Content Capture Innovator Ephesoft Allies with Grant Thornton

Content Capture Innovator Ephesoft Allies with Grant Thornton

Enterprise content capture and data discovery solution provider Ephesoft has partnered with Chicago, Illinois-based accounting consultancy Grant Thornton. The firm now offers Ephesoft Smart Capture to its customers to help them enhance back office operations, including invoicing, accounts payable, and contract management. The solution also will improve the ability of companies to manage more challenging processes such as tax calculations and revenue recognition.

“Ephesoft’s patented, supervised machine learning technology reduces the overall document processing time by an average of 65% and increases employee productivity by as much as 400%,” Ephesoft founder and CEO Ike Kavas explained. “Now we can work with Grant Thornton to help more clients in more locations gain control over their documents and unstructured data.”

Advisory practice leader for Grant Thornton’s central region Nick Vellani added that the technology would help businesses deal with the problem of not just managing but actually leveraging large amounts of unstructured data to produce valuable insights. He praised Ephesoft’s technology and its ability to help alleviate these “workflow and collaboration nightmares.”

“When we saw how easily the Ephesoft Smart Capture platform plugged into our tech environments – and the benefits it provided to our professionals – we knew it was something our clients could benefit from as well,” Vellani said.

It’s worth noting that Grant Thornton is no newcomer to Ephesoft’s technology. In addition to using the company’s technology in-house to enhance the tax services it provides to clients, Grant Thornton also has deployed Ephesoft’s technology for “several clients” to help them improve their tax functions, as well.

Founded in 1924, Grant Thornton is the U.S. member firm of Grant Thornton International, a global professional services network of independent accounting and consulting companies. With revenues of more than $1.8 billion and 58 offices across the U.S., Grant Thornton provides auditing, tax planning, and financial advisory services in a wide variety of verticals including financial services, private equity, and real estate, as well as transportation, manufacturing, and retail.

Named One of the Best Places to Work in Orange County, by the Orange Country Business Journal and the Orange Country Register, Ephesoft demonstrated its cloud-based, smart document capture and analytics platform at FinovateSpring 2018. The technology identifies documents and extracts the relevant data, transforming unstructured content into actionable information. The platform also leverages data mining and analytics to provide valuable business intelligence to help institutions make better decisions and manage risk more effectively.

Ephesoft began the year with the launch of its Cloud HyperExtender add-on, which enables users of the company’s Transact technology to boost processing speeds up to 2,500 pages per minute. More recently, company CEO Kavas was named a semifinalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 Award in Orange County.

Headquartered in Irvine, California, Ephesoft was founded in 2010. The company has raised $15 million in funding courtesy of a Series A round in 2017 led by Mercato Partners.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Content Capture Innovator Ephesoft Allies with Grant Thornton.
  • Gusto Raises $200 Million with $3.8 Billion Valuation.

Around the web

  • TD Ameritrade offers voice-activated investing technology.
  • NIIT Technologies’ revenue grew 16+% YoY, and its after-tax profit increased 2% YoY.
  • Scalable Capital partners with Futurae to add multi-factor authentication technology into its investment platform.
  • LoanScorecard goes live with its Bank Statement Analyzer tool.
  • Betterment adds savings and checking accounts to its offerings.
  • U.K. neobank revverbank to deploy cloud banking technology from Finastra.
  • CardFlight partners with PAX Technology to make SwipeSimple terminal available to clients on the PAX A920 and PAX A80.
  • Australia’s Volt Bank teams up with FIS to power its mobile and card payment services.
  • Alterna Bank unveils its new advanced digital platform, Forge, powered by Backbase.

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.

CrediVia Adds Multifamily Options to Financing Platform

CrediVia Adds Multifamily Options to Financing Platform

CrediVia, the Raleigh, North Carolina online commercial real estate loan marketplace, has added multifamily investments to its platform. The move, just one year after the company’s debut at FinovateFall, will help the fintech startup bring its smarter, faster, and easier commercial lending process to more commercial real estate (CRE) lenders and borrowers.

“We came on the scene to specifically serve the niche vertical of hotel financing, the riskiest of CRE assets,” CrediVia co-founder and CEO Anuj Mittal said. “Our greater mission, however, has not changed: to provide speed, transparency, and ease of transaction to both the lender and the borrower.”

CrediVia offers a platform that enables interested CRE lenders and qualified borrowers to engage and connect securely. Borrowers benefit from a singular location where documents can be uploaded and then easily submitted to multiple lenders. Lenders benefit from a borrower pool that is pre-screened before being added to their queue. The result is an easier, more efficiently process for borrowers, and a greater closing rate for lenders.

Multifamily investments, the company’s Chief Commercial Officer Michael Richardson explained, are an ideal addition to CrediVia’s platform. Highlighting the absence of a “typical profile” for a multifamily investment, Richardson noted the “reasonable” risk of the investment and the opportunity for diversification multifamily investments can provide. He added that investing in these properties can also provide a way for institutions considering an expansion into CRE financing.

“Multifamily assets are a common stepping stone to more sophisticated CRE financing for many institutions looking to build or broaden their business lending portfolio,” said Richardson, who joined CrediVia last month. “CrediVia’s move into multifamily is a direct response to listening to the market, as responding with a solution that relieves the common pressures and interruptions found in these exchanges. We’re here to drive the loan process forward.”

Founded in 2018, CrediVia demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall 2018. The company added to its C-Suite talent with the hire of Trusha Patel as Chief Business Development Officer this spring.

Daon’s New Features Bring Two-in-One Approach to Onboarding, Authentication

Daon’s New Features Bring Two-in-One Approach to Onboarding, Authentication

Browser-based onboarding, third-party identity checks, automated decisioning, and optional human review are among the top-level, new features of Daon’s IdentityX Digital Onboarding 2.0. The updated platform, launched this week, enables companies to offer a frictionless and fraud-resistant onboarding experience for their customers, reducing abandonment rates and operating costs while ensuring KYC/AML compliance.

Decrying what he called the “false choice between convenience and compliance,” Daon CEO Tom Grissen highlighted the new platform’s “two-in-one” approach that enables users to leverage their onboarding credentials to authenticate across both digital and physical channels. “Daon’s unprecedented integration of onboarding and authentication is a powerful new realization of our longstanding commitment to a frictionless, omni-channel experience at every step of the customer journey,” he said.

Reston, Virginia-based Daon demonstrated its IdentityX platform at FinovateFall 2016. The technology leverages biometric inputs such as face, voice, and fingerprint, as well as other authentication strategies such as device binding, geolocation, and liveness detection to provide an “inherently multi-factor,” future-proof authentication option for banks, payment processors, and other businesses.

With the launch of 2.0, Daon adds the ability to onboard users online instead of relying on the mobile app, and the capacity for businesses to achieve a higher or more specific degree of authentication by connecting to third party identity verification solutions. The new features give users the option to configure decision, action, and review paths, and features an optional human review process to examine challenging or questionable applications more effectively.

“For too long, organizations have been stuck choosing 90% customer abandonment rates on the one hand, or billions of dollars lost to fraud and regulatory fines on the other,” Grissen said. “Today, with all-digital customer onboarding from Daon, the process isn’t just more frictionless than traditional onboarding; it’s also more secure.”

Founded in 2000, Daon made fintech headlines earlier this month with news that it would bring its biometric identity technology to digital onboarding and anti-fraud company CTMS. Also in July, Daon announced that it had partnered with GEMADEC to build a life certificate digitization solution for the Moroccan Interprofessional Pension Fund’s (CIMR) mobile app.

Lendio Acquires Billy, Launches Cloud Accounting Software

Lendio Acquires Billy, Launches Cloud Accounting Software

Small business loan marketplace Lendio is entering into the cloud-based accounting software field with the launch of Sunrise. The new endeavor is the result of the Utah-based company’s just-announced purchase of online bookkeeping startup Billy. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded by Toke Kruse in 2012, Billy aimed to create “hassle-free” finance software for business owners who wanted to focus on their business, not accounting. After the acquisition, Lendio rebranded the Portland, Oregon-based company to Sunrise and pivoted it into a freemium bookkeeping software that offers accounting, cash flow management, and loan and credit information, as well as access to Lendio’s loan marketplace into a single platform.

“We are very excited to announce the acquisition of Billy and the re-brand to Sunrise. The Sunrise platform will bring together previously disparate sources of information for small business owners, such as accounting, loan and credit data,” said Brock Blake, CEO and founder of Lendio. “It’s our goal for Sunrise users to feel more confident in making financial decisions that help their businesses grow.”

The free version of Sunrise offers cash and accrual-based accounting, as well as an invoicing system, estimate creator, and a customer-facing credit card payment portal for billing. Businesses can also sync their financial accounts to categorize and track expenses and income, store receipts, and view profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and other reports such as accounts receivable, customer statements, and more.

A paid subscription, which ranges from $99/ month to $499/ month, enables business owners to automate accounting tasks by outsourcing bookkeeping duties to professionals who use a system to recognize revenue, take care of invoicing, and reconcile books on a monthly basis. The paid version also integrates with Stripe, PayPal, and Square.

Sunrise invoice sample
Sunrise offers invoicing capabilities

Lendio is already working to improve upon Sunrise by building out capabilities such as enhanced loan integration. The company also plans to launch a Sunrise mobile app, add auto categorization, and offer tax software integration.

At FinovateSpring 2011, Lendio showcased its flagship loan marketplace. With an ecosystem of 75+ lenders, the company facilitates an average loan size of around 27,000. Since it was founded in 2011, Lendio has helped close $1.5 billion in financing (half a billion of which closed in the past six months alone) via 70,000 small business loans.

After launching franchising opportunities in 2017, the company announced it would find financing alternatives for small businesses whose loan applications are initially rejected. In a recent interview, when asked “What’s next?” Blake said, “At some point, maybe we’ll either go public or someone will come and give us an offer we can’t refuse. Then, we’ll kind of take a step back and say, ‘Okay, what next?'”

Marqeta Teams Up with Capital on Tap

Marqeta Teams Up with Capital on Tap

Capital on Tap is partnering with Marqeta, a global modern card issuing platform, to power payment processing for its small business credit card, relied on by over 60,000 UK enterprises, reports Sharon Kimathi of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Since its launch in 2012, Capital on Tap has competed with the offering of major banks, by offering small businesses a faster and more transparent way to fund their business. Capital on Tap has already provided close to £1 billion in funding to more than 60,000 small businesses across the UK.

“Capital on Tap have shown themselves to be true innovators in the UK fintech space, taking an underserved market like credit for small businesses and building a product that can make a real difference for their customers,” said Ian Johnson, head of European growth at Marqeta.

Founded in Oakland, California in 2010, the Marqeta platform is used by various innovators to drive new modes of commerce through modern card issuing.

“We’re excited to partner with Marqeta,” said David Luck, co-founder and CEO of Capital on Tap.

“We loved the transparency and simplicity of their technology and how future focused and innovative their open-API platform is. They showed an intuitive understanding in how they could support our mission to help small businesses thrive through better access to working capital.”

Marqeta’s European digital banking solution supports instantly issued virtual cards and offers advanced spend controls to engage users and grow card use. It’s platform and APIs are highly configurable and scalable, and allow Marqeta partners to access actionable, real-time transaction data to drive program improvements.

Marqeta CTO Tony Ford presented Democratizing Issuer Payment Processing with Just-in-time “JIT” Funding at our developers conference, FinDEVR Silicon Valley, in 2016. During the discussion, Ford explained the anatomy of a payment card authorization, the importance of putting customers into the authorization stream, and the role of open payment APIs.

With more than $376 million funding from investors including Coatue Management and Granite Ventures, Marqeta was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Oakland, California.


Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Lendio Acquires Billy, Launches Cloud Accounting Software.
  • Daon’s New Features Bring Two-in-One Approach to Onboarding, Authentication.
  • CrediVia Adds Multifamily Options to Financing Platform.

Around the web

  • Busey Bank selects Jack Henry’s SilverLake System to improve workflows and enhance digital capabilities.
  • SMArtX Advisory Solutions to power managed accounts for Independent Financial Partners.
  • Gaming rewards and marketing firm Refereum hires Hacker One for its new bug bounty cybersecurity campaign.
  • Onfido teams up with MoneyNetint to help the U.K.-based cross-border money transfer company expand its ability to verify customers.
  • Arkose Labs launches private bug bounty program with Bugcrowd.
  • Tesco For Business leverages Blackhawk for U.K. gift card program.
  • ID R&D ships new version of IDVoice that combines AI and voice technology to increase biometric matching speed and improve enrollment and authentication.
  • VERA names Bill Gadala Chief Financial Officer.

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.

nCino Acquires Analytics and Insights Specialist Visible Equity

nCino Acquires Analytics and Insights Specialist Visible Equity

Cloud banking innovator nCino is adding the financial analytics and compliance capability of Salt Lake City, Utah-based Visible Equity to its platform. The acquisition, announced last week, brings enhanced portfolio management and analytic insights to nCino’s Bank Operating System, and is designed to help banks and credit unions better manage risk and meet compliance regulations with regard to fair lending.

Calling Visible Equity “a perfect complement to our vision, mission and company culture,” nCino CEO Pierre Naudé put the news in the broader context of nCino’s long-term commitment to “transform” financial services. “We believe this acquisition will further enable us to execute on that mission,” Naudé said, adding that together Visible Equity and nCino will give clients “greater insights, efficiency, and risk management while furthering their customer relationships.”

In their statement, the companies said that they will continue to market their solutions separately, but added “the two platforms will become fully integrated to provide a seamless client and cloud-based experience.”

With more than 850 financial institution customers, Visible Equity provides analytics, data warehousing, and reporting to enable FIs to better identify and manage risk. The company’s technology blends customer data from loans, applications, deposits, marketing and other sources with advanced analytics to empower banks and credit unions to make accurate, data-driven decisions.

Visible Equity CEO and President Brad Hansen called the acquisition by nCino “the right move for us and a natural fit.” He highlighted the two companies’ shared “passion for innovation” and emphasis on customer success. “A key driver of our desire to become a part of the nCino family is their industry-leading Bank Operating System and ability to support a global client base of enterprise, regional, and community financial institutions,” Hansen said.

nCino made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017, demoing its Bank Operating System. The technology leverages the Salesforce platform to provide financial institutions with an end-to-end, cloud-based banking solution that features CRM, loan origination, workflow, ECM, business intelligence and reporting all in one secure environment. nCino notes that its client institutions on average have experienced 40% decrease in loan closing times, 92% reduction in servicing costs, and 127% increase in account opening completion rates.

Other recent headlines for nCino include the appointment of Andrew Carriline as Strategic Advisor and the opening of a new office in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The company has announced a slew of new partnerships in 2019, teaming up with Westfield Bank and South State Bank in June; collaborating with S&T Bank in May, Navy Federal Credit Union in April, and both Project B-North and St. Louis Bank in March.

Based in Wilmington, North Carolina, nCino has raised more than $133 million in funding from investors including Salesforce Ventures, Wellington Management, and Insight Partners. The company was founded in 2012.

Workday Buys Blockchain-Based Identity Management Innovator Trusted Key

Workday Buys Blockchain-Based Identity Management Innovator Trusted Key

Seattle, Washington-based Trusted Key will bring its innovations in blockchain-based, digital identity management technology to Workday, courtesy of a recently-announced acquisition. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“With our new platform, Workday wants to bring credentials into the digital age,” Workday SVP Jon Ruggiero wrote in a blog post discussing the role of credentialization in identity management. He highlighted the way that blockchain technology can help create “a new form of digital credential – one that puts individuals in control of their data, and is portable, authentic, and secure.”

Trusted Key’s digital identity management technology enables financial institutions to leverage credentialization and tokenization to provide a more seamless and secure authentication experience for users. The platform uses strong cryptography and blockchain technology to convert government-issued identity documents into secure, cryptographic credentials and tokens. These tokens can be used to securely establish identity to access both online assets as well as mobile apps, without relying on passwords. The credentials can also be used to authorize transactions and make digital signatures.

A leading cloud core financial management suite provider, Workday will use blockchain-powered credentialing technology to help companies improve their HR operations to more efficiently verify applicant skills and qualifications, as well as to onboard new workers. As Ruggiero noted, digital credentialing does more than just alleviate an otherwise time-consuming, error-prone manual process. It also makes it easier for firms to respond to a changing workforce that is both “more mobile, distributed, and diverse,” and helps companies in tight labor markets move faster and with less friction to attract and onboard their preferred candidates.

Launched in 2005 and headquartered in Pleasanton, California, Workday was featured this year by Gartner as a leader in cloud core financial management suites. This marked the third year in a row the company has been recognized in the category. With customers ranging from Bank of America and Thomson Reuters to Netflix and Denny’s, Workday has processed more than 100 million credentials and 70 million job applications – as well as employment records, certifications, licenses, and more. The publicly-traded company is listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker WDAY and has a market capitalization of $48 billion. Aneel Bhusri is co-founder and CEO.

Trusted Key demonstrated its Digital Identity Platform at FinovateFall 2017. The company is also an alum of our developers conference, winning a Crowd Favorite award at FinDEVr London 2017 for its presentation, Secure Digital Identity.

Founded in 2016 by Prakash Sundaresan and Amit Mital, Trusted Key picked up $3 million funding last spring. The round, led by Founders Co-Op, took the company’s total equity financing to more than $4 million. Trusted Key is the first exit for Kernel Labs, a Seattle startup studio with a focus on machine learning, computer vision, and security.

Aixigo Teams Up with MLP Banking

Aixigo Teams Up with MLP Banking

MLP Banking AG and digital financial consulting software provider, aixigo, have developed a digitally supported portfolio evaluation and optimisation solution, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The VEM Guide supports MLP’s wealth management advisory services by transparently modeling possible portfolios with just a few clicks, taking into account customer requirements for risk, return and liquidity.

Risk assessments are then automatically evaluated and updated daily, with forecasts based on economic research by specialists at MLP Group company, FERI Trust GmbH.

“The VEM Guide is a very good example of how personal advice can be meaningfully supplemented by digital service,” said Jakob Trefz, head of wealth management at MLP Banking AG. “In this way, we make our customers’ decisions even faster and at the same time we support our advisors in the best possible way.”

Mario Alves, head of sales and partner management at aixigo, added: “The integration of the aixigo risk engine into MLP’s VEM Guide shows how the needs of clients and advisors in wealth management can be met precisely.”

As well as modeling and implementing portfolios more easily, the software can also generate associated documents and offer a digital customer signature option.

Aixigo demonstrated its Digital Financial Portfolio Management Back Office solution at FinovateFall 2018. The solution enables a small group of advisors to easily manage hundreds of thousands of investment portfolios.

Founded in 1999, aixigo is based in Aachen, Germany.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Workday Buys Blockchain-Based Identity Management Innovator Trusted Key.
  • nCino Acquires Analytics and Insights Specialist Visible Equity.

Around the web

  • Token.io announces partnership with U.K. property marketplaces StuRents and Mashroom.
  • Identity verification specialist Onfido partners with international payments provider Currencies Direct.
  • NewFi Wholesale implements LoanScoreCard’s automated underwriting system Portfolio Underwriter.
  • Apply Financial, Currencycloud collaborate to simplify cross-border payments.
  • Lending Club offers Levered Certificates backed by over $100 million in loans on its marketplace.

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.

Mambu Strikes First Deal in Brazil; Twisto Sets Sights on Poland

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.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Indian financial services marketplace MyMoneyMantra raises $15 million in funding.
  • Razorpay, a payments solutions provider based in India, reports a 40% increase in the number of digital transactions in the country during the second quarter of 2019.
  • Credit Suisse and NASSCOM agree to promote the growth of Indian fintech startups.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mambu forges partnership with its first Brazilian customer, Acesso.
  • MercadoLibre announces plan to allow users of its e-wallet in Mexico to earn interest on funds saved on the app.
  • Bloomberg looks at Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group and its pursuit of investment opportunities among Latin American fintechs.

Asia-Pacific

  • China Merchant Bank to deploy regulatory reporting technology from Wolters Kluwer.
  • Philippines Union Bank picks Refinitiv to power its electronic trading business.
  • Samsung partners with a cohort of South Korean banks on a blockchain-based digital identity project.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Central Bank of Kenya reaches fintech cooperation agreement with the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
  • Standard Bank leverages mobile teller technology from Infosys Finacle.
  • Kenyan payment solutions provider WAPI Pay pledges to support faster adoption of Wechat Pay and Alipay across Africa.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Czech Republic’s Twisto announces plans to expand to Poland this fall, with expansion to Romania to follow.
  • Revolut makes Apple Pay available to its customers in Hungary.
  • Austrian insurtech Bsurance and fintech Cashpresso team up to provide automatic buyer protection Cashpresso customers.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Nasdaq and Iraq Stock Exchange ink new market technology agreement.
  • Emirates NBD’s Liv leverages gamification to raise money for charity.
  • Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority issues guidelines for robo advisors operating in ADGM.

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