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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
College Aid Pro (CAP) is an innovative, college planning technology for, and supported by, an engaged community of financial advisors. CAP is changing the way America shops for college.
Features
Demystifies financial aid, providing accurate net cost projections at thousands of schools
Provides a process for guiding families to better college outcomes
Supported by a community of professionals
Why it’s great There is currently no such thing as a financial advocate for Gen-X families with college bound teens. CAP is growing a movement of professionals with the tools and resources to provide that service.
Presenters
Joe Messinger, Co-Founder Messinger has helped hundreds of Gen X families navigate the college funding maze through his RIA Capstone Wealth Partners, while training thousands of advisors to replicate his process. LinkedIn
Matt Carpenter, Co-Founder Carpenter is a leading expert in the opaque process of higher education funding and financial aid. His firm, College Funding Services, has helped thousands of families cut the cost of college. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
Founded by recognized university leaders, Edmit’s award-winning software provides personalized insights and advice to help families make smarter college financial decisions, leading to less debt.
Features
Build brand trust and provide insights and expertise in a high anxiety major investment
Become a “one stop shop” for holistic financial wellness
Introduce a differentiated college-related product
Why it’s great Families that use Edmit make smarter college financial choices leading to less debt and better life outcomes.
Presenters
Nick Ducoff, Co-Founder and CEO Ducoff was previously Northeastern University’s VP for New Ventures. He previously co-founded Infochimps, acquired by DXC, and was a VP at Boundless, acquired by Follett. He started his career in law. LinkedIn
Sabrina Manville, Co-Founder Manville was previously AVP at Southern New Hampshire University and previously worked at Pearson and Coursera. She has an MBA from Stanford and a BA in Religious Studies from Yale. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
Insuritas is debuting the world’s first end-to-end quote and buy platform for business insurance to be fully integrated via API within a digital banking ecosystem.
Features
Revenue from digital banking
Seamless insurance for small businesses
Fully integrated solution allowing the bank to own the customer journey
Why it’s great iInsure for Businesses empowers banks to transform their digital banking platforms and investments into platforms that drive non-interest income, customer wallet share, and retention.
Presenter
Matt Chesky, President Chesky was recognized by Hartford Business Journal and Connecticut Magazine in 2018 as a “40 Under 40” recipient. He graduated from Yale University in 2012 with a degree in Economics. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
Founded by an award-winning fintech veteran, Andes Wealth Technologies offers the “Google Maps for Financial Advisors,” a set of unique, modern tools to transform the wealth management experience.
Features
Risk Tolerance Test: The best ever.
Real-Time Risk Monitor: 360° risk visualization for markets and portfolios.
Practical Behavioral Finance, including a special tool for baby boomers.
Why it’s great Unique ideas and visualizations. Beautiful yet practical tools backed by rigorous research and robust data analytics. It will indeed revolutionize the advisor and client experience.
Presenter
Helen Yang, Founder and CEO A winner of the prestigious Harry Markowitz Award in 2011, Yang has 20+ years of leadership in Fintech and holds an MBA from MIT. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
Trulioo presents EmbedID, a fast and simple way for startups and developers to verify customers across borders while supporting AML/KYC compliance requirements.
Features
Integrate and test Trulioo’s identity verification API in minutes
Fully customize onboarding fields and forms
Verify customers in real time
Why it’s great With only a snippet of code embedded into any website, Trulioo’s EmbedID enables organizations to verify over 5 billion identities worldwide.
Presenters
Anatoly Kvitnitsky Kvitnitsky has a wealth of experience working in fintech and identity markets, and is committed to helping solve identity challenges that organizations face in scaling their products for global use. LinkedIn
Marat Asadurian A software engineering manager at Trulioo, Asadurian enjoys building new products as well as new teams. In his current role, he is managing a team that generates new business lines for GlobalGateway. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
JSOL Corporation provides IT consulting and digital transformation related services to clients from various industries by leveraging its technology and know-how developed over the years.
Features
Predict growth/deterioration of business partners
Visualize transactional networks of businesses and assess spillover effects
Monitor/analyze up-to-date financial conditions of business partners
Why it’s great Use JSOL Corporation’s tool to gain insight into your business partners’ projected financial performance and to make informed financing decisions.
Presenters
Kimitaka Honma, Deputy Unit Director Honma is a Deputy Unit Director of the Digital Innovation Business Unit and has ample experience assisting financial institutions with their digital transformation efforts.
Andrew Ogata, Sales and Strategic Partnerships Ogata is a sales specialist in the Digital Innovation Business Unit and focuses on domestic/overseas sales and strategic partnerships.
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
The StreetShares platform provides “Lending-as-a-Service” technology to community banks and credit unions, empowering them to offer fully-digital small business loans… up and running in 30 days.
Features
Ability to grow and retain small business customers
Fully-digital borrower onboarding and management with no core software integration
Precision, 100% digital underwriting at the industry’s leading loss rates
Why it’s great Community banks and credit unions struggle to make small business loans due to costly underwriting and core software integration. StreetShares Lending-as-a-Service technology solves this problem.
Presenters
Mark Rockefeller, CEO Rockefeller leads the StreetShares team in its mission to help community banks and credit unions offer fully-digital small business loans to America’s main street businesses. LinkedIn
Sanjay Bhaskar, Vice President, Development and Partnerships Bhaskar focuses on identifying opportunities for community banks and credit unions to use StreetShares Lending-as-a-Service technology to offer fully digital small business loans. LinkedIn
Indian online lending marketplace Namaste Credit announced it is becoming a “fully-fledged digital-only bank” for micro small and medium businesses (MSMEs), reports Ruby Hinchliffe of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.
The neobank will have a “foundational software-as-a-service (SaaS) play” and aims to offer the first one-stop-shop for MSMEs. It will include automated credit, banking, and accounting solutions.
The soon-to-be-launched app, dubbed Namaste Biz, will centralize MSME’s cash flow, banking applications, and credit management tools.
“Our transition to a neobank will not only help the start-up get a firmer grip into the banking and non-banking financial company (NBFC) ecosystem but also balance revenues with customer acquisition costs to maintain a profitable growth path,” said Namaste Credit’s co-founder and director, Lucas Bianchi.
He added, “We believe a technology-based integrated platform that can bring together banks, NBFCs and other stakeholders can completely transform the financial services industry, specially from a B2B perspective.”
The company is confident the conversion will give them a “substantial competitive advantage.” Fellow co-founder and director Gaurav Anand said the newly-turned neobank will “accelerate customer and channel acquisition,” “reduce operational costs significantly,” and allow them “to expand quickly to global markets.”
At its core, Namaste Credit serves as an online marketplace for small business loans. The service connects borrowers with relevant lenders to help them find the loan that best suits their circumstance. The company also offers robotic process automation to help underwriters accurately assess risk. Namaste Credit demoed at FinovateFall 2018.
Credit SesameRaises $43 Million in Advance of IPO.
Around the web
Salt Edgemarks 400+ integrations with open banking APIs.
Payfoneteams up with Digital Matrix Systems to help companies fight fraud.
Fenergoappoints Louise O’Connell to the newly created role of Chief Customer Officer.
StrategyCorpsbrings on former Geezeo executive, Bryan Clagett.
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.
One month after digital core banking provider Five Degreesannounced its collaboration with fellow Finovate alum W.UP, the company is back in the fintech headlines with another round of partnership news: digital security platform Entersektwill join its Open Banking Marketplace.
“Partnering with Entersekt is testament to our vision for the future of banking and finance so we are delighted to welcome the company as part of our Open Banking Marketplace,” Five Degrees EVP Peter-Jan van de Venn said. “Our marketplace is championing a culture of collaboration throughout the industry, enabling us to provide a better customer experience via interconnected APIs.”
In their statement, the companies indicate that the partnership between the two companies will help financial service providers perform better both at home in Europe as well as in their global banking and finance operations. Five Degrees Open Banking Marketplace is designed to encourage financial services companies and fintechs to work together to build engaging digital customer experiences, increase their own efficiencies, and make regulatory compliance easier.
“(We) help tens of millions of end users across the globe, securing 150 million digital transactions every month in 45 countries,” Entersekt CEO Schalk Nolte said. “We look forward to being part of five degrees’ Open Banking Marketplace and are confident that our partnership will drive further innovation in (digital services) and help our mutual customers differentiate themselves from the competition.”
Entersekt’s Chief Technology Officer presented “Securing Mobile Applications through Transport Layer Diversity” at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, in 2014. The South African company, which was founded in 2008, opened its second office in Cape Town in April, and that same month was named to the Wealthtech 100. Entersekt teamed up with fellow Finovate alum BioCatch in March to offer financial services companies a “one-stop-shop” for security solutions such as continuous and multi-factor authentication, passwordless login, and enhanced remote user registration.
In its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateEurope 2018, Five Degrees demonstrated its digital wealth management solution, Prospery. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the company was selected last month to join the Kickstarter Innovation Program. In June, Five Degrees announced a partnership with Bankingblocks to assist challenger banks and payment companies as they offer new solutions to their customers.
With $11 million (€10 million) in funding, Five Degrees includes Karmijn Kapitaal and Velocity Capital Private Equity among its investors.
Personal sales assistant Vymo recently teamed up with FE Credit, the consumer lending services division of Vietnam-based VP Bank.
Through the partnership, Vymo is handling pieces in FE Credit’s mortgage lending workflow. Specifically, Vymo is helping FE Credit with customer acquisition, lead generation, and onboarding. The India-based company will offer its automated sales tool to help FE Credit’s team of 20,000 sales executives and 8,000 agents become more productive.
Vymo prompts the salesperson to make notes about their sales calls
After the deal is closed, Vymo helps agents follow up with up-sell and cross-sell opportunities and makes it easy to track down missed payments.
Vymo’s sales tool offers multiple ways of driving productivity, beginning with assisting with client onboarding and authentication. The tool also assigns each lead to the best agent for the job based on experience and geographical location, offers next best action suggestions, and sends timely nudges to sales agents. Additionally, by notifying agents of the leads on their mobile device, FE Credit’s team is able to follow up on inquiries within 15 minutes. When a meeting is complete, the app prompts the salesperson to make notes about the client and how the meeting went.
FE Credit, the largest lending organization in Vietnam, initiated the partnership in an effort to work on its ambition of “better, not more,” meaning that it wants to improve upon its existing services before offering consumers more services. Kalidas Ghose, Vice Chairman and CEO of FE Credit, said the company selected Vymo “because of its unique application of automation and AI technology that allows for seamless data capture and contextual recommendations.”
With 140 employees, and 100,000 users on its platform Vymo has raised $23 million since it was founded in 2013. The company demonstrated its sales tool at FinovateAsia 2018 and has since made a major geographical expansion, launching in the U.S. a couple of months back.
Financial and blockchain API provider Hydrogen is the latest technology to achieve “Powered by Oracle Cloud” status, making the app building platform available to Oracle Cloud customers via the Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
“Hydrogen’s participation in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace further extends our commitment to the Oracle community and enables customers to easily reap the benefits of our APIs,” Hydrogen co-founder and CEO Mike Kane said. “We look forward to leveraging the power of the Oracle Cloud to help us achieve our business goals.”
Described as the global financial operating system by its founders, Hydrogen offers a wealth of fintech and blockchain APIs – known as atom and molecule respectively – to power a wide range of financial services from banking and investing to savings, financial wellness, and insurance.
The Oracle Cloud provides enterprise-quality services at all levels of the technology stack including both platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). And by joining the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, the Hydrogen platform will be readily accessible by Oracle Cloud customers. The marketplace has an intuitive user interface to make it easy for developers to browse and discover not only applications and services, but also solution ratings and reviews from users to help customers find the optimal resource for their needs. The Marketplace recently has unveiled its automated application installation tools to enable customers to deploy provider business apps from a centralized, cloud-based UI.
“Hydrogen’s commitment to innovation with the Oracle Cloud and quality execution helps our mutual customers receive cloud-enabled fintech solutions ready to meet critical business needs,” Oracle VP for Worldwide ISV Cloud Business Development David Hicks said.
At FinovateEurope 2018, Hydrogen made its Finovate debut, demonstrating how its technology enables developers to build sophisticated financial apps – such as a European savings platform with UI/UX, onboarding, simulations, backend connectivity, and business intelligence – in a matter of minutes.
Hydrogen has seen its share of plaudits this year. The company was named to the Wealthtech 100 in April, the same month it was listed in Fast Company’s “World Changing Ideas” compilation in the Developing World Technology category. Hydrogen joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) in May and, the following month, was named a finalist in WealthManagement.com’s 2019 Industry Awards in the Blockchain/Cryptocurrency category.
More recently, the company earned recognition from Bank Director’s FinxTech Awards, winning a finalist spot in the Best of FinXTech Connect category. Hydrogen was named a finalist in the Financial Inclusion category of the Finnosummit Challenge and was shortlisted for three awards – Top Emerging Tech Company, Best Use of Blockchain, and Innovator of the Year – at Finovate’s inaugural awards series (check out more information on the Finovate Awards, or FinovateFall, which will take place the same week in New York this month).
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in New York City, Hydrogen includes Canadian bank and wealth manager TD Bank, global insurer Principal, and investment manager CI Investments among its clients.
