Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

Around the web

  • PaySimple announces latest payment integration with Profit Rhino’s selling app for home service companies.
  • The Financial Times ranks Transferwise, Kantox, Zopa Featurespace, Trustly, Kreditech on its FT 1000 list of Europe’s fastest growing companies.
  • Jumio and Insights Network partner to deliver “Passport” for blockchain projects.
  • LendingTree launches Credit Analyzer, a free credit and debt analysis tool.

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.

WorkFusion’s $50 Million Round to Fuel Robotic Process Automation

WorkFusion’s $50 Million Round to Fuel Robotic Process Automation

Robotic process automation (RPA) technology is a term that’s becoming more and more common in fintech. And thanks to WorkFusion’s $50 million round announced today, it’s a trend that’s gaining even more footing.

This Series E investment was led by Hawk Equity and Declaration Partners, with contributions from previous investors Georgian Partners, iNovia Capital, and NGP Capital. WorkFusion’s total funding now stands at $118 million.

The company also announced today it has appointed former President Alex Lyashok as CEO. Lyashok will take the reins from Co-founder and former CEO, Max Yankelevich, who will transition to Chief Strategy Officer.

Hawk Equity Founder David Hawkins said that WorkFusion is a “clear leader” in leveraging intelligent automation for workforce efficiency. The company plans to use the $50 million to expand its global operations, which is essential to accommodate growing interest in RPA software. According to Lyashok, “Demand for our products grew 850% in 2017, reaffirming the power of AI to automate common business processes such as customer onboarding in banking, claims processing in insurance, or accounts payable in shared services.”

WorkFusion was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in New York City with offices in eight countries throughout Europe and Asia. At FinovateFall 2014, Yankelevich demoed how banks can leverage the company’s active learning automation technology to create workflow efficiencies. Last year, the company partnered with IBA Group to launch a Smart Application for customer support email processing.

Lender Price Integrates with Mortgage Management Solution from Ellie Mae

Lender Price Integrates with Mortgage Management Solution from Ellie Mae

Cre8tech Labs’ Lender Price, a digital mortgage platform that provides a product pricing and eligibility engine and competitive, real-time analytics, has partnered with fellow Finovate alum Ellie Mae. The Pasadena, California-based company, which demonstrated its PPE engine at FinovateSpring last year, will integrate its technology with Ellie Mae’s all-in-one mortgage management solution, Encompass. “Our pricing engine coupled with our real-time competitive analytics platform provides actionable insight into competitor pricing,” Cre8tech Labs President and CIO Dawar Alimi said.

Lender Price gives mortgage loan originators an openly accessible marketplace to price mortgage loans with hundreds of lenders in real-time. The company’s PPE engine can handle producing pricing and eligibility across all mortgage products including Conforming, Non-Conforming, Specialty Loans, and Hard Money, making it a more flexible solution compared to pricing engines built over a decade ago that are still commonly used.

“We are delighted to partner with Ellie Mae,” said Jerry Halbrook, who joined Lender Price as CEO in September. “Our secure, seamless integration with Encompass enables our clients to simplify the process of managing Products, Pricing and Eligibility, so they can more efficiently process mortgage loans and grow their business. We look forward to a long, successful relationship with Ellie Mae.”

Lender Price is the second Finovate alum to team up with the cloud-based mortgage finance platform provider this year. In March, Finicity announced that it was integrating its digital verification technology into Ellie Mae’s Encompass solution. Ellie Mae SVP of business development Parvesh Sahi said this underscored Ellie Mae’s commitment to working with technology partners to improve the way it serves customers and “change the way lenders and consumers engage in the loan manufacturing process.”

Founded in 2015, Lender Price demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2017. With more than 85 partners and more than 30,000 registered users, Lender Price also recently partnered with Black Knight to integrate its LoanSphere Empower LOS into Lender Price’s POS solution. Last fall, the company was named a 2017 HW Tech100 Winner by Housing Wire.

Also demoing its technology at FinovateSpring 2017 last year, Ellie Mae showed how its Encompass Connect SolutionsConsumer Connect and Developer Connect, help lenders improve the application process for customers and provide developers with tools to quickly add new features and customizations to the platform. In March, Ellie Mae launched its Encompass Data Connect solution, which provides mortgage lenders with real-time data to help them make better lending decisions.

$1.32 Billion Raised by 26 Alums in Q1 of 2018

$1.32 Billion Raised by 26 Alums in Q1 of 2018

It seems as if it was only yesterday when we were looking at the first quarter funding numbers for our alums in 2017 and wondering if the slow start was a harbinger of investment stinginess to come.

Fortunately, by the end of 2017, investment in fintech in general and our Finovate alums in specific had rebounded strongly. As the financial world accommodated itself to the incoming Trump administration, so too did fintech investors get back to the business of putting major money behind some of our industry’s most innovative startups. The result was a big year for Finovate alums who raised more than $2.7 billion for 2017, recording their fourth consecutive year of more than $2 billion in funding.

And it looks like the momentum is still going strong. For the first quarter of 2018, 26 Finovate alums have raised more than $1.32 billion in funding combined. This number is not only more than 5x our first quarter funding total from last year, it also rivals any other first quarter in our history – as our quarterly comparison below shows.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

  • Q1 2017: $230 million raised by 20 alums
  • Q1 2016: $656 million raised by 32 alums
  • Q1 2015: $680 million raised by 29 alums
  • Q1 2014: $600 million raised by 23 alums

What is especially tantalizing about Q1 numbers this year is the high number of undisclosed investments. This quarter, five of the investments were undisclosed. This compares with two undisclosed investments from Q1 2017, five in Q1 2016, one in Q1 2015, and one in Q1 2014. The actual amounts of undisclosed investments can vary widely, of course, but having five such investments in a quarter suggests our real alum funding total for Q1 is actually higher.

Top 10 Equity Investments

  1. Credit Karma: $500 million
  2. NuBank: $150 million
  3. eToro: $100 million
  4. Ledger: $75 million
  5. Wealthfront: $75 million
  6. Alkami: $70 million
  7. defi SOLUTIONS: $55 million
  8. Endor: $45 million
  9. Stash: $37.5 million
  10. Ohpen: $31 million

In terms of the top equity investments in the first quarter, Credit Karma stands out with their secondary investment of $500 million. NuBank’s $150 million comes in second place, with the $100 million raised by eToro being our third largest equity investment of the first quarter of the year. Tied for fourth place are Ledger and Wealthfront, each raising $75 million in funding. The top 10 equity investments in Q1 totaled $1.14 billion or 86% of the quarter’s total funding.

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q1 2018.

January: More than $338 million raised by ten alums

February: More than $156 million raised by ten alums

March: More than $825 million raised by six alums


If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the first quarter of 2018, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at [email protected]. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

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The Analysts are Up & the Pressure is On

The Analysts are Up & the Pressure is On

After the final fintech demo at FinovateSpring next month, the next highlight to take the stage will be a committee of six fintech experts. Each analyst will have seven minutes to make their case for what they see as the hottest trend and opportunity in financial services.

The pressure is on for this group. Here’s who will be in the hot seat at FinovateSpring next month:

Jacob Jegher

Jegher is an experienced fintech executive and digital banking thought leader. He advises clients on emerging technologies and business strategies related to retail, small business, and corporate digital banking. Jegher provides strategic consulting to financial institutions and solution providers on issues ranging from digital strategy to vendor selection. In addition to his client-facing responsibilities, Jacob leads Javelin’s overall strategy, marketing, and product development efforts.

Most recently, Jegher was Vice President of Global Solution Marketing and Head of Analyst Relations at FIS, where he was responsible for marketing strategy efforts across all business units and solutions. He also brings extensive expertise in the banking research and consulting field, having spent over 10 years as a Research Director at Celent.

Tiffani Montez

Montez is a Retail Banking senior analyst at Aite Group covering card issuance for prepaid, credit, and debit cards. She has deep experience in global financial services with more than 20 years of experience in strategic planning, strategic execution, and consumer experience design. Montez has the unique ability to not only build strategies but also provide the strategic guidelines for executing complex strategic plans to deliver results.

Prior to joining Aite Group, Montez held executive-level positions at Wells Fargo, building digital experiences for various product groups such as home lending, personal credit, wealth, brokerage, and retirement, and was a principal analyst at Forrester Research, covering topics such as mobile banking, digital financial management, multichannel banking, and next-generation sales strategies. Most recently, she was the VP of operations at Terafina, helping banks and credit unions transform their customer experience through an omnichannel strategy. Her unique blend of experience as a practitioner, analyst, and vendor solution provider gives her the foundation to be able to provide thought leadership to clients through all lenses of the financial services ecosystem.

Ron Shevlin

Shevlin is the Director of Research at Cornerstone Advisors where he heads up the firm’s strategic research efforts, including the Insight Vault service. Shevlin is the author of the book, Smarter Bank, and is the purveyor of fine snark on his Snarketing blog and the Fintech Snark Tank podcast. Shevlin’s experience includes research and consulting for Aite Group, Forrester Research, and KPMG.

Shane Hubbell

Hubbell is a Vice President at Arbor Advisors and has more than 10 years of experience as an investment banker, business operations manager, and entrepreneur. In his role at Arbor, Hubbell is responsible for driving the firm’s business development efforts to source new clients as well as helping clients execute successful transactions. He has executed over $600 million of M&A and capital raising transactions over his career.

Prior to joining Arbor, Hubbell helped drive the strategic development of Goldman Sachs’ derivative trading systems. Previous to this, he was co-founder and CFO of a biotechnology company that developed a safer device for a cricothyrotomy.

Daniel Latimore

Latimore, CFA, is the Senior Vice President of Celent’s Banking group and is based in the firm’s Boston office. Latimore’s areas of focus include the banking ecosystem, digital and omnichannel banking, and innovation. Underlying each is a keen interest in consumer behavior and technology-enabled strategy. Latimore is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and client gatherings, having addressed audiences ranging from intimate meetings of CEOs and central banks to conference keynotes in more than a dozen countries. He led research groups at Deloitte and IBM, worked in industry Liberty Mutual and Merrill Lynch (where he lived in New York, Tokyo and London), and was a consultant at McKinsey & Co.

Jerry Silva

Jerry Silva is research director for IDC Financial Insights responsible for the global retail banking practice. Jerry’s research focuses on technology trends and customer expectations and behaviors in retail banking worldwide. Jerry draws upon over 25 years experience in the financial services industry to cover a variety of topics, from the back office, to customer channels, to governance in the technology shops at financial institutions. His work for both institutions and vendors gives Jerry a broad perspective in technology strategies.


Join us on May 8 through 11 at the Santa Clara convention center to hear the experts talk about the latest in fintech. Register by April 27 and save.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Lender Price Integrates with Mortgage Management Solution from Ellie Mae.
  • WorkFusion’s $50 Million Round to Fuel Robotic Process Automation.
  • $1.32 Billion Raised by 26 Alums in Q1 of 2018.

Around the web

  • Retail chain Speedway names InComm Innovative Business Partner of the Year.
  • Technology from Malauzai and Geezeo contributes to new mobile app for Florida’s Axiom Bank.
  • YellowDog announces new partnership with [RE]DESIGN.
  • Mr. Cooper awarded Top Servicing Performance Rating from Fannie Mae. Come see Mr. Cooper’s demo at FinovateSpring next month.
  • Arxan launches new app security monitoring and analysis service, Arxan Threat Analytics.

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.

Micronotes to Scale AI-Enabled Marketing Platform with $3 Million in Funding

Micronotes to Scale AI-Enabled Marketing Platform with $3 Million in Funding

Cloud-based interview marketing company Micronotes has locked in $3 million in funding today, bringing the company’s total amount raised to $8 million. The round was led by TTV Capital, a VC firm focused on early-stage fintech companies. Vestigo Ventures, also an early-stage VC firm with a fintech focus, participated as well.

Micronotes will use the funds to scale its platform by bolstering the support of sales, marketing, and engineering. The Massachusetts-based company focuses on helping banks strengthen customer relationships with a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that leverages machine learning to match customers with banking products and services.

The company offers three main products. The first is Cross-Sell, which helps banks cross-sell products by conducting a mini-interview with customers about their needs without disrupting core banking functions. NPS Module enables banks to individually measure the net promoter score for a large percentage of its user base, instead of just a small sample. And the Predict Module, which scores how relevant every bank product is to each customer, and help banks to anticipate their needs.

“Micronotes’ vision is to interview the world’s customers, all seven billion, starting with banking customers,” said Devon Kinkead, CEO and co-founder of Micronotes. “The team at Vestigo understands our mission and how data and technology can be applied to financial services to create better, stronger and more profitable customer experiences. We look forward to leveraging Vestigo’s strong operational expertise within financial services to rapidly expand into our beachhead market.”

Micronotes was founded in 2008 by serial entrepreneurs and MIT Sloan School alumni, Devon Kinkead and Christian Klacko. Ian Sheridan, co-founder and managing director of Vestigo Ventures, and a member of the Board of Directors for Micronotes, said that the two “represent the rare combination of deep expertise in AI with the ability to achieve superior business outcomes.” At FinovateSpring 2013, the company demoed how Alliance Federal Credit Union leverages its cross-sell capabilities. Last fall, Micronotes released free downloadable propensity scores to help banks access predictive marketing analytics on their clients.

Symbiont Brings the Blockchain to Mortgagetech in New Partnership with Ranieri Solutions

Symbiont Brings the Blockchain to Mortgagetech in New Partnership with Ranieri Solutions

Could blockchain technology revitalize mortgagetech?

Blockchain and smart contract technology innovator Symbiont has teamed up with Ranieri Solutions to explore ways to use its smart contract platform to “systematically improve all aspects of the mortgage industry,” according to an announcement today. Ranieri Solutions is a financial services technology investment firm founded by securitized mortgage market pioneer Lewis Ranieri. The firm sees an opportunity to combine its own knowledge and experience in the mortgage market with Symbiont’s innovations in enterprise blockchain networks.

“When Symbiont was founded, it was my dream and vision to develop decentralized technology solutions that could solve the root problems that were at the heart of the financial crisis,” Symbiont CEO Mark Smith said. “Blockchain and smart contract technology is proving to be that solution.” Smith acknowledged Ranieri’s deep history in and beyond mortgage financing, referring to him as “the genius behind modern securitized markets.” He called the partnership a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for himself and a “seminal moment” for Symbiont.

Ranieri said blockchain technology was an opportunity to modernize a region of the financial world that has not kept up with the rest of the industry. “The mortgage market, despite significant efforts, continues to lag behind from a technological standpoint creating inefficiencies that impact mortgage loans throughout their life cycle,” he said. “By partnering with Symbiont, a proven blockchain pioneer, Ranieri Solutions believes that together we can implement this transformative technology to bring necessary efficiencies, transparency, and security to mortgage markets.”

In addition to putting its blockchain-based smart contract technology to work to the improve mortgage market, Symbiont has demonstrated its effectiveness in a variety of use cases. In December, Symbiont partnered with Vanguard and the Center for Research in Security Prices to use blockchain technology to simplify index data sharing between index providers and market participants. Last summer, the company publicly demonstrated how its Symbiont Assembly platform could be used for private equity issuance, and teamed up with PrivateMarket.io to use its SmartSecurities technology to build an alternative investment marketplace for closed-end funds.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City, Symbiont participated in our developers conference in New York, FinDEVr 2016. The company’s Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Adam Krellenstein discussed the architecture of Symbiont’s Smart Securities technology in a presentation titled “Distributed Ledgers and Smart Contracts.” Symbiont has raised more than $15 million in funding and includes Celeridem Capital Management and SenaHill Partners among its investors.

Mambu Launches Digital Marketplace for Cloud-Enabled Banking, Lending Apps

Mambu Launches Digital Marketplace for Cloud-Enabled Banking, Lending Apps

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) banking engine provider Mambu has launched its digital marketplace to offer cloud-enabled apps, products and tools for banking and lending, reports Antony Peyton of FinTech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Mambu Marketplace offers a choice of global and localized solutions which can be integrated with the SaaS engine. Its offerings are based on an API-driven architecture.

Ben Goldin, Mambu’s head of product and technology, said the launch sets the stage for Mambu’s pre-integration strategy and “that no single vendor can provide market leading components for every module of a digital banking architecture.”

Goldin added that for its partners, the marketplace “provides an opportunity to present their offerings to institutions and influencers with the Mambu engine powering a composable architecture.”

Some of these partners named on the marketplace site include fellow Finovate alums Onfido, nCino, Avoka and Experian.

The marketplace was launched as part of Mambu’s “revamped digital identity” which includes a new look website.

Founded in 2011, the German company’s technology powers over 6,000 loan and deposit products which serve over four million end customers. Mambu has more than 250 live operations in over 46 countries, ranging from fintech firms to banks. With more than $13 million in funding, the company demonstrated its technology at FinovateAsia 2013.

DriveWealth Closes $21 Million in Funding

DriveWealth Closes $21 Million in Funding

Wealthtech company DriveWealth has closed a Series B round of funding this week. The $21 million investment was led by Raptor Group Holdings, SBI Holdings, and Point72 Ventures. Existing investor Route 66 Ventures also participated. This brings the company’s total funding to just shy of $30 million.

DriveWealth will use the funds to enhance its existing products. The New Jersey-based company offers a suite of APIs that help online brokers, digital advisors, and financial services companies access the U.S. securities market. DriveWealth also has an API that allows partners to integrate native investment experiences into their own mobile applications. Among the company’s investment offerings are real-time, dollar-based investing capabilities that enable any investor to own shares in U.S. equities, regardless of stock price or deposit size.

Robert Cortright, CEO of DriveWealth, said that the company’s mission is to “provide global partners low cost, frictionless access to wealth building products.” He added, “Our solutions provide our partners native integration into their customer facing, mobile applications and reimagine investing for the clients they serve.”

As you may expect, today’s investors had positive things to say about DriveWealth and its business model. Yoshitaka Kitao, Chairman of SBI Holdings commented: “As a pioneer of internet-based financial services, we are excited to add DriveWealth to the world’s first ‘financial ecosystem’ that SBI has now expanded from Japan to worldwide.” Pete Casella, Head of Fintech Investments at Point72 Ventures, said, “DriveWealth has built a world class tech-driven brokerage stack that allows fintech firms to incorporate a wide range of investments capabilities into their product offerings.”

Founded in 2012, DriveWealth’s clients include MoneyLion, a lending and wealth management app, and INVSTR, a U.K.-based stock trading application. At FinovateAsia 2016, the company released a new API to enable partners to offer a robo advisory product suite and a self-directed equity investing platform. In 2016, the company partnered with Alkanza to bring robo advisory solutions to Latin America.

Does Your Loan Help You Save For Retirement? It Should.

Does Your Loan Help You Save For Retirement? It Should.

John Waupsh is Chief Innovation Officer of Kasasa, an award-winning financial technology and marketing technology provider. Ahead of his session at FinovateSpring where John will talk about the role of the branch in a digital world, he discusses how loans should help people save for retirement.

Building retirement savings is not a strong suit for many Americans. According to a 2018 survey by GoBankingRates, more than 40 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, including the 14 percent with $0 saved for retirement. Financial planning experts frequently recommend having at least eight times your salary saved for your post-career future, and with life expectancy continuing to increase, the minimal recommend savings will likely rise even higher.

It’s so easy for consumers to put off saving for retirement. Their last day on the job seems so far away, and bearing today’s financial burdens like bills and loan payments often means restricting, reducing or simply never beginning to save for tomorrow.

But there’s a better way.

Historically, consumers have often felt like they must jump through three hoops before starting to save for retirement or increasing investments in their future. First, they must be meeting their primary needs like paying power bills and buying groceries. Second, many want to build cushions of both emergency and “fun money,” in case the need arises to pay for a last-minute home repair, an unforeseen medical expense or even a spontaneous weekend vacation. Last, many want to pay off their debt before beginning to save or increasing retirement contributions. These second and third hoops are where many consumers are missing out.

Despite the fact that most Americans want to pay off their loans faster to increase retirement savings, those that meet their primary needs rarely pay extra toward their monthly loan payments because it’s money they can never get back if they need or want it later.

That’s changing with the Kasasa Loan. It is the only loan product that can serve as a tool for building savings through the ability to take-back extra payments.

A loan that allows borrowers to pay ahead to reduce debt, but take that extra back if they need it, eliminates the fear of parting with ‘extra money,’ enabling the consumer to make better financial decisions like paying down debt faster. And when debt is paid down sooner, consumers are freed up to boost retirement savings earlier, when it really counts due to the power of compound interest. Consumers like this option. In fact, according to a recent study, nine out of ten consumers prefer a loan with take-back functionality over comparably priced loans, and 98 percent of consumers say they would refinance existing debt at the same rate to have the flexibility of taking back their extra payments.

In addition to flexibility, visual transparency is something that the lending world has been lacking until now. The innovation of sleek, mobile-friendly dashboards in personal financial management (PFM) apps have long helped consumers budget and visually understand their money. Consumers should now expect the same features from a loan. Having the ability to actually see the impact of extra payments enables borrowers to comprehend better the impact of paying down their loan faster and therefore, make smarter financial decisions for their future.

As Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials and even Generation Z inch closer to retirement, there is an opportunity for these consumers to make better borrowing decisions by choosing a loan that is extremely flexible, easy to work with, and visually transparent. In the past, taking out a loan has prevented consumers from saving for their future. Now, it is possible for them to borrow in a way that not only doesn’t hurt their retirement funds but actually helps them save.

For more information on Kasasa, visit www.kasasa.com, or visit them on Twitter @Kasasa, @KasasaNews, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • DriveWealth Closes $21 Million in Funding.
  • Symbiont Brings the Blockchain to Mortgagetech in New Partnership with Raneiri Partners.
  • Micronotes to Scale AI-Enabled Marketing Platform with $3 Million in Funding.

Around the  web

  • nCino appoints James Peverell as General Manager, EMEA, and Hali Kahn as Regional Vice President.
  • Finastra named a Category Leader in the Chartis Hedge Fund Risk Management Quadrant in the Hedge Fund Risk Management Technology 2018 report.
  • Comarch wins award from the Italy Protection Forum for innovation in digital transformation of insurance companies.
  • Insuritas to power digitally powered insurance agency for Priority Bank.
  • Kofax reports that 50% of top U.S. life insurers leveraging TotalAgility.
  • Temenos tables takeover of Fidessa.
  • FierceCEO features DefenseStorm CEO Sean Feeney.

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.