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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Finovate Alums Shine in 2019 Forbes Fintech 50 Roster.
Around the web
Mirror Review featuresNeener Analytics founder and CEO, Jeff LoCastro on small data and social media analytics.
Connecticut’s Guilford Savings Bank to deploy technology from Jack Henry & Associates.
BioMetric Signature ID to integrate identity verification technology from Mitek to provide authentication for its BioProof-ID solution.
Business Intelligence Group honorsJumio as part of its 2019 BIG Innovation 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.
Alternative credit assessment innovator Aire has picked up $11 million in new funding. The London-based company, which demonstrated its Aire Credit API at FinovateEurope 2015, said the new capital will support the continued development of its credit insight engine, as well as support expansion in the U.S.
This week’s investment adds to the $5 million Aire raised in the summer of 2017, and takes the company’s total funding to $23 million.
“Aire is built on the premise that empowering consumers to play an active role in their credit assessment is the only way to give lenders a comprehensive view with which to make a decision,” company co-founder and CEO Aneesh Varma said.
Calling the announcement a “significant milestone,” Varma highlighted the participation of Experian Ventures, the venture arm of fellow Finovate alum and credit bureau giant, Experian. “This Series B funding is allowing us to push the Aire philosophy further into new markets, such as the U.S., as well as new sectors,” he said.
Aire improves the credit decisioning process by providing lenders with the tools they need to accurately assess thin file credit histories. When an applicant’s initial credit check reveals insufficient information, the applicant is directed to an Aire Interactive Interview. The applicant answers a series of tailored questions to create a “three-dimensional” view of their finances, focusing on issues such as affordability, stability, and financial resilience. Aire then creates and delivers a score based on this data that gives lenders insight into the applicant’s creditworthiness in the future rather than the past.
This latest funding for Aire was led by Crane Venture Partners, and featured participation from Orange Digital Ventures as well as Experian Ventures. The round comes two years after the company earned Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approval, and accompanies news that Aire has scored more than $10 billion in credit across a variety of consumer credit categories.
Krishna Visvanathan, Crane Venture Partners founding partner praised Aire’s “unique contextual decisioning methodology” which he said “combines direct consumer engagement, new data sources, and (a) dynamic algorithm model” to help lenders make more accurate assessments of credit risk.
“Aire is yet another great example of a category-leading enterprise software company formed in Europe that is fundamentally changing an industry,” Visvanathan said, “and we are proud to support its new phase of growth.”
Aire was founded in 2014. The company’s partners include Zopa and the UK. arm of auto financing company, Toyota Financial Services.
Best of Show winner Capitalise is beginning the year with a bang: the company’s technology – which enables traders to automate their strategies using natural language – is now live with Interactive Brokers.
“Partnering with the prominent Interactive Brokers is a cornerstone achievement for Capitalise,” said company CEO Shahar Rabin. “This partnership will allow IB users to take their trading to new heights by automating them with the Capitalise platform. We believe IB users will enjoy and benefit from the hands-off experience of algo trading.”
Capitalise offers a white label solution that redefines trading automation by enabling traders to build and automate their own unique strategies using natural language. The technology transforms if-then scenarios into executable trades, monitoring the market and making entries and exits based on parameters provided in plain English by the trader. In this way, Capitalise brings the benefits of algorithmic trading to the average investor without requiring programming knowledge or ability.
The technology also enables traders to optimize their strategies, allowing them to analyze, predict, and improve investment outcomes with the click of a button. Capitalise is integrated with trading accounts on many third-party exchanges and brokers, making it easy for traders and investors to manage their trades in one place.
Capitalise plans to add a number of additional features to the platform including a social network for traders called The Social Arena, as well as backtesting functionality to enable traders to apply historical data to specific scenarios.
Interactive Brokers is an electronic brokerage firm based in the United States, with offices in 12 countries. Founded in 1978, the company has grown into the biggest electronic broker in the country based on daily average revenue trades and the number one forex brokerage. IB serves 385,000 client brokerage accounts, adding up to $86 billion in customer equity.
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Capitalise demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2017, winning Best of Show. Last fall, the company announced that it would be one of 11 startups to participate in the 10th cohort at the Microsoft Accelerator Tel Aviv.
Capitalise has raised more than $5 million in funding and includes Stage One Ventures, Poalim Capital Markets, Gefen Capital, and Glenrock Israel among its investors.
By harnessing the collective wisdom of networked investors, social trading app Voleo helps individuals pursue market-beating returns. Voleo makes it easy for users to form and join investment clubs, contribute equally to the club portfolio, and make investments to grow the account.
The solution uses chat technology to enable club members to propose, debate, and ultimately vote on new investment proposals. Those new to trading and investing can take advantage of Voleo’s SimuTrader app, which allows investors to practice trading without risking actual money.
Awarded Best of Show at FinovateFall 2017, Voleo announced last month that it was partnering with OP Financial Group to help the Helsinki, Finland-based company develop a new social trading platform for the European market. Voleo also bolstered its advisory ranks in January, appointing B2B digital marketing executive Nicky Senyard to its board of directors. And last fall, the company launched its 2nd annual equity trading competition, in collaboration with Nasdaq.
Most recently, Voleo introduced a number of new features including advanced order types to enable investors to place and specify the date range for both limit and stop orders.
We caught up with company CEO Thomas Beattie (pictured) to talk about Voleo, the power of social trading and investing, and what to expect from the company in 2019 and beyond.
Finovate: What does Voleo do and how does it do it?
Thomas Beattie: Voleo is the first social trading app that makes it possible to team up and invest in the stock market with your friends.
Our patent-pending trading technology allows users to leverage the collective knowledge of their peers, and has revolutionized the way individuals trade stocks, ETFs, and proprietary products offered by partner financial institutions. Vancouver-based Voleo gamifies the investing experience and motivates users to collaborate through its community-building user experience. Voleo has established itself in the U.S. as a registered broker-dealer with FINRA and SEC, and now offers its social trading technology white-label to financial institutions.
Finovate: Who are Voleo’s primary customers and how does Voleo attract them?
Beattie: Our primary customers are career-oriented and ambitious individuals in their mid-30s. Current research shows that they have typically built some wealth, in the form of savings, but do not yet have self-directed trading accounts. Voleo’s target market socializes well in digital, mobile environments. They value the opinions of those in their network, and they are digital natives who learn, communicate and bank with their smartphones.
Firstly, we plan to reach this target market through strategic partnerships with U.S. banks and credit unions. These financial institutions have established brands that resonate with Voleo’s target market. This enables Voleo to naturally synergize and deepen relationships with current customers and acquire new ones.
Secondly, we have seen consistent and organic growth through our own iOS, Android, and Web platforms, which we thank the Voleo community for. On average, each club founded on Voleo’s platform has led to 13 members of their social circle being invited to join, with team sizes averaging nine members and growing. As our user base grows further, we are making continuous progress on product development to encourage further collaboration between our users and make investing more accessible to the general public.
Finovate: How does Voleo solve the problem better?
Beattie: The reality is that traditional investment options are not meeting the needs of Millennials due to high costs, time constraints, and inaccessibility. Young investors usually face a trade-off for the two most popular options for taxable investment accounts. For one, investment advisors are not interested in clients with minimal assets, and for individuals with money, these same advisors can end up being costly. On the other hand, self-directed investing can seem risky to novices who don’t know the ins and outs of the stock market.
From a customer acquisition standpoint, Voleo creates opportunities for financial institutions by merging the best of self-directed trading and social media platforms. We help reach new prospects by providing tangible value to customers, and authentic communication channels to financial institutions.
Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of Voleo’s technology.
Beattie: Four years of R&D has gone into the development of its iOS and Android apps, which have seen steady user growth since the soft launch in early 2017. As of December 2018, Voleo has earned the opportunity to pilot with OP Financial Group, Finland’s largest bank with total assets of €140bn. This partnership came to fruition from OP’s Wealthtech Program, which serves to expose top international fintech companies to the Finnish market, and for OP Financial Group to stay at the forefront of innovation and adopt new technologies for their client base.
Our mission for this partnership is to help OP Financial Group convert savers into investors and help them along the way as they kickstart their wealth journey. Our white-label product will integrate the social sharing capabilities of Voleo’s platform with OP Financial Group’s product line. By creating a community around personal finance, we believe that we can increase activity among existing OP users and acquire new prospects as well.
Finovate: What in your capital markets background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?
Beattie: I began my career 15 years ago and have devoted time across several sectors, leading projects in financial services and capital markets before taking on the role of CEO at Voleo. I’ve always had a passion for investing and education, and this aligned well with our mission of enabling the general public to reach their long-term financial goals.
Finovate: What can we expect from Voleo in 2019?
Beattie: I am excited for 2019 as Voleo is currently taking steps to become a publicly listed company on the TSX Venture Exchange.
In the past year of soft launch, we have continuously refined our product and grown our community organically. Voleo is now at the stage where we are ready to scale up.
To assist in the company’s strategic growth in 2019, Voleo has recently appointed Nicky Senyard as our first Independent Director. We are extremely excited to have Nicky join our group, as she is a veteran in the marketing technology space, having successfully founded Income Access which was acquired by Paysafe for $30M in 2016. We’re excited to have her provide her expertise in scaling fintech businesses to achieve our business goals for 2019.
To learn more about this unique platform and how you can be an early-adopter to this coming revolution, you can message me on LinkedIn or send us an e-mail at partnerships@myvoleo.com.
Fiservlaunches new mortgage lifecycle integration solution, Mortgage Momentum.
Worldlineannounces expansion of its partnership with Rambus to provide ITSO smart tickets in the U.K.
The Paypers interviews Luke Flomo, Head of Ecommerce for Trustly.
BlueRushannounces two new board members, Michael Beckerman and Paul G. Smith.
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.
Identity verification specialist HooYu is collaborating with alternative banking solution provider Suits Me to help un- and underbanked workers get better access to financial services.
“Suits Me is an innovative solution that gives temporary workers freedom and choice through financial inclusion,” HooYu Marketing Director David Pope explained. “HooYu Identify blends a range of identity verification techniques into one service. By choosing the services according to their needs, Suits Me has built their ideal customer onboarding process balancing the twin objectives of security and convenience.”
Suits Me offers a hassle-free alternative for many workers, including temporary and migrant workers who are often unable to open traditional bank accounts. With Suits Me, account holders can send wages directly to their account and get a VISA debit card that can be used anywhere VISA is accepted – online, in person, and over the phone.
Courtesy of the partnership with HooYu, new Suits Me customers will benefit from an online verification process that is both seamless and comprehensive. With HooYu’s Identify solution, new customers simply take a selfie, and provide social media or online account information, and a photo of their ID document.
HooYu then conducts a biometric facial verification and authenticates the ID documents. Identify cross-references all of the collected identity attributes and scores them to create an overall identity confirmation score and report that show the degree of confidence in the accuracy of the customer’s claimed identity.
“Our mission is to help workers get paid, ” Suits Me CEO Matthew Sanders said. Pointing out how Suits Me relieves workers of the hassles of checks and check cashing, Sanders added “Integrating HooYu Identity removes yet another hurdle – we can trust who the customer says they are and, this can happen even more quickly, without unnecessary complications or bureaucracy.”
HooYu demonstrated its identity verification technology at FinovateEurope 2018. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in London, U.K., the company earlier this month announced that it would provide online verification services for mobile e-gaming operator, Small Screen Casinos. In September, HooYu reported partnering with U.K. casino operator, Bear Group, as well as teaming up with EasyMoney, a firm that offers a variety of innovative finance ISAs.
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.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Mexican fintech Albo raises $7.4 million in Series A round led by Mountain Nazca.
Mobile digital wallet BPP Pay goes live in Brazil.
The Inter-American Development Bank and Finnovista publish their Fintech in Latin America 2018: Growth and Consolidation report.
Asia-Pacific
R3 and SBI Holdings launch joint venture to boost use of Corda in Japan and East Asia more broadly.
Mizuho inks memorandum of understanding for business cooperation with Zhongguancun Development Group (ZDG) in quest for Chinese fintech startups.
Phillippine “fintech city” Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA) unveils new regulations for trading cryptocurrency assets.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Standard Chartered begins the second phase of its digital-only, retail bank rollout in four African markets.
The Standard reflects on Kenya’s progress in promoting financial inclusion via financial technology.
Modern Ghana considersFive Ways Fintech Will Change E-Commerce.
Central and Eastern Europe
Fintech Futures takes a look at the growth of Lithuania’s fintech sector.
ACI Worldwide to drive real-time payments for 17 banks in Hungary.
Belarus turns to the example of Lithuania as the country considers how to regulate fintech.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Sharia’h compliant insurance solution provider Solidarity Bahrain opts for core insurance system from TCS Bancs.
Al Bawaba looks at how Egyptian banks are moving toward digitization and embracing fintech.
Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority and United Arab Emirates Central Bank announce plans for a blockchain-based digital currency to improve financial settlements between the two countries.
Central and South Asia
Indian alternative credit scoring startup CreditVidya raises $3 million in funding.
A partnership between 11 banks in India has led to the country’s first blockchain-linked funding for SMEs.
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) launches Ombudsman Scheme for Digital Transactions to improve response to complaints regarding digital transactions.
Mambu has signed a deal to implement its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based core banking system at Orange Bank‘s new location in Spain, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
Mambu has also confirmed that it recently completed a funding round, and said it will be revealing details about this soon.
Fintech Futures understands the value of this round is in the tens of millions, but it hasn’t been confirmed yet.
According to Fintech Futures’ sources, Orange Bank has also picked Mambu for one of its Eastern Europe locations, possibly Romania or Bulgaria.
These may be just rumors, however, as Orange Bank says: “For the moment the contract does not stipulate any other country. This will be seen later, depending of future deployments in Europe.”
It is understood that for these new locations, Orange Bank went through a selection process that Mambu won.
Mambu has declined to comment on the deal.
The French business of the bank uses the SAB AT system from French core banking tech supplier SAB.
In 2016, the French mobile operator acquired 65% of Groupama shares, to launch a bank, and leveraged its tech to do so.
For its mobile front-end, Orange Bank uses Backbase’s platform.
Mambu demonstrated its cloud native, SaaS banking solution at FinovateAsia 2013. A few years later, the company participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2016, presenting Smart Consumer Lending: Platform and Scoring Architecture, a look at the company’s collaboration with alternative lender, Lenddo.
Founded in 2011, Mambu is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
MambuTakes its SaaS Core Banking Solution to Orange Bank in Spain.
Around the web
API platform provider for banking and insurance NDGITsigns Banco BNI as a strategic customer.
EU Startups featuresNordigen in its look at the top 10 Latvian startups to look out for in 2019.
Qover, an insurtech startup from Belgium, opens a new office in France.
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.
When the going gets tough, the tough take to the cloud.
Enterprise content capture and data solution provider Ephesoftunveiled its Ephesoft Cloud HyperExtender today. The new technology enables Ephesoft Transact users to optimize their on-premise solution by more than 10x, bringing processing speeds up to 2,500 pages per minute to satisfy instances of peak demand.
An add-on application, the Cloud Hyperextender combines high-performance cloud image processing with Transact’s supervised machine learning, shifting processing intensive Optical Character Recognition (OCR) operations to the cloud once documents are captured on-premise. After processing, the documents are returned to the on-premise system for classification, extraction, validation, and export.
Click the image above to see a YouTube video of the Cloud HyperExtender in action.
The solution is designed to help companies meet peak demand which “stress(es) the infrastructure for document intelligence,” the company noted in a statement. Retailers experiencing surges in invoices and credit card applications during shopping holidays and tax preparation companies managing heavy processing during tax season are among the examples of how the technology can be deployed.
“Ephesoft’s Cloud HyperExtender is bridging the gap for our customers who want to continue using their existing systems while reaping the benefits of ultra-fast processing in the cloud,” company founder and CEO Ike Kavas said. “This first-to-market offering provides the best of both worlds. As the world’s first hybrid capture microservice, this product maximizes efficiency and profitability for our customers and epitomizes our vision to lead the market to the cloud.”
Above: Scott Lee (Senior Product Manager) and Chris MacWilliams (Lead Solution Engineer) demonstrating the Ephesoft platform at FinovateSpring 2018.
Ephesoft demonstrated its smart document capture and analytics platform at FinovateSpring 2018. The firm has hundreds of customers in more than 50 countries who rely on the company’s technology – including its Ephesoft Insight document analytics and business intelligence solution – to become more productive and efficient, as well as boost ROI.
Earning a finalist spot in the 2019 Cloud Awards Program in the Best Cloud Automation Solution category last month, Ephesoft was named a 2018 Top Workplace by the Orange County Register. Over the summer, Ephesoft was recognized as a Hot Vendor in Document and Contract Analytics, 2018, and launched its Swagger/OpenAPI-web services for Ephesoft Transact. This simplified API makes it easy to integrate Ephesoft’s document capture solutions into openAPI-compliance platforms such as Microsoft Flow.
Ephesoft has raised $15 million in funding, courtesy of a Series A round led by Mercato Partners. Founded in 2010, the company is headquartered in Irvine, California with offices in the U.K., Germany, France, Australia, Singapore, and Italy.
Workspaces for Retail Banking is the first offering from digital customer experience specialist Avoka since the company was acquired by fellow Finovate alum Temenos in a $245 million deal in December.
A new module within the Temenos Infinity product, Workspaces gives professionals at retail banks and credit unions a digital review and approval workspace to provide better support and service during customer account opening and onboarding.
The new solution will be especially helpful for financial services professionals when dealing with applications submitted via Straight Through Processing (STP) that can neither be immediately approved or declined. Workspaces is built to improve the efficiency and productivity of the resolution process necessary to manage these pending applications, helping bank staff avoid delays and negative customer engagement.
“Orchestrating a fast, accurate and collaborative decisioning process is a critical aspect of an applicant’s customer journey,” Steve Demchuk, Chief Product Officer for Avoka, a Temenos Company, explained. “We validated this as an important problem to solve for our bank and credit union customers as they look to remove costly delays in account acquisition.”
Demchuk added that making application review and live customer service a part of the digital account opening process – instead of relying on separate systems – was a major innovation with Workspaces. “This is key to providing excellent service to prospective customers,” he said.
A multiple time Finovate Best of Show winner, Avoka demonstrated its digital account opening solution, Transaction Insights, at FinovateEurope 2017. With offices in Denver, Colorado, as well as London, England, and Sydney, Australia, Avoka had digitized more than 100 million transactions for more than 150 clients around the world.
With customers in more than 145 countries, Temenos introduced its Connect Mobile Banking application at FinovateEurope 2015. The company announced a partnership with Credorax earlier this week, helping the payments firm provide SME, merchant acquiring, and cross-border payment services. Also this month, Temenos partnered with Bloomberg to help provide contingency net asset value )NAV) calculations to buy-side institutions.
Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, Temenos was founded in 1993.
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateEurope on February 12 through 14, 2019 in London, U.K. Register today and save your spot.
Recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in Germany, Fincite provides an investment suite with a 360° customer view, intelligent recommendations, and portfolio management for banks and asset managers
Features
Automatically provide an individual investment proposal based on customer and bank restrictions
Reduce the effort of an investment advisor to handle a portfolio by 4x
Ensure portfolio compliance
Why it’s great
The tool allows investment advisors to quickly give accurate financial advice and optimize portfolios, providing a completely new user experience for advisors and customers.
Presenters
Friedhelm Schmitt, Co-CEO, Fincite
Schmitt is a German technology entrepreneur and founder of Fincite and Fincite Ventures. Fincite is creating solutions to reinvent investment and portfolio management in a digital world. LinkedIn
Maarten Heyboer, Business Developer, Investments, ABN AMRO
Heyboer is a Dutch business developer working for ABN AMRO Private Banking. His drive is to optimize customer satisfaction by developing great investment products using the latest innovations. LinkedIn
We caught up with company CEO Thomas Beattie (pictured) to talk about Voleo, the power of social trading and investing, and what to expect from the company in 2019 and beyond.
Presenters
Maarten Heyboer, Business Developer, Investments, ABN AMRO