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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
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.
Analytics and visualization company MapD has its head in the cloud this week. That’s because the San Francisco-based company launched a cloud-based offering, MapD Cloud.
The new service has been in the making since the company launched in 2016, but proved difficult to implement without widespread availability of GPUs in the public cloud. Previously, it was difficult for customers to set up a cluster of GPUs to run MapD software because it was challenging to find a hardware manufacturer that carried GPU server SKUs– they were scarce in public clouds. This has shifted, however, with the rise of GPU computing adoption and major technology players providing support for GPU infrastructure.
Leveraging this shift, MapD has partnered with hardware vendors to standardize on-premises deployments and launched on the AWS marketplace. These moves have helped the company become a leader in GPU-accelerated analytics.
MapD was founded in 2013. The company’s CEO Todd Mostak most recently demoed the company’s Core and Immerse components at FinovateSpring 2017. Mostak also gave a presentation at FinDEVr New York 2017 titled How GPU-Powered Visual Analytics Are Remaking Financial Services. Last fall, MapD teamed up with IBM Power Systems to enhance the speed at which SQL queries can be performed.
Since the first spring fintech conference in 2008, a total of six companies have won Best of Show honors more than once. These companies range from some of our earlier innovators like oflows and Wikinvest that have since gone on to bigger and better things, as well as more recent multiple-time winners like MX and SaleMove that have picked up Best of Show awards at our other events in London and New York.
With FinovateSpring just over a month away, we thought we’d give a tip of the hat to the companies that have helped make our Spring shows especially memorable with their demonstrations of audience-pleasing, Best of Show-winning fintech. Below the six, two-time FinovateSpring Best of Show winners, we’ve also included a complete history of FinovateSpring Best of Show winners. It’s all designed to whet your appetite for the cutting-edge fintech you’ll see on stage on May 8-9 in Santa Clara, California for FinovateSpring 2018.
SaleMove (2017, 2016) – Dedicated to bringing the in-person customer experience online, New York City-based SaleMove leverages its engagement platform to give clients in wealth management, banking, insurance, and other verticals the ability to interact with their customers in the channel – or channels – they prefer. With live video, voice, live chat, and co-browsing, SaleMove’s platform helps financial services businesses communicate better and more effectively with their customers, leading to more sales, more conversations, and improved customer service. The company was founded in 2012, and has raised more than $5 million in funding.
Money Desktop/MX (2013, 2012) – In rebranding to MX in 2014, the multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner signaled it was ready to maximize its expertise in financial data acquisition, cleansing, and visualization to help financial service providers make the most of their underused and unused data. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Lehi, Utah, MX has raised $75 million in funding, and began the year with news that Coast Capital Savings – Canada’s largest credit union by membership with more than $20 billion in assets – would deploy a next-generation PFM solution developed by MX.
PayNearMe (2013, 2011) – With more than $90 million in funding, PayNearMe operates a real time, cash transaction network that gives consumers without bank accounts or access to automatic payments the ability to pay with cash. Founded in 2009 and based in Sunnyvale, California, the company acquired Prism Money in 2016 and shortly afterwards reorganized itself as Handle Financial to better communicate its various brands to consumers.
Dwolla (2012, 2011) – Enterprise payments platform Dwolla is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa and was founded in 2008 by Ben Milne. The company’s white-label payments API enables businesses to credit or debit user-connected accounts, and its technology is also used for verification and user discovery. With more than $51 million in funding, Dwolla recently announced it would power identity verification for Yahoo!’s Tanda savings app.
oflows (2011, 2010) – Founded in 2009 and acquired by fellow Finovate alum Andera in the fall of 2011, oflows specialized in multi-channel paperless account opening solutions. The company was named a Top 10 Company to Watch in 2011 by Bank Technology News. Andera itself was the subject of an acquisition in 2014, when it was purchased by Bottomline Technologies for $48 million.
Wikinvest/SigFig (2011, 2010) – Known today as SigFig, the company was founded in 2007 as a consumer finance portal called Wikinvest. Picking up a pair of Best of Show awards in the early days of Finovate, the company has since grown into one of wealthtech’s biggest success stories as a wealth management services provider with more than $114 million in assets under management.
And here’s the full list of FinovateSpring Best of Show winners.
Security breach detection and account takeover prevention service SpyCloud recently brought home $5 million in funding. The Series A round comes courtesy of existing investors Silverton Partners and March Capital Partners. This brings the Austin-based company’s total funding to $7.5 million.
SpyCloud helps prevent account takeovers by proactively identifying exposed accounts as early as possible so that businesses can force password changes for vulnerable accounts before fraudsters take action. The company will use the new funds to fuel product development, conduct deeper security research, expand its database of assets, and grow its team.
The company was founded in 2016 and emerged from stealth mode a year later. Since that time, SpyCloud has compiled a database of 32 billion exposed accounts, leaked passwords, and pieces of personally identifiable information; it adds billions of new account data points every month. This data repository is available to service providers via an API to help prevent customer account takeover. SpyCloud has protected tens of millions of accounts for notable companies across a variety of industries, including finance, retail, and healthcare.
“There isn’t a company in the world that doesn’t run the constant risk of having its employee or customer accounts exposed, and that leads to a host of other issues,” said Ted Ross, CEO and co-founder of SpyCloud. “The only chance businesses stand against these increasingly-proficient criminals is to know as soon as possible which accounts have been exposed and to take preventative measures well before credentials make it onto the dark web.”
SpyCloud CEO and Co-Founder Ted Ross, along with Head of Business Development, Chris LaConte, gave a Best of Show-winning presentation at FinovateFall 2017. The company also has the honor of winning the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency Defense Innovation Challenge. We published a profile on SpyCloud, along with an interview with Ross, last fall.
It is no surprise to see companies like NVIDIA, Intel, Dell EMC, and SAS at the top of the quarterly insideBIGDATA IMPACT 50 roster. But what caught our eye was the handful of Finovate alums that won recognition on insideBIGDATA’s review of companies that are “making waves in the technology areas of big data, data science, machine learning, AI, and deep learning.”
“Our in-box is filled each day with new announcements, commentaries, and insights about what’s driving the success of our industry so we’re in a unique position (to) publish our quarterly IMPACT 50 List of the most important movers and shakers in our industry,” Daniel D. Gutierrez, managing editor and resident data scientist of insideBIGDATA wrote in an article accompanying the announcement.
What does it take to make the list? Gutierrez explained that the roster consists of companies that “exhibit technology leadership, strength of offering, proven innovation, positivity of message, quality perception in the enterprise, intensity and frequency of social media buzz, high profile of members of the C-suite, and in the case of public companies: positive financial indicators and stock price, and so much more!”
Our five honored Finovate alums are below. To see the full list of 50 “DataTech” companies, visit insideBIGDATA.
#9 Google (Europe 2018, Fall 2011): Appearing first on the Finovate stage with its Google Advisor solution and as recently as this spring in partnership with KBC Bank Ireland, Google is in the top ten of insideBIGDATA’s Impact 50 list. Google needs little introduction as one of the companies that has done the most to bring the benefits of data to technology consumers via solutions like Search, Maps, Google Play, and its Chrome browser. Founded in 1998, Google is headquartered in Mountain View, California.
#14 Kinetica (Europe 2018, Fall 2017): Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Kinetica enables financial institutions to conduct on-demand risk calculations using the most up-to-date data with “sub-second speed.” High frequency trading firms and traditional asset managers alike can leverage Kinetica’s technology to measure risk, identify customer behavioral patterns, and locate up-sell opportunities. With $63 million in funding, Kinetica includes fellow insideBIGDATA Impact 50 members Dell EMC, NVIDIA, and Google Cloud Platform among its partners.
#15 MapD (Spring 2017, Fall 2016): Developer of the world’s fastest open source SQL engine, MapD harnesses GPUs to deliver extreme speed at scale. Based in San Francisco, MapD provides users with powerful data visualizations made possible by the technology’s ability to query and render billions of rows of data in milliseconds. MapD’s technology originated from research conducted at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Todd Mostak is CEO of the company, which was founded in 2013.
#40 Narrative Science (Fall 2013, Spring 2013): Specialists in Advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP), Narrative Science builds solutions that enable financial institutions to analyze, understand, communicate, and act upon their data quickly and efficiently. The company’s technology can turn ordinary numeric and symbolic data and visualizations into “intelligent narratives” that express insights and context in language that is indistinguishable from that of a human author. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and founded in 2010, Narrative Science has raised more than $43 million in funding. Stuart Frankel is CEO.
#46 TIBCO (Asia 2013, Asia 2012): Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, TIBCO is a leader in integration, API management, and analytics. The company’s TIBCO Connected Intelligence Cloud gives enterprise users access to a unified suite of services including the company’s low-code development platform, TIBCO Cloud Live Apps. The company was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in September 2014 in a deal valued at $4.3 billion. TIBCO made headlines earlier this year with the appointment of a new CTO and COO.
Bazaarvoicelaunches new solution to make personalization more powerful.
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.
Banks and financial institutions have long been at the forefront of adopting technologies to increase efficiencies and provide better service to customers. From ATMs to online banking, they’ve helped to seamlessly integrate transactional technologies into the customer’s daily life. Financial institutions currently find themselves at the forefront of adopting new cognitive AI technologies that are redefining and elevating the customer experience. To add to our webinar, we speak to Grant Thornton about the realities of what fintech really means, and how you can capitalize on the impressive challenges we should expect over the next decade.
Finovate: How can your organisation prepare for and embrace the rise of intelligent automation? What are the key steps to consider?
Grant Thornton: Intelligent automation, including robotics and artificial intelligence, have transformed entire industries over the last two decades. Now it’s time for the financial services industry. Although it’s still early, financial services is headed down the same inevitable path to disruption and towards an explosion in productivity and efficiency.
In the next 5-10 years, the productivity of the enterprise will be transformed through multiple technologies, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Natural Language Processing (NLP), or Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Fintech represents a long-term, systemic change in the industry. The only successful way forward is to take a long-term view. The key is to plan for a steady pace of adoption for interrelated technologies rather than focus on individual projects and siloed technological innovations that will not build upon each other.
The first step is to improve your “digital quotient” — the extent to which your processes, information, data and activities are in digital form. A high digital quotient makes your path to the cognitive enterprise easier.
To build your digital quotient, take a clear look at your efficiencies and operating model:
How many processes and activities are digitally accessible?
How much data is available?
How much conversion work is needed?
Start by piloting small, focused projects that are clearly measurable and materially understood. Engage your C-Suite and ensure that they understand the importance of building your organization’s digital quotient. They need to support the significant operational and cultural changes that come with becoming an automated cognitive enterprise. This is critical to your organization’s success.
Finovate: Do customers expect AI-driven experiences in their interactions with businesses?
Grant Thornton: Thanks to their experience with leading retailers and technology giants—including Apple’s Siri and Google’s Alexa—we believe customers will not only expect, but will actually demand AI-driven experiences in their interactions.
In fact, AI will soon seem normal:
By 2020, IBM[1] projects that more than 85% of all customer interactions will be handled without the need for a human agent.
By 2025, Forbes Magazine[2] estimates that 95% of customer interactions will be supported by AI technology.
AI empowers personalization like never before. Customers don’t want to be treated as “one of the crowd.” Companies such as Amazon, Walmart and Google set high standards for quality of personalized customer experience, and customers routinely compare their experiences with financial institutions to their most recent shopping experience.
Finovate: What are the key advantages of offering chatbot interaction? Do customers consider communication with chatbots as a 2-way communication channel? In the future, will banks have something like an Alexa to guide their customers through their website and services?
Grant Thornton: According to a report by Grand View Research reported on BusinessInsider.com[3], the global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2025, an annual growth rate of 24.3 percent. Likewise InfoWorld.com[4] reports that approximately 45 percent of global users prefer chatbots as the primary mode of communication for customer service inquires.
In fact, according to ForbesMagazine[5], chatbots are becoming so common that consumers are growing to expect them. For example:
Domino’s uses a Facebook Messenger chatbot named Dom that allows customers to place an order simply by sending a message that says “pizza”. The bot gets the details and the order is completed faster than a customer could call the store or drive to place an order.
China Merchant Bank, one of the largest credit card companies in China, takes advantage of AI bots to interact with a huge number of customers. The bank’s WeChat Messenger bot handles 1.5 to 2 million customer conversations each day, mostly about things like card balances and payments. Customers can quickly get the information they need, and it saves the bank from hiring thousands of human employees to match the same volume of requests.
In banking, chatbots can go beyond the basic functions of mobile banking, enabling banks to start a conversation about each customer’s finances. They can use predictive analytics, and cognitive messaging to perform tasks ranging from making payments to checking balances and paying down debt and even notifying customers of personalized savings opportunities.
Millennials, in particular, seem to be enthusiastic about computer-generated advice and services. This trend reflects the fact that they typically gravitate toward the latest in digital banking technologies as digital natives. This is not just because these tools are cool or cutting-edge, but because they deliver banking customer experiences that are simple, consistent and relevant.
Finovate: Can you share what intelligent opportunities are available for the customer within personalised eCommerce experience?
Grant Thornton: It’s one thing to know what the consumer wants and what should be done to provide a differentiated and contextual consumer experience—it’s another to be able to deliver on the “personalization promise.”
Staying relevant in today’s competitive environment demands personalization. Unlike most banks, Fintech firms provide consumers with an improved digital experience based on contextual insight and simplified delivery of financial services. These smaller start-ups build solutions that often are superior to those from legacy financial institutions by leveraging advanced analytics of consumer data and digital technology.
Whether they’re patronizing traditional legacy banking institutions or the newest of Fintech startups, consumers demand deals and discounts, convenience, relevance and customer experiences that combine the latest in digital banking with human interaction. They will share personal data to get what they want, and will switch if they do not.
Finovate: How to achieve balance between the human touch and technology in customer experience? Does AI contribute to the true currency of a customer relationship – engagement and loyalty?
Grant Thornton: Because consumers do the vast majority of their shopping for a new financial institution using digital channels, it is no longer adequate to wait until the customer or member walks into a branch or decides to purchase a new product online or via smartphone.
Instead, banks need to engage customers at the earliest stages of their purchase journey.
AI is an important tool for institutions that seek to become a bank with a “personal touch.” They should not, however, presume that frequent customer interactions alone create true engagement or develop enduring relationships. What really matters is the quality and personal relevance of customer communications.
Banks must put customers’ wants and needs at the heart of all activities. They need to shift their focus from simply selling products and services towards providing relevant and contextual financial advice. In other words, a bank should demonstrate a true interest in customers’ financial well-being. AI affords banks the insight and capability they need to make this shift in focus.
Finovate: How can an organisation capitalise on the deployment of a smart AI/ML solution?
Grant Thornton: At the most basic level, technological advances can boost process efficiency, which translates to faster, around-the-clock responses to customer inquiries. Additionally, chabots powered AI/ML can assist customers through the online account opening process by proactively suggesting personalized services based on life events and previous banking experiences.
Beyond traditional uses for financial performance and regulatory reporting, data can be collected, processed and analyzed as a means to understanding customers’ expectations in order to enhance their experience. As banks advance their digital programs, they can uncover insights about trends, products and services to improve, which to discontinue, and where to devote resources. This results in institutional cost savings, but more importantly, in greater customer satisfaction.
At a higher level, AI/ML solutions can reveal new opportunities by tapping into underutilized data sources. For example, monitoring internet browsing and uniting customer, product and pricing data can reveal new insights into customer desires and preferences. With this knowledge, a bank can nuance solutions and target ads to specific consumer groups and influencers.
Finally, smart AI/ML solutions can help banks access data that supports or enhances their overall strategic framework. In the process, they can develop a holistic understanding of their customers, opening the door to faster, more flexible product prototypes that are responsive based on the data and interaction that the customers are providing.
This holistic picture of the customer needs enables financial institutions to be proactive and to cross-sell more effectively. In essence, they are able to more effectively anticipate and serve customer needs, helping them on their journey while increasing share of wallet.
Community banking and marketing services company Kasasa has cut a deal with enterprise software firm MicroStrategy. Under the agreement Kasasa will integrate MicroStrategy 10 into its business intelligence platform, Insight.
Kasasa’s Insight is a data-backed analytics solution that offers community banking clients product and marketing performance awareness, and helps them better understand consumer portfolios and market conditions. MicroStrategy 10 brings to the table a suite of research and adjustable product marketing tools to drive customer engagement at different levels.
Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy said, “This integration allows financial institutions to have a single version of the truth that provides the insight needed to identify new opportunities and drive profitability.”
“Delivering the most practical and impactful insights to our clients is a top priority,” said Gabe Krajicek, CEO of Kasasa. “Our goal is to help community institutions build stronger relationships with their customers so they can win new business and better serve their existing customers. MicroStrategy provides Kasasa Insights with a critical competitive edge to help us accomplish our goals.”
Kasasa selected MicroStrategy for its new adaptive layout capabilities and its bootstrap framework. These elements will help Kasasa’s developers easily update the design across multiple devices. Speaking about a specific implementation of Insight, Krajicek said, “Our analytics platform now allows us to see the entire consumer base of the fifth-largest banking network in the country. We can extract actionable insights from large amounts of consumer data to increase the profitability of their customers.”
Kasasa was founded in 2003 when it launched its flagship REWARDChecking account to help community financial institutions compete against big banks. Since then, the company has expanded to 350 employees and now offers a full suite of branded bank products. Kasasa debuted at FinovateFall 2009 under BancVue, which was founded in 2003, and created a premium, national consumer brand for the BancVue product offering – Kasasa – which launched in 2009. Kasasa will present its newest technology at FinovateSpring next month. To check it out, register before April 27 and save.
Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy demoed a mobile identity network at FinovateSpring 2013. The company went public in 1998 and the latest release of its business intelligence platform, MicroStrategy 10, was released in 2016.
Enterprise blockchain solution Ripple has joined the likes of 231 organizations who belong to the Hyperledger blockchain consortium.
Hosted by The Linux Foundation, Hyperledger is an open source group consisting of leaders in finance, banking, IoT, manufacturing, and technology that seeks to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. Other Finovate alum members of the group, which launched in 2015, include Tradeshift, AlphaPoint, BBVA, Blockchain, PWC, Sberbank, SecureKey, and Wipro.
After teaming up with NTT Data last year, Ripple and the Japanese system integration company submitted Hyperledger Quilt, a Java-based Interledger Protocol (ILP), to Hyperledger. Through the partnership with Hyperledger, said Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas, “developers will be able to access Interledger Protocol in Java for enterprise use.” Thomas added that Hyperledger Quilt “connects Hyperledger blockchains with other ILP-capable payment systems such as XRP Ledger, Ethereum, Bitcoin (Lightning), Litecoin, Mojaloop, and RippleNet, helping us to deliver on our vision for an internet of value – where money moves as information does today.”
Ripple was among 14 companies to join the consortium last week. Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf explained that this growth is beneficial to the future of the blockchain. “The accelerating pace of growth and adoption of Hyperledger across industries and geographies underscores the power of our community and the technologies it is building,” he said. “It also reflects a global awakening to the impact of blockchain for business.”
With more than 100 customers across the globe, Ripple has offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney. At FinovateSpring 2013, company co-founder Chris Larsen debuted Ripple (originally known as OpenCoin).
Last week, the company funded every project on DonorsChoose.org, a platform where school teachers crowdfund classroom needs and special projects. Ripple fulfilled all 35,647 open campaigns with a $29 million donation. Earlier in March, Ripple began piloting blockchain-based payments with FLEETCOR. The company was founded in 2012 and has since raised $93 million.
Moxtra will help OCBC Bank Malaysia deploy and test its new Secure Chat Banking mobile app. Recently approved by Bank Negara – the country’s central bank – the pilot will take place in a regulatory sandbox environment with real customers and actual financial transactions. The bank hopes a successful test, which is expected to last for one year, will enable it to provide its premier customers with the first banking app of its kind in the country.
The idea of the new banking app came as a response to a rise in phone-based phishing fraud incidents, in which fraudsters were impersonating bank officials to trick customers into giving them personal information. OCBC Bank Malaysia head of consumer financial service Lim Wyson explained that the result has been to make bank customers very skeptical about banking by phone. “This has made it difficult for banks to carry out even simple, day-to-day, call-back verifications for confirmation of transactions,” he said.
The new app will remove the need for call-back verifications by enabling customers to securely give their financial transaction instructions to their relationship manager. Lim Wyson suggested this will also help make consumers less vulnerable to fraud, as well. “This will improve people’s experience of our services without compromising security,” he said. “It will also ultimately safeguard them from falling victim to phone spoofing and scamming activities.”
Moxtra provides financial services companies with an omni-channel client engagement platform that supports collaboration between clients and relationship managers. The technology features secure messaging, e-signatures, voice layered over content and supports real-time meetings. The service is platform-agnostic, mobile-friendly, and can be white-labeled and integrated into existing workflows.
OCBC Bank has been making major strides in modernizing its banking services of late. Last month, the bank became the first bank in Singapore to offer voice-powered, cashless payments. “This latest service marks a major milestone in banking as it brings us one huge leap closer to making natural language voice-activated banking and payments a reality,” Aditya Gupta, OCBC Bank Head of E-Business Singapore, said in a statement. “This is just a start – we will continue to embed ourselves in our customer’s everyday lives using voice-powered AI tools which they will be able to use for more banking transactions such as bill payments, money management, and common servicing requests in the future,” Gupta said.
Moxtra demonstrated its Engagement Platform at FinovateFall 2017. The company, which was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Cupertino, California, has more than five million registered users of its solutions. Moxtra has raised $20 million in funding and includes KDDI and Cisco among its investors. Subrah Iyar is CEO.
ITSectorlaunches ITSCredit spinoff (news in Portugese).
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.
CNH Industrial Capital America (CNH), the captive finance company for capital goods provider CNH Industrial America, has selectedFIS’s asset finance solution for managing its commercial contract and lease portfolio, reports Antony Peyton of Banking Technology (Finovate’s sister publication).
According to FIS, CNH was looking to consolidate management of its disparate commercial contract and lease portfolios on a single integrated platform.
Brett Davis, president, CNH Industrial Capital America, said the solution provides a “new level of configuration, automation and advanced integration capabilities for managing our business.”
By selecting the solution, CNH will get an integrated view of customer and dealer information, “enhancing its decision-making while simplifying accounting and tax reporting, managing regulatory compliance and reducing costs.”
At FinovateFall 2016, FIS demonstrated how it was extending Cardless Cash solution to enable mobile banking customers to pre-order funds and withdraw cash at participating banks and ATMs in more than 70,000 location in the U.S.
In March, FIS was recognized for Best In-Class Wealth Management Outsourcing in the 2018 Family Wealth Report Awards. The company also picked up 15 Stevie Awards in the 2018 American Business Awards for Sales & Customer Service last month,
With more than 20,000 clients in more than 130 countries, FIS is a global financial services technology company with more than 57,000 employed around the world. The company is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, and was founded in 1968.
