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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Swiss digital banking software provider, CREALOGIX, is moving from its traditional initial license to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
Although the intended transition has resulted in a drop in profitability of just over $5 million (CHF 5 million), sales have increased by 17% to exceed $101.5 million (CHF 100 million) for the first time.
Reporting preliminary results for the 2018/19 financial year, CREALOGIX states that the move to a SaaS-based, multi-year subscription model will result in greater revenue stability and sustained profitability increases in the long term.
The company believes that it will see solid cashflow levels and double-digit EBITDA margins from 2020/21 onwards. CREALOGIX notes that the continuing uncertainty around Brexit has had a pronounced negative impact on the UK business.
Recent new deals for the company have included agreements with Hampden & Co, LGT Vestra and MeDirect.
Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, CREALOGIX demonstrated its TimeWarp solution at FinovateEurope 2019, winning Best of Show. TimeWarp enables banking customers to run simulations of various scenarios in their financial lives to better understand how today’s decisions are mostly likely to affect financial outcomes.
King Klarna: New Investment Boosts Valuation to $5.5 Billion.
LendingClubUnveilsSelect Plus for Sophisticated Investors.
Around the web
Israel’s third largest bank Mizrahi-Tefahot to deploy core banking technology from Temenos.
Experianreports surging interest in Open Banking, with the number of API requests made in the U.K. growing by more than 2x since February.
Russia’s Tinkoff Bank to sell the speech recognition technology behind its Oleg chatbot to corporate customers.
LeapXpertearns spot in 2019 FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific.
Mortgage Cadenceenhances data verification, fraud prevention and compliance with integration of DataVerify to its Enterprise Lending Center.
AT&T launches new bug bounty program in partnership with HackerOne.
Jumiotakes gold in the Security Software category of the 2019 IT World Awards.
Lendiotops $1.5 billion in small business loans financed.
OndotintroducesTransaction Intelligence to make it easier for consumers to recognize purchases.
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.
Helping small businesses in the U.K. maximize the opportunities of Open Banking is the goal of the new partnership forged between AccountScore and financial data sharing and standardization specialist Validis. The two companies announced that they will work together to ensure that SMEs get access to more transparent financial services, and that U.K. institutions gain the most accurate financial overview of their clients.
The agreement between the AISP accredited Open Banking platform and Validis will enable small businesses to share financial data with a single click through a single, consent-driven workflow. Banks can visualize the data from an “insight-fueled interface” and track critical processes like loan originations. This collaboration will help institutions develop more personalized banking services for specific businesses, and enhance their ability to make better, more accurate decisions faster.
“As Open Banking becomes more established, having a single intuitive workflow where SMEs can share their data easily and securely opens up huge possibilities for financial services,” AccountScore CEO Emma Steeley said. “Our unique relationship with Validis ensures we can visualize all the financial data required to help these institutions tailor their services, make the right decisions, and identify insights that they could not previously.”
In addition to helping businesses and financial institutions make more of their data, the ability of different datasets to complement each other – using management account data to confirm bank transaction data, for example – adds new value to the processes financial institutions conduct every day. This is value institutions have not been able to capture until recently.
“We are excited to sign this partnership agreement with AccountScore,” Validis CEO Joel Curry said. “For too long financial institutions were only seeing individual pieces of the puzzle, but now they will have access to all the data, all in one place.” Curry called the partnership “a truly innovative step forward for small business financial services.”
AccountScore demonstrated its consents.online solution at FinovateEurope earlier this year. Consents.online is the consent management feature of the company’s Open Banking solution, and helps users manage their online consents in one centralized location. Customers can visit consents.online and review what data has been accessed and by whom, as well as change consent permissions.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in London, U.K., AccountScore has partnered with The Insolvency Panel earlier this year to develop a solution for the debt and debt solutions sector to give financially challenged individuals the ability to more easily share their financial data with financial institutions. In February, Freedom Finance announced that it had reduced application time to five minutes thanks to technology from AccountScore.
The newly announced collaboration between email risk assessment innovator Emailage and fraud prevention and risk management firm Featurespace is designed to combat online application fraud, a problem that grew by 159% last year according to U.K. Finance.
The partnership integrates Featurespace’s ARIC Fraud Hub with Emailage’s data and risk assessment scores. The combined solution identifies and reports application fraud in real time, boosting the accuracy of customer authentication during processes like onboarding and account maintenance. The integration will also make it easier for institutions to comply with the latest payment regulations.
“In order to keep up with the fast-changing payment landscape, we are always on the lookout to leverage our expertise and that of other providers,” Chief Partnership Officer at Emailage Tim White said. “Emailage and Featurespace are two companies moving in the same direction in terms of innovation and growth. Therefore, we felt this collaboration was a highly strategic opportunity.”
“This is yet another step in our journey to provide our customers with full regulatory compliance and a best-in-class solution,” White said.
Emailage turns email addresses into global digital identifiers. The company leverages a worldwide data network to assess the likelihood that the individual who provided the email address is reliable as a potential customer or applicant. Via the integration, digital identities that are established by Emailage are then processed by the Adaptive Behavioral Analytics of Featurespace’s ARIC platform, which builds individual behavioral profiles. This improves the ability of the machine learning models to automatically detect risk and to combat new threats as they develop. Emailage noted that it has helped organizations around the world mitigate $2.8 billion in fraudulent purchases and applications.
“This integration makes it easy for all of our customers to leverage the combined power of our innovative Adaptive Behavioral Analytics and Emailage’s proprietary data set to improve risk scoring and reduce exposure to sophisticated online threats at the point of application,” Featurespace CEO Martina King said.
Founded in 2008, Featurespace demonstrated its ARIC Fraud Manager solution at FinovateFall 2016. The company’s partnership announcement with Emailage comes at the same time as a report that banking and payments solutions provider Contis has completed deployment of Featurespace’s ARIC Fraud Hub.
In June, Featurespace announced that it would power transaction monitoring for Ireland’s Permanent TSB. This spring, the company was highlighted by Aite Group in its 2019 report on anti-fraud and AML machine learning platform vendors, and its CEO was profiled by Hypepotamus on the topic of workplace diversity.
Earlier this year, Featurespace announced a partnership with retail finance technology provider Deko, and launched its technology in Singapore. The company began 2019 with a major fundraising, bringing in $32.3 million (£25 million) in new capital in a round led by Insight Venture Partners.
Emailage demonstrated its Browser Extension at its Finovate debut in 2015. The extension marks email with an easily identifiable icon that enables users to get an instant analysis on the risk associated with the email. With the extension, users of Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer can leverage Emailage’s fraud-detecting technology to assess the risk of emails and websites.
Emailage wonBest E-commerce Initiative at the PayTech Awards in London last month. This spring, the company introduced a trio of new points of presence in Singapore, Australia, and Germany, in what company CTO Rafael Loureiro said demonstrated the company’s “strategic commitment” to making its technology available worldwide. An office in Dublin, Ireland, was opened in June.
Emailage also announced it added a “big four” U.S. bank, a major Asian payment platform, and a global e-commerce solution provider to its shared intelligence network in the first quarter of this year. Founded in 2012, the company has raised $15.7 million in funding from investors including Anthos Capital, Cobre Capital, and Mucker Capital. Rei Carvalho is CEO.
UBS has formed a partnership with BizEquity, an online provider of estimated business valuations. This will allow a select group of UBS financial advisors in the US arm of its global wealth management business, to access BizEquity’s database of businesses and valuation information, reports Sharon Kimathi of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
Enterprise access through BizEquity will support UBS financial advisors to provide clients with informal valuation reports that will assist them with their financial planning needs.
James Jack, director of the business owner strategic client segment at UBS Financial Services said: “Our advisors are constantly looking for new ways to grow their business and expand their reach, particularly in middle-market businesses. Access to the BizEquity platform will help us to deliver highly tailored advice to our clients.”
“UBS is one of the preeminent names in the wealth management industry and we are proud to announce our partnership. The clients and prospects that it serves will benefit from our service to help them answer one of the most important questions they will ever ask: ‘What is my business worth?’” said Michael M. Carter, founder and CEO of BizEquity.
BizEquity is a leading provider of business valuations, distributing its cloud-based service through thousands of financial advisors to help better inform businesses of their lending, insurance, and wealth management needs and potential.
Founded in 2010, BizEquity demonstrated its BizEquity One UK solution at FinovateEurope 2015. The technology provides real time, dynamic valuations, “Zillow-esque” search functions on more than two million pre-valued businesses in the U.K., real time advice and alerts during the valuation process, and an dashboard that provides an infographic-like overview of business value and KPIs.
BizEquity has raised $5.1 million in funding. Brinker Capital and Frost Books are among the company’s investors.
AccountScore and Validis Bring the Benefits of Open Banking to U.K. SMEs.
Emailage and FeaturespaceTarget Online Application Fraud.
Business Valuation Specialist BizEquity Teams Up with UBS.
Around the web
ID R&Dlaunches facial liveness detection solution, IDLive Face.
Klarna and global fashion retailer ASOS to expand to the U.S.
Banking and payments solution provider Contis deploysFeaturespace’sARIC Fraud Hub.
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.
Digital currency wallet and crypto management platform Coinbase landed a major win today. The California-based company announced that Grayscale, a major digital asset fund manager, has partnered with Coinbase to store its $2.7 billion worth of assets on Coinbase Custody.
Launched in 2017, Coinbase Custody is a cold storage solution for crypto assets. In May of this year, Coinbase Custody reported it had reached $1 billion in crypto assets under management. Today’s agreement with Grayscale, which will use Coinbase Custody to store all of its digital assets, more than doubles Coinbase Custody’s AUM.
According to the Coinbase blog, Grayscale selected Coinbase Custody after researching more than 30 other custodians. All were evaluated on factors such as security, regulatory compliance, insurance coverage, scalability, and their suitability as a partner. “We’re honored to have been selected based on such a comprehensive evaluation process,” Coinbase said in a blog post.
Coinbase aims to be top-of-mind with traditional wealth management firms as they add crypto to their offerings. The company’s Coinbase Pro offering provides a compliant way to access a regulated, verified crypto liquidity with APIs and hands-on customer service.
After its most recent funding round of $300 million, Coinbase’s total funding hit $525 million and its valuation rose to $800 million. Coinbase demoedInstantExchange at FinovateSpring 2014.
Bobsguide awardsTaulia partnership award for its alliance with NHS Business Services.
Tuition.iopowers student loan repayment for Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall.
CREALOGIXrecords over $101 million (CHF 100 million) in sales for the first time.
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.
Business payments platform PayStand is launching what it’s calling Assurety-as-a-Service, which is exactly what it sounds like. The new API allows businesses with no prior blockchain experience to verify any event, action, or identity in real-time by creating a record that is notarized on the blockchain.
To picture what this looks like, imagine having a frictionless notary public that can scale; notarizing an unlimited number of documents. In a blog post detailing the API, PayStand illustrates a multitude of use cases across a variety of industries. In the insurance industry, for example, businesses can track the exchange of high-value assets and use an automated collections process to settle a claim more efficiently. And businesses in the real estate vertical can record, track, and transfer land titles, property deeds, and liens, and ensure all documents are accurate and verifiable.
The solution levels the blockchain playing field by not requiring businesses to have any prior experience with the enabling technology. “Assurety-as-a-Service lets businesses skip the steep learning curve and start using blockchain right now,” said PayStand CEO Jeremy Almond. “Any developer can use our API and spin up their own blockchain app in minutes,” added Omar Baqueiro, Director of Product and Engineering.
The Assurety-as-a-Service API helps businesses deploy applications that prevent fraud by leveraging PayStand’s hybrid blockchain to document proof-of-action without allowing anyone to edit the record. The tool offers the accountability of a public blockchain while providing data privacy of a private blockchain. As Baqueiro phrased it, Assurety-as-a-Service “combin[es] the advantages of a trustless, decentralized, immutable public chain with the privacy and security expected of enterprise-level solutions.”
Today’s development comes after the company’s 2018 launch of a blockchain that ensures payment, adding security to the PayStand Bank Network. On that blockchain is stored an immutable record of every transaction the company processes.
PayStand showcased at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. Earlier this year the company launched a service that uses the blockchain to automate invoice collection. Businesses can integrate the tool, Automated Receivables, into their existing customer payments infrastructure.
Alternative banking provider Revolutannounced the roll out of commission-free stock trading on its app today. Starting today Revolut Metal customers in the U.K. and Europe can buy and hold shares of 300+ stocks listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ directly from the Revolut app.
The feature is powered by DriveWealth, which is registered as a full-carrying and clearing broker-dealer and will help Revolut navigate the complexities of brokerage. New Jersey-based DriveWealth offers a suite of APIs that allow companies across the globe to help their users invest in the U.S. stock market. The firm provides digital investment products for brokerages to offer clients as well as a brokerage service offering dollar-based, real-time investing.
Overall, Revolut is making stock market investing more inclusive. Trades are free, the annual custodian fee totals 0.01% (when others in the industry charge 0.25% to 1.5%), and there are no account minimums. At launch, all fees are waived for eligible customers during the beta period. The company did not specify when it plans to implement fees but said, “These will come into effect later, and we will communicate with you in advance about when that will be.”
Revolut said it is most proud of integrating the ability to buy partial shares of stock. Fractional share investing, one of DriveWealth’s flagship features, allows users to purchase a small portion of a stock. This democratizes investing by making a stock like Amazon, which trades at almost $1,900 per share, more accessible to investors with lower capital.
Another badge of honor is that trades can be made instantly, meaning users will pay the asking price of a stock when their order hits the market. And, specific to Revolut, users can fund their trading account in multiple currencies and benefit from the interbank exchange rate.
The trading feature not only helps Revolut compete with banks, but also helps the company build its user base for its Metal account. Launched last August, the Metal account offers users 100 free trades per month, along with a host of other features, for $14.99 per month.
In the future, Revolut plans to open trading to users outside of Europe, offer ETFs and other new products, and introduce European stocks. Additionally, the company will open up free trades to Premium and Standard customers, who will be able to make 8 free trades per month and three free trades per month, respectively. This variance is representative of Revolut’s tiered pricing model, which offers free Standard accounts while charging $9.99 per month for a Premium account.
Revolut debuted at FinovateEurope 2015 in London. The company’s CEO and founder Nikolay Storonsky showed off the app’s money transfer capabilities that help users avoid banking fees without actually using a bank.
Adding Revolut as a client is another notch in the belt for DriveWealth, which last month partnered with Sigma Securities and Trove Technologies to offer digital U.S. equities trading in Nigeria. Last August, DriveWealth collaborated with fellow Finovate alum Bambu to launch a white-label roboadvisory platform for U.S. wealth managers. Other DriveWealth clients include MoneyLion, Vested Finance, and INVSTR.
At FinovateAsia 2016, DriveWealth released a new API to enable partners to offer a robo advisory product suite and a self-directed equity investing platform. Robert Cortright is CEO.
PayStandLeverages the Blockchain to Document Proof-of-Action.
DriveWealthPowers Commission-Free Trading for Revolut Cardholders.
Around the web
Columbia Bank to leveragenCino’s Bank Operating System.
Fast Company highlightsLighter Capital as a competitor to Clearbanc.
Ezbobwins the Best Fintech Partnership category for its Smart Onboarding Engine in this year’s Banker’s Tech Projects Awards.
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.
The new international partner program launched this week by Onfido will help expand the reach of the company’s identity verification solutions and explore new use cases. ForgeRock, IDEMIA, and iovation are among the cybersecurity and identity access management (IAM) specialists that have agreed to include Onfido’s AI-powered identity verification services in their own offerings.
“Empowering the channel is an important strategic move that will enable us to accelerate our expansion into the U.S.A., Southeast Asia, and Europe, while exploring new product innovation in areas such as account takeover and authentication,” Director of Alliances and Partnerships at Onfido Ed Ackerman said. “With some of the biggest enterprise names already signed up to our program, we’re now selecting additional applications from companies to join and share in exciting new revenue-generating opportunities.”
Onfido demonstrated its Facial Check with Video technology, available via the company’s SDK, at FinovateFall 2018. The solution leverages liveness detection by having users film themselves performing a variety of random movements and then comparing the image in the video to the facial image of the user extracted from their identity document.
Onfido’s technology can be integrated into existing cloud-based systems or co-sold by partners as a combined solution stack. The company boasts a number of fellow Finovate alums as current program members as well, including Mambu, Qwil Messenger, Signicat, InvestGlass, FiveDegrees, and Thought Machine.
Along with the program launch news, Onfido also reported that Visa was now offering Onfido’s end-to-end identity verification service on its marketplace. And that’s not the first of this type of partnership: Salesforce has offered Onfido’s technology on its AppExchange since in December 2017.
Recently selected to participate in the new data protection ICO Sandbox, Onfido has spent the summer partnering with firms like cross-border money transfer specialist MoneyNetint and international payments company Currencies Direct to enhance the verification component of their onboarding processes. Other partnerships for Onfido this year include a collaboration with Checkr to support the background check specialist’s Checkr Connect IDV solution, and an agreement with mobility-as-a-service company Drover to help the firm offer a more secure, seamless onboarding experience for customers.
Onfido raised $50 million in funding this spring in a round led by SBI Investment and Salesforce Ventures, which took the company’s total financing to more than $100 million. Founded in 2012, Onfido is headquartered in London, U.K. Co-founder Husayn Kassai is CEO.
