This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
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.
The following is a guest post by April Rudin, founder and president of The Rudin Group, a firm that designs marketing campaigns for financial services companies.
Rudin will host the Wealthtech and Investech stream at the Summit, which takes place right after FinovateFall on September 26. The event also features an AI stream, which will be hosted by Lindsay Davis of CB Insights. Tickets are available as an add-on to FinovateFall or as a separate event.
Wealth management has entered the digital age. While it might not be readily apparent given the breathless coverage of whether and when the industry will cross the threshold, rest assured, the moment is here. The question is: Are all firms ready to seize the moment?
The financial services industry has been historically reticent to adopt new technology. And for good reason — finance, and wealth management especially — is a client-driven business where discretion is valued as much as — if not more than — financial acumen. In the early days of fintech, financial firms could rest knowing that they were keeping their client’s data and dollars safe rather than chasing the new, shiny tech toy on the block.
But now, financial service firms cannot afford to rest on their laurels and their patchwork of clunky, proprietary, tech solutions. Clients are used to being able to access the world at their fingertips and are no longer willing to let their financial data live elsewhere. And it’s not just Millennials and Generation Z demanding the convenience. Mobile Baby Boomers also want to be able to safely access their financial data with just a few clicks of a mouse whether they’re at home or traveling.
But despite the demand, companies still delay implementing new tech solutions, citing both perceived costs and compliance risks. While these factors shouldn’t be brushed aside, wealth management firms must find intelligent ways to power through.
Whereas firms once had the luxury of relying on the anticipated return on investment when deciding to embark on new technology products, a new ROI has entered the block: return on inertia. Put another way, what is the cost of doing nothing while rival upstarts and incumbents alike find ways to intelligently integrate technology into their firms?
It used to be that technology was housed only in the IT department of financial services firms. These were specialists who mostly loaded computers with new programs and knew how to troubleshoot when things went awry. But in today’s world, IT can no longer be thought of as an ancillary part of the business. Everything from onboarding, performance tracking, to investment recommendations has the ability to be touched by technology — freeing up time advisors can spend doing direct client work. The whole wealth management supply chain is being automated and firms must have tech specialists at all levels.
Does this mean that firms have to jump into tech willy nilly? Not necessarily, but the time of taking a wait and see approach for technology has also passed. The technology is here and clients demand it.
Waiting to implement technological solutions will only lead to otherwise avoidable costs and heightened risk exposure, Ernst & Young noted in a recent report.
Client onboarding is one area where tech is sorely needed. While some clients may appreciate the personal touch of in-office meetings to handle paperwork and account transfers, others may see the analog approach as a red flag. How does a paper-based business ensure the safety of client records, they may wonder. Video conferencing, online ID verification, and e-signatures are just a few of the ways the onboarding process can be made less cumbersome and client friendly while still falling inline with compliance.
From there, wealth management firms can consider implementing robo-advisor-like technology into their practice to facilitate decision making. The human touch will always be important for wealth management but tech-aided portfolio construction and reporting will allow advisors to have more meaningful discussions with clients, freeing up time for more customized solutions.
The ease of making and monitoring recommendations becomes especially important as high net worth families often have their assets spread across multiple investment types and financial institutions. While 10 years ago having a dashboard that can provide real-time data of those assets was once considered a novelty, clients now demand that rapid transparency.
Firms can no longer get away with listing the reasons not to embrace technology. And while risks to data integrity and security should not be minimized, firms will have to think of ways to buttress their controls while also directing their firms into the new era.
The return on investment may at first appear uncertain, but the return on inertia is definite — and bleak.
Low-code platform OutSystems has formed a deal with Nationwide to develop a new digital business savings service, reports Ruby Hinchliffe of FinTech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
By “dumbing down the back-end” so it becomes “a system of record only,” OutSystems will take on all the business logic and process for Nationwide, giving it a more agile front-end with less reliance on its legacy back-end.
OutSystem’s regional financial services and insurance director, Garry Larner, told FinTech Futures: “There’s a lot of legacy technology out there. It’s difficult and expensive to find talented developers, especially when it comes to native mobile. It’s becoming too costly to innovate, so that’s where we come in.”
He added: “In an ideal world you’d want to rip everything out and start from the beginning. But from a practical view, that’s not possible unless you’re prepared to spend hundreds of millions.”
The software platform can offer a traditional bank like Nationwide access to accelerators, such as templates, patterns and multi-factor authentication plugins which all speed up the UX development process.
It’s newest partnership with Nationwide is all about “creating the digital channel for business saving customers. Banking at the drop of a fingertip.”
Speaking more broadly on low-code, Larner recognized the “enormous” market opportunity, excited the industry is “finally catching up with the concept challenging the status quo – that traditional development is not the only option.”
OutSystems has had a 54% yearly growth rate globally and enjoyed a $360 million investment from Goldman Sachs and KKR last year.
Larner said: “There’s going to be a series of very large enterprise customers which we’ll be announcing over the next three or four months, because it’s almost caught up with the mainstream.”
Currently OutSystems works with British councils to digitize taxes, insurance companies to build broker portals, and, most recently, it is working on a new credit comparison market with a fintech to be announced soon.
Founded in 2001, OutSystems presented “Low-Code: The Next Evolution in App Dev Platforms” at our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2017. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and has raised more than $422 million in total funding from investors including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Goldman Sachs, and North Bridge Venture Partners & Growth Equity.
Merck Sharp & Dohme FCU deploys trio of biometric authentication solutions from Fiserv.
New partnership bringsnCino’sBank Operating System to Allied Irish Banks.
Entrust Datacardpartners with JPMorgan Chase to pilot email security project.
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.
Small business financing company Kabbage has made a purchase that will help it get to know the world of SMEs all the better. In a deal announced today, Kabbage will acquire small business intelligence firm, and fellow Finovate alum, Radius, adding insights from more than 20 million U.S. small businesses to its platform.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Upon the successful closing of the acquisition, Kabbage said in a statement that it will add “nearly 20 team members” from Radius to its offices in San Francisco, including Radius CEO Joel Carusone, to help support the integration of the two platforms and the two companies.
“Data has always been our competitive advantage, and Radius strengthens it by adding millions of new and verified small business insights to our platform,” Kabbage CEO Rob Frohwein said. “These new technology and data-analysis capabilities further differentiate us from other SMB-focused fintech companies as we dramatically expand our product set and service platform to address the unique cash flow needs of small businesses.”
Expressing a “deep respect for Kabbage’s data-driven technology and focus,” Radius’ Carusone highlighted similarities between the two firms. “Our companies have complementary technical architectures and domain experience for decision making,” he said. “With Kabbage, we can build a more sophisticated analytics solution to identify, reach, and serve small businesses.”
San Francisco, California-based Radius was founded in 2009. The company demonstrated its platform at FinovateSpring 2014, showing how it leverages big data to gain insights into more than 27 million small and medium-sized businesses. This information helps FIs find the best customer segments, build efficient and accurate targeted lead lists, and measure the success of marketing campaigns.
Radius began 2019 with the launch of its Data for Good campaign to help the company’s employees and customers give back to their communities. This included credit-backs to the accounts of for-profit companies for any data used to support philanthropic causes. The campaign also featured service donations to nonprofits to enable them to use the Radius’ enterprise customer data platform to reach out to and potentially partner with small businesses.
In May, Radius unveiled a new data stewardship app designed to fix bad, siloed Salesforce data. The new solution enables enterprises to manage data across any Salesforce field based on unified, trusted data. “Existing tools enrich some external data,” Radius CEO Joel Carusone explained, “but what’s missing is an easy-to-use application coupled with a powerful platform that gives users access to data unified across all third-parties and their internal data sets.”
Atlanta, Georgia-based Kabbage made its first appearance on the Finovate stage in 2010, demoing its Kabbage Loan offering at FinovateSpring that year. The company most recently demoed its Kabbage Card, a part of the company’s Kabbage Everywhere product expansion, at FinovateSpring 2015.
Featured in June by CEO World in its look at fintechs that are helping fight for fair lending, Kabbage announced a partnership with online banking platform Azlo in May that would create a new entity, Mission Street Capital, to help small businesses get the financing they need to grow. Kabbage also announced in May that it was teaming up with the BTEA (Building Trades Employers’ Association) in a strategic alliance to help women and minority-owned business enterprise contractors to secure funding for their projects.
With $2.5 billion in funding, Kabbage includes SoftBank Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and BlueRun Ventures among its investors. The company was founded in 2009.
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.
Illuma Labs’Illuma Shield provides passive voice authentication for call centers. It reduces operating costs, enhances security against fraudsters, and eliminates friction from the customer experience.
Features
Reduce average handle time and operating costs
Enhance security against fraudsters and social engineers
Elevate user experience by eliminating friction in the authentication process
Presenters
Milind Borkar, Founder & CEO Borkar has over a decade of experience spanning R&D and marketing, and leads the IP and business development activities for the company. LinkedIn
Jeremy Whittington, Co-Founder & CTO Whittington has over 20 years of experience architecting SaaS applications, and leads architecture and product development activities for the company. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.
NYMBUSSmartLaunch enables financial institutions to quickly and cost-effectively stand up fully-outsourced digital banks to attract new customers and revenue growth.
Features
Allows banks to immediately compete with today’s emerging digital challenger banks
Doesn’t require technology conversions
Doesn’t require banks to hire new resources
Why it’s great NYMBUS SmartLaunch is a pioneer in the industry’s transformation by eliminating the need for financial institutions to undergo a conversion or hire new resources to digitally innovate and compete.
Presenter
Drew Dizon, Senior Vice President of Strategic Solutions With over 17 years of fintech experience, Dizon helps to identify and evaluate potential products and solutions that promote the strategic growth initiatives at NYMBUS. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.
Stratifyd has developed an AI infrastructure to automate and analyze the voice of the consumer for financial enterprises using unsupervised and supervised technology.
Features
Offers the fastest time to insights
Utilizes predictive intelligence to provide deeper understanding of customer feedback
Leads with machine learning, removing human bias
Why it’s great Stratifyd’s AI-powered platform ingests, analyzes, and visualizes omni-channel data through unsupervised machine learning and natural language understanding to deliver real time customer analytics.
Presenter
Kevin O’Dell, Chief Technology Officer O’Dell is growing and scaling the company by solving the most challenging customer analytics problems faced by enterprises. LinkedIn
