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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
U.S. wealthtech player Betterment is building up its assets under management. That’s because the company acquired the U.S. investment advisory business of Canada-based Wealthsimple this week.
Terms of the deal– which notably does not include Wealthsimple’s technology, employees, or operations– were not disclosed.
“As we shift our focus to our Canadian business for the time being, finding a partner for our U.S. business that shared our commitment to putting clients first was our top priority,” said Wealthsimple Co-founder and CEO Michael Katchen. “It’s been a privilege to serve our U.S. clients, and we’re confident that their investments will continue to be in good hands with Betterment.”
To find a suitable home for its U.S. accounts, Wealthsimple selected Betterment in a competitive bidding process for its strong reputation and customer-first mentality. Wealthsimple’s U.S. clients will be moved over to Betterment in June of this year.
“This was an excellent opportunity for us to grow our customer base, and we’ll continue to be aggressive in opportunities that accelerate our business goals,” said Betterment’s newly-appointed CEO Sarah Levy.
As our recent conversation featuring Boss Insights founder and CEO Keren Moynihan, reminds us, the fintechs (and “TechFins”) of the Great White North are engaged in some of the most forward-looking innovation on the continent.
This week brings an above average volume of news from Canada’s ambitious real-time payments industry. For one, the Vancouver Bullion & Currency Exchange (VBCE) announced a partnership with EMQ to bring “near real-time” cross-border payments to businesses and consumers across Canada. A PSP as well as a foreign currency exchange, VBCE hopes that its partnership with the global financial settlement network will give its customers the ability to move money faster and more efficiently. The firm also anticipates being able to use EMQ’s network to bring new services to market and scale existing ones.
“The speed and reach of EMQ’s global network allows us to pilot new services in one market and scale them rapidly across others to meet the evolving customer needs,” VBCE VP of Business Development Kevin Ma said. “This is especially important for our business with a diverse product portfolio.”
Elsewhere on the Canadian real-time payments beat, Payments Canada announced a collaboration with debit network Interac to support real-time payments in the country. Interac will serve as the exchange solution provider for Real-Time Rail, the real-time payments systems operated by Payments Canada and regulated by the Bank of Canada. RTR, scheduled to go live in 2022, will enable Canadians to initiate payments and receive funds in seconds.
Payments Canada President and CEO Tracey Black said that RTR will be the “foundation for faster, data-rich payments” and will serve as a “platform for innovation.” Black also praised Interac as a “well-suited partner” with the requisite infrastructure and connectivity to support “the rapid adoption of real-time payments in Canada.”
Last, some developments on the Canadian neobank front. Toronto, Ontario-based challenger bank KOHO added a no-fee savings account to its offerings this week. KOHO Save gives account holders 1.2% interest on their entire balance. There are no teaser rates and no minimum balance is required to acquire an account, which is available on the KOHO app.
“We’re excited to add KOHO Save to our product line as a simple and valuable money earning tool for Canadians,” KOHO CEO and founder Daniel Eberhard said. “We’ve been able to build a savings tool that doesn’t follow the same restrictions of most other savings products on the market. People just want to access their money freely and earn a great interest rate. We think Save is a wonderful step in that direction.”
KOHO also offers a savings and checking account and gives users a minimum of 0.5% (up to 10%) cash back on all purchases. KOHO Premium account holders get an additional 2% cash back on three major spending categories. The company, founded in 2014 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, has raised $57.5 million in funding from investors including Drive Capital and Portag3 Ventures.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Israel-based Rewire, a cross-border digital banking firm that serves migrant workers, announced $20 million Series B round led by Finovate alum OurCrowd.
What does International Women’s Day and #IChoosetoChallenge mean in practice, and what can be done to support and develop truly diverse teams? How does the world of fast-paced fintechs compare with legacy banking when it comes to embracing women in leadership, and empowering new voices to be heard from the bottom up?
Ahead of International Women’s Day, Charlie Burgess, Head of Digital Content for Finovate, sat down with Nicole Newlin, VP Solutions at Ocrolus and part of the Leadership Team at NYC Fintech Women, and Filippa Noghani, Head of Marketing – Banking and Financial Services at Virtusa and Board Member and Marketing Chair of NYC Fintech Women to talk opportunities and challenges, walking the walk of celebrating women, and why brands getting on-board with the IWD should look beyond making it just a marketing stunt.
Watch the full interview below. If you’re interested in finding out more about NYC Fintech Women, visit their page and learn more about the panel discussed, taking place at FinovateSpring Digital 2021 here.
“With more and more people around the world growing anxious about the consequences of climate change, the need for solutions and initiatives that empower people to take action to help protect our planet has become a business imperative,” Meniga CEO and co-founder Georg Ludviksson said.
Carbon Insight enables users to estimate and track how their spending decision impacts the environment via their carbon footprint. This footprint is derived via the Meniga Carbon Index, which was developed by a team of data scientists who leveraged environment research into the carbon emissions of various products and services. Carbon Insight works by multiplying spending transaction amounts by a “carbon intensity value” to give the user a reasonable carbon footprint estimate. This information can be used to help inform the user to which activities are potentially more environmentally impactful.
“We have seen great enthusiasm for our Carbon Insight product over the past few months, from banks and other key financial players, which is an encouraging sign from our industry that more green initiatives are still to come,” Ludviksson said.
As part of the partnership with Meniga, Íslandsbanki has agreed to integrate Carbon Insight into its digital banking solution. The Icelandic bank sees the new offering as a way to increase customer engagement and build on its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy.
“Consumers are increasingly interested in improving their carbon footprint and having a positive impact on the environment,” Birna Einarsdóttir, Íslandsbanki CEO said. “Meniga’s Carbon Insight solution will enable Íslandsbanki’s customers to estimate the carbon footprint of their private consumption, identify carbon intensive purchases, and ultimately reduce their carbon footprint while saving money at the same time.”
Banking technology player PlaidannouncedPlaid Income this week, the company’s new income verification tool.
Income offers a secure and fast way to help consumers prove their salary in order to qualify for and secure loans, rent apartments, lease vehicles, and more. Lenders benefit from this data by being able to make better-informed risk decisions, issue pre-approvals or approvals faster, and allocate fewer resources to manually reviewing documents.
Plaid places consumers in control of their own data by offering them the option to choose whether to share their data. With Income, they can opt to share their salary information by connecting to their employer account, payroll provider account, or by verifying their salary using documents such as paystubs, W2s, and some 1099s.
To help users connect directly with their payroll provider, Plaid supports real-time payroll authentication for over 250,000 of the largest employers in the U.S. The company is also developing credential-less authentication capabilities with leading payroll providers, including ADP.
The new Income tool is part of the Plaid for Payroll suite, which also includes the company’s Deposit Switch offering launched earlier this year.
Plaid’s income verification tool is similar to an offering from its competitor Finicity, which launched its Verification of Income and Employment solution in 2019. Among Finicity’s clients are Freddie Mac, Quicken Loans, and Experian.
Interestingly, Finicity was acquired by Mastercard late last year, just days after the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block Visa’s ability to acquire innovative fintech.
iProov’sFlexible Authentication provides banks with a single biometric solution for high and low risk profile transactions throughout the customer journey to protect from fraud.
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Presenter
Andrew Bud, CEO & Founder Andrew Bud, CBE FREng, is a serial entrepreneur who has built innovative global businesses in the mobile and biometrics sectors and founded iProov in 2011. LinkedIn
Evolution AI has re-built data extraction technology from the ground up. The company’s proprietary deep-learning models weave together text, graphics, and meaning to extract data from documents – just like humans do.
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Martin Goodson, CEO & Chief Scientist Goodson is Chief Scientist and CEO of Evolution AI. He is also the Chair of the Royal Statistical Society Data Science Section and runs the largest ML community in Europe, London Machine Learning Meetup. LinkedIn
Rafal Kwasny, CTO Kwasny is CTO of Evolution AI and has over 10 years of experience in enterprise IT. He is an expert systems thinker with unrivaled knowledge of big data technologies. LinkedIn
CoCoNet is an expert in white labeled corporate banking solutions for banks like ING, KBC, LBBW, and UniCredit. Their newest solution dramatically improves the onboarding process for corporates.
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Presenter
Dennis Rochel, Head of Innovations Rochel is the Head of Innovations at CoCoNet and has a Master of Science at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. LinkedIn
With Black History Month drawing to a close and Women’s History Month just underway, now is an excellent opportunity to look at some of the ways that fintechs and financial services companies are responding to the needs of women- and ethnic minority-owned small businesses and their employees.
This is a story about how three companies – a Canadian fintech and Finovate alum named Boss Insights, a diversity-focused neobank called Paybby, and one of the biggest African-American banks Carver Federal Savings Bank – came together to help struggling small business owners survive in a world made even more unequal by the global pandemic.
Can you tell us how the collaboration began?
Richard Muskus, SVP and CRO Carver Federal Savings Bank: The collaboration began as Carver was in the late stages of assessing and negotiating a technology solution for our PPP platform with a large well- known national firm and there was a great deal of urgency to have this platform in place to meet the upcoming government program launch.
Facing a delay in setting up an all-hands call to finalize planning, we were introduced to Boss Insights and Paybby who engaged Carver within hours and moved to demo and agreement within 48 hours. As impressed as we were with the tech, we were as equally impressed with the speed by which Carver was up and running.
Hassan Miah, founder and CEO, Paybby: When PPP came out, the first round, people of color were underrepresented. Either they didn’t know (about the program) or they had issues getting their data. We went around and looked at what platform would be the best that would help these communities do better in this next round.
We did a deep dive on multiple platforms, including Boss Insights’ platform, and we saw they they had an architecture and a product that would best serve the community we are focused on.
Why is it important for you to be involved in this round of the PPP?
Keren Moynihan, founder and CEO, Boss Insights: We were having meeting after meeting and reading article after article about the program and someone said to me at one point: “You’re a female founder. Can you tell me what you’re doing to help diverse and minority companies survive?”
When someone says something like that it resonates in your head and you just don’t stop thinking about it. In the first round of PPP only 14% of participants reported their demographic information. But in that 14%, 16% were female-owned companies and 18% visible minorities. If you look at that and compare it to the actual number of businesses run by females or by visible minorities there is a large difference. “Boss” in Boss Insights stands for “back office software systems” and insights on those. We are a data-driven company and so when you look at those numbers it’s clear that something had to be done.
Muskus: Serving the needs of our communities is foundational to the organization since 1948 and not only being involved, but being a leader in the PPP is representative of our mission.
What is gained when fintechs and neobanks and community banks collaborate?
Muskus: Partnering with firms such as a Boss Insights and Paybby allows small community banks such as Carver to provide customers with the highest quality of service and is incredibly important in our growth and impact in the market.
Miah: When we first got involved, Carver and some of banks we talked with told us that in the Black community many people don’t even have a bank account. We saw this as an opportunity to provide that account and then support them on their loan efforts.
Many of these small businesses are small Mom and Pop businesses, many of them work out of their back pockets: they use their regular personal checking account, make no distinction between their social security number and EIN, and those kinds of things. So we saw that they needed these services – and wanted them. There’s a lot of opportunity there.
Moynihan: The piece that has become much clearer to me is that we have been focusing so much to make sure that this technology works seamlessly, that it can get onboarded in one hour – meaning any lender who wants to support businesses and measure them on their merit, they’re one hour away from doing it.
You can sometimes get so into that rabbit hole that you forget about the reason you started to begin with. Business owners, they are people, with families and children, and what we want is to give them the ability to go to a lender and say: this is me, this is my package of information, please evaluate me. Don’t look at extraneous details – look at me and tell me if I am a good bet.
How will you measure success and what insights have you gained from the partnership?
Muskus: Our success is measured primarily by how successful our customers view Carver being. The successful delivery of our products and services leveraging these types of partnerships is representative of the choices we make in partnering to begin with.
Miah: Part of our goal is to bring data science to the community in a way that is usable. One reason we bought banking app Wicket is that it categorizes your spending. Our vision is you go from having a bank account where you just spend money and your account starts at $500 and it goes down to $50 to where you start saying, “hey I spent $100 on Starbucks . Did I really need to do that when I can’t even feed my family.” The idea is to marry the data with the use case, and now we have the technology and the know how to not just tell people “oh you ought to learn how to do better and think about managing (your finances)”, but the tools and technologies and everything are there and available.
Moynihan: When you’re a business and you’re asking for money from a bank, the first thing they do is they send you a laundry list of information they need to get from you. (But) if you have a connection to where they are collecting it, and it’s on the cloud, you can get it in real-time. So whether it’s accounting information for businesses that have made it that far, banking information for ones who are just starting out, or credit scores which will continue to get better, you can have access to the information in real time. The industry is called the “financial services industry”. (Now) lenders can focus on the services part of that, not on the data administration part. That’s what we’re all doing here together, that’s the real crux of the collaboration.
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Boss Insights made its Finovate debut two years ago at FinovateFall. At the event, company founder and CEO Keren Moynihan demonstrated Boss Insights’ Smart Capital platform, which leverages data-driven insights to accelerate the lending process.
A public benefit challenger bank dedicated to bringing financial empowerment to African-American and Latino communities, Paybby offers a financial wellness and PFM app – Wicket – courtesy of its recent acquisition of the eponymous Overland Park, Kansas-based neobank. Wicket provides a Mastercard debit card and FDIC-insured savings and checking accounts, as well as early direct deposit and automatic savings solutions.
Founded in 1948, Carver Federal Savings Bank is one of the largest African-American banks in the U.S. Headquartered in Harlem, New York, the bank has been designated as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) by the U.S. Treasury Department for its community-based banking operations. Carver Federal Savings Bank is committed to reinvesting 80 cents of every dollar deposited back into the African American community.
With International Womens’ Day just around the corner, we continue our #WomeninFintech series and speak with Kim Snyder, CEO & Founder, KlariVis about her journey through fintech and advice to the next generation of women coming through.
Tell us about yourself and your career path to your current role.
Snyder: Personally, I am a very family-oriented person and prior to the Pandemic we had started some new traditions, like “Sunday Brunch-day”; it truly is my favorite thing to do and I cannot wait until we are able to restart those activities!
My career path to KlariVis is probably not what you would expect. I started my career with KPMG and then moved into an accounting/finance role for a small private liberal arts college. My next step was where the entrepreneurial bug hit me: I joined a local start-up company focused on creating new innovations in a variety of industries and it was here I saw what it was like to build something from scratch and it was invigorating, exciting and scary all at the same time. I then spent 10 years at a community bank, and it was my passion for this industry that fueled my drive to take the chance and start my own consulting business. During those course of 4+ years, I hired many previous team members to help me build a premier, boutique consulting firm focused on helping community banks solve the prevalent issues they are faced with in this rapidly changing industry.
The one challenge that resonated more than any other, though, is the data conundrum that exists in the banking industry. Regardless of size, core system, talent level or management team experience, our clients were paralyzed with the mass volume of data generated by the various siloed processing systems and the bank’s inability to access that data in an efficient manner, thus making it virtually useless to the institution. We knew that there had to be a better way and thus the idea of KlariVis was born. We spent about a year incubating our solution and our consulting clients became our focus group – by the end of that year, they were using phrases like “game-changer” related to our solution. So, I started a second company in February 2019 and hired a technology firm to take our proof of concept and turn it into reality. We launched KlariVis in January 2020 and the response was incredible from our prospect banks. We issued a press release last week – FVCBank has now invested in KlariVis due to the value and impact our platform is having on their bank. I’m not sure what better testament there can be than for a client to say, I want to be more than a client, I want to invest in your success and become your long-term strategic partner.
There seems to be a big push towards knowing your customer and providing a personalized and exceptional service in recent years. How should banks go about this?
Snyder: Community banks are known for their exceptional customer service – they typically have a very loyal customer base who value the personal touch. The PPP program highlighted this very fact – it was the community banks who stepped up and were the heroes by helping the small businesses in their communities.
How do they take that exceptional customer service and turn it into a more personalized experience? I believe it all starts with treating data as an enterprise-wide asset – making sure it is in the hands of the relationship managers who interact with and serve bank customers every day. The banking customer is communicating to its bank every day through transactions, whether they be transacted in person or digitally.
Unfortunately banks and credit unions are hampered by the numerous disparate systems that exist in the banking ecosystem, most of all which have critical data points about their customer base. As such, they have no choice but to leverage solution providers to enable them to aggregate this information, cut out the noise and focus on the high-value actionable data points that will allow them to offer that more personalized touch.
Allowing easy and efficient access to customer data at the front-line is paramount to improving and personalizing the customer experience.
Are there other trends you see driving innovation within banking/ fintech?
Snyder: Digital transformation is the primary focus for financial institutions of all sizes and I don’t see that changing for quite some time. We’ve been talking in the industry for years about this wave coming, and due to the Pandemic, it’s here. In a recent survey by the Digital Banking Report, the top three strategic priorities for 2021 were consistent for big and small institutions: 1) improve digital experience for consumers; 2) enhance data and analytic capabilities; and 3) reduce operating costs.
Fortunately for KlariVis, we hit 2 of the top 3 strategic priorities – enhancing data and analytic capabilities and reducing operating costs. Our solution accomplishes both and enables financial institutions to improve the overall customer experience.
What is important to you as a leader of a fintech? Does KlariVis have any initiatives that support diversity/ women in fintech?
Snyder: I strive to build a diverse and talented team. KlariVis was born out of an identified need in the banking industry but it was conceptualized through creativity and innovation. Diversity provides our team with expanded creativity stemming from different perspectives based upon life and work experiences. Absent of diversity of thought, skills and unique perspectives, our concept would not be what it is today.
My goal is to hire the best talent for the Company’s open positions, but as a female leader, I am passionate about ensuring that opportunities for women continue to grow in fintech and would like to see the same trend at KlariVis. Many tech industry roles are often filled by men. At KlariVis we have three females at the C-Suite level and each of us is equally passionate about hiring, promoting, and compensating talented deserving women. We would like to see more female applicants for technical positions particularly software engineers and have recently begun participation with a university’s internship program which may yield diverse candidates for future open positions.
What advice would you give to women looking to begin a career in banking/fintech?
Snyder: For women looking to begin a career in banking, fintech or another field, it is critical to learn the industry. Evaluating positions typical to the industry and matching that with individual skills, likes and dislikes is key to finding a position that is a good match. Passion is critical particularly in the rapidly growing fintech arena.
In addition to pursing an applicable degree and identifying a mentor, take the time to listen and learn from that person who can provide a frame of reference that you would not have otherwise. There are many different aspects of banking and financial technology is moving quickly with new innovations. Banks are trying to keep up with the latest and greatest technology advancements as well as their competitors with the goal of enhancing the customer experience. I recommend that anyone with an interest in banking or fintech read everything they can to stay current with the industry.
Aon announced partnerships this week that are helping the insurance broker to pilot a decentralized insurance offering. The new product will cover risks associated with DeFi platforms. More specifically, it will cover clients who experience losses as a result of hacks or buggy software.
The firm formed partnerships with smart insurance contracts provider Nayms, decentralized lending platform Teller Finance, and Relm, an insurance company that embraces new and emerging business categories.
“The Nayms platform puts the tool of smart contracts in the hand of regulated underwriters (like Relm) and brokers (like Aon), to open up a new capital source when underwriting crypto risk,” Nayms CEO Dan Roberts told NASDAQ via email. “This could be in either crypto (ETH, BTC) or in fiat (via a stablecoin). Aon is assessing both options as part of longer term programs.”
Aon and Nayms are conducting the pilot through Teller Finance, while Relm is underwriting the insurance contract.
While other players have offered insurance protection for crypto wallets in the past, Aon aims to be different. That’s because not only is the firm staying above board with fully regulated players, it is also focused on keeping the underlying processes straightforward and intelligible. Both of these attributes are difficult to achieve in the crypto world.
It’s just a little business banking between friends for now. But the announcement this week that SME payments platform Square is launching an in-house bank is the latest instance of fintechs leveraging banking services to maximize customer engagement and grow their customer base.
Square Financial Services, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, began operations at the beginning of the week, and will function as an independently governed subsidiary of Square offering business loans and deposit products for its merchant sellers. Previously leveraging a partnership with a third-party bank to offer financing via its Square Capital solution, the new “industrial bank” will now provide underwriting and loan origination for the company’s lending product.
According to Square, its Square Capital division facilitated 57,000 loans in Q4 of 2020 and facilitated $857 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to 80,000+ SMEs. Additionally, 58% of Square Capital’s loans go to women-owned businesses, with 35% going to ethnic minority-owned firms. These figures compare favorably to those of traditional lenders, whose financing tends to support female-owned SMEs 17% of the time and minority-owned companies 27% of the time.
“Bringing banking capability in-house enables us to operate more nimbly, which will serve Square and our customers as we continue the work to create financial tools that serve the underserved,” Square Chief Financial Officer Amrita Ahuja said. Ahuja, who is also Executive Chairwoman of the board of directors for Square Financial Services, added, “We thank the FDIC and Utah DFI for their partnership enabling us to reach this milestone, and look forward to continuing to expand access to financial services at this critical time for small businesses.”
Square Financial Services won charter approval with both the FDIC and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions. The entity will be led by CEO Lewis Goodwin, with Brandon Soto serving as Chief Financial Officer and Samantha Ku as Chief Operating Officer.
