Sequoia Capital, intelligent sales engagement platform Vymo has secured $22 million in Series C funding. The investment takes the company’s total capital to $45 million, according to Crunchbase.
Calling 2021 “a momentous year,” Vymo CEO and co-founder Yamini Bhat pointed to quarterly growth of more than 20% and 142% net revenue retention, as well as new partnerships with Berkshire Hathaway and Max Life Insurance, as examples of the company’s recent success. Bhat added that the Series C funding will help Vymo accelerate its growth plans in markets like the U.S. and Japan. “Sales tech is a $10B+ opportunity in just these two countries,” she said.
A Finovate alum since 2018, Vymo enables frontline sales representatives to report data and learn how to best engage their customers. The company’s app serves as a personal assistant, predicting what the representative should do at key stages of the customer engagement process, detecting whether the recommended action has taken place, and recording outcomes in order to drive better predictions in the future. With more than 200,000 users around the world, Vymo’s activity capture, intelligent nudges, and ability to construct industry playbooks help improve sales outcomes and provide business leaders with insights that help them plan and execute sales and business strategies.
Vymo finished 2021 with the appointment of Deepak Keni as Chief Customer Officer for Asia. The company said that the addition of Keni was “a commitment to deliver real business outcomes from digital transformation projects” in the region. The company also was recognized by Gartner in December as a Representative Vendor in its 2021 market guide for Sales Engagement Applications.
“We started Vymo with a mission to unleash the full potential of each salesperson – to help them become a trusted advisor to their customers and partners,” Bhat said when the company’s inclusion in Gartner’s guide was announced. “After 60+ deployments around the globe, we have demonstrated how bottom-up behavioral changes are integral to driving business outcomes.”
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Vymo was founded in 2013. The company most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage last year at FinovateFall.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
SmartStream’sSmartStream Air is cloud native, behaves like a consumer app, requires no training or IT skillset to use, and is the fastest AI and machine learning data quality application available today.
Features
Web based, ready to go, no installation
AI delivers immediate results
Cloud native, fully SaaS compliant
Why it’s great
The first and fastest AI data quality application that outperforms matching rates of anything available on the market today.
Presenter
Jethro MacDonald, Product Manager MacDonald brings over 10 years of experience in the financial services industry and has worked across multiple trading platforms and regulatory reporting systems, with a focus on credit/equity derivatives. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
Persistent Systems and Mambu will demo an intuitive solution that gives customers the ability to manage multiple financial accounts and enables seamless transfers to and from accounts using different currencies.
Features
Consolidated account balances from multiple accounts and currencies
Transfer of funds from one currency account to another
Transfer to third party accounts
Why it’s great
Customers are seeking digital wallets to hold and spend in different currencies. The Persistent solution and Mambu integration enables multi-currency wallets, quickly and globally.
Presenters
Rowhit Bhosale, Digital Banking Specialist at Persistent Systems Bhosale is a digital banking specialist with over 10 years experience working in the financial services sector, evangelizing and supporting transformative initiatives for the global enterprises. LinkedIn
Harjit Kang, Account Executive at Mambu Focusing on supporting financial organisations to break away from monolithic managed services and move towards a best of breed composable ecosystem. Having been an early joiner at Mambu, Kang has real life use cases of such journeys. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
mmob makes embedded finance easy. The company connects digital brands with financial products to deliver great customer experiences and promote innovation.
Features
An ecosystem of financial products ready to be embedded
Integration within hours with low-code requirements
An analytics dashboard for acquiring customers and driving sales
Why it’s great
mmob’s solution allows any business to embed financial products. Embedded finance is not a future concept, but an opportunity for the audience right now.
Presenters
Irfan Khan, CEO and Founder Khan is the CEO and Founder of mmob, using his 15 years of experience within fintech and traditional finance to impact the industry through embedded finance. LinkedIn
Jake Figg, Product Manager Figg is a Product Manager at mmob, helping to develop the embedded finance platform. He previously worked in product at a property investment platform. LinkedIn
The metaverse, decentralized finance (DeFi), and crypto are rising up to become some of the hottest themes in fintech this year, taking the place of AI, digitization, and customer experience.
So how should firms in the traditional finance (TradFi) realm prepare for the road ahead? We spoke with NimbusPlatform CEO Alex Lemberg to get his thoughts on the intersection of DeFi and TradFi.
What changes will we see in crypto and DeFi this year in comparison to years past?
Alex Lemberg: A month ago my answer to this question would have been slightly different than today. We still believe that a great deal of capital inflows will come more and more from financial and institutional organizations. This will cover the gambit from high net worth individuals to hedge funds and family / PE offices alike. We are now also witnessing major use cases related to regions in conflict and faced with sanctions. Also the advent of SWIFT as a new means of restrictions will make sovereign groups look closer to crypto markets as well in the future.
How can traditional financial institutions prepare themselves for these changes?
Lemberg: Financial institutions are extremely well prepared to handle both client activities in the space as well as their own. The main precursor is better understanding of filing and reporting requirements to regulators. I strongly believe that even though most of the innovations we are seeing do come from private markets, the largest impact will come from institutions beginning this year.
The U.S. recently issued a discussion paper on a government-issued CBDC. What do you envision the role of TradFi will be if the U.S. government issues a CBDC?
Lemberg: It is too early to discuss impact, as too many things are still in discussion regarding structure. It could eventually provide some upheavals in the payments space and user data controls which are both quite ripe for it.
Does the recent rise in DeFi indicate an end to paper and coin currency?
Lemberg: Absolutely not in the immediate future, nor do I believe would it be the case for quite some time. That said, let us remind ourselves that 90% of the world’s currency is digital and has been for some time. Yes, this will add to that digital transactional landscape, but certainly as an addition and not a replacement of any meaningful sort.
The digital economy is rapidly growing. With the pandemic accelerating the urgency for agility, adaptability and transformation, traditional business models are being disrupted. It’s estimated that over the next 10 years, 70% of new value created in the economy will be based on digitally-enabled platform business models.
Meanwhile, research regarding global GDP is forecasting that digitally transformed enterprises will reach 53.3 trillion USD by 2023, making them account for more than half of the overall nominal GDP. As the digital economy continues to revolutionize the way we do business, companies are looking to optimize their onboarding workflows for a seamless user experience while continuing to meet Know Your Customer, Anti-Money Laundering and other regulatory and fraud prevention requirements.
With blue ocean opportunities for global growth and prosperity on the horizon, it’s clear that digitally-enabled business models will soon reign supreme in the global economy.
Elevating identity programs with advanced orchestration
By next year, it’s estimated that 75% of organizations will be using a single vendor with strong identity orchestration capabilities for identity proofing and affirmation, which is up from less than 15% in 2021. At a time when securing digital identities is a greater challenge than ever before, this sharp increase in demand for all-in-one vendor solutions is a testament to the pains businesses and their customers are experiencing with current workflows.
Typically, most legacy identity and authentication solutions require companies to cobble together different technologies as their needs and regulations have evolved. As a result of this siloed approach, Frankensteined technology setups put a strain on businesses as they are costly and time-consuming to maintain while also requiring an immense amount of heavy lifting from customers.
Say hello to Trulioo GlobalGateway Orchestration
For the past 10 years, Trulioo, the global leader in identity verification, has been on a mission to build a leading end-to-end identity platform that will enable everyone, in every country, to participate in the digital economy in real-time.
As consumers increasingly interact and transact online, the demand for reliable and robust identity verification services and technology continues to surge.
With this in mind, it only made sense for Trulioo to partner with HelloFlow — an innovative no-code, drag-and-drop builder of client onboarding and monitoring digital workflows.
Through the recent acquisition of HelloFlow, Trulioo is able to bolster its position as a trusted global platform for verifying businesses and individuals while offering advanced orchestration with unmatched capabilities. With a best-in-class, intuitive workflow builder, it will be even easier for customers to customize and deploy its global identity API — Trulioo GlobalGateway.
Backed by advanced orchestration from Trulioo, businesses will be able to seamlessly create multi-product verification workflows and smooth onboarding experiences for their customers, all while keeping their data secure. By bringing together several aspects from the employee and customer journey, businesses can alleviate the pains that are often associated with:
Registrations and logins
Identity verification
Ongoing authentication
With the ability to verify identities, businesses and documents, GlobalGateway Orchestration will combine user onboarding and verification to make it easy to:
Build and launch workflows At the heart of GlobalGateway Orchestration, the flow builder will allow you to build an integrated workflow that connects verification solutions.
Monitor and optimize workflows GlobalGateway Orchestration allows for high-level monitoring and testing of workflows by providing in-depth performance metrics including verification rates, country data and even deeper case-by-case reviews of client data.
Are you ready to future-proof your business?
As your business grows and your needs evolve, it’s important to work with a company that can grow alongside you.
No matter the size of your business, where you’re located or where you’re looking to go, Trulioo has the customizability to get you there. With experience in multiple markets and multiple countries, Trulioo has a team of growth specialists ready to help you future-proof your business, this year and beyond.
To find out how your business can begin leveraging an identity verification platform that’s built for change, visit the Trulioo website or you can see them at FinovateEurope 2022 in booth #37.
As part of Finovate’s continued celebration of Women’s History Month and female-led fintech, we are taking a moment to showcase the women whose companies demoed their latest innovations at our Finovate conferences last year.
Hanna Wu
CEO and Co-Founder, Amplify Life Insurance, FinovateFall. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2019, Amplify helps people build wealth through permanent life insurance.
Katherine Regnier
CEO and Founder, Coconut Software, FinovateSpring. Headquartered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and founded in 2007, Coconut Software provides a platform for financial institutions to help them improve customer digital and in-person engagement.
Janice Diner
CEO and Founder, Horizn, FinovateFall (Best of Show winner). Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and founded in 2011, Horizn helps banks accelerate digital banking knowledge, fluency, and adoption for both customers and employees.
Laurie Rowley
CEO, Icon Savings Plan, FinovateFall. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2019, Icon Savings Plan provides portable retirement savings plans, the next generation in workplace savings.
Ana Inés Echavarren
CEO, Infocorp, FinovateFall (Best of Show winner). Headquartered in Montevideo, Uruguay, and founded in 1994, Infocorp offers a smart digital platform that provides banks with fast and flexible solutions to deliver superior customer experiences.
Lindsay Holden
CEO, Long Game, FinovateFall (Best of Show winner). Headquartered in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2015, Long Game is a gamified finance app that helps banks acquire new customers and increase engagement with their current Millennial and Generation Z customers.
Ksenia Yudina
CEO, UNest, FinovateFall. Headquartered in Hollywood, California, and founded in 2020, UNest is the leading provider of financial planning, savings, and investment tools for parents to help their children reach their dreams.
Yamini Bhat
CEO and Co-Founder, Vymo, FinovateSpring, FinovateFall. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2013, Vymo offers a sales acceleration platform for financial services firms like Berkshire Hathaway, AXA, and BNP Paribas.
Acorns has raised $300 million in Series F funding.
The investment, led by private equity firm TPG, gives the company a valuation of $1.9 billion.
The fundraising comes after the company abandoned its plan to go public via a SPAC merger.
Savings and investing app Acorns has raised $300 million in Series F funding in a round led by TPG. The investment gives the company a valuation of $1.9 billion and comes in the wake of the company’s decision to abandon a plan to go public via a SPAC merger that could have delivered Acorns a valuation in the neighborhood of $2.2 billion.
Also participating in the round were BlackRock, Bain Capital Ventures, and Galaxy Digital among others. Acorns said that it plans to use the additional funding to expand its offerings (including cryptocurrrency exposure), to enhance the ability of users to personalize their portfolios, and to fuel acquisitions. The company has raised a total of $507 million in capital, according to Crunchbase.
The investment comes amid increasing concerns over the fate of high growth fintechs in the public markets of late. In an interview with CNBC, Acorns CEO Noah Kerner pointed to “very volatile” markets as one of the reasons his company retreated from the SPAC market, saying he feared Acorns would be treated the same as other high growth technology companies whose valuations were coming under critical scrutiny. Kerner took solace in the successful Series F round which he said reflected the determination of Acorns’ private investors to support growing companies, “but not grow-at-all costs companies.”
Founded in 2012 by father and son Walter and Jeffrey Cruttenden, Acorns offers a platform that leverages micro- and robo-investing to help individuals and families save and invest. With as little as $3 a month, users can choose from among a number of diversified, exchange-traded fund (ETF) based portfolios with different asset allocation strategies. Automatic portfolio rebalancing is provided, and users can set up automatic recurring investments starting at $5 a day, week, or month, to take advantage of the efficiencies of fractional investing and dollar cost averaging. Acorns also offers a Round-Ups feature that enables users to automatically invest the spare change from their everyday purchases when they link their credit or debit card to their Acorns account.
With more than 4.6 million paid subscribers on its platform, Acorns has $4.7 billion in assets under management as of May of last year according to its Form ADV. The company is headquartered in Irvine, California.
Identity verification specialist Onfido has teamed up with U.K.-based retail bank Tesco Bank to enhance security of Tesco’s Clubcard Pay+ new account opening process.
Tesco made its Clubcard Pay+ offering available to all of its 20 million Clubcard members, following a phased launch that began in March of last year.
Onfido made its Finovate debut in 2018.
A new partnership between global identity verification and authentication provider Onfido and Tesco Bank will help secure the application process for Tesco’s Clubcard Pay+ customers. The security upgrade comes as the bank makes the new offering available to all 20 million Clubcard members, following a successful phased launch of Clubcard Pay+ that began a year ago with a limited number of customers and Tesco colleagues.
With Clubcard Pay+, Clubcard members will be able to pay with their Clubcard and earn extra Tesco Clubcard points wherever they shop. Using the Tesco Bank mobile app, users can add funds to their Clubcard Pay+ account from any U.K. bank account as well as ringfence their grocery spend. Additional features of Clubcard Pay+ include the ability to round up purchases to the nearest pound and transfer the difference to their Round Up savings account.
Courtesy of its partnership with Onfido, Tesco will enable customers to apply for the new offering directly from the Tesco Bank mobile app. All that is required is that applicants take a photo of their government-issued ID and a selfie. Onfido’s technology ensures first that the identity document is genuine, and then matches the image on the document with the image on the selfie. This establishes both that the person presenting the ID is the actual owner of the document and that the individual is physically present. The technology helps customers establish their identity anywhere and at any time, easing and accelerating the account opening process.
“By combining decades of banking experience with advanced biometrics and AI technology, Tesco Bank is now able to accelerate the account opening process for new Clubcard Pay+ customers,” Onfido CEO Mike Tuchen explained. “The innovative technology provided by Onfido underpins a seamless and secure application experience that protects customers and provides them with a streamlined access to Clubcard Pay+.”
Founded in 1997, Tesco Bank is the product of a joint venture between the Royal Bank of Scotland and U.K.-based supermarket giant Tesco. With more than five million customer accounts and £5.7 billion in customer deposits, Tesco Bank offers a wide range of banking and insurance solutions for the retail market. In addition to its new Clubcard Pay+ offering, the institution began 2022 with major changes to its C-suite, appointing new interim Chief Risk Officer Debbie Walker and new interim Chief Insurance Officer, Tesco Bank and interim CEO, Tesco Underwriting Gary Duggan.
London-based Onfido entered 2022 in the wake of what the company referred to as a “breakthrough” 2021. The company grew revenues by 90% year-over-year to more than $100 million and reached year-over-year growth of 134% in the U.S. Further, the company expanded its workforce by 50% to 600 employees to better accommodate increased demand for its services, this includes reaching 150 million in digital identity checks.
“Our strong year reflects the continued shift towards the critical adoption of digital environments where businesses are adapting to meet their users online,” Tuchen said earlier this year. He pointed to the $56 billion in identity theft losses consumers endured in 2020, adding “a fast, simple, and secure online journey is imperative when it comes to building customer trust, which is why we are continuing to invest in our workforce, technology, research, and development.”
Onfido has raised more than $188 million in funding from investors including TPG Growth, Augmentum Fintech, and Salesforce Ventures.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and live in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
Trulioo is the global identity verification leader, helping organizations mitigate risk, reduce fraud and scale compliance programs globally.
Features
Easy-to-do business verification
Simple verification of owner identities
World-class orchestration and workflow building
Why it’s great
See just how simple yet effective verification of businesses and people can be with the industry leader in global verification.
Presenters
Hal Lonas, CTO Lonas brings over 25 years of technology leadership and expertise in cloud security and machine learning to his role as Trulioo CTO. LinkedIn
Mikkel Skarnager, SVP Product Skarnager co-founded HelloFlow, the innovative no-code digital workflow and onboarding solution, now a part of Trulioo. He previously led Digital Transformation at Saxo Bank. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and live in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
SESAMm is a fintech company that specializes in big data and artificial intelligence. It provides analytics and investment signals by analyzing over 17 billion web articles and messages using NLP.
Features
Early detection of ESG risks and alpha signals
Extensive coverage of companies from large to very small
Timely insights updated daily to anticipate market reactions
Why it’s great
TextReveal® creates alpha-generating opportunities and systematically identifies ESG Risks, leading to better decision-making and better returns.
Presenter
Sylvain Forté, CEO and Co-Founder Forté is the CEO and Co-Founder of SESAMm. His passion for artificial intelligence and finance led him to create SESAMm in 2014. He holds a double degree in engineering from Germany and France. LinkedIn
