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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
Eigen’s NLP software goes to work on your documents, extracting information to answer your unique questions. Eigen puts the power of machine learning (ML) in your hands.
Features
Puts the power of ML in your hands
Enables you to build a ML model with 20 to 50 examples
Can be used by anyone
Why it’s great Eigen’s natural language processing (NLP) software is highly flexible and easy to use.
Presenter
Lewis Liu Liu co-founded Eigen Technologies in 2014 after earning his physics Ph.D at the University of Oxford. He started his career with McKinsey in London. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
IndiVideo is BlueRush’s interactive personalized video platform. IndiVideo improves marketing and sales performance across the buyer journey from acquisition to engaging statements and customer care.
Features
Seamless CX, improved conversions and ROI
Higher customer engagement and satisfaction for increased up/cross-sell
Data-driven customer insights for improved sales and marketing performance
Why it’s great Predictive analytics and customer data flow through IndiVideo for intelligent video production. Customer interactions with each video are captured for data analysis and deeper customer understanding.
Presenter
Ted Mercer From chartered accountant to sales consultant, Mercer leads the sales team at BlueRush, searching for new ways to drive value for leading financial institutions using interactive, personalized video. LinkedIn
3E Software’s portfolio management system Teslar closed a $2 million funding round this week. Leading the investment is the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA).
“We provide the solutions necessary for community banks to operate more efficiently and effectively, while focusing on what matters most: exceptional customer service,” said Teslar CEO and Founder Joe Ehrhardt. “This investment and ICBA’s support will provide resources to grow our team and continue advancing our technology, furthering our mission to help community bankers prosper.”
The Arkansas-based company will use the funds to add to its workforce, specifically in its client support, marketing, and technology development departments. Teslar graduated from ICBA’s ThinkTECH accelerator program earlier this year where its demo won the Banker’s Choice Award for Most Impactful Solution.
Teslar offers a lending and credit management SaaS solution that offers banks a holistic tool for managing credit and lending operations. At FinovateSpring 2015, Ehrhardt demoed how Teslar serves as a one-stop shop for lenders.
A full 60% of the company’s staff are former bankers, a pedigree which offers them insight into the headaches often faced during the lending process. This group of former bankers relies on what they call the “four pillars:” empowering bankers, integrating multiple systems, streamlining processes, and making it scalable. These objectives translate into everything from a toolset to manage loan reviews, to loan portfolio management, exceptions management, and more.
Innovation in the lending space is becoming increasingly relevant as bankers are taking a second look at their loan portfolios to make sure they are recession-proof. Solutions like Teslar offer a faster way for loan officers to close deals and minimize risk.
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
Instnt Inc. is the first customizable, risk and compliance liability insured, online account opening and onboarding service for businesses.
Features
Increase revenue by reducing your rejection rates
Shift your risk and compliance costs and loss liability for onboarding with a single line of code
Cut operating costs by outsourcing onboarding
Why it’s great Instnt helps improve business’ approval rates
Presenters
Sunil Madhu Madhu is a serial entrepreneur with IPO and acquisition exits including Socure (Series C, venture backed), Hopskoch (M&A exit to WPP), Securent (M&A exit to Cisco), and Netegrity (IPO). LinkedIn
Mimi Salcedo Salcedo was the first Product Manager at Simple Finance and went on to co-found WinWin (acquired in 2019). She is now Instnt’s co-founder and VP of Product. LinkedIn
Cloud banking provider Ohpen has migrated close to one million Dutch and German savings accounts of LeasePlan Bank to its core banking engine in the bank’s major technology overhaul, reports Sharon Kimathi of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The project was completed by migrating the aforementioned accounts and more than 17 million historical records. The smooth transition was the result of a close collaboration between LeasePlan Bank and Ohpen, the vendor said.
“We set out to reduce our IT complexity and improve the flexibility, reliability and efficiency of our services, whilst wanting to avoid any negative customer impact as much as possible during the transition phase,” said Sander Frons, director at LeasePlan Bank.
Frons believes that the migration and implementation to the purely cloud-native Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution from Ohpen was a textbook example of how such an operation should be run.
Angelique Schouten, board member at Ohpen, observed that “more and more financial organizations want to increase the digitization of their technology stack, and at the same time want to decrease their IT complexity”.
In the case of LeasePlan Bank, the Ohpen Platform replaced a number of legacy solutions, including Flexcube from Oracle FSS, which were installed on-premise. The new platform is hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
Ohpen demonstrated its core banking platform at FinovateFall 2012. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the Ohpen announced earlier this year that NPM Capital had acquired a 35% stake in the company. Ohpen began 2019 with a big change at the top, appointing its Chief Operational Officer Matthijs Aler as CEO. Aler replaced Ohpen founder Chris Zadeh, who will continue to serve as chairman of the company’s board of directors.
PNC now usingRipple’s XRP for cross-border payments.
Mortgage Media interviews Steve Butler, founder and GM of AI Foundry.
Flywirepartners with Vietnam Prosperity Bank to simplify international tuition payments for Vietnamese students.
InSpirAVE is being issued its first patent for the technology underlying its savings social network system. The patent is part of the company’s portfolio of patents published internationally.
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.
Less than a month after securing a $37 million debt financing from BMO’s Technology and Innovation Banking Group, mobile application development platform Kony is back in the fintech headlines with even bigger news: the company has agreed to be acquired by digital banking technology giant and fellow Finovate alum Temenos for $559 million and an earn-out of $21 million.
The acquisition will bolster Temenos’ ability to compete in the digital front office solutions market, specifically strengthening the company’s Infinity offering – which currently has more than 500 banking customers and is widely recognized as a leading technology by industry analysts from Forrester and Gartner. Kony Chairman and CEO Thomas Hogan will serve as President of Temenos North America, post-acquisition, and will join the company’s Executive Committee.
“The power of the Temenos portfolio, combined with Kony’s digital banking applications and multi-experience development platform, will bring the industry’s most robust suite of applications for delivering service, value, and efficiencies from the digital edge to the modern core,” Hogan said. “The strength, scale, and commitment of Temenos will also help protect and extend our market-leading innovation.”
The acquisition is expected to be completed by Q4 2019, and is subject to standard regulatory approvals.
Calling Kony the #1 SaaS digital banking company in the U.S., Temenos CEO Max Chuard highlighted the synergies between Kony and his company. “We are acquiring a digital front office product that has already been successful in the U.S. market and is connected to most third party cores,” Chuard said. “We are also adding a significant amount of exciting functionality and ease of generating customer journeys and experiences that will accelerate Temenos Infinity, providing banks in both North America and internationally with an unrivaled customer experience and omnichannel banking product.”
A long-time Finovate alum, Kony first demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2010, and returned to the Finovate stage two years ago for FinovateFall 2017 to present its retail banking solution. Founded in 2007 and based in Austin, Texas, Kony launched its Conversational AI DevKit earlier this month to enable businesses to deploy new technologies to improve customer engagement. In May, Kony announced that its Quantum digital experience development platform would power the new CareLogic mobile app from Qualifacts, and unveiled a new partnership with multiple Finovate Best of Show winner and fellow alum, MX.
Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, Temenos demonstrated its Connect Mobile Banking solution at FinovateEurope 2015. The company is also an alum of our developers conference, having presented its B2B Financial Marketplace at FinDEVr Silicon Valley – also in 2015. More than 3,000 banks in 150+ countries – including 41 of the top 50 banks – rely on Temenos’ banking technology to process the daily transactions and interactions of more than 500 million banking customers.
Kony is the second major acquisition by Temenos this year. In July, the company announced its purchase of explainable AI innovator Logical Glue and plans to integrate the company’s machine-learning-as-a-service technology into its cloud-native banking solution. Aside from acquisitions, Temenos has been on an energetic partner-making pace, working with IIG Bank, who agreed to use the company’s Infinity digital front office platform earlier this month; as well as teaming up with FIs like Israeli bank Mizrahi-Tefahot, New Zealand’s TSB Bank, and Pakistan’s Bank of Khyber.
The promotion of Chief Operating Officer Todd Clyde to the top job at Token marks the open banking technology provider’s transition “from start-up to scale-up,” the company noted in a statement today.
“Token has grown from an idea formed in the basement of Stanford into a commercially viable, leading fintech poised to change financial services forever,” founder and now-former CEO Steve Kirsch said. Kirsch, who introduced the company to fintech audiences at FinovateSpring in 2015, will assume the role of Chief Innovation Officer and focus on developing Token’s product roadmap. Featured prominently on that map is the company’s digital money business, including its digital currency for banks, Token X.
“Open banking is a huge opportunity for banks and fintechs across the world and Token has delivered a product with solid market fit,” Kirsch said.
New Token CEO Todd Clyde
With more than 30 years of experience in the enterprise and financial software business – including 12 years at Accenture – Clyde was responsible for all of Token’s commercial and financial operations during his three-year tenure as the company’s COO. In his new role as CEO, Clyde will drive the company’s open banking business worldwide, and build on a year that has seen Token forge partnerships with institutions like TurkishBank UK, Estonia’s Tallinn Business Bank, Sberbank Croatia, Omnio Group, Khaleeji Commercial Bank of Bahrain, and U.K. challenger bank Tandem.
“Open banking is already enabling the next generation of digital financial services,” Clyde said. “It’s one of the biggest disruptions to hit the payments and banking industries in decades.” He praised Token for “providing the infrastructure to power these services, at this crucial time.”
With more than 4,000 connected banks, Token offers financial institutions a single API and Smart Token technology that provides an easy route to PSD2 compliance, as well as a way to make multi-banking available to their customers. Merchants can leverage Token’s technology to connect directly to customer bank accounts, enabling direct payments and lowering costs.
Clyde is the second big C-level change for Token in 2019. The company began the year by hiring 15-year technology and payments veteran Gaurav Kohli as its new Chief Technology Officer. Kohli was previously VP of Product Development, Architecture, and Platform Engineering at Visa where he oversaw merchant and acquirer processing.
This summer, Token was honored at the second annual PayTech Awards, taking home the top prize for Best Consumer Payments Initiative. In March, the company announced a collaboration with Konsentus to launch a fast PSD2 compliance solution that combines a PSD2 API with automated third party provider verification.
Token has raised $32 million in funding – including more than $16 million raised in June in a round led by Opera Tech Ventures. Founded in 2015 and based in San Francisco, California, the company made its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateEurope 2017.
If you try to access Hip Pocket’s website today, you’ll be redirected to this site: htmobileapps.com/products/hippocket/. That’s because mortgage rate comparison site Hip Pocket has officially been acquired by HT Mobile Apps (HTMA).
Terms of the deal were undisclosed.
Hip Pocket is a six-year-old fintech that aims to help consumers compare mortgage, auto loans, and retirement products on their bank’s website. The solution also gives banks a personalized way to engage their clients.
Founded by Mark Zmarzly in 2013, the company has raised over $250,000 across three rounds of funding. At FinovateSpring 2015, Hip Pocket demoed its mortgage comparison site. Two years later, the company graduated from Point of Light accelerator and that same year the company spun out Hip Money, a savings app that specifically targets millennials.
Kathleen Craig, Founder and CEO of HTMA said, “Hip Pocket is a great complement to our range of products. Each of our products empower customers to grow their knowledge of personal finances while also helping financial institutions provide better digital offerings and develop more meaningful relationships with their customers. We are excited to acquire this innovative technology.”
“Kathleen and I have known each other for years and always looked for ways to help each other’s companies,” said Zmarzly. “As we talked more, it became obvious that we could raise the level of impact for banks and customers by working together.”
The acquiring party, HTMA, is a Michigan-based fintech that offers a suite of solutions for banks and credit unions. The company also offers Plinqit, a savings management app; as well as Banker Jr. and Member Jr., apps that teach financial literacy to young clients.
This deal comes at a time when merger and acquisition activity is booming within fintech. So far this year, Finovate alums have inked 32 M&A deals, including the mega-merger announced today between Kony and Temenos. We laid out why all of this M&A is good for fintech in a blog post published this June.
Cloud cybersecurity specialist DefenseStormannounced the launch of its latest anti-fraud solution, DefenseStorm FI CyberFraud, this week. FI CyberFraud is designed to spot fraud risks in banking apps as well as identify potentially fraudulent activity in computer systems. The solution leverages designated specialists who work in collaboration with the institution to manage alerts, help in fraud investigations, and serve as an extension of the institution’s own internal operations, fraud, and IT teams.
“Until now, no solution has provided specific monitoring capabilities related to data and application protection, coupled with the ability to correlate events across data, applications, and server/network/workstation events,” DefenseStorm CEO Harold Brewer said. “DefenseStorm FI CyberFraud has the potential to reduce fraud-related costs, improve the financial institution’s risk management posture, and drive cost efficiency related to the required monitoring of cyber activities.”
More specifically, FI CyberFraud analyzes and correlates data from all electronic delivery systems to spot potentially fraudulent behavior and monitors and audits access and configuration changes to both core and ancillary systems such as data warehouses. The technology also tracks transaction activity and databases for atypical usage patterns. DefenseStorm will demonstrate its new solution at the upcoming CUNA Operations and Member Experience Council and Technology Council Conference in Chicago next month.
The new product announcement from DefenseStorm comes just one month after the company picked up a major investment of $15 million in a round led by Georgian Partners. The funding took the company’s total capital to more than $29 million. Also in July, DefenseStorm teamed up with digital banking provider Apiture to offer cloud-based cybersecurity and cybercompliance solutions to its 500+ community bank and credit union partners. This spring, DefenseStorm announced a collaboration with Heritage Trust Federal Credit Union (HTFCU) to help the 50,000-member institution more proactively manage cybercrime risk.
Named a Top 40 Innovative Technology Company by the Technology Association of Georgia at the beginning of the year, DefenseStorm was founded in 2014 in Seattle as Praesidio. The company changed its name to DefenseStorm two years later, and expanded its operations from Seattle, Washington, where it still maintains an office, to Alpharetta, Georgia, where the company is currently headquartered.
DefenseStorm demonstratedPatternScout, its anomaly detection engine, at FinovateSpring 2017. PatternScout uses machine learning to identify potentially fraudulent activity in networks, and provides automated alerts to enable IT professionals and operations teams to stop cyberattacks before they spread.
FinovateFall is happening in less than a month, and we’re taking a look at the fintech trends that will grace the stage over the course of the three-day show.
This year’s word cloud of themes hints at the major points the demoing companies will showcase on September 23 and 24, and leads us to the topics of discussion we’ll see on stage during the panels and keynote discussions on September 25. Register in advance to secure your seat at the show.
I’ve broken down this year’s trends into three groups; the big, the small, and the surprising:
The big trends
Artificial Intelligence (AI) This is a trend that needs no introduction or explanation. We’ve seen AI come out on top as the largest trend in every Finovate conference this year, and next month’s show will be no different.
Data Data is a necessary component behind two of this year’s hottest trends– AI and machine learning. And since banks have an overload of data that gets larger by the minute, the way that they manage data is just as important as how they use it.
Compliance Buried within the regtech subsector of fintech, compliance is one of those topics that no one wants to think about but everyone needs to have a plan for. And these days, compliance is no longer just for banks. With bank-fintech partnerships on the rise, fintechs are increasingly expected to play by the rules, too.
Small but mighty trends
Chatbots Chatbots may not dominate the conversation at FinovateFall this year but that doesn’t mean people won’t be talking about them. Customer experience is top on the minds of both banks and fintechs alike, and having a chatbot can ease a lot of headaches associated with taking care of customers, including lowering costs, offering the ability to scale, and providing a mobile-first solution.
Customer service In many ways, 2019 is the era of the customer in fintech. We’ve seen both banks and startups throughout the industry refocus their solutions not only to attain new customers, but also to retain existing ones. As these efforts come to a head, investment in customer service solutions is at an all-time high.
Investing Investment technologies experienced their hey-day in 2015, when the use of AI was in its infancy and new robo-advisors were launching every week. Now, after much consolidation, investing technology is making a comeback with more sophisticated AI advancements.
Surprising trends
IoT devices Fintech may be all about technology, but the application of IoT devices has been slow to take off. Applications for Google Glass failed to prove valuable and the growth of Fitbit Pay remained stagnant. Today, not many new players in fintech have come forward.
Mobile wallets Technology that was the hype of 2011, mobile wallets, are everywhere and no where. A lot of players offer them, including PayPal, Square, and most alt-banking services providers. However, mobile wallets have faded into the background of fintech hype as they have transitioned into a necessity for many players.
Insurtech Unlike the previous two trends, insurtech is surprising not because it appears in the word cloud of trends we’ll see at FinovateFall, but because it appears to be such a small fraction compared to the size of other trends. The U.S. has never had a large number of insurtech players, especially compared to the U.K., but insurance is widely used across the country. Perhaps 2020 will mark the year of insurtechs in the U.S.
From Start-up to Scale-up: TokenIntroduces New CEO Todd Clyde
TemenosBuysKony to Boost its Front Office Technology for Banks
Around the web
PayActivpartners with Fiserv to streamline access to earned wages.
ABN Amro teams up with open banking solution provider Tink to bring multi-banking functionality to the bank’s Grip app.
Avaloqappoints Imad Abou Haidar as its new Head of Asia.
BeSmarteelaunches its new Mortgage Loan Officer (MLO) Command Center for loan originators.
Marqeta to create 175 new jobs in 2019, growing its workforce beyond 400 people.
SparkPost unveils new SparkPost Recipient Validation service, a sender reputation protection service that helps eliminate harmful bounces.
Azimo’s Richard Ambrose moves from COO to CEO, replacing Michael Kent.
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.
