Finn AI Closes $11 Million Series A

Finn AI Closes $11 Million Series A
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finn.ai, Funding

One of the big stars of last year’s FinovateAsia, Finn AI, continues to make big headlines. The company, whose AI-powered virtual assistant technology has earned it two Finovate Best of Show awards, has picked up $11 million in new funding (CAD $14 million). The Series A round was led by Yaletown Partners and Flying Fish Partners, and featured participation from BDC Capital’s Women in Technology Fund, 1843 Capital, and angel investors.

“We’ve seen great progress in our business over the last twelve months, doubling our team to over 50 across North America and acquiring a number of major new customers and partners,” co-founder and CEO of Finn AI Jake Tyler said. “As the market moves beyond early experiments into scale production deployments we are seeing greater demand for our proven enterprise-grade Conversational AI platform.”

Tyler added that the funding would support the company’s growth in North America and Europe. The investment will also enable Finn AI to innovate on its enterprise technology and extend its core solution to support additional banking and personal finance capabilities for its current customers.

As part of the investment, Eric Bukovinsky of Yaletown Partners and Frank Chang of Flying Fish Partners will join Finn AI’s board of directors.

At FinovateFall 2017 last September, Finn AI demonstrated how its virtual banking assistant, integrated with Facebook Messenger and Google Assistant, could be used to complete everyday banking and personal finance tasks. Leveraging bot technology and artificial intelligence, Finn AI’s solution supports payments, budgeting, and savings. And while the virtual assistant is capable of answering a wide range of support queries without any human intervention, the technology is also able to bring in human agents to respond to more complex requests.

“Banks around the world are rapidly adopting Conversational AI to deepen relationships with customers, drive sales, and migrate routine, high volume tasks and queries to digital self-serve channels,” Bukovinsky said. “Finn AI has proven it can deliver with major banks across North America, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. We’re excited to support them in this next stage of their growth.”

Finn AI was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Earlier this year, the company announced a partnership with Visa Canada, leveraging the Visa Development Platform APIs to enhance its conversational AI technology. This spring, Finn AI teamed up with Bank of Montreal (BMO) to power the bank’s personal banking chatbot, BMO Bolt. The company also collaborated with Nicaragua’s biggest bank, Banpro, in March, to offer the company’s first Spanish-speaking virtual banking assistant.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ayondo, Clover Network, Credit Karma, Feedzai, Finn.ai, Jumio, Klarna, Moven, Plaid, Temenos

On Finovate.com

  • Finn AI Closes $11 Million Series A.
  • Plaid Signs Open Banking Agreement with JPMorgan.
  • Moven Enterprise Goes Global.

Around the web

  • Klarna pairs up with Rancourt to let shoppers pay over time.
  • Credit Karma launches new personalized shopping experience.
  • Temenos ramps up AI efforts to power its digital banking platform.
  • Feedzai launches AI-powered Feedzai Genome to help users visualize and fight financial crime.
  • Jumio stays ahead of fraudsters with certified 3D liveness detection.
  • Clover announces additions to its Partner Portfolio with enhanced integrations with Nav, AP Intego Insurance Group, and Gusto.
  • Ayondo forms white label agreement with Phnom Penh Derivative Exchange to provide TradeHub for derivative brokers trading CFDs for PPDE’s clients in Cambodia.

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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Experian, FICO, and Finicity Launch the UltraFICO Score

Experian, FICO, and Finicity Launch the UltraFICO Score
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Experian, FICO, Finicity

Three fintechs joined forces today to create a new credit scoring technology designed for thin-file customers. Experian, FICO, and Finicity are the triumvirate behind the new score, named the UltraFICO score.

The UltraFICO score leverages consumer-permissioned account data aggregated and distributed by Experian and Finicity. Unlike the traditional FICO score, which relies heavily on repayment data from users’ previous credit usage, UltraFICO looks at how responsibly consumers manage their finances. After gaining the user’s permission to access their bank statements, Finicity’s technology pulls consumer-contributed data from their checking, savings, and money market accounts, examining the length of time accounts have been open, frequency of activity, and saving data.

For its part, Experian pulls the consumer’s credit information and will integrate the new model into lenders’ existing operational workflow. Alex Lintner, president of Experian’s Consumer Information Services, said that this project has offered the company “a new way to use consumer-permissioned data that allows lenders to make better decisions and helps consumers gain access to credit.”

Accessing the additional data not only offers lenders a more complete picture of the prospective borrower’s ability to repay, it also improves access to credit for Americans who are typically below lenders’ preferred credit score threshold. This especially applies to thin-file borrowers and those working on rebuilding their score after a financial crisis.

Jim Wehmann, FICO EVP of Scores, said that UltraFICO “empowers consumers to have greater control over the information that is being used in making credit risk decisions.” He added, “It also enables a deeper dialogue between the consumer and lenders to help both parties make better financial decisions.”

UltraFICO will be piloted in 2019 to test the new model and determine consumers’ willingness to share their financial data. The group plans to make the new model generally available to lenders in mid-2019.

Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Experian most recently demoed its decisioning platform at FinovateFall 2018. The cloud-based platform enables organizations to combine data and analytics to improve the accuracy of their customer lending decisions. Earlier this year, Experian acquired U.K.-based ClearScore for $385 million.

Founded in 1956 as Fair Isaac Corporation, FICO presented “Rapidly Deliver Contextually-Powered Stream Processing” at FinDEVr New York 2016. Earlier this month, the company announced it will provide KYC and onboarding solutions for Belarus-based lender, Belgazprombank.

Utah-based Finicity demoed at FinovateFall 2017 where the company’s Co-founder and President of Data Services, Nick Thomas, showed how the company simplified access to its Verification of Income and Verification of Assets reports. Frequently in the headlines, Finicity announced last week it was selected as third-party service provider for Freddie Mac’s automated income and asset assessment solution, Loan Product Advisor. In September, the company aligned with intelligent process automation software provider Capsilon to modernize the mortgage origination process.

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Ondot Lands Strategic Investment from Citi Ventures

Ondot Lands Strategic Investment from Citi Ventures
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Ondot, Ondot Systems

A strategic investment from Citi Ventures announced today will help power international growth for mobile payment services specialist Ondot.

“As we steadily march toward high-frequency, invisible and autonomous payments, consumers increasingly expect detailed information about their transactions,” Ondot CEO Vaduvur Bharghavan said. “Bringing together details such as real-time transaction authorizations, proximity controls, merchant specifications, and applying machine learning on historical data helps consumers have more control over their cards and delivers a premium cardholder experience.”

The amount of the funding was not disclosed. Prior to today’s news, the company reportedly had raised $51 million in equity financing.

Ondot offers banks and credit unions technology that enables them to provide their customers with solutions to better manage and control their card payments. The company’s real-time, API-based platform and mobile app provide an end-to-end digital payment card services experience that ranges from bot-assisted digital acquisition and instant activation to geolocation-based contextual alerts and messaging. Ondot’s technology gives payment cards a “digital voice,” supported by a three-way interaction between the card issuer, the card holder, and the merchant.

“Consumers want to be able to manage their financial lives anywhere and at any time, and their expectations for a seamless experience will continue to evolve,” Citi Ventures’ co-head of venture investing Ramneek Gupta said. “Ondot meets this demand by providing innovative solutions that enable increased access and control of financial information, so we are thrilled to invest.”

Ondot’s strategic investment comes as the company announced a partnership with Mexico’s INVEX. The collaboration will enable INVEX to leverage Ondot’s digital acquisition and instant issuance technology to provide the country’s first “Instant Card.” Integrated with Ondot’s technology, INVEX’s Digital Card Services solution will also feature mobile product presentment and selection, as well as built-in card controls and alerts.

“Nowadays, credit card customers and digitally savvy generations, seek simplicity and immediate financial solutions through 100% digital channels,” Jean Marc Mercier, INVEX’s Managing Director for Consumer Banking and Payments, said. He added that INVEX was “committed to consolidate our position as a player at the forefront of the Mexican consumer and payments market, providing solutions that meet these expectations.”

Santa Clara, California-based Ondot Systems demonstrated its Digital Card mobile app at FinovateSpring 2018. The company also participated in our inaugural FinovateMiddleEast conference earlier this year, winning Best of Show honors for a live demo of its card control technology. More than 3,000 banks and credit unions around the world use Ondot’s white label apps, including the premier credit union services organization in the U.S., PSCU, which announced a partnership with Ondot in August.

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Open Bank Project Collaborates with Open Source Software Company Red Hat

Open Bank Project Collaborates with Open Source Software Company Red Hat
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Open Bank Project

Open source API innovator, TESOBE’s Open Bank Project, announced it has teamed up with Red Hat this week. The two are collaborating on a new API specifically designed for banking and financial services companies.

The Open Bank Project will leverage Red Hat’s Fuse along with the North Carolina-based company’s rule engines to connect banking systems and offer interoperability among a variety of sources of bank data. This combination of the Open Bank Project’s and Red Hat’s open source technologies facilitates banking system connections while delivering a wider range of applications to end users.

TESOBE CEO and Founder of the Open Bank Project, Simon Redfern, said, “Red Hat and TESOBE share a strong commitment to open source and I’m excited to see these technologies working together. The collaboration we have today can offer a valuable opportunity for banks to help reap the benefits of Open Banking.”

Founded in 2005, the Open Bank Project is a pioneer in open banking, an initiative wherein banks open up their architecture via APIs. In addition to allowing third party applications and services to leverage consumer data, open banking helps financial services companies comply with the EU’s recently revised payment services directive, which was implemented in January of this year. For this reason, as Rich Feldmann, global director of financial services for RedHat, noted, “As open source continues to be a part of the financial services and banking industry, it is important to have standards and projects in place to help enable it to be used properly and remain compliant. This is why we are happy to collaborate with TESOBE’s Open Bank Project to help provide technology tools and guidance to enable success in open source banking.”

In addition to today’s Red Hat announcement, the Open Bank Project also divulged it will be working with Australian challenger bank, 86 400. The neobank will leverage the Open Bank Project’s APIs to standardize and harmonize its API design for more than 10,000 fintech developers.

Headquartered in Germany, TESOBE’s Open Bank Project demoed at FinovateFall 2018 last month, where Redfern showcased how banks can leverage APIs to drive innovation. Earlier this summer, the Open Bank Project teamed up with Citizens Bank to power the bank’s hackathon.

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Fiserv Partners with UK-Based Co-operative Bank

Fiserv Partners with UK-Based Co-operative Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fiserv

Fiserv announced that UK-based Co-operative Bank will implement its FinKit for Open Banking, “to provide more flexibility for customers to choose how they conduct their everyday banking in relation to the European Union’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2)”, reports Tanya Andreasyan of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The two parties have a long-standing relationship.

The cloud-based managed service delivery model of FinKit for Open Banking appealed to the bank, Fiserv explained, because it will help facilitate the many aspects of open banking compliance, from secure customer authentication to management of trusted third parties (TPPs).

FinKit for Open Banking includes access to pre-built APIs and facilitates ongoing compliance through API version control and publishing. This positions the bank to respond efficiently and effectively to the rapid pace of regulatory and industry change, the vendor explains.

FinKit originates from a UK-based mobile paytech provider, Monitise, which was acquired by Fiserv last year.

“Open banking is an area of continual change, and Co-operative Bank is positioned to move ahead of the curve,” noted Lee Cameron, managing director, EMEA, Fiserv (and formerly CEO of Monitise).

Fiserv was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Brookfield, Wisconsin. The company most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2018, partnering with Samsung SDS America to show new biometric authentication features for its digital banking experience, Fiserv Commercial Center.

With more than 12,000 clients and more than 24,000 associates around the world, Fiserv trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker “FISV”. The firm has a market capitalization of $32 billion. Jeffery Yabuki is president and CEO.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Artivest, Bluefin, Bumped, Envestnet, Experian, Featurespace, FICO, Fidor Bank, Finastra, Finicity, ID.me, Kony, NCR Corporation, NTT Data, Ondot, Ondot Systems, Open Bank Project, Sberbank, SuperMoney, ThreatMetrix

On Finovate.com

  • Open Bank Project Collaborates with Open Source Software Company Red Hat.
  • Ondot Lands Strategic Investment from Citi Ventures.
  • Experian, FICO, and Finicity Launch the UltraFICO Score.

Around the web

  • Bloomberg TV features Best of Show winner Bumped.
  • Envestnet | Yodlee launches new suite of developer tools.
  • ThreatMetrix partners with SAS, bringing digital identity intelligence to machine learning to help creditors fight identity fraud.
  • Finastra introduces its cloud-based instant payments offering for SMEs.
  • Sberbank inks Memorandum of Understanding with SWIFT.
  • Artivest appoints new Chief Compliance Officer, Kamal Jafarnia.
  • Featurespace unveils its ARIC White Label solution for advanced fraud and risk prevention.
  • Finextra: Fidor and GFT extend partnership to the Americas markets.
  • Kony acquires innovation subsidiary of Umpqua Bank.
  • Finextra: NTT Data plans pan-Asian federated trade information platform based on blockchain.
  • SuperMoney surpasses $1 billion in financing requests
  • Bluefin and TokenEx partner to strengthen payment security with PCI-validated P2PE and omni-channel tokenization.
  • ID.me launches KYC / AML identity verification solution and ID document verification solution.

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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Lending Club and Wealthfront Score Intuit Consumer Data

Lending Club and Wealthfront Score Intuit Consumer Data
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Intuit, Lending Club, Wealthfront

What do you get when you combine Intuit, Lending Club, and Wealthfront? We’re about to find out, thanks to Intuit’s announcement today that it is making user data available to third party providers.

California-based Intuit partnered with P2P lending company Lending Club and roboadvisor Wealthfront this week. These partnerships are fueled by Intuit-owned Turbox, leveraging the more than 80,000 data fields on the TurboTax return, including income, employment, housing, etc. With one click, TurboTax users can save time during LendingClub’s loan application process by importing their data. Similarly, shared TurboTax and Wealthfront clients can open an account much faster and receive more personalized financial advice based on their tax return data.

Lending Club noted the capability will do more than just speed up the application process. Cole Gillespie, Vice President and Head of Business Development at LendingClub, said that the TurboTax data will “unlock the access to credit for customers that ordinarily we might not be able to serve… this partnership is a step in leveraging alternative data sources to help us increase the speed and access to credit.”

Andy Rachleff, CEO of Wealthfront said that partnering with a company like Intuit is “a dream come true.” He explained, “They don’t just pay lip service to caring about the client. They constantly challenge themselves to provide more value. Integrating with TurboTax data that customers agree to provide will allow Wealthfront to continue to raise the bar on what it means to deliver accessible, convenient, and deeply personalized financial planning. We can’t wait to do more together.”

Intuit is also leveraging the data to pre-fill applications within PFM platform, Mint; financial recommendations site, Turbo; and existing external Intuit partners. By combining household data to give lenders a view of shared household income, credit score, and debt, Intuit offers a fuller picture of total borrowing and savings power. The company estimates pre-qualification leveraging TurboTax data generates a conversion rate of up to 9x in offer performance.

“With more than 25 million users and rich insights into their financial profile, Mint and Turbo are uniquely positioned to deliver value to both consumers and strategic partners,” said Varun Krishna, VP of product management for Intuit’s Consumer Division. “Using machine learning, we are able to provide consumers a comprehensive view of their finances and highlight relevant opportunities to save time and money and generate unique value to our partners.”

Best known for its Quickbooks accounting software, Intuit most recently demoed at FinovateFall 2009. The company has 20 locations across 9 countries and employs 9,000 people. Founded in 1983, Intuit went public 10 years later and today has a market capitalization of $54.6 billion.

Founded in 2006, Lending Club demoed at FinovateSpring 2009 and at the inaugural Finovate in 2007. Earlier this summer, the company appointed Ronnie Momen as Chief Lending Officer. Lending Club went public in 2015 and today the company’s market capitalization sits at $1.54 billion.

Wealthfront debuted as KaChing at FinovateSpring 2009. The company began 2018 by landing $75 million in funding, bringing its total raised to $205 million. A few weeks later, the company launched a home ownership planning tool.

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Identity Risk Scoring from Socure Helps Radius Bank Reduce Online Fraud

Identity Risk Scoring from Socure Helps Radius Bank Reduce Online Fraud
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Socure

A partnership between AI-powered identity risk scoring innovator Socure and workflow management specialist Alloy has enabled Radius Bank to decrease online fraud by 50%, increase new account conversions by 30%, and make manual review nearly a process of the past – reducing it by 95%.

The joint solution marries Socure’s predictive analytics with Alloy’s decisioning engine, and adds a variety of on- and offline data sources, predictive fraud tools, and a flexible rules engine to enable real-time decisioning and onboarding for new account openings.

Socure co-founder and SVP Johnny Ayers explained: “Given the extreme difficulty in fighting fraud while onboarding consumers digitally at scale, providing our customers with an end-to-end suite of predictive analytics, decisioning and case management capabilities means speed to market, unparalleled accuracy and technical flexibility that can’t be found when trying (to) work with legacy ‘identity proofing’ platforms.”

“Balancing fraud risk and customer friction are the two leading challenges facing financial institutions when it comes to digital account opening,” co-founder and CEO of Alloy Tommy Nicholas added. “The data and intelligence provided by Socure combined with Alloy’s decision engine and reporting tools make digital onboarding infinitely scalable for the first time.”

Radius Bank is a digitally-focused, community bank based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1987, Radius Bank offers check deposit, billpay, P2P payments, and card management for its personal clients, and provides advanced treasury management and loan payment solutions for business customers. In addition to Socure and Alloy, the bank has partnered with fintechs like LevelUp and Prosper to provide additional innovative services to its customers. Radius Bank has assets of more than $1 billion.

Headquartered in New York City, Socure demonstrated its Socure ID+ solution at FinovateFall 2017. The company’s digital-to-physical identity verification technology features an integrated document authentication service to determine the authenticity of government-issued identification and ensure a match with the PII provided. Socure’s platform provides best-of-breed email, phone, and address risk scores, overall identity risk prediction, KYC and physical document verification on a single, integrated solution.

Socure has raised $31.9 million in funding, and includes ff Venture Capital, Commerce Venture Partners, and Flint Capital among its investors. Sunil Madhu is CEO and President of the company, which was founded in 2012.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Cardlytics, Intuit, Lending Club, NCR Corporation, PayPal, Sberbank, Socure, Tinkoff Bank, Wealthfront

On Finovate.com

  • Identity Risk Scoring from Socure Helps Radius Bank Reduce Online Fraud.
  • Lending Club and Wealthfront Score Intuit Consumer Data.

Around the web

  • American Express and PayPal announced expanded strategic partnership to enhanced experience for U.S. Amex card members using PayPal and Venmo.
  • NCR to test age detection technology to improve efficiency in self-service checkouts.
  • Sberbank unveils its new Payment Schedules solution, enabling users to configure the interface of Sberbank Business Online into an event feed format.
  • Tinkoff Bank launches Tinkoff Junior mobile app for children and teenagers.

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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BMO Financial Unveils New Payments Hub Powered by ACI Worldwide

BMO Financial Unveils New Payments Hub Powered by ACI Worldwide
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide

BMO is rolling out new payments hub, reports Tanya Andreasyan of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Canada’s BMO Financial Group has implemented a new payments hub based on the ACI Worldwide UP solution. The project was completed in nine months.

BMO is involved in the modernization of national payment ecosystems in Canada and the US.

“The launch of our payment hub is a cornerstone of our payment modernisation strategy and a very exciting step forward for BMO and our clients,” said Sharon Haward-Laird, head, North American treasury and payment solutions at BMO.

“Our speed-to-market differentiates BMO and has been a significant win that has positioned us well to adapt quickly to shifting demands and enable the new payment rails we are working toward in the coming months.

“It’s all about delivering faster and more efficient payment experiences for clients and with the hub, we’re well positioned to do that.”

ACI said its UP Real-Time Payments solution is “the only global solution that allows financial institutions to address their real-time gross settlement (RTGS), Swift messaging, ACH and real-time payments needs with a single, universal offering”.

Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Naples, Florida, ACI Worldwide participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, in 2016. The company’s Wolfgang Berner and Grit Ruehling led a presentation titled Simple, Global, and Secure eCommerce Payments with ACI Worldwide’s Next-Generation API that showcased ACI Worldwide’ s SAQ-A compliant JavaScript payment-form solution. The technology enables merchants to readily add dozens of alternative payment methods to their checkout page.

A publicly-traded company on the Nasdaq, ACI Worldwide trades under the ticker “ACIW”. The company has a market capitalization of $3 billion. More than 5,100 organizations around the world, as well as more than 1,000 of the world’s largest FIs use ACI’s technology to process $14 trillion in payments and securities every day.

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