Credit Sesame Raises $43 Million in Advance of IPO

Credit Sesame Raises $43 Million in Advance of IPO

Credit score and loan management platform, Credit Sesame, has raised $43 million so far in its latest funding round, which is likely to be the last before the firm goes public, writes Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The round, led by ATW Partners with participation from previous investors, has not yet closed. TechCrunch reports CEO and founder, Adrian Nazari, believes the company is on track to achieve a $1 billion valuation when the round does close.

The funding is a combination of equity and debt for the profitable company, which has seen 90% annual revenue growth for the last five years. It will be spent on business expansion and developing Credit Sesame’s RoboCredit artificial intelligence algorithms, which enable consumers to see what actions they can take to improve their credit scores.

Nazari said this is likely to be the last funding round before launching an IPO and the company has no plans to look at mergers or acquisitions until after it goes public.

“Credit Sesame is revolutionizing how consumers manage their credit,” said Kerry Propper, co-founder and managing partner of ATW Partners. “What once was a mystery and black box is now distilled by Credit Sesame’s PCM platform into easy to digest actionable insights that can effortlessly and meaningfully change a consumer’s credit and financial health.”

Users of Credit Sesame, which coined the term “Personal Credit Management,” can check their initial credit score and look at debt rebalancing options for free, but pay fees to take up products referred through the engine.

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, Credit Sesame demonstrated its credit-based PFM for a co-branded environment at FinovateSpring 2015.

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: College Aid Pro

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: College Aid Pro

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.

College Aid Pro (CAP) is an innovative, college planning technology for, and supported by, an engaged community of financial advisors. CAP is changing the way America shops for college.

Features

  • Demystifies financial aid, providing accurate net cost projections at thousands of schools
  • Provides a process for guiding families to better college outcomes
  • Supported by a community of professionals

Why it’s great
There is currently no such thing as a financial advocate for Gen-X families with college bound teens. CAP is growing a movement of professionals with the tools and resources to provide that service.

Presenters

Joe Messinger, Co-Founder
Messinger has helped hundreds of Gen X families navigate the college funding maze through his RIA Capstone Wealth Partners, while training thousands of advisors to replicate his process.
LinkedIn

Matt Carpenter, Co-Founder
Carpenter is a leading expert in the opaque process of higher education funding and financial aid. His firm, College Funding Services, has helped thousands of families cut the cost of college.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Edmit

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Edmit

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.

Founded by recognized university leaders, Edmit’s award-winning software provides personalized insights and advice to help families make smarter college financial decisions, leading to less debt.

Features

  • Build brand trust and provide insights and expertise in a high anxiety major investment
  • Become a “one stop shop” for holistic financial wellness
  • Introduce a differentiated college-related product

Why it’s great
Families that use Edmit make smarter college financial choices leading to less debt and better life outcomes.

Presenters

Nick Ducoff, Co-Founder and CEO
Ducoff was previously Northeastern University’s VP for New Ventures. He previously co-founded Infochimps, acquired by DXC, and was a VP at Boundless, acquired by Follett. He started his career in law.
LinkedIn

Sabrina Manville, Co-Founder
Manville was previously AVP at Southern New Hampshire University and previously worked at Pearson and Coursera. She has an MBA from Stanford and a BA in Religious Studies from Yale.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Insuritas

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Insuritas

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.

Insuritas is debuting the world’s first end-to-end quote and buy platform for business insurance to be fully integrated via API within a digital banking ecosystem.

Features

  • Revenue from digital banking
  • Seamless insurance for small businesses
  • Fully integrated solution allowing the bank to own the customer journey

Why it’s great
iInsure for Businesses empowers banks to transform their digital banking platforms and investments into platforms that drive non-interest income, customer wallet share, and retention.

Presenter

Matt Chesky, President
Chesky was recognized by Hartford Business Journal and Connecticut Magazine in 2018 as a “40 Under 40” recipient. He graduated from Yale University in 2012 with a degree in Economics.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Andes Wealth Technologies

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Andes Wealth Technologies

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.

Founded by an award-winning fintech veteran, Andes Wealth Technologies offers the “Google Maps for Financial Advisors,” a set of unique, modern tools to transform the wealth management experience.

Features

  • Risk Tolerance Test: The best ever.
  • Real-Time Risk Monitor: 360° risk visualization for markets and portfolios.
  • Practical Behavioral Finance, including a special tool for baby boomers.

Why it’s great
Unique ideas and visualizations. Beautiful yet practical tools backed by rigorous research and robust data analytics. It will indeed revolutionize the advisor and client experience.

Presenter

Helen Yang, Founder and CEO
A winner of the prestigious Harry Markowitz Award in 2011, Yang has 20+ years of leadership in Fintech and holds an MBA from MIT.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Trulioo

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Trulioo

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.

Trulioo presents EmbedID, a fast and simple way for startups and developers to verify customers across borders while supporting AML/KYC compliance requirements.

Features

  • Integrate and test Trulioo’s identity verification API in minutes
  • Fully customize onboarding fields and forms
  • Verify customers in real time

Why it’s great
With only a snippet of code embedded into any website, Trulioo’s EmbedID enables organizations to verify over 5 billion identities worldwide.

Presenters

Anatoly Kvitnitsky
Kvitnitsky has a wealth of experience working in fintech and identity markets, and is committed to helping solve identity challenges that organizations face in scaling their products for global use.
LinkedIn

Marat Asadurian
A software engineering manager at Trulioo, Asadurian enjoys building new products as well as new teams. In his current role, he is managing a team that generates new business lines for GlobalGateway.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: JSOL Corporation

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: JSOL Corporation

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.

JSOL Corporation provides IT consulting and digital transformation related services to clients from various industries by leveraging its technology and know-how developed over the years.

Features

  • Predict growth/deterioration of business partners
  • Visualize transactional networks of businesses and assess spillover effects
  • Monitor/analyze up-to-date financial conditions of business partners

Why it’s great
Use JSOL Corporation’s tool to gain insight into your business partners’ projected financial performance and to make informed financing decisions.

Presenters

Kimitaka Honma, Deputy Unit Director
Honma is a Deputy Unit Director of the Digital Innovation Business Unit and has ample experience assisting financial institutions with their digital transformation efforts.

Andrew Ogata, Sales and Strategic Partnerships
Ogata is a sales specialist in the Digital Innovation Business Unit and focuses on domestic/overseas sales and strategic partnerships.

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: StreetShares

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: StreetShares

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.

The StreetShares platform provides “Lending-as-a-Service” technology to community banks and credit unions, empowering them to offer fully-digital small business loans… up and running in 30 days.

Features

  • Ability to grow and retain small business customers
  • Fully-digital borrower onboarding and management with no core software integration
  • Precision, 100% digital underwriting at the industry’s leading loss rates

Why it’s great
Community banks and credit unions struggle to make small business loans due to costly underwriting and core software integration. StreetShares Lending-as-a-Service technology solves this problem.

Presenters

Mark Rockefeller, CEO
Rockefeller leads the StreetShares team in its mission to help community banks and credit unions offer fully-digital small business loans to America’s main street businesses.
LinkedIn

Sanjay Bhaskar, Vice President, Development and Partnerships
Bhaskar focuses on identifying opportunities for community banks and credit unions to use StreetShares Lending-as-a-Service technology to offer fully digital small business loans.
LinkedIn

Namaste Credit Becomes Challenger Bank

Namaste Credit Becomes Challenger Bank

Indian online lending marketplace Namaste Credit announced it is becoming a “fully-fledged digital-only bank” for micro small and medium businesses (MSMEs), reports Ruby Hinchliffe of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.

The neobank will have a “foundational software-as-a-service (SaaS) play” and aims to offer the first one-stop-shop for MSMEs. It will include automated credit, banking, and accounting solutions.

The soon-to-be-launched app, dubbed Namaste Biz, will centralize MSME’s cash flow, banking applications, and credit management tools.

“Our transition to a neobank will not only help the start-up get a firmer grip into the banking and non-banking financial company (NBFC) ecosystem but also balance revenues with customer acquisition costs to maintain a profitable growth path,” said Namaste Credit’s co-founder and director, Lucas Bianchi.

He added, “We believe a technology-based integrated platform that can bring together banks, NBFCs and other stakeholders can completely transform the financial services industry, specially from a B2B perspective.”

The company is confident the conversion will give them a “substantial competitive advantage.” Fellow co-founder and director Gaurav Anand said the newly-turned neobank will “accelerate customer and channel acquisition,” “reduce operational costs significantly,” and allow them “to expand quickly to global markets.”

At its core, Namaste Credit serves as an online marketplace for small business loans. The service connects borrowers with relevant lenders to help them find the loan that best suits their circumstance. The company also offers robotic process automation to help underwriters accurately assess risk. Namaste Credit demoed at FinovateFall 2018.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Namaste Credit Becomes Challenger Bank.
  • Chatbots.Studio Partners with Yozobi. Check them out at FinovateFall later this month!
  • Credit Sesame Raises $43 Million in Advance of IPO.

Around the web

  • Salt Edge marks 400+ integrations with open banking APIs.
  • Payfone teams up with Digital Matrix Systems to help companies fight fraud.
  • Fenergo appoints Louise O’Connell to the newly created role of Chief Customer Officer.
  • StrategyCorps brings on former Geezeo executive, Bryan Clagett.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Five Degrees and Entersekt Forge Fintech Partnership

Five Degrees and Entersekt Forge Fintech Partnership

One month after digital core banking provider Five Degrees announced its collaboration with fellow Finovate alum W.UP, the company is back in the fintech headlines with another round of partnership news: digital security platform Entersekt will join its Open Banking Marketplace.

“Partnering with Entersekt is testament to our vision for the future of banking and finance so we are delighted to welcome the company as part of our Open Banking Marketplace,” Five Degrees EVP Peter-Jan van de Venn said. “Our marketplace is championing a culture of collaboration throughout the industry, enabling us to provide a better customer experience via interconnected APIs.”

In their statement, the companies indicate that the partnership between the two companies will help financial service providers perform better both at home in Europe as well as in their global banking and finance operations. Five Degrees Open Banking Marketplace is designed to encourage financial services companies and fintechs to work together to build engaging digital customer experiences, increase their own efficiencies, and make regulatory compliance easier.

“(We) help tens of millions of end users across the globe, securing 150 million digital transactions every month in 45 countries,” Entersekt CEO Schalk Nolte said. “We look forward to being part of five degrees’ Open Banking Marketplace and are confident that our partnership will drive further innovation in (digital services) and help our mutual customers differentiate themselves from the competition.”

Entersekt’s Chief Technology Officer presented “Securing Mobile Applications through Transport Layer Diversity” at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, in 2014. The South African company, which was founded in 2008, opened its second office in Cape Town in April, and that same month was named to the Wealthtech 100. Entersekt teamed up with fellow Finovate alum BioCatch in March to offer financial services companies a “one-stop-shop” for security solutions such as continuous and multi-factor authentication, passwordless login, and enhanced remote user registration.

In its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateEurope 2018, Five Degrees demonstrated its digital wealth management solution, Prospery. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the company was selected last month to join the Kickstarter Innovation Program. In June, Five Degrees announced a partnership with Bankingblocks to assist challenger banks and payment companies as they offer new solutions to their customers.

With $11 million (€10 million) in funding, Five Degrees includes Karmijn Kapitaal and Velocity Capital Private Equity among its investors.

Vymo Fuels Insight for VP Bank’s FE Credit

Vymo Fuels Insight for VP Bank’s FE Credit

Personal sales assistant Vymo recently teamed up with FE Credit, the consumer lending services division of Vietnam-based VP Bank.

Through the partnership, Vymo is handling pieces in FE Credit’s mortgage lending workflow. Specifically, Vymo is helping FE Credit with customer acquisition, lead generation, and onboarding. The India-based company will offer its automated sales tool to help FE Credit’s team of 20,000 sales executives and 8,000 agents become more productive.

Vymo prompts the salesperson to make notes about their sales calls

After the deal is closed, Vymo helps agents follow up with up-sell and cross-sell opportunities and makes it easy to track down missed payments.

Vymo’s sales tool offers multiple ways of driving productivity, beginning with assisting with client onboarding and authentication. The tool also assigns each lead to the best agent for the job based on experience and geographical location, offers next best action suggestions, and sends timely nudges to sales agents. Additionally, by notifying agents of the leads on their mobile device, FE Credit’s team is able to follow up on inquiries within 15 minutes. When a meeting is complete, the app prompts the salesperson to make notes about the client and how the meeting went.

FE Credit, the largest lending organization in Vietnam, initiated the partnership in an effort to work on its ambition of “better, not more,” meaning that it wants to improve upon its existing services before offering consumers more services. Kalidas Ghose, Vice Chairman and CEO of FE Credit, said the company selected Vymo “because of its unique application of automation and AI technology that allows for seamless data capture and contextual recommendations.”

With 140 employees, and 100,000 users on its platform Vymo has raised $23 million since it was founded in 2013. The company demonstrated its sales tool at FinovateAsia 2018 and has since made a major geographical expansion, launching in the U.S. a couple of months back.