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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
TransUnionlaunches its consumer data mapping solution, TrueVision.
Coinbase to offer exclusive trading data to all customers.
Plaidunveils its Liabilities endpoint to support development of apps to help combat student loan debt.
Signifydannounces general availability of its Signifyd INR Protection add-on, bringing coverage of item-not-received (INR) chargebacks to its fraud protection solution.
Klarnapartners with Superdry to enable the company’s customers in the U.K. to pay later or pay in three installments.
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.
Explainable AI – which enables human analysts who aren’t data scientists to understand how artificial intelligence-based solutions reach their conclusions – is at the center of the prize that is Temenos’ acquisition of explainable AI innovator Logical Glue. Temenos announced today that it will integrate the Logical Glue XAI platform into its cloud-native, cloud-agnostic banking solution, and will be available with all Temenos products.
Many view Explainable AI as a critical component in making artificial intelligence work in heavily-regulated industries like banking and finance. Temenos CEO Max Chuard called the technology “a game changer” for customers, adding: “It will give them greater transparency and explainability of AI automated decisions and recommendations helping them harness AI technology to create seamless customer journeys and automate manual processes while meeting the growing regulatory demands.”
Logical Glue provides a purpose-built, Machine Learning as a Service platform that does the work of data scientists at speed and scale. The company’s technology, demonstrated live at FinovateEurope 2016, enables users to leverage raw data to build highly accurate predictive models, see how those models can be applied to real-world business challenges, and then apply those models to the new data in real-time.
“With our patented, cutting-edge XAI platform and our highly experienced machine learning experts, we are helping financial institutions harness the explosive power of XAI and helping them master AI decision-making,” said Logical Glue co-founder and Chief Science Officer Hani Hagras.
Founded in 2012, Logical Glue is headquartered in London, U.K. In May, Logical Glue announced a partnership with managing digital agent Azur to help the company improve its risk analysis. Two years ago, Logical Glue secured an investment from U.K. entrepreneur Tom Singh, founder of fashion retailer New Look. “Logical Glue provides a straightforward and accessible machine learning platform for lenders and insurance providers,” Singh said in a statement when the investment was announced. “(The technology delivers) faster and more accurate decisions that will underpin increased productivity and profitability.”
Temenos demonstrated its Connect Mobile Banking solution at FinovateEurope 2015. The company is also an alum of our developers conference, presenting its B2B Financial Apps Marketplace at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015. Based in Geneva, Switzerland and founded in 1993, Temenos notes that more than 3,000 firms around the world – including 41 of the top 50 banks – are daily users of its banking, payments, fund, and wealth management solutions.
Cloud-based cybersecurity innovator DefenseStormclosed a $15 million equity funding round this week. The Series A was led by Georgian Partners, a growth equity firm with an emphasis on companies that leverage applied and conversational artificial intelligence. In addition to the new capital, which takes DefenseStorm’s total funding to more than $29 million, the company will collaborate with the Georgian Impact team to accelerate the adoption of these technologies.
“DefenseStorm is growing rapidly, and our primary goal is not only to ensure that we take care of both our current and potential customers, but also that we invest in our employees and the innovation they continue to bring to the table,” DefenseStorm CEO Harold Brewer said. “We are thrilled to have the support of the Georgian Impact team and look forward to a lasting partnership benefitting the entire cybersecurity community.”
As part of the investment, Georgian Partners Managing Partner Justin LaFayette will join DefenseStorm’s board of directors. Chief Technology Officer for Georgian Partners Mads Mihailescu praised DefenseStorm’s “deep domain expertise” and noted that the partnership has “already identified a number of opportunities to further accelerate new product capabilities.”
DefenseStorm demonstrated its PatternScout anomaly detection engine at FinovateSpring 2017. The technology uses advanced machine learning to identify suspicious behavior patterns, and provides automated alerts to enable administrators to stop cyberattacks before they spread.
The company is also an alum of our developers conference, having presented a discussion on best practices for fintechs in securing the cloud, Cloud Security Fundamentals, at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016.
Named a Top 40 Innovative Technology Company by the Technology Association of Georgia at the beginning of the year, DefenseStorm announced a partnership with Heritage Trust Federal Credit Union in April. Per the agreement, DefenseStorm provided the Charleston, South Carolina-area credit union with a strategic technology platform to enable it to proactively manage cyberexposure and risk. Other recent partnerships announced by DefenseStorm include a collaboration with Alogent and a preferred partner pact with NAFCU.
Non-agency automated underwriting systems (AUS) provider LoanScorecard announced its latest partnership this week. The company is teaming up with Nations Direct Mortgage (NDM) to power its loan pricing and scenario solution, DirectQual.
Calling broker education on non-qualified mortgage products a major challenge for wholesale lenders like Nations Direct Mortgage, LoanScorecard Executive Director Ben Wu highlighted why NDM’s new tool will be part of the solution. “DirectQual allows brokers who work with or are considering working with NDM to not only see products and pricing, but also determine borrower eligibility – so they can accelerate the Non-QM origination process and provide a better borrower experience,” Wu said.
Driven by LoanScorecard’s Portfolio Underwriter technology, DirectQual will enable brokers to import loan scenarios and assess eligibility for Nations Direct Mortgage’s Non-QM loan programs. The solution both simplifies the process and makes it easier for brokers to match the right program with the right borrower.
Director of Lending for NDM Martin Warren called the technology “a tremendous tool for our brokers to simplify the pre-qual process and get results for their Non-QM borrowers – consistently and quickly.” He listed broader engagement with more brokers, better broker education on Non-QM products, and the ability to deliver quick pre-qualifications among the bigger benefits of the platform.
A wholesale mortgage lender founded in 2007, Nations Direct Mortgage originates and purchases residential mortgage loans, including FHA, Conventional, VA, USDA, and Jumbo products. The Santa Ana, California-based company also offers three Non-QM loan products: Income Direct, Credit Direct, and Investor Direct.
LoanScorecard demonstrated its Portfolio Underwriter technology at FinovateFall 2018. Portfolio Underwriter is an agency-agnostic, underwriting engine that gives capital market investors, banks, and credit unions the ability to quickly analyze loan information based on their own unique offerings and specifications. The solution makes it easier to deploy capital most effectively, is more efficient and consistent than manual underwriting, and helps ensure that mortgage operations comply with fair lending regulations.
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Irvine, California, the company has been on a strong partner-making pace of late. Last month, LoanScorecard announced it would power the new automated underwriting system Acorn from Sprouts Mortgage. In May, the company integrated Calyx Software’s Path LOS into its SimpleCECL solution to make it easier for FIs to conduct loan level current expected credit loss (CECL) analysis.
RAccount holders should be able to trust their bank or credit union to protect their valuable financial data. However, the human presence within complex networks inherently creates privacy and governance vulnerabilities, particularly in the visibility, control, and protection over how, when, and where data is made available to the people who use it every day.
Though modern cybersecurity is inherently multi-layered, the deepest layer must include modern data security governance that protects against privileged access and human error.
Watch on-demand to hear Lou Senko, CIO of Q2, and Doug Wick, VP of Product and Marketing for ALTR, explore how a large, publicly traded financial experience (FinX) company is using innovative solutions to provide the ultimate failsafe to its customers, as well as:
• Best practices for keeping sensitive financial data safe • How to gain transparent visibility and control over your data • How blockchain technology can support the restoration of digital trust.
Entrepreneur.com featuresXero in its round up of solutions to help companies better control their business expenses.
SaaS banking engine Mambuinks deal with its first Brazilian client, Acesso.
Worldpay to deployUP eCommerce Payments solution from ACI Worldwide as part of new international partnership.
Czech Republic’s Twistoannounces plans to expand to Poland this fall, with expansion to Romania to follow.
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.
In a round led by Point72 Ventures, contextual data intelligence specialist Flybits has raised $35 million in new funding. The fresh capital takes the company’s total equity financing to $50 million, and will help drive its growth in EMEA, Latin America, and the U.S.
The Series C round featured participation from Mastercard, Citi Ventures, and Reinventure, which was backed by Westpac Banking Corporation of Australia. Existing investors Portag3 Ventures, TD Bank Group and Information Venture Partners contributed to the round, as well.
The financing will also enable Flybits to commercialize its portfolio of AI and machine learning patents, as well as make enhancements to UX and design. Flybits also plans to launch a marketplace to make it easier for financial institutions, fintechs, and financial data providers to collaborate on new products and services.
“Banks are looking for ways to maximize their use of data and better engage with customers, but are having a hard time executing and scaling this on their own or by leveraging passive PFM (personal financial management) services,” Flybits founder and CEO Dr. Hossein Rahnama explained. “Flybits enables banks to use real-time data and contextual intelligence to shift to those new models and go to market with them faster without over reliance on their IT department.”
Point72 Ventures Partner Tripp Shriner shared Rahnama’s view on this new challenge for banks and other FIs, whom Shriner said “are struggling to communicate with their customers about their products and services in the digital environment.” He praised Flybits for developing a “superior end-to-end solution for personalization of the digital customer experience.”
Today’s investment comes just a few months after Flybits announced that it was a key enabler of the Mastercard Contextual Engagement Solution. The technology is the first product built using the Mastercard Innovation Engine and helps drive contextually-relevant and personalized digital engagement. Last fall, Flybits announced it would work with TD Bank Group to provide enhanced, “micro-personalized” mobile experiences to the bank customers.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Flybits demonstrated its contextual recommendation engine at FinovateSpring in May. The technology leverages behavioral data and combinations of data sets to provide a deeper understanding of individual customer behavior and preferences based on collective experiences.
Lemonade, the training platform developed by Finovate Best of Show winner Launchfire, is going live as a standalone SaaS brand, the company announced today. In a statement, Launchfire noted that offering the solution as its own SaaS offering was a “key strategic goal” to help ensure the product had a “strong identity” and “clear value proposition” for its brand.
“It was time to create some separation between our two business offerings,” Launchfire CEO John Findlay said. “Both Lemonade and our Promotions Agency have seen significant growth in the past few years, and we wanted to create some space to let each shine on their own.”
Launchfire demonstrated Lemonade, its game-based employee and customer engagement solution for financial institutions, at FinovateEurope 2019, winning Best of Show. Lemonade leverages microlearning, product simulations, and roleplay scenarios to help institutions educate and train workers faster. The solution also provides in-depth analytics to enable managers to track progress and measure how effectively the current training process is going.
“For 20 years, we’ve educated consumers using game-based promotions,” Launchfire CTO Alexandre Lemaire said. “In hindsight, it was a natural transition to combine proven game tactics with learning science to derive this powerful learning platform, and the result is fantastic. We’re pushing learning outcomes, metrics, and engagement to entirely new levels,” Lemaire said.
Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Launchfire won gold at the 2019 Hermes Creative Awards of the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals in May. Back in December, the company was honored with a gold award at the Brandon Hall Group Excellence Technology Awards for “excellence in gaming or simulation technology.”
TrueLayer, provider of financial APIs, has integrated with Revolut to enable the secure access of financial data via open banking, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
Money management app, Emma, will be one of the first companies to use the new integration. Emma’s customers will now be able to use their Revolut account information to track their spending in real time.
Account information will only be accessible when a customer chooses to use a new product and actively agrees to share their information.
Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and co-founder of TrueLayer, said: “We’re increasingly seeing how open banking is uniting successful companies so that they can offer more and more great services to consumers.”
Edoardo Moreni, CEO and co-founder of Emma, added: “Our users can now have access to all their balances, see the exact conversion in pound and manage their money like never before.”
TrueLayer’s partnership is its latest milestone in 2019, with the recent announcement of a $35 million funding round led by Tencent and Temasek.
It recently expanded across Europe to Germany, France, Italy and Spain, the launch of payment initiation capabilities and partnerships with companies including Zopa, ClearScore, Plum, CreditLadder, Canopy, and ANNA Money.
Revolut demonstrated its platform at FinovateEurope 2015. Founded in 2013 and based in London, U.K., the company has raised more than $336 million in funding. Future Fifty, DST Global, and Draper Esprit are among the firm’s investors.
Ritholtz Wealth turns toBetterment’sBetterment for Advisors, a white label online investing solution, to power its Liftoff automated investment platform.
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.
ClickSWITCH, which made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring, has unveiled its partnership with Current, a digital bank launched in 2016. Current has used the ClickSWITCH API to build and design a customized UX that makes it easy for members to switch direct deposits to their checking accounts.
“We are excited to be providing direct deposit technology to Current’s banking solution,” Founder and CEO of ClickSWITCH Cale Johnston said. “Current is on the leading edge of an industry that is evolving at a rapid pace. They are adding new users at a very impressive rate, and we believe our solution will increase user adoption for their growing platform.”
ClickSWITCH offers banks and other financial institutions a turn-key solution that automates the switch of direct deposits and recurring payments for account holders. The company’s automated account holder acquisition technology makes onboarding easier and faster, enabling FIs to improve customer acquisition and account activation rates, ease the funding of new accounts, and increase the number of primary account holders.
Current bills itself as “a bank built for modern life.” The institution, launched in 2016, provides an iOS/Android banking app, and a Visa debit card with no minimum balance or overdraft fees. With more than 400,000 active accounts, Current offers a variety of innovative options for customers such as its Teen Checking Accounts and Early Direct Deposits. Current founder and CEO Stuart Sopp highlighted the bank’s Early Direct Deposit program, which allows customers to access their paychecks up to two days in advance, as a major beneficiary of ClickSWITCH’s technology.
“For more Americans, changing where their paychecks are deposited is the best measure of truly switching banks,” Sopp said. “By partnering with ClickSWITCH, we’re able to make that process far more seamless and offer a better customer experience for our account holders – which is always our top priority at Current.”
Founded in 2014, ClickSWITCH is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The company demonstrated its automated direct deposit switch technology at FinovateSpring 2019. ClickSWITCH has raised $17.1 million in funding, and counts Point72 Ventures and Commerce Ventures among its investors.
Earlier this year, the company partnered with fellow Finovate alum Digital Onboarding to enable Old Point National Bank to update and switch direct deposits and recurring payments more efficiently. Last spring, ClickSWITCH worked with virtual branch app provider Mobilearth to add a new direct deposit switching feature to Mobilearth’s roving teller dashboard.
Pan-American Life Insurance Group (PALIG), a provider of insurance and financial services throughout the Americas, has selected Fiserv technology to strengthen the efficiency and effectiveness of its anti-money laundering (AML) compliance and risk management program in multiple countries, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
PALIG sought a provider with insurance industry expertise, a global footprint, and flexibility to help streamline AML compliance and fraud and risk management processes. The company selected Fiserv to provide a solution that accommodates country-specific regulations and reporting requirements.
The firm hopes this will improve efficiency for PALIG by enabling it to execute and monitor risk management processes in multiple countries through a single platform.
PALIG is initially deploying the Fiserv solution for use in Panama, the Cayman Islands, Colombia and Costa Rica, with plans to expand to more of the 22 countries where it has operations.
“Effective risk management is an important part of how we do business,” said Steven A. Friedman, executive vice president, chief investment officer, corporate development and strategy, Pan-American Life Insurance Group. “Working with Fiserv will optimize our ability to manage risk in an increasingly complex world so we can continue earning our customers’ trust.”
AML Risk Manager from Fiserv incorporates advanced capabilities that address four areas of an AML risk management program: know your customer (KYC) monitoring, detection and alerts, case management, and reporting.
Fiserv was founded in 1984, and is based in Brookfield Wisconsin. The company partnered with Samsung SDS last year at FinovateSpring to demo the Fiserv Commercial Center: Security & Samsung SDS Nexsign. Earlier this year, Fiserv announced plans to merge with First Data.
