Zopa Tests Savings Product Before Full Launch

Zopa Tests Savings Product Before Full Launch
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Zopa

P2P lending company and newly initiated challenger bank Zopa is taking a first step on its banking journey with the rollout of a new savings product. The U.K.-based company is launching fixed-term savings accounts that will be available for terms of one month and pay 4% interest.

This news comes after the company received partial authorization from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) last December and launched bank products with its staff as beta testers. This partial authorization is the reason behind the limited nature of the savings accounts. Zopa is currently operating in a period called AWR (authorization with restrictions), meaning the company has met all of the FCA’s conditions and is allowed to begin testing bank products.

Under those restrictions, Zopa cannot accept more than $64,000 (£50,000) in customer deposits, so it is only inviting 200 current investors to test out the new savings product. There is no word yet on when the restrictions will be lifted.

“Inviting existing customers to test our Fixed Term Saver is a major milestone in our bank journey,” said Zopa CPO Didier Baclin. “It is a great opportunity to ensure that the product meets their expectations before the full launch next year so that we deliver a great product that customers can trust.”

Zopa’s choice to start its bank product offerings with a high-interest savings account doesn’t come as a surprise. As we covered last month, multiple fintechs are offering high interest bearing accounts in order to attract customer deposits away from their primary, traditional bank.

Last year, Zopa closed a $77 million (£60 million) investment round that contributed to the company’s total of $297 million in funding it’s received since launching in 2005. Zopa is seeking to raise additional funding this year, stating that the fresh capital will offer the boost it needs to have the FCA’s restrictions removed.

Zopa’s former CEO Doug Dolton debuted the P2P lending platform at FinovateSpring 2008 at Finovate’s very first show in the Bay Area. The company was founded in 2005, pioneering peer-to-peer lending in the U.K., and has since amassed 400,000 customers and facilitated $5 billion (£4 billion) on its platform.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Anorak, BioCatch, Fair Isaac FICO, FICO, ITSector, Q2, Q2 Holdings, Q2ebanking, Revolut, Zopa

On the web

  • Zopa Tests Savings Product Before Full Launch.
  • Starling Bank Offers Income Protection Insurance Via Anorak Partnership.
  • Q2 Closes Acquisition of PrecisionLender.

Around the web

  • Revolut unveils metal cards in silver and space grey.
  • Chief Administrative Officer of the Royal Bank of Scotland interviews BioCatch CEO.
  • ITSector inaugurates 6th Software Development Center that will focus on the financial sector, AI, and 5G.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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IBM and Bank of America Partner on Public Cloud for Financial Services

IBM and Bank of America Partner on Public Cloud for Financial Services
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: IBM

How serious is IBM about making an impact in fintech? The company, which demonstrated its wealth management technology at FinovateSpring in 2016, launched its first financial services-ready public cloud today and revealed Bank of America as its initial partner. The two companies have been working together on the project for more than a year, and the bank said it plans to host key applications and workloads on the platform to better serve its 66 million banking customers. According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, Bank of America currently has 80% of its IT workload on a private cloud and has been planning a move to a public cloud since 2012.

The IBM financial services public cloud will help banks and other financial services companies more effectively engage with qualified technology vendors. In its statement, IBM highlighted the fact that the cloud will also help financial services firms meet regulatory, security, and resiliency requirements for working with fintechs. The company added that the solution is the only industry-specific, public cloud platform to provide preventative and compensatory controls for financial services regulatory workloads, multi-architecture support, and proactive and automated security.

Bank of America helped IBM develop the platform’s control requirements which, for example, will help both ISVs and SaaS providers of all sizes focus on their businesses rather than security, infrastructure, and compliance issues once platform controls are established.

Calling the pact, “one of the most important collaborations in the financial services industry cloud space,” Bank of America Chief Operations and Technology Officer Cathy Bessant explained that the bank expects to give as much as it gets from the relationship. “This industry-first platform will allow Bank of America to use the public cloud, putting data security, resiliency, privacy, and customer information safety needs at the forefront of decision-making,” Bessant said. “By setting a standard that addresses the concern of hosting highly-confidential information, we aim to drive the public cloud to a safety level that is unmatched.”

The IBM financial services-ready cloud will run on IBM’s public cloud. IBM’s public cloud leverages open source technologies, including a managed Red Hat OpenShift environment, to support more than 1,000 enterprise clients. The platform leverages more than 16,000 production clusters, provides industry-leading compliance for data encryption, and relies on integration with IBM Security to deliver threat monitoring and management from a centralized security dashboard.

“The financial services-ready public cloud represents an ongoing focus from Bank of America, IBM, and Promontory to help develop a technology ecosystem where regulations can be addressed,” IBM SVP for Global Industries, Clients, Platforms & Blockchain Bridget van Kralingen said. “Together we plan to help our customers address their ongoing compliance requirements, coupled with highly scalable, standardized capabilities that will be built to help serve today’s modern financial services industry.” Promontory is an IBM business unit focused on financial services regulatory compliance consulting that was brought in to ensure an environment that was compliant with relevant regulations.

In addition to its FinovateSpring appearance in 2016, IBM also participated in our developers conference, FinDEVrNewYork 2017. The presentation by CTO Tom Eck discussed how thousands of developers were successfully building and monetizing “cognitive-enabled” financial services apps quickly and at scale.

Founded in 1911, IBM is based in Armonk, New York. The company is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker IBM, and has a market capitalization of $122 billion.

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eToro’s Latest Acquisition Boosts its Crypto Presence

eToro’s Latest Acquisition Boosts its Crypto Presence
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: eToro, Mergers & Acquisitions

Social trading and investment platform eToro is making moves this month. In addition to launching CopyTrader in the U.S. last week, the company announced today it has acquired Delta, an app for tracking crypto portfolios.

Delta’s app helps its 1.5 million users track and analyze their crypto portfolios, offering information on more than 6,000 crypto assets traded on more than 180 exchanges.

The deal will close for an undisclosed amount, though TechCrunch rumors the purchase price is around $5 million. Delta is eToro’s second acquisition this year (and overall) after buying blockchain company Firmo in March.

“When we started eToro our goal was to disrupt the world of trading. We wanted to change the way people think about trading and investing, ultimately reducing dependency on traditional financial institutions and make trading and investing more transparent and fun,” said eToro Cofounder and CEO Yoni Assia. “This mission remains our guiding light and we will continue to evolve both organically and by acquisition in order to bring our customers the very best experience.”

eToro’s purchase of Delta shows the company’s increased commitment to the crypto space. Last year the company launched its subsidiary eToroX, a regulated digital asset exchange and crypto wallet to support tokenized asset trading. Doron Rosenblum, Managing Director of eToroX, said that Delta is “a great addition” to eToro’s crypto offering. Rosenblum also mentioned that he plans to integrate Delta into the eToroX platform to allow customers to trade from within the app.

Logistically, the Delta team will become part of eToroX, reporting to Rosenblum, but will continue working from its headquarters in Belgium.

And if you haven’t seen eToro’s video featuring Alec Baldwin pitching the U.S. launch of CopyTrader, here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBBuFuHAxoY

eToro most recently showcasedCopyFunds for Partners at FinovateEurope 2017. Originally known for being a social trading platform, the company began pioneering bitcoin trading in 2013 via CFDs and in 2017 allowed clients to trade and invest in Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, and other cryptocurrencies. eToro has raised $223 million since it was founded in 2007.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, DefenseStorm, eToro, Fiserv, IBM, Jemstep, NICE Systems, PayKey, ThetaRay, TransferWise

On Finovate.com

  • Avaloq Seeks Exit: M&A or IPO?
  • eToro’s Latest Acquisition Boosts its Crypto Presence
  • IBM and Bank of America Partner on Public Cloud for Financial Services

Around the web

  • DefenseStorm names Chief Revenue Officer Steve Soukup as its new President.
  • NICE Actimize introduces its new Federated Learning capability that offers higher fraud detection via Collective Intelligence.
  • Fiserv inks global agreement with German grocery industry leader ALDI.
  • GoCardless to use TransferWise’s API, TransferWise for Business product, and provide TransferWise’s FX rates to its customers.
  • PayKey forms SBI PayKey Asia, a joint venture with SBI Holdings that will support the sales and market launch of PayKey across the region.
  • ThetaRay taps Moran Goldwein as SVP for Human Resources.
  • Infinex to integrate Jemstep’s Advisor Pro to deliver digital advice to Infinex’s client firms.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Ephesoft Drives Digital Automation in Thailand via Language Recognition

Ephesoft Drives Digital Automation in Thailand via Language Recognition
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ephesoft

The newly-announced partnership between Ephesoft and Tokio Marine Asia demonstrates how fintech and insurtech are playing a role in the advancement of Thai language recognition technology. Tokio Marine Asia, the regional headquarters of Japan’s first life insurance company, will collaborate with the enterprise content capture and data discovery solutions provider to bring greater automation to the Thai insurance market.

Ephesoft’s technology leverages supervised machine learning to automate the classification and extraction of key information from unstructured data. The technology is sensitive enough to recognize document types and the machine learning system requires only two to five samples of the data in order to perform. Faster data extraction, with fewer opportunities for manual entry-based error, gives businesses in a variety of industries lower costs, deeper insight into business trends, and the ability to offer improved service to customers.

“We hope that by using Ephesoft, we will be able to alleviate manual data entry and streamline processes, accelerating our claim processing to provide better customer service,” VP and head of digital strategy of Tokio Marine Asia Hidemi Harada said.

In addition to bringing digital efficiencies to the Thai insurance industry, the partnership hopes to break new ground in the analysis of Thai language unstructured data. Pledging to overcome data, document, and language challenges that are “prevalent throughout Thailand,” Ephesoft CEO and founder Ike Kavas said, “Ephesoft has a strong commitment to meeting our customers where they are and addressing their unique challenges, regardless of geographic location.” Harada added that the collaboration will help them “gain a deeper level of understanding for characters and language, which has been a long-time challenge to international business in Thailand.”

The deal with Tokio Marine Asia is the latest partnership from Ephesoft, which unveiled a major alliance with Grant Thornton over the summer. That partnership will enable Grant Thornton to make Ephesoft Smart Capture available to its customers to improve back office operations such as invoicing, accounts payable, and contract management.

Last month, Ephesoft announced that it had partnered with IT, BPO, and consulting services firm Hexaware Technologies to help businesses successfully undertake automation-led, process transformations. In September, the company announced that it was collaborating with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) specialist Automation Anywhere to help customers take advantage of the combined benefits of RPA and document capture technologies.

Ephesoft demonstrated its smart document capture and analytics platform at FinovateSpring 2018, highlighting how the technology leverages data mining and analytics to enhance mortgage document processing. Founded in 2010, the company has raised $15 million in funding and includes Mercato Partners among its investors.

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Avaloq Seeks Exit: M&A or IPO?

Avaloq Seeks Exit: M&A or IPO?
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, Mergers & Acquisitions

Digital banking technology provider Avaloq is at a crossroads, Reuters reports. The Swiss company is preparing to sell or go public.

The decision comes as Avaloq’s private equity shareholder Warburg Pincus, which owns a 45% stake in Avaloq, seeks an exit. Other shareholders in the company include founder Francisco Fernandez, who owns 28%, as well as Avaloq staff and management, which hold 27% ownership.

If recent exit trends persist, Avaloq will take the acquisition route, likely being picked up by a wealth management firm, large bank, or a larger competitor, such as Temenos, which is much more of a heavyweight in the industry. “I always said I would never do an IPO before getting to a critical size or maturity needed for such a step. I said roughly 1 billion in revenues,” Fernandez said in a Reuters report in 2017. “Counting back, we think that in three to four years we should be there.”

No matter which route Avaloq takes, it will likely be placed among fintech unicorns. The company was valued at $1 billion in 2017 when it initiated the agreement with Warburg Pincus.

Avaloq most recently demoed at FinovateAsia last year where it showcased its ecosystem that serves as an app store for banks using open APIs. The company launched in 1985 as BZ Informatik and has since grown its offerings to include core banking software, digital wealth management, as well as core banking SaaS and BPaaS products.

Avaloq, which has raised $350 million in funding, provides technology that helps its 150 clients manage $4.5 trillion. Among the company’s clients are Barclays, BBVA, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Rothschild, Societe Generale, and Vontobel.

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GoDaddy Adds SME Financing Option with Kabbage Partnership

GoDaddy Adds SME Financing Option with Kabbage Partnership
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Kabbage

The “everyday entrepreneurs” of GoDaddy just got access to a new financing option. The web hosting innovator has teamed up with online lending and technology platform Kabbage to enable its business customers to apply for and receive a Kabbage line of credit of up to $250,000 in a matter of minutes if approved.

“Our customers tell us all the time that flexible funding is critical to grow and run their businesses; new opportunities make it important to be able to access capital, quickly whether for online marketing, inventory or purchasing new equipment,” Kabbage CRO Laura Goldberg explained. “They simply can’t afford to wait weeks or months for a loan approval.”

The flexible lines of credit also mean that business borrowers are not obligated to make withdrawals. There is no fee for applying for Kabbage funding, and borrowers pay nothing until they access the funds. “Our customer base of over 200,000 small businesses across the U.S. understands the value of accessing the exact amount of funding they need when they need it,” Goldberg said.

In a statement, Kabbage and GoDaddy highlighted the role that a lack of capital played in undermining small business digital marketing efforts, in particular. Citing a survey of 500+ entrepreneurs, the companies noted that small businesses typically pointed to a lack of money as the main reason for not growing their presence online.

“We know that a lack of capital for marketing and other core activities remains a major roadblock to accelerate growth,” GoDaddy VP of global market operations Melissa Schneider said. “Our partnership with Kabbage is key in our ongoing mission to empower our customers and provide them with the resources they need to fuel their business needs.”

GoDaddy has more than 18 million customers and 9,000+ employees around the world. Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, the company had 2017 revenues of $2.2 billion and a net income that same year of more than $15 million. Founded in 1997, GoDaddy is publicly-traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker GDDY. The company has a market capitalization of $11 billion.

Founded in 2009, Kabbage demonstrated its Kabbage Card – which links directly to the customer’s Kabbage line of credit – at FinovateSpring 2015. More recently, the company announced that it was getting into the payments business with the launch of a new SME payments solution, Kabbage Payments. Also this fall, the Atlanta, Georgia-based company acquired fellow Finovate alum Radius, adding insights into millions of small businesses to its platform.

Kabbage is also an alum of our developers conference, FinDEVr SiliconValley 2015. At the event, the company’s Chief Technical Officer demonstrated how developers can use the Kabbage platform to accelerate the lending process.

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FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: Scientia Consulting

FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: Scientia Consulting
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateMiddleEast 2019, FinovateMiddleEast 2019 Sneak Peek, Scientia Consulting

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.

FinTech Insights by Scientia is an innovative online platform that analyzes, measures, and compares all digital services of banks and fintechs in the UAE and worldwide.

Features

  • Analyzes digital banking and fintech services behind the login screens
  • Measures and presents functionality and UX across all channels of each bank
  • Allows head-to-head comparison of banks and fintechs

Why it’s great
FinTech Insights exhaustively analyzes all UAE and most prominent worldwide digital banking and fintech services behind the login screens using real bank accounts.

Presenters

Alexandros C. Argyriou, Managing Partner
Argyriou is the managing partner of Scientia Consulting Group and a recognized fintech and digital banking expert.
LinkedIn

Konstantinos Stivaros, Partner
Stivaros is partner in Scientia Consulting, mainly responsible for its international expansion. He has worked in banks and fintechs for 16 years and he holds a PhD in Computer Science.
LinkedIn


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FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: PointCheckout

FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: PointCheckout
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateMiddleEast 2019, FinovateMiddleEast 2019 Sneak Peek, PointCheckout

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.

PointCheckout is a payment platform for loyalty points, allowing users to pay online and in store with their existing points and miles, and even a combination of their points from different programs in one transaction.

Features

  • Ability to pay with points online and in store
  • AI-powered analytics on user spend
  • Hyper-personalized redemption options

Why it’s great
With $700 million in unredeemed points in MENA, opening loyalty redemption options will result in a direct and measurable increase in credit card spend and double engagement with the bank channels.

Presenters

Bashar Saleh, CEO
Saleh is an entrepreneur, technologist, and the founder and CEO of PointCheckout, which is a payment method for reward points.
LinkedIn

Tarek Ghobar, Chief Commercial Officer
Ghobar is a three-time tech entrepreneur and aerospace engineer, with experience in turning technology into business and e-commerce.
LinkedIn






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FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: IN-D by Intain

FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: IN-D by Intain
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateMiddleEast 2019, FinovateMiddleEast 2019 Sneak Peek, IN-D by Intain

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.

IN-D by Intain is an AI-powered platform that digitizes, classifies, and reads documents in image form. The technology sources data from digital sources, including unstructured documents, and automatically extracts data to accelerate decisions.

Features

  • Template-independent, artificial intelligence algorithms-backed engine
  • Zero cost to implement
  • Cloud or on-premise solution

Why it’s great
RPA products fail if there is a need for document to data to decision. IN-D has an artificial intelligence, algorithms-backed engine that automates these process to make the automation successful.

Presenter

Ashish Shekhawat, Product & Marketing Head
Shekhawat is leading product and marketing efforts at IN-D By Intain. He has a vast experience working with financial institutions and joined Intain to solve the organization’s operational challenges.
LinkedIn


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FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: Amber Labs

FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: Amber Labs
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Amber Labs, FinovateMiddleEast 2019, FinovateMiddleEast 2019 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.

Amber Labs is a university-backed, automation-focused bitcoin exchange, wallet, and micro-investment app – all in the palm of your hand. It is optimized as an on-ramp today and evolving into a global Bitcoin bank tomorrow.

Features

  • Fastest retail-focused Bitcoin gateway in the world
  • Automated, programmatic purchases (eg; IFTTT, rules, recipes, etc.)
  • Bitcoin-denominated banking and financial products (payments, subs, loans)

Why it’s great
Amber is building a next generation bank and financial application on Bitcoin – an open, internet-based central banking protocol. This is being done whilst generating real revenue and profits today.

Presenters

Steph Verin, Marketing

Alex Svetski, CEO & Founder
Svetski is a university dropout, Bitcoin advocate, and a financial markets and tech entrepreneur. Privately, he is a writer and researcher in the fields of economics, physics, technology, anthropology, math, and engineering.
LinkedIn

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