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
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Banzai

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.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Banzai, Chatbots.Studio, CREALOGIX, Digital Onboarding, EVERFI, HackerOne, Jscrambler, Kyndi, MasterCard, Ping Identity

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.

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YSEOP Garners $9.3 Million in New Funding Round

YSEOP Garners $9.3 Million in New Funding Round
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Yseop

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.

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DemystData Signs Two Year Agreement with Kyckr

DemystData Signs Two Year Agreement with Kyckr
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: DemystData, 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. 

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HiddenLevers and First Rate to Improve Risk Analytics for Wealth Managers

HiddenLevers and First Rate to Improve Risk Analytics for Wealth Managers
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Hidden Levers

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.

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HSBC Creates Private Banking Portal with Finantix

HSBC Creates Private Banking Portal with Finantix
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: 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.

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AI Foundry Adds Mortgage Document Modeling to its Automation Platform

AI Foundry Adds Mortgage Document Modeling to its Automation Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AI Foundry

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.

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Trulioo Can Now Verify Customers in 4 New Countries

Trulioo Can Now Verify Customers in 4 New Countries
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Trulioo

To 100 countries and beyond! Identity verification specialist Trulioo announced this week it is bulking up the list of countries for which it is able to conduct electronic identity verification (eIDV).

Customers in Bahrain, Georgia, Iceland, and Qatar can now be verified via GlobalGateway, a database that enables organizations to run identity verification checks on a wide range of the global population. GlobalGateway’s online eIDV service helps businesses comply with AML and KYC rules, as well as a range of international electronic identity verification requirements. The service offers organizations real-time access to more than 400 data sources to verify five billion people in more than 100 countries.

Each of the four countries has recently enhanced its efforts to counter online fraud. For Bahrain and Iceland, this move was motivated by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which said that Bahrain needed to bolster its AML and Counter Terrorist Financing (CTF) systems. The task force also recommended that Iceland take steps to mitigate money laundering.

Qatar recently created a Memorandum of Understanding signed by both the country’s General Authority of Customers and the Financial Information Unit. And Georgia is participating in an EU partnership program to promote AML and Counter Terrorist Financing (CTF) in accordance with European and international standards.

“Fraud and money laundering have hit these four countries especially hard and as a result they are navigating complex regulatory waters. Adhering to strict compliance requirements while successfully fighting financial crime is no easy task,” said Stephen Ufford, CEO and founder of Trulioo. “By extending our identity verification capabilities, organizations can quickly verify the identities of consumers in these markets, while also increasing trust, privacy, and access to digital financial services.”

Combined, these four countries have more than 8 million residents. Being able to verify identities of this group places Trulioo one step closer to its mission to provide (KYC) and AML-compliant identity verification for every individual around the globe.

In addition to today’s four countries, Trulioo recently added Malta, Bangladesh, Poland, and the Philippines to its Global Gateway coverage. The company is now able to verify more than two-thirds of the world’s population.

In addition to Global Gateway, Trulioo offers a data exchange platform that allows data partners to provide access to consumer data for electronic identity verification purposes, allowing them to set bid prices for electronic ID verification on a region-by-region basis.

At FinovateSpring 2019, Trulioo’s Head of Growth, Anatoly Kvitnitsky, demonstrated GlobalGateway’s instant onboarding with EmbedID. EmbedID enables businesses to query Trulioo’s GlobalGateway API and instantly verify customers in multiple markets by embedding a snippet of code to their website. Trulioo will demo its latest technology later this year at FinovateFall, which begins September 23rd in New York. Register today to be part of the action.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: AI Foundry, BeSmartee, DemystData, eToro, Finantix, Hidden Levers, Jumio, Kyckr, On Deck Capital, Passport, Settle, Trulioo, WorldPay, Xceptor

On Finovate.com

  • HSBC Creates Private Banking Portal with Finantix
  • Trulioo Can Now Verify Customers in 4 New Countries
  • AI Foundry Adds Mortgage Document Modeling to its Automation Platform
  • HiddenLevers and First Rate to Improve Risk Analytics for Wealth Managers
  • DemystData Signs Two Year Agreement with Kyckr
  • YSEOP Garners $9.3 Million in New Funding Round

Around the web

  • Xceptor appoints former GBST exec as new COO.
  • eToro has launched a portfolio of firms involved in Facebook’s new digital currency Libra.
  • Jumio to power digital identity for Brazil-based BTG Pactual.
  • Settle launches its mobile payments app in Croatia.
  • Worldpay and the University of Cincinnati partner to fill business talent shortfall.
  • Coast Capital Savings teams with OnDeck to offer small business members financing options.
  • Scooter fleet company Spin joins Passport’s micro-mobility pilot program.
  • First Rate and HiddenLevers partner to provide risk analytics and business intelligence to the wealth management industry.
  • BeSmartee announces direct integration with private mortgage insurance provider Arch MI.

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.

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Hyperwallet to Power Payments for Lime’s Gig Workers

Hyperwallet to Power Payments for Lime’s Gig Workers
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Hyperwallet

Global payout provider Hyperwallet is helping citizens scoot through the streets– that is, helping the freelancers that keep users scooting through the streets get paid. The PayPal-owned fintech announced today that it has agreed to power outbound payments for Lime, the scooter and bike rental startup that aims to reduce reliance on cars for short-term trips.

Lime, which has scooter rental operations in 100 cities across the globe, is leveraging Hyperwallet to help its network of freelancers (a community Lime calls Juicers) receive payment for keeping Lime’s fleet of scooters charged. Brent Warrington, Hyperwallet’s General Manager, commented on Lime’s “creative business model,” saying that it “provides a new, flexible earning opportunity for individuals.” With Hyperwallet, the Juicers get paid on a daily basis.

“Hyperwallet’s platform gave us the functionality we needed to scale quickly and offer our Juicer community fast and convenient payouts,” explained Ryan Foutty, Global Head of Business Development at Lime. “This partnership has allowed us to launch our business in new markets and deliver a great localized experience for Juicers all over the world. We are excited about expanding our collaboration with Hyperwallet in the coming months.”

Austin-based Hyperwallet fit the bill for Lime’s list of specific requirements, which included sending fast payments, facilitating local disbursements to multiple geographies, and allowing Juicers to receive payouts using their preferred method. “Hyperwallet’s platform has helped add value to our Juicer program by giving us the ability to offer fast, efficient, self-service payment disbursements,” added Foutty.

Founded in 2000, Hyperwallet most recently presented at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. At the event, Bill Crowley, Chief Product Officer, and Blair Olynyk, Software Architect, gave a presentation titled, Pay the Planet: Implementing Frictionless Global Payout Distribution.

PayPal acquired Hyperwallet last November for $400 million. The company, which was founded in 1998 and has a market capitalization of $138 billion, showcased its Instant Account Creation feature at FinovateFall 2012. 

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Bitbond Celebrates Successful STO; Raising More than $2.3 Million in New Capital

Bitbond Celebrates Successful STO; Raising More than $2.3 Million in New Capital
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bitbond, Funding

In a post titled “What is the Bitbond STO and Why Should I Care?” published this spring, Bitbond Marketing Manager Mollie Thick criticized the cryptocurrency industry for “too much hyperbole, failed projects, and disappointed investors.” By contrast, Thick said that Bitbond – via its then just-announced security token offering (STO) – offered “a new breed of stable crypto investment with fixed income returns that other asset classes don’t deliver today.”

This week, the Berlin, Germany-based company announced that it had successfully completed its spring STO, raising more than $2.3 million (€2.1 million) in the process. The token offering makes Bitbond the first issuer to have its prospectus approved by BaFin, Germany’s security regulator. Bitbond noted that investors from 87 countries were involved (investors from the U.S. and Canada were not allowed to participate). The company also pointed out that more than $36,000 (€32,000) was earned by affiliates who helped promote the offering.

The new, tradable security BB1 offers a 4% annual rate, but has a targeted return of double that insofar as the security will pay out 60% of Bitbond’s profits to tokenholders for the duration of the term (10 years). The first payments are expected on October 1. Investors were able to participate in the offering via Euros as well as other crypto currencies such as bitcoin, Ethereum, and Stellar – which is the network upon which BB1 was issued.

The STO brings Bitbond’s total funding to $13.1 million. The company includes Hevella Capital and angel investor Sekip Can Gokalp, co-founder of mobile advertisement network, Mobilike, among its financial backers.

Founded in 2013, Bitbond offers a combined technology and data platform designed to provide financing to SMEs around the world. With customers in more than 120 countries, Bitbond helps small business owners access the working capital they need to grow their businesses by connecting them with both individual and institutional investors. With loan amounts up to €25,000 and terms up to 12 months, Bitbond leverages automation to accelerate the decisioning process and relies on the bitcoin blockchain to ensure efficient payments across borders.

As a platform for investors, Bitbond has enabled more than 1,800 individual and institutional investors to fund more than 1,300 loans. Investors can expect returns of approximately 13% per year via Bitbond’s fixed income investments in SME loans, and can invest for terms ranging from six months to five years.

Bitbond returned to the Finovate stage in 2016 to demonstrate its global automated SME scoring solution. Automated scoring enables loan applicants to instantly request a loan upon completion of the borrower application rather than wait up to 24 hours with traditional scoring methods. The solution is universal across countries, and leverages verifiable data from online revenues, payment processors, business software and accounts, as well as other sources.

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Xignite Forges Strategic Partnership with XPansion

Xignite Forges Strategic Partnership with XPansion
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Xignite

Financial markets data provider Xignite has inked a deal with data usage, tracking, and business monitoring software firm Xpansion that will give capital markets customers even better visibility into and management of their data use and expense.

“Market data is a complex environment where vendor fees and commercial licensing models continue to change, putting pressure on buy and sell side firms to control access and costs,” Xignite CEO and founder Stephane Dubois explained. He added that helping customers more efficiently use market data flow was a key element in the company’s goal of “simplifying, the acquisition, management, and dissemination of market data.”

The strategic partnership will enable Xignite to integrate Xpansion’s XMon analytics and reporting functionality into its Market Data Cloud Platform. This will give Xignite customers enhanced business intelligence, analytics, and reporting capabilities, as well as dashboards and reporting tools to help users analyze and control market data use, as well as manage costs across multiple data vendors.

“Clients consume increasing amounts of data and coupling powerful analytics with a robust data distribution platform is essential in today’s data landscape,” XPansion director and co-founder Amjad Zoghbi said. Zoghbi referred to bringing greater transparency and spending controls to the use of market data as the company’s “focus from the beginning.”

XPansion specializes in cloud-based solutions that help data operations and management teams control data usage better, improving both cost-effectiveness and data governance. The company’s flagship XMon Static Data solution delivers real-time tracking of data requested from external data vendors, data flowing between internal applications and systems, and data exiting the firm as in reports or customer exports. Based in London, U.K., XPansion was founded in 2013.

Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Xignite demonstrated its Cloud Add-in solution at FinovateAsia 2017. The add-in caters to the 1.2 billion Excel users worldwide, enabling them to easily and quickly introduce data – including real-time streaming data – into their Excel spreadsheets.

Earlier this month, Xignite announced that it was the first market data vendor to join the Snowflake Data Exchange. This spring, the company was named to the WealthTech 100, along with seven of its clients including fellow Finovate alums eToro and Tradeit. Also this spring, Xignite announced a partnership with StockCharts.com.

Xignite has raised $37.6 million in funding. QUICK Corporation and StarVest Partners are among the company’s investors.

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