This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Mastercardannounced a partnership with Samsung’s security platform, Samsung Knox today in a move that will serve to foster digital inclusion across emerging markets.
“This partnership with Mastercard is our way of making that future available to everyone by helping to close the digital divide, especially in emerging economies and countries,” explained KC Choi, executive vice president of Global Mobile B2B at Samsung.
The two will use Mastercard’s Pay on Demand platform which offers consumers device financing via a pay-as-you-go model. Built by Mastercard Labs, Pay on Demand brings together banks, equipment manufacturers, and telcos to solve issues limiting device financing in underserved markets. The program consists of four components:
A lending marketplace that aggregates lenders who offer affordable device financing
Samsung’s Knox security platform that ensure the safety of consumer data and transactions
Tools that help consumers analyze and build their credit history from usage data
Virtual card numbers that can be used for everyday transactions and to make payments on a device
“At Mastercard, we see a connected world where opportunity and prosperity are possible for everyone, everywhere,” said Jorn Lambert, executive vice president of Digital Solutions at Mastercard. “The Pay on Demand platform enables us to deliver on that vision and foster financial inclusion, giving consumers an opportunity to participate in digital commerce. By combining Samsung’s device management and security expertise with Mastercard’s innovative technology, we are creating an ecosystem that can deliver measurable, positive impact to the communities we serve.”
Pay On Demand will be launched in the Middle East and Africa in early 2020 and will extend to other geographical locations later this year.
For all the talk of challenger banks in Europe, Southeast Asia, and the U.K., the movement to bring alternative banking options to consumers and small businesses in the U.S. may deserve more attention than it tends to get. And this week’s news that SME-based challenger bank NorthOne has raised $21 in Series Afunding, is a reminder of why.
“We created NorthOne to serve businesses that are often underserved by big banks,” bank CEO Eytan Bensoussan explained. “Having grown up in a family of small business owners myself, I know first-hand what to expect when it comes to small business banking.”
The round was led by Battery Ventures’ Shiran Shalev, and featured participation from Redpoint Ventures and Tom Williams. The investment takes the bank’s total capital to more than $23 million.
“With this funding,” Bensoussan added, “NorthOne will be able to continue to develop solutions that simplify the most painful part of managing a small business, its finances.” The additional capital will also enable the challenger bank to add to its product and engineering teams, as well as spend more on marketing and customer acquisition.
NorthOne offers small and medium-sized businesses a digital, FDIC-insured, business checking account with mobile ACH, wires, check deposits, and access to 300,000 fee-free ATMs across the U.S. NorthOne’s mobile-first, API-enabled platform also offers overseas vendor payments, and software integration with expense management, accounting, and e-commerce systems. The company noted that, in the second half of last year, it has signed up 1% of all small businesses that applied for bank accounts in the U.S.
“Millions of dollars are spent using NorthOne debit cards every month,” Bensoussan wrote on the company’s blog today. “And we expect those numbers to keep rising as we open thousands upon thousands of new NorthOne bank accounts each month.”
Founded in 2016, NorthOne launched its small business banking account last fall, in partnership with Radius Bank.
One of the more consistently insightful observers of the fintech industry, author Chris Skinner, highlighted the rise of central bank digital currencies as one of the more surprising conversations at FinovateEurope this year.
“China’s about to launch one, there’s going to be a digital dollar from the Fed at some point probably,” Skinner said. “And the implications of that on cross border payments and infrastructure was one of the topics that was a little bit off track to me because it hadn’t come up before. So I enjoyed that immensely.”
That said, the man behind theFinanser.com and chair of the Financial Services Club spent the majority of our conversation in Berlin talking the discussions he’s had with leaders in the banking industry who are tackling the challenge of digital transformation head on – and succeeding. These insights are at the core of Skinner’s upcoming book, Doing Digital, to be published in April.
Skinner also shared some insights on banks and their role in digital identity management. He noted Head of OP Lab for Finland’s OP Financial Group Kristian Luoma who pointed out that even in a future in which banks aren’t involved in payments or authentication due to intermediaries like Square and Apple ID, for example, there is still a critical role for banks to play. But banks must be ready to share the ball.
“It’s one of the few times I’ve heard a bank actually stating that in such a clear way, because most banks still think they have to own and control everything,” Skinner observed. “The idea of being just a player in a system – that’s the way we have to think for the future.”
Here are some of the top takeaways from our conversation with Chris Skinner this year at FinovateEurope in Berlin.
On why a “bare-knuckle approach” to the challenge of successful digital transformation is appropriate – if not required
Skinner: Digital transformation is not easy, it’s really hard, it takes years, it involves balancing business-as-usual with business-as-unusual, and it’s something that had to be led by the chief executive and chairperson and cannot be delegated. I find too many banks think that digital (transformation) is a project or a function or a budget that can be delegated. But that’s absconding the reality. The reality is that you have to own it.
On the swim-or-sink approach companies that succeed in digital transformation have adopted to ensure a digital-positive culture
Skinner: The most difficult thing in any transformational project is getting the middle management to buy into the project and participate. And commit. Because often the middle management are the most worried about what’s happening. They think they are going to lose their job or they might lose their part of the organization or they might lose their power. They might lose their people. They might lose their promotion. So they fear change rather than embrace it. And it’s really a case of: how do you bring those people with you?
On the progress some innovative banks are making toward digital transformation.
Skinner: One of (the banks I interviewed for Doing Digital) had a head of ecosystems. It’s the first time I ever met anybody at a bank who’s called the “head of ecosystems.” His pure role was to go out and find appropriate partnerships – in the world of APIs and apps and analytics – on open platforms and bring them in to work with the bank. At the time, they had about ten partnerships, and I think today they’ve more than doubled that number. So there are some banks taking it very seriously.
In order for fintech to be for everyone, it needs to be from everyone.
It’s a line that will strike a chord with anyone, across industries, who find themselves in the minority within teams and businesses, or even the sole representative of a different background or perspective.
Addressing gender-gap challenges in the finance industry is on-going, and a key part of this is providing a platform for women to share their insights and vision for the future of fintech. As part of this endeavor, we brought together some of the leading women from FinovateEurope to share their thoughts not only on issues on diversity in the workplace, but also on the key pain points in their field and their ideas on how to overcome them.
First, here’s a look at an interview with Dr. Louise Beaumont, Tech U.K.’s Co-Chair of the Open Banking & Payments Working Group. Beaumont was the Chair of the Open Banking Industry Stage at FinovateEurope last month and spoke with Finovate Research Analyst David Penn on the future of open finance, why banks need to believe they are trusted, and creating a full data daisy.
Penn also interviewed Ghela Boskovich, Founder of FemTechGlobal and Chair of the Digital Future Industry Stage at FinovateEurope. In this conversation, Boskovich explores why culture is the cornerstone on which financial institutions built looks at and the need for more public education around data.
The next interview was with Theo Lau, Founder at Unconventional Ventures and Chair of FinovateEurope’s Future Tech Industry Stage. Lau explores the challenges AI presents to legacy businesses and gender diversity in fintech.
Finally, here’s a conversation with Simone Vroegop, Head of European Product Management of Financial Technology at Brown Brothers Harriman. Vroegop discusses why it is crucial to have an open mind and look to where value can be added to an asset manager’s operating system, and why she’s surprised that hasn’t been more disruption in the sector.
To promote the gender goal of 50/50 diversity in financial services, women who register by this Friday, March 13, can purchase a ticket to any 2020 Finovate event at a 50% discount. Just enter the code EQUALITY on the booking form.
African American comedian Richard Pryor joked after seeing the classic, 1976 movie Logan’s Run that the future didn’t look so bright to him. Why? Well, with no black people cast in the futuristic sci-fi flick, the legendary funny man surmised that, perhaps, “White folks ain’t planning on us being here.”
A similar thought comes to mind when anticipating the upcoming presentation by strategic futurist and TEDx Curator Nancy Giordano at FinovateSpring in May. In spite of the increasing evidence that the future belongs to women, the ranks of futurists – the people helping us understand, anticipate, and prepare for the world to come – tend to feature far fewer women than you might imagine.
This is just one of many reasons to look forward to Giordano’s keynote opening address “Navigating the Big Shift – How Exponential Technologies are Changing … Everything.”
A guest lecturer at Singularity University, and a ten-year TEDx curator, Giordano is recognized as one of the top female futurists in the world. A frequent panelist at South by Southwest, she has been on the board of the retail trade association, GMDC, and on the advisory council of both Retail Tomorrow and Future Frontiers, a fintech conference designed to help strengthen community banks. She also is a part of Austin, Texas-based, artificial intelligence services provider KUNGFU.AI.
And given her theme at FinovateSpring, of how big shifts change everything, it is easy to wonder how a shift in perspective on the future – from male-generated to female-generated – can fundamentally enhance our capacity to cope with technological change.
“You are also a human that is going through this. You are a parent, you are a son or daughter. You are part of a community that is wrestling with these questions,” she said in a compilation of remarks titled What Does the Future Expect from Us and How Do We Create that Future? “It’s hitting us personally, not just professionally.” She used the example of a group of women, all strangers, spontaneously consoling a young mother and her child at an airport as the model for the kind of take-action agency and humanistic focus she believes is required in order to build the future we need.
To this end, Giordano warns businesses to avoid the temptation to not make decisions. She uses the metaphor of training soldiers to act dynamically in the face of often existential uncertainty to explain why companies need to move beyond pining for “killer apps” or “the right time.” Often, she notes, by the time that’s happened, it’s often too late.”
Giordano’s futurism is a human-centered one. In response to an extended discourse from a cloud computing specialist who was extolling the virtues of the digital cloud during a conference panel, Giordano asked, “what is the equivalent of the human cloud? What allows us to level up in that same way? And are social technologies keeping up with digital technologies?”
Again and again, Giordano emphasizes less the new gadgets and gizmos to come from exponential technology development and instead reinforces how these technological changes will require new behavior on our part. “This is not just about understanding the Shift,” she says of the “permanent state of ambiguity” that characterizes our technological – and social – present and future. “It calls to a different kind of leadership, or ‘leadering’, or posture, or approach.”
To promote the gender goal of 50/50 diversity in financial services, women who register by this Friday, March 13, can purchase a ticket to any 2020 Finovate event at a 50% discount. Just enter the code EQUALITY on the booking form.
Small and medium-sized businesses working with Australian cross-border payments company Airwallex will be getting some help with their books. The company has announced a new partnership with New Zealand-based, cloud accounting company Xero.
Specifically, the newly-announced collaboration will enable Airwallex customers to reconcile their domestic and international payments by connecting their multi-currency financial transactions in Airwallex to Xero. Businesses will get daily updates of their transactions via their Xero bank feeds, accelerating and simplifying the reconciliation process, and saving companies both time and money.
“As more small businesses enter overseas markets, it’s important that their multi-currency payments flow seamlessly in Xero and are automatically reconciled,” Xero Financial Industry Director Ian Boyd said. “This integration with Airwallex will ensure our mutual customers spend less time on administrative tasks and more on what’s important to them – running their business.”
The integration is live in Australia and will be made available in both the U.K. and Hong Kong later in 2020.
Airwallex leverages its proprietary technology and infrastructure to facilitate low-cost, high-speed payments and collections around the world. The company allows SMEs to access interbank FX rates on international transactions, and enables them to open Airwallex accounts in the U.S., U.K., and European Union to conduct their international operations. Airwallex’s partnership with Xero comes on the heels of its teaming up with Visa for the launch of its Airwallex Borderless Card, which makes it easier for SMEs to do their banking business online.
Calling an integration with Xero, “one of the most requested integrations from our customers,” Airwallex Co-founder and CEO Jack Zhang said that the partnership was part of a “wider international rollout” the company will launch over the course of the year. “This is the start of a series of capabilities that we plan to introduce with Xero to improve the way small businesses manage their finances across platforms,” Zhang said.
With ten international offices, including locations in Hong Kong, London, Shanghai, San Francisco, and Bangalore, Airwallex has raised more than $200 million in funding from investors including DST Global, Sequoia Capital China, and Tencent. The company was founded in 2015.
Founded by former CEO Rod Drury and a Finovate alum since 2011, Xero has grown into one of the world’s major, cloud-based accounting software platforms. This year, the company announced a partnership with Square to power instant invoice payments in Australia, and collaborated with Macquarie Group on a new initiative to help support the financial advisory and planning industry in Australia.
Steve Vamos took the helm as Xero’s CEO in 2018. The following year, the company reached 1.8 million subscribers and positive free cash flow for the first time.
Financial commerce technology provider Wirecard announced today it has partnered with Grab, a super app based in Southeast Asia that provides users with everyday services including on-demand transportation and food delivery.
Under the partnership Wirecard will process transactions made using Grab’s ewallet GrabPay in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore.
Grabpay, which is accepted by 600,000+ merchants, works for both online and brick and mortar transactions. Along with payment processing, Wirecard will help introduce Grabpay to more merchants, expanding acceptance across Southeast Asia.
While mobile payment functionality may not be impressive to U.S. users, keep in mind that mobile wallets are much more popular in Asia. In fact, mobile wallets are almost 2x more popular in Southeast Asia than they are worldwide. Among consumers in the region, 44% regularly choose their mobile wallet as a payment method. In comparison, the global average mobile wallet usage is 25%.
Senior Managing Director of Grab Financial Group Reuben Lai explained that Wirecard will help the company build a cashless economy for millions of businesses across Southeast Asia. “Wirecard’s innovative mobile payments solutions will not only complement our GrabPay e-wallet platform, but also offer businesses and consumers the opportunity to transact with greater security, convenience and flexibility,” he said.
Today’s announcement comes just days after Wirecard partnered with another player in the gig economy. Earlier this month the Germany-based company partnered with Xolo to offer more robust financial tools to entrepreneurs and micro-businesses.
As any woman working in fintech can tell you, we have a long road to equality. The good news is that equality starts with us.
And because we are responsible for exemplifying the change we want to see in the workforce, we are in control of how we inspire others and create solutions.
Today we bring you perspectives from two women working in the fintech field to get their take on what they are doing to be the change they want to see.
First up is Sophie Theen, Chief People Officer at Oakam, a U.K.-based fintech that helps underserved individuals build credit. Theen is passionate about recruitment, culture, diversity, and inclusion and has helped a number of tech startups with talent recruitment and HR strategy. She has received multiple industry awards, including being named a WeAreTheCity Rising Star Finalist in 2019.
In your professional life you help startups recruit talent. What is your strategy in promoting diversity?
Sophie Theen: Hiring for diversity to me is very simple. We don’t want to deliberately hire for diversity i.e., rejecting male candidates or promoting or writing an advert that only speaks to a woman. It’s about making it fair and equal to all candidates who are in the process and ensuring that the hiring managers and panel of interviewers are diverse, too (so no all male or female panel).
It’s also got a lot to do with the way we present ourselves as a company. If we want to be recognized as an inclusive employer, then we need to always remember to put effort in taking those baby steps.
Tell us how someone in the industry has helped empower you.
Theen: So I haven’t been in fintech for so long yet, and my first experience wasn’t all that amazing. I was new to the industry and had to learn to navigate through adversity in a heavily male-dominated environment, most of the time feeling quite lost and insecure.
This was the case until I joined 11:FS in 2017. The leadership there really changed my impression about the industry. My CEO then, David Brear, empowered me in every way you could imagine; that made me realize this is the industry I’m passionate about and this is where I want to make a change for the better.
How do you empower other women to achieve success of their own?
Theen: Simple, I give as much of my time as I can back to the women that I meet, cross paths with, and to those who reach out to me asking for support. Because if it wasn’t for my community and mentors around me, I wouldn’t have gotten the strength– let alone the confidence– to enjoy doing what I’m doing everyday.
The one most important thing I’ve learned from them was that I needed to believe in myself. So to anyone of you thinking you can’t– stop. We’re the only ones limiting ourselves!
Our next interview was with SVP of Product and Marketing at biometric authentication company iProov, Aarti Samani. After working for more than 10 years in the investment banking space, Samani transitioned to the tech sector and has since gained experience in banking, consumer technology, and healthcare.
Talk to us about efforts at iProov to promote diversity within the organization and in the tech community at large.
Aarti Samani: iProov is an inclusive and diverse organisation. We always look to hire the right person for a role based on their experience and skill set. Everyone gets a fair chance regardless of labels like race and gender. We actively promote a culture of inclusivity in the organization in a number of ways. Our flexible working policy encourages an inclusive workplace, as well as women centric comms channels to provide support. The diversity in demographics across the organization enables iProov to propel as a startup.
We celebrate the uniqueness of our people, and endeavour to inspire young people from all walks of life. For example, as part of International Day of Women and Girls in Science, iProov published a blog post showcasing the career trajectories and accomplishments of my colleagues and I. By demonstrating some of the exciting work that STEM skills can lead to, we hope to inspire young women to pursue STEM.
Despite a lot of progress, women are still highly underrepresented in technology – both as employees and as leaders. I take conscious responsibility to empower women and other minority groups around me.
Tell us about a way someone in the industry has helped empower you.
Samani: I have been incredibly fortunate to have had great mentors and sponsors who have both supported and guided me in my career.
According to research from the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI), 85% of women and 81% of multicultural professionals need navigational support to figure out how best to succeed in the workplace, but often don’t receive it with nearly the same regularity as men.
I would like to take this opportunity to call out Eric Collins, a former colleague, and now a dear friend. Eric not only helped me navigate a career transition from finance to technology, he was also a strong role model and an influential sponsor. His endorsement and guidance helped me to grow as a leader and helped advance my career in an otherwise male dominated environment.
Working with Eric was a very positive experience and has greatly shaped my approach to leadership, team-building and the impact I aspire to have on people I work with.
How do you empower other women to achieve success of their own?
Samani: As a leader, I mentor and coach members of my team and in the wider industry to help them develop their professional and people skills to help them succeed in their careers.
I am invested in the growth and well-being of my team so that they are able to be their best selves at work and in their personal lives. I am a big believer in celebrating each individual’s accomplishments and ensure that their work is recognized across the organization. This instills a sense of pride in their work and fuels a virtuous circle of increased confidence in their ability to deliver, which encourages people to aim higher and in turn accomplish more. To foster mental well-being and create space for the team to reconnect with themselves as well as each other, I make available weekly team meditation sessions. This, coupled with an emphasis on open, collaborative team culture means everyone leans in and acts as sponsors for their colleagues. This leads to lower stress levels overall, and promotes greater happiness in and out of work.
To promote the gender goal of 50/50 diversity in financial services, women who register by this Friday, March 13, can purchase a ticket to any 2020 Finovate event at a 50% discount. Just enter the code EQUALITY on the booking form.
Financial health platform Credit Sesameannounced this week it has launched Sesame Cash, a debit card aimed to help consumers reach financial stability while optimizing credit.
The San Francisco-based company, which sees 500,000 new members every month, said that more than five million of its existing members want a digital banking service that integrates their cash and credit. Sesame Cash does just that.
“Through the use of advanced machine learning and AI, we’ve helped millions of consumers improve and manage their credit. However, we identified the disconnect between consumers’ cash and credit—how much cash you have, and how and when you use your cash has an impact on your credit health,” said Credit Sesame Founder and CEO Adrian Nazari. “With Sesame Cash, we are now bridging that gap and unlocking a whole new set of benefits and capabilities in a new product category. This underscores our mission and commitment to innovation and financial inclusion, and the importance we place in working with partners who share the same ethos.”
The Sesame Cash account includes a fee-free Mastercard debit card with no overdraft fees, no minimum balance, and no service fees. Cardholders have free access to more than 55,000 ATMs, the option for early payday, real-time transaction notifications, the ability to freeze or unfreeze the debit card, and virtual card integration with other mobile wallets.
Unique to Credit Sesame’s bank account are daily credit score updates, cash rewards for credit score improvement, and free identity theft protection.
Future advancements include a billpay service that helps users lower their interest payment and pay down debt faster, a roundup autosave tool, rewards programs, and budgeting tools.
This move by Credit Sesame comes at a time when many fintechs are launching debit accounts and high yield savings accounts in order to compete with traditional financial institutions for not only consumer deposits but also mindshare. One of the company’s closest rivals, Credit Karma, launched a high interest savings account last October that yields 1.30% (down from 2.03% at launch).
Credit Sesame’s decision to offer a debit card instead of a high yield savings account will ultimately prove to be a winning strategy. Many fintechs that have launched high interest accounts in the past couple of years have little differentiation now that the U.S. Federal Reserve has cut interest rates to 1.25%.
Courtesy of a partnership with a pair of current customers, card issuing platform Marqeta is open for business in Australia. The company announced today that its arrival in the Asia-Pacific market will also help support fellow Finovate alum Klarna and customer Doordash as they expand in the country.
“Card issuing is on its way to being an $80 trillion global opportunity by 2030, and Marqeta is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this over the coming years,” Marqeta founder and CEO Jason Gardner said. “The Australian market relies heavily on card spending and is digitizing rapidly. It is a market that was important to our customers and where we saw a lot of potential for Marqeta technology to help revolutionize customer experience in payments.”
Marqeta’s announcement comes in the wake of news that the company – in partnership with Visa – had earned certification to process payments in 10 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. In Australia, the first market in the APAC where Marqeta’s services will be available, the company hopes to take advantage of both the high penetration of traditional bank accounts compared to the rest of the region, as well as a boom in digital payments.
With the first transactions facilitated by Marqeta in late January, partner Klarna is already appreciating the results. “Our close collaboration in bringing an entirely new product offering and shopping experience to the Australian market in record time has been a big success,” Koen Koppen, Klarna CTO, said. “The positive reaction of Australian consumers is evident in just how many are downloading and using the app and virtual card each day.”
An alum of our developers conference, Marqeta delivered a presentation on Democratizing Issuer Payment Processing with Just-in-Time Funding at FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2016. The Oakland, California-based company was last valued at nearly $2 billion, following a May 2019 Series E round that added $260 million to Marqeta’s coffers.
When it comes to defending your data, Enveil’s speciality is helping prevent you from losing it while you’re using it. The company, which picked up $10 million in funding last month and made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2017, enables businesses to securely perform analysis on encrypted data at scale.
“Over the past three years, we’ve successfully created a market, solidified customer use cases, executed enterprise deployments, and expanded our capabilities, for protecting data in use where it is and as it is today,” company CEO and founder Ellison Anne Williams explained when the company’s Series A round was announced. She added that the funding will help the company market its ZeroReveal product suite on a “global scale” and, indeed, the company announced just a few days later that it was opening a new office in London.
Enveil VP of Sales Craig Trautman referred to the London opening as “an important first step toward expanding our footprint in the regions most directly affected by evolving global regulatory standards.”
Founded in 2016, Williams launched Enveil after years of working with institutions like the National Security Agency – where she was a Senior Researcher for more than ten years – and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. She has leveraged this experience – and advanced degrees in mathematics (algebraic combinatorics and set theoretic topology) and computer science (machine learning) – into building one of the more innovative companies in the secure data collaboration / privacy enhancing technologies industry.
In a commentary for Dark Reading last month, Williams explained how a focus on securing data itself is one of the best ways for companies to negotiate an ever-shifting regulatory environment. To avoid the “hamster wheel of compliance,” she argued, businesses should learn how to secure data rather than the “networks, applications, and endpoints” that data uses.
The biggest challenge with securing data is that one of its most critical states – the state of being used – is also the most challenging state to secure. Compared to data that is not being used – data either at rest or in transit – data in use, according to Williams, represents the “point of least resistance” for the latest generation of cybercriminals. This is in large part because many of the technologies to secure data in use have historically not been “practical enough for commercial use.”
And this is where Enveil comes in. By discovering a way to apply technologies like homomorphic encryption, that are effective defenses for data in use, in a commercial context, Enveil offers businesses in verticals ranging from financial services and supply chain finance to cloud security and healthcare a way to securely work with secure data without having to decrypt it.
Enveil’s flagship solution, its ZeroReveal Compute Fabric, is a two-party platform of a ZeroReveal Client application which resides within the enterprise, and the ZeroReveal Server application, which is located where the data is kept. Via standard APIs, the technology works alongside the business’s current protections to provide security during the data processing lifecycle. Within this solution, Enveil offers functionality to power searches of secure data (ZeroReveal Search), conduct analytic investigations on encrypted data (ZeroReveal Analytics), and support the use of secured enclaves like Intel’s SGX (ZeroReveal Enclave).
In addition to expanding geographically, Enveil is also looking to add to its team. The company is specifically looking to bring on engineering talent to support new products, as well as additional sales and marketing team members to help drive Enveil’s efforts overseas.
“Enveil is stepping up to solve a fundamental security challenge: preserve privacy while ensuring that data remains usable,” C5 Capital Managing Partner Zulfe Ali said. “By empowering organizations to secure data throughout its lifecycle, Enveil’s contributions go beyond adding business value and ensuring compliance.”
Deutsche Bank Group is giving Deutsche Bank Wealth Management a boost today by teaming up with wealthtech firm QPLIX. The partnership also comes with an investment for QPLIX; Deutsche Bank has acquired a minority stake in the Germany-based company.
“With this cooperation, we are combining the innovative power and digital expertise of QPLIX with Deutsche Bank’s large client base and many years of experience in serving ultra-high net-worth clients,” said Kai Linde, co-founder and managing director of QPLIX.
With the collaboration, Deutsche Bank’s Wealth Management arm will use QPLIX to help clients manage and control investments among all asset classes, including illiquid investments such as real estate, on a digital platform. The bank will also tap QPLIX’s software for Deutsche Private Port, the digital investment office of Deutsche Bank Wealth Management.
For its part, QPLIX will leverage Deutsche Bank to offer its clients access to 100 data interfaces.
“With comprehensive asset mapping, we are meeting a need of our top clients and strengthening our market leadership in Germany,” said Deutsche Bank’s Head of Wealth Management Germany Frank Schriever.
