Standard Bank Leverages Mobile Teller Tech from Infosys Finacle

Standard Bank Leverages Mobile Teller Tech from Infosys Finacle

Standard Bank has cut customer waiting and transaction times since adopting the Infosys Finacle Mobile Teller Solution at branches across Africa, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Since going live with the enterprise level, tablet-based solution at 107 branches in five countries – Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Eswatini – the bank has seen transaction turnaround times reduced by over 40%.

Features such as designated workflows for tellers, relationship managers and agents, offline operation capability, an inbuilt analytics engine and an interactive user interface have improved capacity. Tellers can now offer personalised services on the go and service multiple customer requests from a single window.

Other benefits have included a 50% reduction in paper use, 14% lower branch network costs and staff training time slashed from one week to about two hours.

“Ensuring world class customer experience is a key priority for Standard Bank and ensuring this at non-digital touch points such as branches was a challenge,” said Klaas Kruger, chief information officer of African Regions at Standard Bank.

“The implementation of ‘Moby’, Finacle’s Mobile Teller Solution as we call it, has been a significant step in our journey towards customer centric digitalization and process optimization. ‘Moby’, in combination with our existing Finacle Omnichannel Hub, has been a game changer in helping us provide the best banking experience in Africa.”

The solution is in the implementation stage for Ghana and Tanzania and will be further phased in across the bank’s African Regions countries.

A division of EdgeVerge Systems, a subsidiary of Infosys, Finacle demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2017. The company was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Bangalore, India.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate

  • ClickSWITCH to Power Digital Direct Deposit Switch for Current.
  • Standard Bank Leverages Mobile Teller Tech from Infosys Finacle.
  • Fiserv to Enhance Risk Management for Pan-American Life.

Around the web

  • New integration between Revolut and TrueLayer brings Open Banking to money management app Emma.
  • Via its Mastercard Send push payments solution, Mastercard and Evolve Bank & Trust team up to back Branch and similar companies to ensure prompt payment for gig workers.
  • Envestnet helps Voya Financial launch hybrid roboadvisory offering.

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.

Kyndi Raises $20 Million

Kyndi Raises $20 Million

Kyndi has boosted its total funding to $28.5 million this week after closing a $20 million Series B round led by Intel Capital. Also participating in the round were UL Ventures, PivotNorth, Pinnacle Peak, and all existing investors.

Kyndi founder and CEO Ryan Welsh said that the round accelerates the company’s growth. “The extra capital allows us to grow our engineering and sales teams. It also allows us to expand our footprint in Washington, D.C., for our government customers,” he said.

Since the company’s last round of funding in 2017, Kyndi has quadrupled in size, revenue, and number of customers, built its executive team, and released its Explainable AI product, which Welsh demoed at FinovateSpring 2018. Explainable AI helps organizations analyze massive amounts of data by unifying probabilistic and logical methods. Additionally, the tool helps minimize human bias that often occurs when information is manually extracted from raw data.

“Enterprises are turning to AI to take advantage of new opportunities and to solve pressing business problems, and we expect AI’s use in business will continue to grow as the technology matures,” said Nick Washburn, Senior Managing Director of Intel Capital. “Solutions like Kyndi’s, which remove some of the mystery of AI technology, will continue to gain importance, and we look forward to helping them accelerate AI adoption and address the need for explainability.” Intel Capital’s Investment Director Sunil M. Sanghavi will join Kyndi’s board of directors.

Digital Onboarding to Boost Customer Engagement for Manatee Community FCU

Digital Onboarding to Boost Customer Engagement for Manatee Community FCU

Manatee County, Florida’s only chartered credit union is teaming up with FinovateFall alum Digital Onboarding to improve new customer engagement. Manatee Community FCU, founded in 1958 and headquartered in Bradenton, Florida, will leverage Digital Onboarding’s fully-automated new account activation technology to boost membership and improve the overall banking experience for new and existing customers.

“Building member engagement is challenging, especially when members live outside of the primary branch service area,” Digital Onboarding CEO Ted Brown explained. “With the Digital Onboarding platform, Manatee Community Federal Credit Union can deliver an exceptional banking experience to all of its members. We’re thrilled to be partnering with the credit union on this important growth initiative.”

Digital Onboarding enables banks and credit unions to move beyond traditional marketing techniques involving phone calls, emails, direct mail, and print brochures when it comes to attracting and engaging new potential customers. Guided journeys help new customers quickly navigate the onboarding and activation process, and institutions can add features such as gamified incentives to customize the process further. The platform can be used to generate automated, intelligent email and text campaigns to keep customers engaged and aware of new service and product offerings. FIs running the platform benefit from summary analytics and reports that provide transparency into the account activation process, enabling community banks and credit unions to optimize their strategies to secure the best responses.

“At Manatee Community Federal Credit Union, we recently expanded our charter to serve members in Sarasota County, various employment groups, and associations,” Manatee Community FCU CEO Sherod Halliburton said. “(We) want to ensure that we deliver a best-in-class banking experience, no matter where our members reside.” He added that his team reviewed a variety of different digital platforms before choosing Digital Onboarding’s solution, which he called “the best option in the market.”

Boston, Massachusetts-based Digital Onboarding demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall 2018. Last month, the company announced that it would join the Venture Center FinTech Accelerator sponsored by Fidelity Information Services. This spring, we featured Digital Onboarding in a profile on how banks can compete with Apple’s new credit card.

Settle Launches Mobile App in Croatia; Sr. Pago Partners with American Express

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • RISQ Teams Up with Aion Digital to Boost SME Lending in MENA.
  • ACI Worldwide teams up with Egyptian Banks Company, which will leverage ACI’s UP Retail Payments solution.
  • The Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) has begun issuing digital banking licenses.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Bangalore-based neobank for workers NiYO raises $35 million in new funding.
  • WebMoney Transfer goes live with its WMY wallet in Uzbekistan.
  • India’s Recko, a company that provides AI-powered digital transaction reconciliation, picks up $1 million in seed capital.
  • Swiss payments technology company BPC opens offices in Pakistan.
  • Nikkei Asian Review highlights Vymo and its entrance to the Japanese market.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Jumio to power digital identity for Brazil-based BTG Pactual.
  • Mexico’s Sr.Pago announces partnership with American Express.
  • Mastercard Brazil partners with Airfox and banQi to bring lower-cost banking options to Brazilian customers.

Asia-Pacific

  • Bank of Thailand implements SimCorp Dimension to manage its reserve management and monetary policy operations.
  • Vietnam’s central bank warns against fraud in the P2P lending market.
  • Regulators in the Philippines introduce new rules governing crowdfunding.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Temenos to power digital transformation for Rwanda’s Bank of Kigali. The company will also replace core and front office legacy systems for South African microfinancier Barko
  • Ghana to launch universal QR code payment method later this year.
  • Mobile payments startup OPay raises $50 million in funding in round led by Sequoia China, IDG Capital, and Source Code Capital.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Settle launches its mobile payments app in Croatia.
  • Czech-based fintech developer Turing Technology closes second round of funding.
  • Slovenia’s Telekom Slovenije introduces its mobile wallet.

Top image designed by Freepik

Best of Show Winner Banzai Teams Up with GreenPath to Boost Financial Literacy

Best of Show Winner Banzai Teams Up with GreenPath to Boost Financial Literacy

Promoting financial wellness among some of the economy’s most vulnerable participants is the goal of the new partnership between financial counseling and debt management nonprofit GreenPath and Finovate Best of Show winner Banzai. The collaboration, announced in June, will combine Banzai’s experience-based, personal finance learning solutions with GreenPath’s empathetic, nonjudgemental, one-on-one approach to debt counseling and helping consumer gain financial wellness.

“Lenders love GreenPath because they know they help people make positive, sustainable behavior changes that lead to improved credit and financial health,” Banzai’s Bryce Peterson wrote in a blog post discussing the news. “We are partnering with GreenPath so financial institutions can relieve the pressures experienced by many of their customers,” he said.

The two companies will also work together to present their respective platforms to potential financial institution customers.

A nonprofit organization founded in 1961, GreenPath has 500 employees in 40 locations who help individuals improve their financial awareness and skills, enabling them to make better financial decisions. The company leverages its relationship with creditors to help clients refinance their outstanding debts and secure lower, easier-to-afford, interest rates. Loan denial and delinquency services, CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) support, financial education workshops, and employer programs are among the services GreenPath offers financial institutions. The company currently facilitates debt management programs for 45,000 customers, and repaid more than $200 million on behalf of its clients last year alone.

Banzai demonstrated its turnkey, CRA eligible solution, combining educational content, interactive online simulations and topical resources at FinovateFall 2018. Winning Best of Show for its experience-based learning programs, Banzai has 750 bank and credit union partners, and 45,000 teachers using its technology.

Later this month, Banzai will unveil a pair of new products: Financial Wellness Center and the Coach. These solutions, in the words of company co-founder and CTO Kendall Buchanan, “(are) designed to encourage potential customers to share their goals … think deeply about their finances, and find answers to their stickiest financial questions.”

Founded in 2007, Banzai is headquartered in Provo, Utah. Morgan Vandagriff is co-founder and CEO.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Best of Show Winner Banzai Teams Up with GreenPath to Boost Financial Literacy.
  • Digital Onboarding to Boost Customer Engagement for Manatee Community FCU.
  • Finovate Global: Settle Launches Mobile App in Croatia; Sr. Pago Partners with American Express.

Around the web

  • Mastercard acquires global payments firm Transfast.
  • Chatbots.Studio partners with Digital Flex Solution to become their first technical partner and adviser. Check out Chatbots.Studio at FinovateFall in September!
  • CREALOGIX wins Best Wealth Management User Interface at the 2019 Systems in the City Financial Technology Awards.
  • Sports Business Daily interviews Everfi Head of Global Partnerships Jon Chapman.
  • HackerOne achieves ISO 27001 certification.
  • Gartner’s 2019 Market Guide for In-App Protection recognizes Jscrambler for its client-side security technology.
  • Ping Identity earns Best Identity Management Solution honors at the 2019 SC Awards Europe.

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.

YSEOP Garners $9.3 Million in New Funding Round

YSEOP Garners $9.3 Million in New Funding Round

Natural language generation (NLG) technology company YSEOP is boosting its capital by $9.3 million this week, bringing its total investment to $12.6 million. The funds come from existing investor NextStage, an investment platform that shares YSEOP’s Parisian roots.

While previous investments have allowed YSEOP to roll out its NLG platform and enter into the pharmaceutical market, the company plans to use today’s round to accelerate its expansion into the U.S. In fact, by 2022, YSEOP expects to generate almost half of its revenue in the U.S.

“We are proud of NextStage’s confidence in YSEOP and the continuation of our shared adventure. The understanding NextStage shows of the challenges at play on the artificial intelligence and natural language market, as well as their knowledge of the U.S. market, confirm that they are the right partner to support us in our entrepreneurial journey,” said Emmanuel Walckenaer, YSEOP CEO. “Artificial Intelligence is a technology that transforms the approach to markets for companies and their organizations. We intend to continue honing and deepening our expertise in this field on behalf of our key accounts in order to realize the market potential of transforming data into natural language.”

YSEOP, which demoed Augmented Analytics earlier this year at FinovateSpring, leverages AI to deliver analysis using a human-like dialogue. The company’s tools can be used for a range of use cases, including wealth management, automated news briefs, report writing, and adding narrative to visual analytics.

DemystData Signs Two Year Agreement with Kyckr

DemystData Signs Two Year Agreement with Kyckr

Data-as-a-service firm DemystData ahas partnered with compliance and risk management specialist Kyckr to enhance its offerings for financial services clients.

Under the two-year agreement, DemystData will integrate Kyckr’s API into its platform. The move will allow DemystData customers to use Demyst’s platform to access Kyckr’s network of real-time registry information, allowing them to test the information in a secure sandbox environment.

“Partnering with DemystData brings together deep expertise in the data and automation space, helping us deliver the most up-to-date, legally accurate information to financial institutions globally,” Kyckr CEO Ian Henderson said. “The agreement is in alignment with our strategy to enhance collaborations with strategic partners as an accelerated method of growing our exposure to new clients and revenue.”

Founded in 2007, Kyckr provides APIs and cloud based, automated decision engines for Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance, due diligence, and customer onboarding. Kyckr’s company intelligence database offers access to 200 official registries, 120 countries, and 170+ million legal entities. The company showcased at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, our developers conference.

“Know-Your-Customer verification is becoming increasingly critical and we are excited to be embedding our unique registry network onto the DemystData platform, and we look forward to working with our new partner and customers,” Henderson added.

Today’s deal also stipulates that DemystData promote Kyckr’s API to its client base, bringing awareness to Kyckr’s company intelligence tools to a fresh group of potential clients.

DemystData offers a data marketplace that helps banks and businesses protect themselves against fraud using email and address verification, criminal history information, and data on negative online sentiment. The company also offers property information for risk underwriting, as well as commercial marketing segmentation. At FinovateAsia 2012, DemystData debuted Credit-in-a-Box, a suite of tools that help banks leverage big data to make better lending decisions. 

HiddenLevers and First Rate to Improve Risk Analytics for Wealth Managers

HiddenLevers and First Rate to Improve Risk Analytics for Wealth Managers

A new integration between wealth management solutions provider First Rate and FinovateFall alum HiddenLevers will bring advanced stress testing to help wealth managers better manage portfolio risk.

HiddenLevers offers a risk monitoring and analytics platform that enables wealth managers and advisors to measure client risk tolerance, stress test portfolios, and provide recommendations on how risk can be further reduced while still meeting investment objectives. The company’s portfolio analytics functionality allows managers to analyze a wide variety of asset classes – including stocks, bonds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds, annuities, real estate, options, and currencies. The technology also allows users to upload a return series to enable analysis of private investments, as well.

“Together, HiddenLevers and First Rate are excited to chart new waters in the wealth management space,” HiddenLevers Director of Business Development David Ristau said. “This integration showcases best-in-class wealth management solutions aligned with enterprise business intelligence, just when the market needs it most.”

HiddenLevers relies on big data to analyze the relationships between a wide range of economic metrics and more than 35,000 investments. The company then leverages “what-if” scenarios that model economic events, as well as historical research and analysis, to identify correlations between economic events and economic indicators. At this point, HiddenLevers is able to conduct stress-testing by applying the relationships uncovered in the first stage of the process to the various stress scenarios constructed in the second stage.

Courtesy of the integration, First Rate clients will get access to the HiddenLevers platform and the ability to import portfolios into HiddenLevers for portfolio and risk profiling. In partnering with First Rate, HiddenLevers clients benefit from access to a leading IPAAS provider that can drive their wealth management network.

“By integrating with HiddenLevers, First Rate is enabling wealth managers to be better stewards of their clients’ investments,” First Rate Chief Products Officer Marshall Smith said. “The ability to leverage fully reconciled and accurate performance data and forward-looking risk attributes are pivotal to overseeing investor assets for wealth management firms.”

Atlanta, Georgia-based HiddenLevers demonstrated its Economic Analysis Suite and Economic Editorial Widgets at FinovateFall 2010. Earlier this year, the company announced that it was extending its partnership with Orion Business Intelligence with the launch of its business intelligence integration Risk Monitor. With more than $400 billion in assets on the platform, HiddenLevers was founded in 2009. Praveen Ghanta is co-founder and CEO.

HSBC Creates Private Banking Portal with Finantix

HSBC Creates Private Banking Portal with Finantix

Finantix, a supplier of software for wealth management, insurance and private banking industries globally, has been selected by HSBC Private Banking as it launches a new global client wealth management portal for its clients, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.

The firm’s solution, Finantix Components, has been deployed to support the new portal, which aims to be a simplified, seamless, and globally standardized platform.

Alessandro Tonchia, co-founder of Finantix, said, “HSBC Private Banking built the portal incorporating Finantix Components APIs and, in doing so, are creating a consistent, modern omni-device experience, easy and secure self-service access to accounts, portfolio information and analytics.”

Finantix worked with HSBC Private Banking to provide business logic, insights, user journey standards and interfaces with its core banking platform.

The solution has been rolled out in the U.K. and is being extended to other markets where HSBC Private Banking operates.

This news comes just a few days after the Italy-based company announced a deal with Deutsche Bank Wealth Management, which will leverage Finantix’s KYC solution for its onboarding process.

Finantix most recently showcased its Banking Assistant at FinovateEurope 2013 after taking home Best of Show honors at FinovateEurope 2011 for its demo of Wealth Apps. Founded by Alessandro Tonchia in 1994, Finantix was acquired last year by Motive Partners for an undisclosed amount.

AI Foundry Adds Mortgage Document Modeling to its Automation Platform

AI Foundry Adds Mortgage Document Modeling to its Automation Platform

The campaign to rid the mortgage industry of as many cumbersome, expensive, and error-prone manual processes as possible continues as AI Foundry unveils the latest enhancement to its Cognitive Business Automation Platform. The company announced this week that its new mortgage document model will add key functionality to its automation platform, leveraging machine learning, machine vision, and AI to provide better automated data classification and data extraction.

“The model enables any lender to upload its loan application material and in return receive fully indexed and extracted data within seconds,” Head of Solution Development for AI Foundry Peter Piela explained. Piela added that the technology has a 95% accuracy rate, which he said was comparable to manual accuracy rates, and is superior to legacy text classification methods. Leveraging both cognitive and deep neural techniques, the solution was trained on more than 100,000 mortgage documents, 300 document types, and 2,000 data extractions.

“The impact of using our document model means significant time savings for the lender and the replacement of expensive manual processes with far more efficient automated ones,” Piela said.

And because the mortgage document model is part of AI Foundry’s Cognitive Business Automation Platform, users will be able to work with the existing model with its powerful rules engine, as well as broaden the functionality of the platform to manage specific mortgage workflow processes. In its statement, the company noted that the model is enhanced “continuously” with new variants that are easily deployed and equally accessible to customers thanks to the solution’s SaaS environment.

Headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts, AI Foundry demonstrated its Agile Mortgage solution at FinovateFall last year. In February, AI Foundry teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Ellie Mae to put AI to work accelerating the mortgage lending process. Steve Butler is founder and President of the company, which was founded in 2016.