FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Sequretek

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Sequretek

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.

Sequretek offers end-to-end security in the areas of enterprise threat monitoring, incident response, device security, identity, and access governance through its own AI-driven Percept Cloud Security Platform.

Features

  • Enterprise scale, easy to use, and cloud native
  • AI-driven threat detection, protection, remediation and response
  • Quick implementation and integration capabilities

Why it’s great
Percept Cloud Security Platform offers end-to-end security through three products instead of implementing and managing 12 to 15 different cybersecurity products. It reduces the total cost of ownership while simplifying security.

Presenters

Pankit Desai, Co-CEO & Co-Founder
Desai is a veteran of the corporate industry with over 25 years of experience in global sales, operations, and FP&A, with leadership stints at Rolta, NTT Data, IBM, and Wipro.
LinkedIn


Anand Naik, Co-CEO & Co-Founder
Naik has worked in the corporate industry for over 25 years with companies like Symantec, where he was the MD for South Asia. He was also previously with IBM and Sun Microsystems in technology roles.
LinkedIn

Acquisitions, Partnerships, and Pivots: Getting In On the Buy Now Pay Later Revolution

Acquisitions, Partnerships, and Pivots: Getting In On the Buy Now Pay Later Revolution

From partnership to acquisition, the Buy Now Pay Later revolution shows few signs, if any, of abating any time soon.

Apple, one of the Big Tech companies that has been aggressive in its expansion into fintech and financial services, recently announced that it is teaming up with BNPL company Affirm Holdings to offer new, interest-free financing options for qualifying Apple customers in Canada. The new program enables consumers to finance iPhone purchases over a 24-month period and iPad and Mac purchases over a 12-month period, both with 0% APR.

The new initiative comes a month after Apple announced that it was teaming up with Goldman Sachs to help introduce its own Buy Now Pay Later service – ostensibly to rival companies like the aforementioned Affirm. The offering will reportedly be called Apple Pay Later.


And filed in the “if you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em” folder is the news from London, U.K.-based Buy Now Pay Later company Zilch. The firm agreed this week to acquire San Francisco, California-based debt funding platform Neptune Financial as part of setting up shop in the U.S. “We’ve been exploring growth options in the U.S. for some time and following the additional funding,” Zilch founder and CEO Philip Belamant said. “Now was the perfect time to take another meaningful step towards our U.S. launch.”

Zilch’s acquisition news comes less than a month after the company secured $110 million as part of an extension of its Series B round. One of the first Buy Now Pay Later firms in the U.K. (founded in 2018), Zilch enables consumers to pay for purchases using their virtual Zilch card by splitting their transaction into four, interest-free payments over a six week period. The company has raised more than $200 million and boasts 150,000 new sign-ups a month for its BNPL services.


One of the more interesting pivots in the BNPL space of late was an internal one as Canada’s Scotiabank announced that it will convert its credit card repayments into BNPL plans. The new arrangement will give cardholders the ability to pay off their debt balances in fixed installments over three-, six-, or 12-month periods.

“Our customers told us that they’re looking for more options to help them manage their finances,” Scotiabank SVP for Credit Cards and Lending Brett Mooney explained. “This new credit card feature offers our customers more flexibility in how they pay for purchases, in addition to the convenience, rewards and lifestyle benefits that our credit cards already provide.”

The new service is called Scotia SelectPay and can be accessed via the Scotia mobile banking app as well as online. Purchases of more than $100 are eligible for the new financing option, which requires no additional credit check or application.


Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: unitQ

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: unitQ

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.

unitQ’s product quality platform empowers fintechs and banks to take a data-driven approach to product quality so they can fix the right quality issues faster.

Features

  • Leverage a single source of truth for product quality
  • Determine what’s impacting your product right now
  • Identify, prioritize, and fix the right quality issues faster

Why it’s great
Staying on top of product quality is hard. unitQ empowers your organization to take a data-driven approach to product quality.

Presenter

Anthony Heckman, Head of Business Development & Growth
Prior to unitQ, Heckman was an EIR at XSeed Capital. He graduated from the University of Southern California and University of Pennsylvania Law School.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Perch Credit

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Perch Credit

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.

Perch helps you get and build your credit with everyday payments and subscriptions. It helps you earn credit by starting with the recurring payments you’re already making – your rent and subscriptions.

Features

  • Quick and easy setup: start credit building in as little as 5 minutes
  • Automated credit building: increase your credit score as you continue to pay
  • All your information is kept safe

Why it’s great
Perch is on a mission to financially empower all.

Presenter

Michael Broughton, CEO & Co-Founder
Broughton is a young entrepreneur who studied business at the University of Southern California. Coming from a military family, he grew up in the Far East, living in South Korea and Japan.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Bambu

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Bambu

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.

Bambu is the next-generation, B2B robo-advisory platform for financial and technology institutions, enabling companies to make saving and investing simple and intelligent for their clients.

Features

  • Enable and empower small and medium RIAs to scale up and increase AUM
  • Avoid complex technology that prevents RIAs from adopting the platform
  • Save on cost with no integration and developer cost

Why it’s great
Bambu GO 2.0 is a turn-key digital investment platform.

Presenters

Ned Phillips, CEO
Phillips has over 20 years of fintech experience. He is on a mission to improve the wealthtech industry with a robo-advisory platform.
LinkedIn

Michael Larsen, Head of Sales, Americas
Larsen is an experienced Head of Sales with a demonstrated history of working in the SaaS and financial services industries.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Amplify Life Insurance

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Amplify Life Insurance

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.

Amplify helps people build wealth through permanent life insurance. They’ve built an intelligent customer journey with frictionless policy customization, pre-underwriting, and in-force policy management.

Features

  • Delightful customer journey for life insurance investment products
  • Policy customization and pre-underwriting for accurate quoting and fast decisions
  • API infrastructure and ecosystem connectivity

Why it’s great
Bespoke life insurance investment products can now be customized and purchased instantly D2C or through an advisor via Amplify’s platform.

Presenters

Hanna Wu, CEO & Co-Founder
Wu’s family has been in life insurance for over 30 years. Prior to Amplify, she built a financial planning agency with three locations and placed over $2B in life insurance coverage over five years.
LinkedIn

Qiyun Cai, President & Co-Founder
Cai started her career in venture capital and found her passion in early stage software startups that make an impact on how we work and live. She is a graduate of Harvard Business School.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Automated Financial Systems

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Automated Financial Systems

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.

AFS, a leading commercial lending solution provider, will demonstrate the ability to add and utilize new Custom Data Fields to the system in real-time, with no programming.

Features

  • Respond to market, product, and regulatory demands immediately
  • Define, label, and create data fields
  • Use the fields as soon as they are created

Why it’s great
Commercial lending technology is behind in moving to digital. AFS will demonstrate that commercial lending solutions can be agile and responsive to technology innovation and customer/market demand.

Presenters

Brenda Alek, Director of Client Strategies
Alek is responsible for working with financial institutions to evaluate workflows, review operations, and develop new business models/transformations.
LinkedIn

Derrick Wise, Director
Wise brings over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. His expertise is with financial software design and implementation.

Jerry Cooper, AFSVision Solution Architect
Cooper leads the design and development of new products and features in the AFSVision platform.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: txtsmarter

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: txtsmarter

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.

txtsmarter is a communications surveillance service for messaging and social platforms to capture, encrypt, and archive previously inaccessible data for compliance requirements in the financial space.

Features

  • Archive iMessage, Android SMS/MMS, and WhatsApp
  • Comply with FINRA, SEC, FDIC, MiFID II, Dodd-Frank, and FCA regulations
  • Adhere to privacy regulations

Why it’s great
txtsmarter is an API-driven Intelligent Communications Surveillance Service. Once activated, it requires no user interaction, is OS and device-agnostic with full compliance coverage, and directs data to an eDiscovery platform.

Presenters

Nuri Otus, CEO & President
Otus drives the strategic direction for txtsmarter as the company establishes itself as a market leader in the communications surveillance and compliance space.
LinkedIn

Sabine Zimmerhansl, Director of Compliance & Product Development
Zimmerhansl is focused on developing txtsmarter’s line of products and services for customers while assuring compliance with global regulations and anticipating the impact on business.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Berbix

FinovateFall 2021 Sneak Peek: Berbix

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.

Berbix is an identity verification solution for building trusted relationships online by instantly and accurately validating a user’s identity.

Features

  • Increase new account signups
  • Reduce cost of acquisition
  • Reduce fraud

Why it’s great
Berbix is the most accurate and reliable ID verification solution – 4x more accurate than legacy providers.

Presenter

Eric Levine, Co-Founder
Co-Founder of Berbix, Levine currently leads the engineering, product and design efforts. Prior to Berbix, he led the Trust & Safety engineering team at Airbnb.
LinkedIn

RightCapital Launches Dynamic Retirement Spending Strategies

RightCapital Launches Dynamic Retirement Spending Strategies

Financial planning software company RightCapital unveiled new dynamic retirement spending strategies on its platform this week. The new offering gives investors the ability to better plan their finances once their working days are done.

“The industry has been using a rather simple retirement expense approach in the financial planning process for many years,” RightCapital CEO Shuang Chen said. “The ability to offer multiple options for retirement spending within our comprehensive planning tool is a significant step forward.”

Traditionally, financial planners have relied on an inflation-adjusted retirement spending model which focuses on a single input – the rising cost of living – to anticipate an increase in retirement spending each year. One criticism of this approach is that it does not account for changes in an individual’s portfolio that might significantly affect how much they are able to spend in retirement. RightCapital’s new offering factors in changes in portfolio value, reducing retirement spending projections when the portfolio loses value and giving investors the option to spend more in retirement should their portfolio significantly increase in value. The two dynamic strategies – referred to as guardrail and floor and ceiling – enable retirement spending to adjust in sync with portfolio performance and investment strategy parameters rather than being limited to tracking the rate of inflation.

Dynamic strategies such as those now available on the RightCapital platform more accurately reflect how individuals respond to changes in their investments in the real world. As Michael Kitces, Chief Financial Planning Nerd for Kitces.com and Head of Planning Strategy for Buckingham Wealth Partners explained, “as advisors, we cannot eliminate the uncertainty of markets themselves, but tools like RightCapital’s dynamic spending can help eliminate the uncertainty for clients of what they’d have to do in response to those market events, facilitating better client conversations about how to keep their retirement on track.”

Other features of RightCapital’s dynamic retirement spending strategies include the ability to customize spending levels by age, anticipating a higher level of spending early in the investor’s retirement life and tapering off as the investor ages. The strategies can also incorporate changes in healthcare expenditures over the course of the investor’s retirement, as well.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Shelton, Connecticut, RightCapital demonstrated its technology most recently at FinovateSpring in 2019. At the conference, the RightCapital team demonstrated the company’s API/Enterprise solution, which gives financial advisors the ability to offer their clients access to custom applications ranging from PFM to account aggregation to secure document sharing. In June, RightCapital announced that it would “enhance (its) integration” with partner Riskalyze, a specialist in risk alignment and portfolio analytics. Also that month, RightCapital and a coalition of fintechs including fellow Finovate alum Betterment launched the RIA Tech Suite to provide financial advisors with services and tools to automate back-office operations.


Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels

Banking-as-a-Service Innovator NYMBUS Secures $3 Million in New Funding

Banking-as-a-Service Innovator NYMBUS Secures $3 Million in New Funding

In a round led by OFG Ventures – a subsidiary of OFG Bancorp – bank technology solution provider NYMBUS has secured $3 million in new funding.

“Our mission has remained steadfast to help financial institutions of any size succeed with impactful, intentional innovation,” Nymbus CEO and Chairman Jeffery Kendall said. “OFG Ventures’ investment is an added vote-of-confidence to the value our strategy brings to an industry widely in need of immediate and sustainable business growth opportunities.”

Most recently demonstrating its technology two years ago at FinovateFall, banking-as-a-service innovator Nymbus provides financial institutions with both the technical and operational tools necessary to digitally transform their businesses. The company’s solutions – ranging from its flagship SmartCore, SmartDigital, and SmartPayments offerings to its full-service, standalone digital banking alternative SmartLaunch – give banks, credit unions, and other financial services-based companies greater ability to streamline processes and offer new digital services – without requiring a major core conversion or significant additional human resources.

This week’s investment is only the latest infusion of capital the Miami Beach, Florida-based fintech has received this year. The company picked up $15 million in funding from private equity firm Financial Services Capital this spring and, in February, Nymbus announced a $53 million Series C round led by Insight Partners. The company’s total funding now stands at more than $121 million, according to Crunchbase.

Nymbus has been one of the busier banking-as-a-service innovators of late, partnering with a variety of fintechs and financial institutions in the past year. These partnerships have included collaborations with fellow Finovate alums like Plaid and Segmint, credit unions and challenger banks like VyStar CU and PeoplesBank’s ZYNLO Bank, as well as with innovators in open finance and cryptocurrencies like Red Hat and NYDIG. The company also launched a new credit union service organization (CUSO) in March, Nymbus CUSO, to help credit unions take better advantage of fintech offerings that can enable them to create new revenue opportunities and boost engagement with their members.

“Our CUSO signifies a commitment to credit unions by providing strategic partnerships and flexible technology that will create sustainable growth and loyal members,” Kendall said when the new organization was introduced earlier this year. “For those wanting to innovate, Nymbus CUSO moves past traditional vendor thinking to create supportive structures for credit unions ready to grow and reach new niche markets.”


Photo by Scott Webb from Pexels

Moments That Matter: Tracking Finovate Alums from the Demo Stage to Real World Success

Moments That Matter: Tracking Finovate Alums from the Demo Stage to Real World Success

Each year, in the weeks leading up to our fintech conferences, we take the time to highlight those companies that have demonstrated their innovations on the Finovate stage, and then gone on to raise significant funding, sign partnerships with impressive new customers, merge with tech/fintech leaders, or achieve other major wins.

We recently shared seven stories from alums of Finovate’s annual autumn event – FinovateFall – which kicks off this year on September 13th and runs through September 15th. We’ll continue exploring them here, in addition to looking at both returning alum all-stars and new companies hoping to make big fintech headlines in the future.

Last week’s list dated back to Finovate’s debut in 2007, when Yodlee joined 19 companies on stage at our inaugural fintech conference. Yodlee continued on to dominate the data aggregation and analytics space, as well as share product launches and updates at Finovate conferences annually. In 2015, Envestnet acquired Yodlee for a whopping $660 million.

The founders of POS platform Shopkeep started their incredible journey at FinovateFall 2012, rounding it out with an acquisition by Lightspeed for $440 million in 2020.

Malauzai — first demoing its digital banking platform in September 2014 — capped off four years of demos with an acquisition by fellow Finovate alum Finastra in 2018. FlexScore, also appearing in 2014, was snapped up by United Capital Financial Advisors in early 2016 for its gamified financial planning platform.

Since first demoing in 2015 as SaleMove, Glia continues to break ground with ten Best of Show wins, $98 million in funding, and massive improvements to customer experience.

And more recently, Eigen Technologies, which specializes in data extraction and business intelligence, raised $37 million in Series B funding just two months after debuting in September 2019. Monit, a mobile, predictive cashflow and financial optimization platform, raised $5.2 million in equity financing this April after winning Best of Show last September.


With Finovate’s return to New York this fall, these next few stories feature companies you’ll see on September 13th and 14th. If you can’t attend in person, join digitally to make sure you’re part of the moments that matter.

Ultimately, Finovate events are about creating moments that matter – in a few short minutes, companies can go from obscurity to fame, from two customers to 20, from a small Series A to a huge Series B, from promising startup to full-fledged unicorn.

Greg Palmer, VP Strategy, Finovate

Backbase debuted at FinovateFall 2009. Shortly after its demo, the company opened offices in New York; signed bank partners across Europe, North America, and beyond; earned several Best of Show awards; and grew to be the fintech giant we know today. Backbase will demo its North American offering next month.

Vymo, a 2018 alum, raised an impressive $18 million in Series B funding in June 2019. The company is back on stage this fall with its sales acceleration platform.

Based in New York City, Instnt made its Finovate debut in 2019 with its customer onboarding solution for businesses. The company began 2020 by raising $2.9 million in seed funding and ended the year partnering with phone intelligence technology company Prove.

And after their September 2019 demo, Breach Clarity agreed to be acquired by Sontiq the following spring. Next month at FinovateFall, the company will debut BreachIQ, a solution to protect the financial health of FIs and the consumers they serve.


Each year, companies aspire to follow in the footsteps of these and other alums that have made a huge impact in the fintech space. Here are some new companies representing the FinovateFall 2021 demo roster that are hoping to make headlines:

  • Amplify‘s digital platform provides accessible, transparent, and convenient permanent life insurance products for Millennial and Gen Z consumers using an intelligent customer journey and instant underwriting capabilities.
  • ASA‘s scalable platform removes all barriers to entry allowing unlimited partnerships between financial institutions and fintechs using an access controller for secure transactions.
  • Atomic FI‘s payroll APIs supply financial service providers with better direct deposit services.
  • BANYAN‘s global interchange for SKU-level receipt data allows consumers to connect their receipts to any app in a secure, safe and anonymized way.
  • Berbix‘s ID validation solution utilizes machine learning and AI data-driven technology to reduce the friction and fraud in new account creation for fintechs that need to onboard new users online.
  • Ellenby‘s end-to-end cash deposit accountability system allows financial institutions to efficiently manage frequent cash deposits by businesses using its Validating Smart Transport Bag (VSTB).
  • Long Game‘s gamified finance app helps banks acquire new customers and increases engagement with their current customers in the Millenial and Gen Z demographics.
  • Perch‘s free app tears down the barriers of the current credit system by reporting alternative data such as rent and subscription payments to build the credit of the underbanked.
  • Posh‘s Conversational Interactive Voice Response technology targets the inefficiencies and expenses within financial institution contact centers using cutting-edge machine learning and natural language processing.
  • Railzs single API connects to major accounting and ERP software and targets complicated and unstandardized SMB financial data using data normalization and insights for financial institutions.
  • Sequretek simplifies cybersecurity for the financial service industry by offering a single AI-based solution for complete enterprise security.
  • Soul MachinesDigital People humanize and personalize each engagement and offer rich and emotionally interactive experiences for banking and financial service customers.
  • SpecTrust‘s no-code risk platform minimizes high costs and slow turnaround time to deploy solutions that help risk investigators, strategists, and engineering teams identify risk, orchestrate signals, and take mitigating actions.
  • UNest‘s mobile application democratizes access to savings and investing solutions for parents and extended family.
  • unitQ‘s quality monitoring platform is AI-enabled based on what your users say and do, so product, engineering, ops, and CX leaders at finserv companies can fix the right issues faster.
  • Akouba by Velocity Solutions reduces the lengthy lending process for financial institutions using a cloud-based digital lending platform.