nCino Brings AI to its Bank Operating System with nIQ

nCino Brings AI to its Bank Operating System with nIQ
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: nCino

Cloud banking leader nCino is enlisting AI in the fight to help financial institutions make better, more informed decisions faster. The Wilmington, North Carolina-based company announced this week the release of nCino IQ (nIQ), a new expansion to its Bank Operating System that works across front, middle, and back office operations, to automate and connect. This not only reduces expensive and error-vulnerable manual data entry, the technology also enables financial institutions to leverage automation and analytics to make data-driven decisions that enhance the customer journey.

“Since its inception, nCino has championed the idea of the agile enterprise, where financial institutions can reduce loan cycle and account opening times by digitizing and automating their processes via our single end-to-end platform,” Chief Product Officer Trisha Price said. “Now, with nIQ, we’re evolving that concept further to the Intelligent Enterprise, where AI is injected into every stage of production and stands at the center of every business line we support.”

nIQ has three main components: nIQ Data Recognition, which automates data extraction; nIQ Insights, which uses predictive analytics to measure and monitor organization-wide performance and risk; and nIQ Digital Assistant, which gives bankers the real-time data they need in order to build personalized experiences. The solution can be used in commercial, small business, and retail banking, as well as for customer engagement.

“With nIQ supercharging their operations,” Price added, “financial institutions can achieve a competitive advantage that allows them to increase savings and, most importantly, make more informed decisions to more effectively and efficiently serve their customers.”

The product news from nCino follows company’s $80 million funding raising – its largest to date – announced last month. The funding, which took nCino’s total capital to more than $213 million, was led by a group investors advised by T. Rowe Price, and featured the participation of existing investor Salesforce Ventures. Also last month, nCino announced a partnership with CNB Bank, a $3.2 billion asset FI based in Pennsylvania, and added David Rudow to its C-suite, appointing the software and technology executive as Chief Financial Officer.

nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. Founded in 2012, and named to the Forbes Cloud 100, the company partners with more than 250 financial institutions around the world. Pierre Naudé is CEO.

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Lloyd’s Syndicate to Insure Ledger’s Vault

Lloyd’s Syndicate to Insure Ledger’s Vault
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Ledger

Crypto holders are exposed to a significant amount of risk. Increasingly sophisticated hackers can easily drain crypto account balances as they have in the past (does Mt. Gox ring any bells?).

Ledger, which helps to secure crypto account balances using its hardware wallet that stores users’ private cryptocurrency keys, made an announcement today that will help its users feel even more secure. The Paris-based company arranged a $150 million insurance policy covering digital assets secured using the Ledger Vault platform.

Ledger has been working for the past year with broker and risk advisor Marsh and crypto-asset insurance underwriter, Arch Insurance (a syndicate of Lloyd’s of London), to create the insurance policy. The policy insures crypto assets up to $150 million in the event of:

  • Third-party theft of the master seed and private keys following a physical breach of a hardware security module in a secure data center
  • Secure transmissions of the master seed fragments upon client onboarding
  • Ledger employee theft caused by collusion

“We consider insurance a crucial part of a comprehensive plan as digital assets gain a foothold in institutional portfolios. As a new class of assets, securing digital currencies has become a complex challenge for both institutions and insurers,” said Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier. “Through our efforts with Marsh and Arch to curate this comprehensive crime insurance policy, we are playing a pivotal role in the movement to secure and insure all critical digital assets.”

Since Ledger is not a digital asset custodian it is not required to carry insurance. However, the company wanted to take the extra step to insure clients’ digital assets. Ledger is also giving its clients the option to directly purchase their own primary coverage.

At FinovateEurope 2016 Ledger’s then-CEO (and now Executive Chairman) Eric Larchevêque debuted Ledger Blue, a touch-screen smart card for developers that offers a second display and thwarts malware attacks by delivering the correct payment address.

Ledger has sold more than 1.5 million Nano devices. The company’s institutional offering, the Nano Vault, has more than 40 clients located among APAC, MENA, and the Americas. Since it was founded in 2014, Ledger has raised $88 million.

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NLP Innovator Eigen Technologies Closes $37 Million Series B

NLP Innovator Eigen Technologies Closes $37 Million Series B
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Eigen Technologies, Funding

In a round co-led by Lakestar and Dawn Capital, natural language processing technology provider Eigen Technologies has raised $37 million (£29 million) in new capital. The investment, which also featured participation from Temasek and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, takes the London-based company’s total funding to $55 million (£43 million).

Eigen plans to spend the funds to accelerate growth, including investments in technical and commercial talent. The company will also strengthen its transatlantic profile by basing additional senior management in New York.

“When we founded Eigen five years ago, I wanted to build a research-led transatlantic business,” Liu said in a statement. “Since the Series A, we have made great progress by massively scaling the company, expanding our client base, and integrating cutting-edge machine learning techniques into our NLP product.” Liu added that in this time Eigen has more than doubled the size of its workforce, grown recurring revenues by 6x, and expanded its customer base to now include more than 25% of the global systematically important banks (G-SIBs) in the world.

The funding announcement comes just a week after the release of Eigen 3.0. Eigen 3.0 extracts data 2x to 5x faster and features a new UI that accelerates the training process by 30%. The company noted that the platform will better enable it to serve both its traditional big bank customer base, as well as new customers among hedge funds and asset managers.

“Our customers asked us for three things in Eigen 3.0: a superuser workflow, improved performance for large teams working simultaneously, and easier document handling,” said Eigen Chief Product Officer Dr. Ashley Fidler, who joined the company in August. “Eigen 3.0 delivers all these improvements and more.”

Eigen Technologies demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall earlier this year. At the conference, Dr. Liu showed how Eigen’s flexible natural language processing solution automatically and accurately extracts data from a wide range of document types at scale. The technology can be integrated into customer workflows, and leverages machine learning algorithms to recognize patterns in text data.

Founded in 2014, Eigen’s clients include Goldman Sachs, Hiscox, Allen & Overy, and ING. The company won the Financial Times Intelligent Business Award for Repapering Technology in October and was named to the FinTech50 2019 in September. Eigen Technologies began the year earning recognition from CB Insights, which featured the company in its 2019 AI 100 roster of the Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence Startups.

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FinovateMiddleEast: Digitization, Disruption, and the Business of Banking

FinovateMiddleEast: Digitization, Disruption, and the Business of Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateMiddleEast 2019

FinovateMiddleEast begins next week, November 20-21, in Dubai, UAE. A few days ago, we introduced some of the themes that will dominate the discussion on Day One of our conference. Today we’ll take a look at what we’ve got in store for attendees on Day Two.

In addition to our live fintech demos (check out our FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek series for more information on our demoing companies), Day Two will feature a variety of conversations on topics ranging from challenger banks and digital disruption to small business banking and the future of work in an increasingly automated world.

Challenger banks and digital disruptors: The future of banking?

  • With a wave of new digital banks entering the sector, how are these new challengers using digital and technology to improve the customer experience?
  • How, as an incumbent bank, can you take inspiration and reinvent your organization in the face of the threats challenger banks present?
  • What can we learn from exploring the different models of challenger bank that are emerging, their advantages, and how to harness elements of their model to tackle customer pain points better?

Digitization and the future of work

  • Exploring how your team looks today and how it will look in the future as more technologies are introduced into day-to-day-processes.
  • Discussing the future of work: what is HSBC doing to upskill its staff and future-proof its workforce to adapt to change?
  • Harnessing the balance between automation and a better-skilled workforce in order to improve the customer experience

Defining innovation: Case study of building processes and strategies for success

  • Defining expectations to set out measurement criteria for innovation.
  • Building channels and processes for the complete spectrum of innovation, from incremental to game-changing.
  • Discovering what motivates people to participate and what difficulties have to be overcome: learning what works and what does not.
  • Moving from idea to reality: how to implement brilliant ideas quickly.

Other topics to be featured on Day Two of FinovateMiddleEast include:

We will also host a Mentoring Power Panel with representatives from AMANIcircle, Startupbootcamp, Intesa Sanpaolo, Radicle, and Angivest Ventures.

Tickets to FinovateMiddleEast are still available. Visit our FinovateMiddleEast page to register and get more information on how to plan your visit.

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FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: Okanii

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

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

Okanii solves all of the problems of moving value around the world by creating the true internet of value.

Features

  • Cost – Okanii offers a 100x cost reduction that makes $0.01 micro-payments profitable
  • Security – Quantum proof hyper-tokenization, unbreakable, zero fraud
  • Scalability – easily supports all of the worlds’ transactions

Why it’s great
Okanii is the opposite of blockchain. Make payments/ transactions in any asset (181 currencies, stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate) across any use-case (P2P, B2C, B2B), instantly, securely, and at no cost.

Presenter

Grant Colhoun, CEO
Colhoun is a serial entrepreneur, payments expert, and a recovering investment banker.
LinkedIn

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FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: Circlys

FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: Circlys
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Circlys, 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.

Circlys is a social saving plan based on circles model (rotating savings and credit association /committees) with trusted users that have been risk accessed.

Features

  • On-time payment
  • Flexible plans
  • Long term saving benefits
  • Access to liquidity that fits any financial plans

Why it’s great
Circulate with Circlys and according to plan.

Presenters

Hanan Alanazi, Operations manager

Khaled Hassoun, CEO
Hassoun has eight plus years of experience in tech start-ups in which he undertook multiple roles in managing business aspects.
LinkedIn



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FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: fcase

FinovateMiddleEast Sneak Peek: fcase
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: fcase, 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.

Fraud prevention has many layers, each with its own view. However, fraudsters attack across all layers. With fcase holistic fraud investigations, you can now manage all fraud from one mission control.

Features

  • Centralized fraud prevention automation
  • Holistic manual fraud investigations
  • Fraud mission control

Why it’s great
Built from the ground up to massively manage your fraud operations from one mission control, fcase is one golden source of fraud data, delivering a reduction in fraud, customer friction and improves efficiency.

Presenters

Bulent Ozkan, VP
LinkedIn

Barry Bowen, Global Head of Sales
Bowen has 25 years of experience building, implementing, and marketing fraud prevention systems.
LinkedIn

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Circlys, Coinbase, DriveWealth, Eigen Technologies, fcase, Finastra, Insuritas, Ledger, MasterCard, nCino, Okanii, On Deck Capital, Salt Edge, Spreedly

On Finovate.com

  • Spreedly Raises $75 Million in Growth Funding.
  • NLP Innovator Eigen Technologies Closes $37 Million Series B.
  • nCino Brings AI to its Bank Operating System with nIQ.
  • Lloyd’s Syndicate to Insure Ledger’s Vault.

Around the web

  • DriveWealth partners with Bamboo to give Nigerians real-time access to trade 3,500+ stocks listed on the U.S. stock market.
  • OnDeck builds liquidity with new $125 million securitization.
  • Salt Edge teams up with Exprivia to expand access to open banking solutions.
  • Insuritas partners with Security Federal Savings Bank to launch digital insurance agency platform.
  • Coinbase adds five new currencies to its Coinbase Card – XRP, BAT, REP, ZRX, and XLM – as it brings its card to ten new countries.
  • Mastercard launches Mastercard Accelerate, a worldwide initiative that gives fintechs access to the company’s suite of digital solutions to help differentiate their offerings.
  • Finastra inks partnership with UAE-based United Arab Bank, which will deploy the company’s Fusion Corporate Channels and Fusion Cash Management solutions.

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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SheerID Lands $64 Million for Segmented Identity Verification

SheerID Lands $64 Million for Segmented Identity Verification
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, SheerID

Customer segmentation identification company SheerID is receiving a boost for its platform today with a $64 million investment. The funds bring SheerID’s total funding to $96 million.

The round was led by CVC Growth, which will join SheerID’s board of directors. SheerID will use the funds to fortify its marketing, sales, and engineering efforts; launch in more geographies, and add more consumer segments relating to occupation, interests, causes, and affiliations.

SheerID was founded in 2011 to help companies gate exclusive offers to high-value customer segmentation groups. The segmentation, for example, prevents customers from using their student ID from the 1990s to score a discount on a laptop today. Other segmentations include military personnel, teachers, and seniors. “Our platform allows brands to create offers that honor and recognize an entire consumer tribe, increasing trust and word-of-mouth, and decreasing customer acquisition costs,” explained SheerID CEO Jake Weatherly.

The new funds come at a time of significant growth for SheerID. The company has seen 4.5x revenue growth over the past three years, ranked 243 in the Deloitte and Touche Fast 500, and landed 200 customers including Target, Amazon, Lowe’s, Comcast, Google, T-Mobile and Urban Outfitters.

“Our exponential growth is driven by major shifts in personalization, privacy, and performance marketing,” Wealtherly said. “Marketers are struggling to capture the attention of consumers who want more control over their personal data and less uninvited marketing from brands.”

Oregon-based SheerID demoed its verification platform at FinovateSpring 2019. The demo showed how the SheerID platform can help banks not only verify credentials for exclusive offers but can also fuel personalized marketing.

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Financial Identity as a Service Innovator Juvo Teams Up with DOCOMO Digital

Financial Identity as a Service Innovator Juvo Teams Up with DOCOMO Digital
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Juvo

Juvo, a company that specializes in building financial identities for the underbanked, announced this week that it has forged a strategic partnership with global mobile commerce company DOCOMO Digital. The collaboration will marry Juvo’s financial-identity-as-a-service capabilities with DOCOMO Digital’s payments platform to give prepaid mobile users broader payment options when it comes to paying for digital services.

The partnership specifically helps address the challenge that many prepaid mobile users in emerging markets face when accessing digital services. Many users abandon purchases because of insufficient prepaid balances or lack of other payment options such as credit cards. Working together, Juvo and DOCOMO Digital will now offer micro-credits, in real-time, to allow the transactions to be completed without requiring the user to top-up their balance immediately.

Founder and CEO of Juvo Steve Polsky described the company’s mission as creating a “YES economy” that provides financial identities for the 68% of adults around the world who are unable to participate in the regular economy because they do not have a credit history. “By creating financial identities, Juvo empowers our partners with the data to say YES to more of their customers, opening up new revenue streams,” Polsky said.

The emerging markets are a particular focus for the initiative. In a statement, DOCOMO Digital CEO Jonathan Kriegel said the partnership will make it easier to provide financial services to the underbanked in these regions, where access to mobile and data services is on the rise. “Our partnership with Juvo aligns perfectly with our endeavor to make the mobile commerce experience seamless for consumers, while unlocking more value for mobile operators and digital merchants,” Kriegel said.

Juvo introduced its Financial Identity as a Service (FiDaaS) platform in September. The solution uses alternative, typically untapped data sources to establish creditworthiness and build financial identities for the underbanked that will help them access financial services. Juvo’s platform presently updates more than five billion data points daily for 200 million consumers on four continents.

Juvo demonstrated its Identity Scoring solution at FinovateFall 2016. At the conference, Polsky and VP of Product Jason Robinson showed how the technology leverages consumer internet “know-how,” data science and game mechanics to identify mobile users and encourage them to engage with their mobile operator. The cloud-based solution also offers intelligence and reporting tools to give mobile operators the analytics and insights they need to boost engagement.

Named to the Deloitte 2019 Technology Fast 500 earlier this month and honored by Frost & Sullivan for Strategic Excellence in Emerging Markets in July, Juvo was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company has raised $54 million in funding, and includes Samsung NEXT, Wing Venture Capital, and New Enterprise Associates among its investors.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AdviceRobo, AlphaPoint, HackerOne, ID R&D, Juvo, Pendo Systems, SheerID, SplitIt, Strands, Tradeshift, TransferWise, Xero

On Finovate.com

  • Financial Identity as a Service Innovator Juvo Teams Up with DOCOMO Digital
  • SheerID Lands $64 Million for Segmented Identity Verification

Around the web

  • HackerOne awards $3,500 in bounties to a pair of researchers who discovered vulnerabilities on its own platform.
  • AlphaPoint adds support for margin trading to its platform.
  • Bank of Georgia goes live with a new smart personal financial management (PFM) solution, mBank, developed by Strands.
  • Installment payment solution Splitit announces a new partnership with chiliPAD sleep system maker, Chilli.
  • Tradeshift integrates with fraud protection specialist SiS-id to reduce payments fraud.
  • Xero launches Pay with TransferWise, a new domestic bill payment solution to help U.K. customers pay and manage bills.
  • Pendo Systems teams with WSN to help customers navigate digital transformation.

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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Financial Literacy Focused Best of Show Winner Zogo Unveils 11 New Partners

Financial Literacy Focused Best of Show Winner Zogo Unveils 11 New Partners
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Zogo Finance

How many partners does it take to help drive a national effort to boost youth financial literacy?

According to news from Finovate Best of Show winner Zogo, eleven is a great place to start.

Zogo announced late last month that it has teamed up with 11 community banks and credit unions across 12 different states to offer its teen financial literacy app to customers and members as a branded offering. Each institution will get an access code specific to their bank or credit union that they provide to the users of the app. Once the code is entered, the Zogo app becomes branded with the institution’s logo, helping create a more unique, partner-specific experience for the customer.

“With Zogo, we wanted to create a financial education experience our peers would actually use,” Zogo co-founder and CEO Bolun Li said. “We are excited to partner with community-focused financial institutions to bring this vision to life.”

The app works by guiding users through more than 300 educational micro-modules that help them meet the national standards for financial literacy. These include topics such as using credit, saving, and financial investing. Successfully completing a module earns the user points that can be redeemed in the form of gift cards. Zogo won Best of Show honors at FinovateFall in September for its live demo of the app, which leverages behavioral economic research developed at Duke University in North Carolina to help foster literacy in younger adults.

The firms that will be using the app as early as this year are:

  • CommunityWide FCU (Indiana)
  • Diamond CU (Pennsylvania)
  • First Bank & Trust (Louisiana)
  • Magnolia FCU (Mississippi)
  • MassMutual FCU (Massachusetts)
  • North Star Community CU (North Dakota)
  • Pen Air FCU (Florida)
  • Pyramid FCU (Arizona)
  • RelyOn CU (Texas)
  • Southern Chautauqua FCU (New York)
  • West Town Bank & Trust (Illinois, North Carolina)

Founded in 2018, Zogo has raised $295,000 in pre-seed funding, and is backed by Techstars and MetLife. In addition to its Finovate Best of Show honors, Zogo was the winner of the National Association of Credit Union Service Organizations (NACUSO) 7th Annual Next Big Idea contest earlier this year.

“Zogo is such a timely application, built to connect with young adults as they are beginning to learn the value of money,” NACUSO President and former USAA Bank CEO Jack Antonini said. “Delivered through ubiquitous mobile phone, this app can help credit unions capture new members, while teaching and reinforcing responsible financial habits.”

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