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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Digital banking platform Blend and financial document automation platform Ocrolus are partnering this week to embed Ocrolus’ Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) document analysis solution into Blend’s digital mortgage application platform.
Blend expects that Ocrolus’ HITL technology will help accelerate digital mortgage applications for potential home loan borrowers. That’s because the document analysis solution will automate the classification of documents and capture data needed for mortgage applications.
“Blend is simplifying and streamlining the lending experience for consumers and bankers alike,” said Blend’s Manager of Business Development Jeff Braddock. “We’re enhancing the Blend platform with Ocrolus’ automated, accurate document classification and data extraction capabilities. Our partnership with Ocrolus enables us to swiftly deliver time-saving innovations to our customers.”
The partnership aligns well with Blend’s goal to automate all aspects of the loan origination process. The California-based company offers a cloud-based platform that powers end-to-end customer journeys for a range of banking-as-a-service lending products and deposit accounts.
Founded in 2012, Blend’s B2B tools also include a loan officer toolkit, a loan officer mobile app, and an income verification tool. The company enables its customers, including Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, and more than 310 other financial services firms, to process an average of more than $5 billion in loans per day.
Ocrolus, which recently won Best of Show for its demo at FinovateFall 2021, provides automated document analysis to automate credit decisions across fintech, mortgage, and banking. The company is headquartered in New York and has raised $127 million since it was founded in 2014.
With locations in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, Meridian Trust Federal Credit Union has announced a partnership with Scienaptic AI. The collaboration with the AI-powered credit decision platform provider will enable Meridian Trust FCU ($569 million in assets; 31,640 members) to enhance its underwriting capabilities to provide faster lending decisions and boost loan approvals.
“At Meridian Trust, we aim to provide our members and community with the best personal service, the highest quality financial products, and the best overall value for a lifetime,” Meridian Trust FCU Chief Lending Officer Michael Barnhardt Jr. said. “Scienaptic’s AI-driven credit decisioning platform will help ensure that our credit union has access to industry-leading underwriting capabilities to approve more loans for our members and further enhance their financial well-being.”
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City, Scienaptic AI leverages both new data sources and new technologies to enable financial institutions to make more accurate decisions about whether and how much financing to provide to credit applicants. Many banks continue to struggle to systematically manage the growing volume of data required for sound credit decisioning. Moreover, the technology necessary to analyze this data requires complex, quantitative, predictive models (and professionals trained in understanding them). Additionally, many financial institutions lack the kind of scalable infrastructure that can handle the volume of data involved in credit-decisioning – and do so in a timely, compliant fashion.
In response to this challenge, Scienaptic AI offers a platform that enables companies to run multiple champion challengers concurrently; merges credit models and strategies in a single, unified workflow; and supports the rapid deployment of new credit models and strategies. Scienaptic claims that its adaptive AI-based platform and pre-built APIs help deliver 15% to 40% more approvals and 10% to 25% fewer losses compared to traditional underwriting methods based on legacy technology. In addition to credit decisioning, Scienaptic’s technology can be leveraged for fraud prevention, financial forecasting, and collections, as well.
“We are pleased to be working with Meridian Trust to help support and strengthen the financing needs of its members,” Scienaptic President Pankaj Jain said. “Scienaptic’s platform will help Meridian Trust to grow their client base and to support the financial goals of its members by making faster credit decisions while minimizing risk.”
Of late, the Scienaptic AI has forged partnerships with Cooperative Teachers Credit Union, Gesa Credit Union and, earlier this month, Levo Credit Union. All of these credit unions have elected to leverage Scienaptic’s AI-powered credit decisioning platform to, in the words of Levo CU VP of Lending Steven Stofferahn, “enhance credit access for members and improve their financial well-being through smarter, faster credit decisions.”
Scienaptic AI has raised $9 million in funding. The company includes TVS Motor Singapore, Pramod Bhasin, and Salil Punalekar among its investors.
In a round led by Warburg Pincus, Insight Partners, and Bow Wave Capital Management, Philippines-based mobile payment company Mynt has secured $300 million in new funding. The investment, which also featured participation from Itai Tsiddon, Amplo Ventures, Globe Telecom, and Ayala Corporation, gives Mynt a valuation of more than $2 billion and solidifying the company’s status as the biggest technology unicorn based in the Philippines.
“We have been able to continuously expand by introducing game-changing innovations while improving our profitability profile,” Mynt president and CEO Martha Sazon. “We are excited about our new partnership with Warburg, Insight, Itali Tsiddon, and Amplo, as they each bring strategic value to our team in the pursuit of our vision towards finance for all.”
Owned by Philippine mobile operator Globe Telecom, Mynt is the company behind the GCash app. The popular solution enables customers to buy prepaid airtime; pay bills at more than 600 partner billers throughout the Philippines; send and receive money anywhere in the country; as well as access savings, credit, insurance, and investment products and services. GCash currently has more than 48 million users.
Most recently, Mynt has piloted a new cash loan offering, GLoan, that enables qualified borrowers to take out loans of up to PHP25,000 (approximately $500 USD) that can be repaid over 12 months. GLoan joins the company’s GCredit offering, which disburses more than PHP1 billion ($200 million USD) in loans every month and has disbursed PHP15 billion ($3 billion USD) as of June of this year. Mynt notes that its GCredit solution has the best repayment rates with the lowest number of past-due and non-performing loans locally. Unsurprisingly, Mynt is also looking to offer Buy Now Pay Later services “within the year” as well.
Mynt’s GCash is also one of the growing number of financial apps to incorporate pro-environmental functionality into its solution. The app has a feature, GForest, that serves as a gamified environmental stewardship program that enables users to convert points earned from using GCash into a virtual tree. These virtual trees are then planted as actual trees in specific locations in the Philippines. Mynt says that it has 8.7 million users of GForest within the GCash app.
Founded in 2015, Mynt has been recognized as a leader in the digital transformation of payments and other financial services in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic. With nearly half the country’s population using its technology, Mynt is on pace to reach a gross transaction value of PHP3 trillion, more than triple of what was achieved last year. The company has reported peak daily app log-ins of 19 million and daily active transactions of 12 million.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
At a time of almost unprecedented financial liquidity, being able to separate the investment-worthy wheat from the chaff may be more important than ever. Additionally, knowledge of where the so-called “smart money” is investing within the growing field of fintech is an invaluable aid for those attempting to better understand where fintech is right now and where it is going. And for those within financial services, or in industries adjacent to it, who are looking to do business with innovative fintech companies, knowing where the most informed investors are putting their capital can be a great guide to identifying where some of the best opportunities to partner and form collaborations may be found.
This is what makes Finovate’s All-Star Investment Panel: Where the Smart Money is Investing in Fintech one of the biggest and most popular attractions at our events. At our upcoming conference in March, FinovateEurope, we’ve put together a star-studded panel of some of fintech’s most informed and accomplished investors to help you gain unique insights into which fintechs the “smart money” is betting on and why. Check out a sneak peek of our All-Star Investment Panel below.
Rana Yared, General Partner, Balderton Capital: Yared joined Balderton Capital in 2020. She previously worked as a Partner at Goldman Sachs in their Principal Strategic Investments Group. Later, as part of GS Growth, Yared oversaw investments in financial technology and enterprise technology. Yared also oversaw the commercialization of Goldman Sachs’ technology assets in New York and London. LinkedIn
Aman Ghei, Partner, Finch Capital: Ghei led Finch’s investment into Twisto (sold to Zip) and sits on the board of AccountsIQ, Symmetrical, Lantum as well as being involved in the firm’s investments in Goodlord, TaxScouts and Squirro. Ghei’s experience ranges from Credit Suisse’s Technology team to Accel Partners in London to Facebook’s content distribution business in Europe. LinkedIn
Luis Valdich, Managing Director, Fintech Investing, Citi Ventures: Joining Citi Ventures in 2015, Valdich is responsible for fintech investing in both the U.S. and Europe, as well as in Latin America and Southeast Asia/India. Before Citi, Valdich founded and ran JPMorgan Chase’s Strategic Investments group for nearly eight years and invested in more than 30 companies. LinkedIn
Jay Wilson, Investment Director, AlbionVC: At AlbionVC, Wilson focuses on all aspects of technology, with a particular focus on how technology is redefining financial services from retail to institutional finance, and at every level of the IT stack including blockchain, AI and machine learning, predictive analytics, robotics, and the cloud. LinkedIn
The FinovateEurope 2022 Investor All-Star panel will be moderated by Sunaina Sinha Haldea, Global Head of Private Capital Advisory with Raymond James. Haldea founded placement agent and secondaries advisor Cebile Capital, which was acquired by Raymond James Financial in 2021. Also a prolific angel investor and non-executive director, Haldea’s leadership of Raymond James / Cebile Capital has enabled the firm to become one of the leading advisors in private equity and real assets.
FinovateEurope 2022 will be held in London, England from March 22 through March 23. Both in-person and digital all-access passes are available with big savings available to those attendees who register by November 19th. For more information, visit our FinovateEurope 2022 hub today.
Announced earlier this year, the merger between cross-border payments marketplace CurrencyFair and payment workflow automation platform Assembly Payments has secured regulatory approval. The merged company has also rebranded as Zai as part of a new focus on providing a wider set of integrated financial services to mid-market businesses and enterprise-level customers within and beyond the Australian market. The CurrencyFair brand will remain intact to serve consumers and small businesses with the kind of fast, affordable foreign exchange the company has offered for nearly a decade.
Paul Byrne, who served as CEO and President of Currencyfair for more than five years, will now serve as CEO and President of the new entity Zai. “Our vision with Zai is to boldly transform the future of financial services,” Byrne said in a statement. “The Australian market is very close to our hearts – both Assembly Payments and CurrencyFair were founded by Australian innovators.”
To underscore this point Byrne added that Zai was first to market with NPP, Australia’s New Payments Platform, and that the company planned to launch its new, real-time digital payments solution, PayTo, in the middle of next year. PayTo will enable merchants and businesses to initiate real-time payments from their customers’ bank accounts.
“Zai will continue our tradition of being customer-centric, solving problems and adding value around our five core capabilities,” Byrne said. These areas – payments, global payment accounts, partner ecosystem, lending and settlement, and services – represent major growth opportunities according to Byrne, in what he described as a “$2 trillion revenue market for payments.” In addition to expanding its presence in Australia, Zai plans to launch in the U.K., the U.S., and Asia in 2022 and to grow its workforce from 170 to 450 by 2025.
“We are already seeing the benefits of expansion as we forecast a second successive year of 60% growth in processing volume to $6.5 billion in 2021,” Byrne said.
Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland and launched in 2009, CurrencyFair has been a Finovate alum since 2012. Ahead of the merger with Assembly Payments, the company had securely exchanged the equivalent of €10 billion, enabling its customers to send money to more than 150 countries. The company had raised more than $24 million in funding before acquiring Assembly Payments, picking up an additional $35 million in funding from Standard Chartered afterward.
“By bringing together the complementary strengths of CurrencyFair and Assembly, we are supporting the merged company in offering the full range of payment services,” Standard Chartered group chief executive Bill Winters said earlier this year, “providing retail and corporate clients access to fast, high-volume domestic and cross-border payments.”
The concept of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) is already familiar to most in the banking and fintech industry. However, the idea that the U.S. will have a functioning CBDC of its own in the near future still seems far-fetched.
PwC’s CBDC global index ranks the U.S. 18th in the globe when it comes to the maturity of its retail CBDC project. This places the U.S. significantly behind countries including the Ukraine, Uruguay, and Turkey, which all rank among the top 10.
So when the U.S. rarely ranks below the top 10 in any global comparison, what’s holding it back when it comes to CBDCs? There are three major reasons, as outlined below.
Slow
The U.S. is a big ship to turn, partially because the country’s legislative process is slow. This is true especially when compared to other countries, such as China, which have more authoritarian control over citizens.
This lack of agility can be seen in other federal initiatives, such as FedNow, the U.S. central bank’s instant payment service. Initially announced in 2019, the service will begin a phased launch of real time payments in 2023 and aims to be fully operational by 2024. As American Banker noted, FedNow should instead be called FedLate. By the time the central bank rolls out instant payments, many other private industry players will have already stepped in. In fact, some already have. Ripple, The Clearing House, and Orum are already offering real-time payment solutions.
And the U.S.’s progress is slow not only when it comes to implementing a CBDC, but even in simply making the decision to implement one. Earlier this fall, the Federal Reserve announced plans to “soon” release its research on a CBDC. While this is an important first step, the report won’t even take a stance on whether or not the U.S. should issue a CBDC.
Fragmented
This is a big one. The U.S. government is siloed; there is no central authority of who would have direct oversight or responsibility for the issuance or regulation of a CBDC.
Government branches that would want a say in the matter include not only the Federal Reserve, but also the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, the Office of Financial Research, and state and regional authorities.
This list doesn’t even include private commercial banks, which will be crucial to the rollout of a CBDC.
This large number of stakeholders is highlighted when contrasted with India, Kenya, and Brazil, which all have central digital payment systems that are overseen by their respective central banks.
Untrusted
Simply stated, many U.S. citizens don’t trust their government. This distrust is potentially the consequence of free speech mixed with 21st century communication technologies and sharing platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, which help spread misinformation and skepticism. If you’ve ever met someone who thinks that the Earth is flat, you know what I mean.
U.S. citizens’ reactions to a recently proposed measure, the IRS reporting mandate, illustrate that the distrust of the government isn’t just for conspiracy theorists. The IRS reporting mandate was part of President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, a bill that would have required financial institutions to report inflows and outflows totaling more than $600 from bank accounts to the IRS.
The purpose of the bill was to catch tax fraud; it would generate an estimated $463 billion in revenue over 10 years. However, many citizens on both sides of the political divide viewed the additional governmental surveillance as overreach. “While the intent of this proposal is to ensure all taxpayers meet their obligations—a goal we strongly share—the data that would be turned over to the IRS is overly broad and raises significant privacy concerns,” Democratic representatives wrote to Speaker Pelosi. “We have little information about how the IRS plans to protect or use this massive trove of data. Americans expect their bank or credit union to safeguard their financial information.”
If the U.S. government issued its own digital currency, many would switch to cash or alternative currencies. It is evident that U.S. citizens don’t want to offer data on financial habits to their government. Additionally, many would likely not appreciate that the government would be able to dictate how they spend a government-issued currency. Indeed, one of the most appealing aspects for governments of a CBDC is that they can control how and when certain funds, such as stimulus checks for example, are spent.
The last shall be first and the first last
Ultimately, the headline of this piece may be a bit dramatic. The U.S. may not necessarily be the last to establish its own CBDC. However, it is already lagging behind many developed countries and doesn’t appear to be making much progress.
“The reason you could say the U.S. is behind in the digital currency race is I don’t think the U.S. is aware there is a race,” Yaya Fanusie, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and a former CIA analyst, said in an interview with TIME. “A lot of policymakers are looking at it and concerned…but even with that I just don’t think there’s this sense of urgency because the risk from China is not an immediate threat.”
And as TIME described, this disconnect may cause the U.S. to cede control of previously established global financial power. “With private companies pushing deeper into the digital currency space, rival countries seeking to seize leadership, and a public that is moving further away from physical currency,” the author wrote, “the U.S. is facing a world in which it may not control or even lead the world’s payment systems.”
The business of helping parents provide financial education and savings for their children has been one of the more robust areas of innovation in fintech. One such company, UNest, based out of Hollywood, California, announced this week that it has entered a strategic partnership with Avibra to further its mission of bringing financial planning, saving, and investment solutions to parents and their kids.
“Together with Avibra, we are addressing three key areas for families – financial, insurance, and healthcare,” UNest founder and CEO Ksenia Yudina explained. “As the leading app to help parents save for their kid’s future, we have insight into other focus areas for our customers. Alongside pragmatic saving and investment tools, families need insurance coverage and access to healthcare. Avibra shares our customer-centric philosophy and desire to create solutions that empower underserved communities.”
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in New Jersey, Avibra is an app-based advisor offering free and affordable finance, insurance, and financial well-being benefits. These benefits include a la carte solutions such as increased life and AD&D coverage, telehealth and teletherapy services, as well as phone repair and roadside assistance. Courtesy of the newly announced strategic partnership, UNest customers will get access to a $10,000 complimentary AD&D insurance policy – with the option to earn up to $5,000 more in additional coverage. They will also have the ability to choose from Avibra’s a la carte benefits – via the company’s Dollar Benefits Store – at a cost of just $1 per week.
“We are both mission-driven companies and the close alignment in our ethos makes this collaboration a natural fit,” Avibra founder and CEO Yogesh Shetty said. “Similar to UNest, we believe that everyone deserves access to top-quality healthcare and financial solutions. Avibra’s team is focused on improving the lives of hard-working families. Through this partnership, we hope to inspire parents and their kids to be proactive in preparing for each life stage.”
To access Avibra, UNest customers use the UNest Rewards section of the company’s app. Founded in 2020, UNest has developed one of the largest collections of rewards partners offered via a savings and investment app. UNest also offers its customers cash back when they enroll and shop with more than 100 different national brands including Disney+, Old Navy, and Nike.
At the company’s Finovate debut in September, Garrett Gilbertson and Peter Mansfield demonstrated the UNest’s financial planning, saving, and investment app for families. UNest offers tax-advantaged investment accounts for children, giving young people an early opportunity to begin saving for higher education, a first car, a first house, or simply to pave the way for better financial security in adulthood. UNest’s gifting program enables parents to enlist the support of extended family members and friends to contribute to their child’s account.
UNest offers a regular account for $2.99 a month and a family account for $5.98 a month. The Family plan adds the ability to include up to five children in the plan, while retaining all the same features – multiple investment options, unlimited gifts from friends and family, cashback from UNest Rewards, and a savings calculator – as the regular plan. Both plans give parents complete visibility and control over how the money is invested and spent until the child reaches adulthood.
From a collaboration with Visa to a partnership with Q2, new Finovate alum Veem, which made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall, continues to offer the kind of solutions to help make business payments easy, efficient, and affordable.
In fact, within one month of the company’s first-ever demo on the Finovate stage – a presentation of Veem’s Partner Connect product – the San Francisco, California-based company inked two major deals with some of the most innovative companies in financial services and digital banking.
Veem’s partnership with Visa, announced in the first half of October, will give the company’s 400,000+ customers access to a new SMB Visa card program, as well as digital money movement capabilities courtesy of Visa’s real-time push payments platform, Visa Direct. The agreement will enable Veem customers to generate and issue virtual Visa payment cards that can be used to cover business costs ranging from payments to suppliers to more general business expenses. The virtual card program, along with Veem’s spend management tools, also provides reconciliation and other financial benefits to help customers further digitize and streamline their operations. Access to Visa Direct will give Veem’s U.S. clients the ability to send money directly to both bank accounts and eligible Visa cards in more than 160 currencies.
“Visa is renowned for having broad network acceptance both domestically and internationally,” Veem CEO Marwan Forzley said. “Our collaboration helps Veem expand digital payment options for our customers, as we continue to build the next generation global solution for businesses.”
Veem also last month announced that it was teaming up with digital banking innovator Q2. The partnership is geared toward taking the friction out of the accounts payable/accounts receivable process for SMEs by making Veem’s AP/AR automation platform available to the 450+ financial institutions and 1.5 million businesses on Q2’s digital banking platform.
“This partnership with Veem gives our Financial institutions the ability to deliver Veem’s modern payment services to SMB customers with agility and reliability,” Q2 Innovation Studio Managing Director Johnny Ola said. “Businesses are looking for embedded solutions that act as a one-stop-shop to conduct all their day-to-day transactions. With our integration with Veem, we are excited to give our financial institution customers the option to offer small businesses innovative technology solutions.”
The two collaborations were only part of a very busy autumn for Veem, which was founded n 2014. Also last month, the company appointed Jeff Revoy as Chief Growth Officer and Travis Green as Vice President of Product Management. Revoy brings 20 years of CEO, President, and C-level experience at a number of public and VC-backed firms. Previous to his joining Veem, Revoy was Chief Operating Officer for SpaceIQ, a real estate workplace management software company he founded in 2016 that was acquired by WeWork in the summer of 2019.
In September, Veem secured $31 million in strategic funding in a round led by Truist Ventures. The company said in a statement that the capital will help it develop a robust channel partner program to broaden the company’s geographic footprint. The investment takes the company’s total equity funding to just over $100 million.
“This funding round marks an important milestone for the company, putting us in an ideal position to build out our channel partner program and prepare for Veem’s next stage of global growth,” Forzley said when the investment was announced. “Our channel partner network serves as our vehicle to better commercialize our product offering and further expand upon our market development efforts.”
As Veem’s FinovateFall debut showed, the development of its channel partner program has already borne fruit. At the conference, Veem’s Revoy and Connor Grilo demonstrated a new minimal code integration – Partner Connect – that enables banks to offer their clients an all-in-one, global payments platform designed for small and mid-sized businesses that keeps the bank’s branding at the forefront. The solution is integrated with the major accounting platforms so that, with a couple of clicks, users can reconcile what they are sending out from or receiving in Veem with their accounting software.
“There’s no back and forth, there’s no trying to keep two separate systems,” Revoy said from the Finovate stage. “All of this is automated and designed in a way so that, as a business owner, it can be fast, it can save you time, hopefully it will save you money, and will save you a lot of headaches, because everything is tied together.”
Birmingham, Alabama-based prepaid digital payment solution provider Prepaid Technologies has scored $96 million in funding. The round was led by Edison Partners and StepStone Group, and also featured participation from Stifel Venture Bank and Top Tier Capital Partners.
The company has enjoyed 15,000% straight-line growth in its load value, as well as revenue gains of 9x over the five years since it last raised capital – $5 million in 2016. Prepaid Technologies currently has 1,700+ customers and 450 active partners including banks, payroll processors, payment providers, as well as digital banking platforms, enterprise technology companies, and merchant services providers. The company’s technology enables its customers to access and customize both B2C and B2B payments for payroll, rewards, purchasing, and disbursement.
“We purpose-built our platform to create a turnkey way for companies to configure payments solutions across their enterprise however they operate,” Prepaid Technologies CEO Stephen Faust explained. “Clients access payments through our dashboard technology or integrate solutions into their workflows through our robust API suite. We’re laser-focused on productization and customization that will help to transition more companies to card-based and digital solutions.”
With financial services clients such as CertiPay, Rocket Mortgage, PNC Bank, and Cornerstone – and boasting customers like Delta, Lowe’s, and Samsung more broadly – Prepaid Technologies was founded in 1998. The company acquired Dash, the purchasing card portfolio and expense management solution from Finovate alum Karmic Labs, in 2019. Prepaid Technologies has leveraged this acquisition to launch its MyDashCard app and dashPerks, a cashback rewards program for cardholders.
Prepaid Technologies will use the new capital to fuel market expansion and to continue to develop both its technology payments platform and its customer-focused prepaid solutions. As part of this week’s investment, Edison Partners Managing Partner Chris Sugden will join Prepaid Technologies’ board of directors.
In a statement, Sugden underscored the unique opportunities available to companies like Prepaid Technologies in the current environment. “Loyalty payments and refund programs present an enormous niche opportunity,” Sugden said. “There is both a programmatic vertical opportunity and underserved community opportunity.” He praised the company’s “incredible load volume and data set” as well as the “deep banking and payments expertise” of Prepaid Technologies’ management team.
Title:Â How BMO is reimagining the Commercial Banking digital client experience using real-time analytics Duration:Â 1 hour
Like most banks, the pandemic caused BMO to accelerate self-serve options for both its retail and commercial digital banking platform. But, self-service is not a one-size-fits all strategy!
Working with Quantum Metric, BMO leveraged real-time data to build an experience for its commercial customers that replicated the ease and usability of its retail platform, but reflected the needs and behaviors of its commercial clients.
Watch this webinar, featuring Quantum Metric and BMO to hear our experts discuss:Â
Building a data and analytics strategy that supports an iterative approach to product development
Identifying user frustrations, errors, and confusion on commercial sites with real-time data
Quantifying the long-term impact of negative user experiences
Establishing a customer-centric mindset through Continuous Product Design
Moderated by Finovate’s David Penn, and featuring Sean Ellery, Head, Digital Innovation, North American Treasury & Payment Solutions; Steven Teo, Director, Innovation & Digital Controls, North American Treasury & Payment Solutions; Darko Mitrovic, Director of Account Management, Quantum Metric; and Michael Hanson, Regional Vice President of Banking and Financial Services, Quantum Metric.
The latest round of Finovate Podcasts features four of the companies that won Best of Show awards at FinovateFall in September. A common theme in the conversations with most of these firms is the importance of customer engagement at a time in rapid digital adoption.
Below is a small sample of what Finovate VP and program host Greg Palmer and his guests are talking about. For more, be sure to check in for new episodes of the Finovate podcast every week.
“We often joke internally that we’re not your parent’s PwC and, as a collective customer transformation team, we’re constantly challenging ourselves to be more provocative in the way that we engage with technology, the experiences that we drive for our clients, and the insights that we deliver.”
“From a Horizn standpoint, we are absolutely focused on helping financial institutions to be able to achieve three key objectives: the first one is overachieving their digital growth goals, the second is successfully supporting mergers and new platform launches, and then the third component is driving mass adoption of new innovation and capabilities.”
“We’ve been doing this since 1994 through IC Banking, our digital channel platform that’s already implemented in more than 40 banks in Latin America and the Caribbean. We are helping people love their banks because we give them superior experiences with our digital channels. Today banks need to build loyalty through digital engagement. That’s why you need as a bank to have customers that love going to your application and your bank.”
“How fast could a mortgage be? At some point in the future, you’ll be able to get a mortgage in a couple of days. It’s harder to say when than to say what but, in theory, if you could process all of the information, and it’s all there available, you should be able to get a mortgage in a couple of days versus a month or more – what it takes today.”
Perhaps the biggest news in crypto today (besides Burger King’s announcement to give away Dogecoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin) is that crypto investment firm Digital Currency Group (DCG) sold $700 million in stock, boosting its valuation to $10 billion.
The Wall Street Journal broke the news earlier today, noting that DCG’s sell-off is the second-largest in crypto history and makes DCG one of the highest-valued private companies in the sector.
The private sale was led by SoftBank and saw participation from Google, GIC Capital, and Rabbit Capital, who join previous investors Western Union, Bain Capital Ventures, Mastercard, and OMERS Ventures.
DCG has created its own subsidiaries, including digital currency asset manager Grayscale. The company also leverages M&A as part of its strategy, having snapped up blockchain news and research company CoinDesk and crypto exchange platform Luno. Among the many companies in DCG’s investment portfolio are eToro, Kraken, Ripple, and Veem.
DCG was founded in 2015 by Barry Silbert, who said that the deal will allow some early market players to close out their positions in the company and pocket the profits. The new investors are also expected to boost DCG’s technical and operational abilities and broaden its geographic reach. Silbert, who owns around 40% of DCG, has not sold any of his stock.
Before launching DCG, Silbert founded Finovate alum SecondMarket, a firm that enables private companies and investment funds to execute primary and secondary transactions. The company was acquired by Nasdaq in 2015.
