Welcome to Day One of FinovateEurope

Welcome to Day One of FinovateEurope

We are off and running at FinovateEurope 2018! Come in from the cold, grab a cup of hot coffee and a pastry, and join us for what promises to be a fantastic first-day of live fintech demonstrations.

Day One will feature more than 40 companies demonstrating a variety of fintech solutions ranging from mobile payments and authentication to digital banking and wealth management. If you haven’t already, pick up your ticket today and join us at ExCel London on the historic Royal Victoria Dock as FinovateEurope brings you the latest in fintech innovation.

Here’s today’s lineup.

Registration begins at 8am

8:00 to 9:00: Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00 to 10:15:

10:15 to 10:45: Intermission and Refreshments

10:45 to 12:00:

12:00 to 13:00: Lunch and networking

13:00 to 14:15:

14:15 to 14:45: Intermission and refreshments

14:45 to 16:00:

16:00 to 18:00: Cocktail reception and networking
Best of Show winners will be announced tomorrow.

All demo videos will be available for free in a few weeks in our video archives.

Yorkshire Building Society Leverages nCino’s Bank Operating System to Drive Corporate Lending

Yorkshire Building Society Leverages nCino’s Bank Operating System to Drive Corporate Lending

The U.K.’s Yorkshire Building Society has deployed nCino’s cloud-based digital Bank Operating System for commercial lending operations, reports Antony Peyton of Banking Technology (Finovate’s sister publication).

This is nCino’s second triumph in the UK – as reported in June 2017 challenger bank OakNorth deployed the same system. In the U.S., ten of the top 30 banks by asset size and the world’s largest credit union, Navy Federal, rely on the Wilmington, North Carolina-based fintech’s cloud-based banking technology.

In this latest deal, Bradford-based Yorkshire Building Society, will use the system to lets its employees make faster decisions and provide funding more quickly to its customers. According to nCino, it completed the deployment in less than 90 days.

Phil Green, head of commercial lending and social housing at Yorkshire Building Society, said: “We invested in the nCino Bank Operating System because it helps automate tasks that were previously paper-based and manual, allowing colleagues more time to deliver differentiated and personalized service.”

The nCino Bank Operating System is built on the Salesforce platform that combines customer relationship management, loan origination, account opening, workflow, enterprise content management, business process management, digital engagement and reporting.

Last month, nCino reeled in investment from Salesforce Ventures. The amount of funding was undisclosed, but the investment adds to the company’s known total capital of more than $81 million.

nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. Pierre Naudé is CEO.

Excuse Me Europe, Your Finovate is Showing

Excuse Me Europe, Your Finovate is Showing

FinovateEurope begins tomorrow and we’re placing the finishing touches on this week’s event. Companies are practicing their demo pitches for March 6 and 7, breakout rooms are ready for panel discussions that will take place on March 8 and 9, and the networking hall is prepared.

Are you ready? Here’s all of the last minute information you need to know:

Arrival

The event will be held at ExCel London. Registration opens at 8 AM tomorrow and the first demo begins at 9 AM. If you still don’t have your ticket, be sure to arrive early tomorrow to register.

Agenda

You can find the four-day agenda online. We’ll also post basic agenda details here on the blog every morning.

Questions?

For specific questions, visit the FinovateEurope website or contact our events team.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Excuse Me, Europe, Your Finovate is Showing.

Around the web

  • Avaloq wins its first Thai customer in Kasikornbank. See Avaloq at FinovateEurope in London this week.
  • Finicity adds verification reports to Advanced Data’s fraud prevention and enhanced verification tools for mortgage lending courtesy of new partnership.
  • Simility announces new VP of Business Development, Eric Newman.
  • FactoryNet profiles the new service processes app from Zuhlke Engineering. (in German).
  • McCullough Robertson Lawyers deploy Riverbed Technology’s SteelCentral Aternity solution to enhance productivity and boost innovation.
  • Kyiv Post highlights Softjourn among world’s top outsourcers.
  • Currencycloud introduces Richard Arudel as North America GM.

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.

Ready, Set, Go…. Finovate Lands in London

Ready, Set, Go…. Finovate Lands in London

If your idea of fun is hanging out with fellow fintech and banking enthusiasts and discussing what the future of the industry holds, then you’re in good company this week as FinovateEurope is taking place this week. Here are the details

Ready…

First, don’t forget to register ahead of time. Tickets are still available online. The event takes place March 6 through 9 and will be held at ExCel London (Finovate veterans, take note– it is a new venue!). Also, to help you prepare, we’ve compiled a Sneak Peek series to get an advanced look into what some of the companies will debut on stage.

Set…

Check out the list of demoing companies, view the agenda, and finalize your accommodations. And if you have additional questions or need help with a special ticket request, please contact our events team.

Go!

Registration and a continental breakfast take place at 8 AM on 6 March, and the first demo will begin at 9 AM. Come early to settle in with a coffee or tea and save your seat.

We’ll be live Tweeting throughout the event from @Finovate, using the hashtag #Finovate. Be sure to check the Twitter feed for presenter information, analyst insights, and even bonus video content throughout the four-day event.

FLEETCOR Launches Blockchain-Based Payments Pilot with Ripple

FLEETCOR Launches Blockchain-Based Payments Pilot with Ripple

For all the buzz around blockchain technologies, few companies have seized the moment like Ripple. And this week, the enterprise blockchain solution provider announced a new partnership with FLEETCOR Technologies. The two firms will launch a pilot program to test the viability of Ripple’s digital asset XRP to improve the efficiency of international payments.

Cambridge Global Payments, the B2B international payments provider owned by FLEETCOR will execute the pilot, using XRP in payment flows through Ripple’s on-demand liquidity solution, XRapid. Cambridge processes more than $20 billion in cross-border, B2B payments each year for its 13,000 business customers. This newly-announced initiative adds to the work Cambridge and Ripple have already done together with the latter’s real-time messaging and transaction settlement for the enterprise solution, xCurrent.

“We are excited for the insights this pilot program is expected to deliver, and we will use that information to help both Cambridge and FLEETCOR develop our use case for blockchain in international payments,” Cambridge Global Payments COO Mark Frey said. Speaking for Ripple, Danny Aranda, Director of Business Development, praised Cambridge as a company that “understand(s) the benefits of digital assets and (is) serious about using XRP to overcome the inefficiencies in the global payment system.”

Making its Finovate debut at OpenCoin at FinovateSpring 2013, Ripple has been recognized as both a pioneer and a critical company in the bringing the benefits of distributed ledger technology to the enterprise. In recent months, the company has forged a wide variety of partnerships with FIs and financial services firms such as UAE Exchange, Banco Santander, and MoneyGram to help establish pilot programs and use cases for blockchain technology in areas ranging from international payment facilitation to the Internet of Things.

Ripple has raised more than $93 million in funding and includes IDG Capital Partners, SBI Investment, Core Innovation Capital, and Santander Innoventures among its investors. Both founder Larsen and current CEO Brad Garlinghouse were featured in Forbes.com’s article Prophets of Boom: Meet Crypto’s Richest, “a list of the richest secretive freaks, geeks, and visionaries” in the world of cryptocurrencies,” earlier this year. The company was founded in 2012 and is based in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney, Australia.

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • TechCrunch talks with HackerOne CEO Marten Mickos on bug bounties and the value of white hat hackers.
  • Cardlytics bolsters executive ranks with pair of new group presidents: Randall Beard and Shannon Johnson.
  • American Banker interviews new SoFi CEO Anthony Neto.
  • First Data goes live with Clover Mini and Clover Flex smart terminals in Germany and Austria.
  • Chetu earns Best Custom Business Software Developer Award from US Business News.
  • Ivan Nabalon, CEO and founder of Best of Show winning Electronic IDentification discusses the mainstream potential for cryptocurrencies.
  • ChartIQ teams up with Trading Central to provide technical insights and tool to traders.
  • Blockchain healthcare platform HealthCombix partners with NuCypher.

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.

Kofax’s Kapow to Fuel Spotcap’s Credit Assessment Algorithm

Kofax’s Kapow to Fuel Spotcap’s Credit Assessment Algorithm

Kofax announced this week that small business financing provider Spotcap has implemented Kofax’s Kapow Robotic Process Automation software.

The Kapow software automatically aggregates, extracts, and transforms business and cash flow data into actionable information. Leveraging this information, Spotcap’s machine-learning credit models offer underwriters insight into a company’s creditworthiness. Ultimately, this helps Spotcap meet its goal of providing flexible financing options to SMEs.

The application takes businesses only 15 minutes to complete and are reviewed within 24 hours. If the application is accepted, businesses gain access to funds immediately.

“For every loan application received, thousands of data points must be analyzed to make a decision about whether to offer a loan,” said Karl Sponholz, COO of Spotcap. “Unlike traditional lending processes, where credit decisions are based primarily on historical financials and credit scoring, we are tapping into Kapow smart automation software to quickly and easily access data from a large number of sources for in-depth insight.”

Kofax CEO Reynolds C. Bish said that when fintechs digitally transform their operations they are poised to better serve their customers and will “thrive by developing deeper and better engagement with customers across their entire lifecycle.”

It seems that machine learning, automation, and AI are much more than just buzzwords for Kofax. In January, the company announced its largest single transaction for a robotic process automation solution. The order, which came from a top 10 global bank, totaled more than $8 million. And early last month, Kofax’s Kapow was named to Constellation ShortList for its robotic process automation technology.

Founded in 1985, Kofax offers products ranging from information capture, robotic process automation, financial process automation, and customer onboarding solutions. The company’s network of more than 1,000 partners in 70+ countries across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific, leverage Kofax to serve 20,000 end customers.

Last May, Kofax was acquired by Thoma Bravo, marking Kofax’s second acquisition after Lexmark acquired it for $1 billion in 2015.

Kore.ai Unveils New Bots Platform, Adds Former Citi CIO as Strategic Advisor

Kore.ai Unveils New Bots Platform, Adds Former Citi CIO as Strategic Advisor

Developer of conversational AI solutions for the enterprise, Kore.ai has launched the latest version of its Bots Platform. Version 6.1 not only enables enterprises to build high-value chatbot solutions faster and more efficiently, but also gives companies the ability to better understand how their chatbots are performing compared to user expectations.

The new platform includes usability enhancements such as a collapsible sidebar navigation and revised layouts. Version 6.1 also provides better bot insights by analyzing how user utterances are processed by the platform’s natural language processing engine and graphically displays how these utterances are classified against various bot tasks. Additionally, the platform enables developers to combine individual bots into a multi-purpose, branded universal bot or VPA (virtual personal assistant) that can communicate with many bots on behalf of an individual. Other features include smart alerts, IVR voice support, new channels including telegram and live person, and a bot sharing facility across users of different domains.

“Our promise has always been to design an end-to-end platform, running in the cloud or on-prem, creating secure, smart, conversational and quick-to-market bots for enterprises,” Raj Koneru, CEO and founder of Kore.ai said in a statement. “We’ve bolstered our Kore Bots Platform with rich new capabilities for enterprises, and are also bringing in fresh thinking into how AI-powered conversational solutions could be engineered better for specific industries.

This “fresh thinking” comes in the form of Devendra Kumar Sharma, former CIO of Citigroup International, who has joined Kore.ai as a strategic advisor and will, in the words of Koneru, “advise us on how to create strategic digital value through great customer engagement.”

Sharma praised the company’s “powerful and unique combination” of growth potential and what he called “strategic relevance in an emerging technology space.” With almost three decades of experience in working with consumer banking technology platforms and operations capabilities, Sharma led initiatives on core operating platforms, digital transformation, and more while working at Citigroup International. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and an MBA in Information Systems and Finance from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, and founded in 2013, Kore.ai demonstrated its Bots Platform at FinovateFall 2016. With strategic partners ranging from Facebook to SAP to Cisco, Kore.ai has developed more than 150 pre-built bots that use machine learning, natural language processing, AI, and speech recognition to provide actionable, “human-like” communications to the interactions between businesses and their customers, employees, systems, and things.

Take Note: FinovateEurope Keynotes Announced!

Take Note: FinovateEurope Keynotes Announced!

FinovateEurope is coming to London next week, and while our Sneak Peek series may have prepared you for the first two days of non-stop fintech demos, you still need to get ready for the extra content and discussions taking place the second half of the week.

Here are the folks who will– in just a few days from now– step up to the Finovate stage to share their insights on some of the most topical issues in fintech:

Rohit Talwar

The Rise Of The Machines – The AI Revolution And The Road To Superintelligence. What Will AI Mean For The Future Of Financial Services – And The Future Of Work?

Talwar is an award winning global futurist, entrepreneur and specialist advisor on business transformation, disruptive strategies and radical innovation. Nominated as one of the top ten global future thinkers by the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he comments regularly on the future and innovation for global news networks. Talwar has been published widely. He is the initiator, editor and a lead author for The Future of Business, which was published on June 23rd 2015 – completed in just 19 weeks. This 60-chapter book brings together the work of 62 future thinkers from around the world to explore the forces shaping our world and highlight the implications for business.

Jamie Woodruff

Cyber Security – Why We Should All Be Very, Very Afraid…

In his early 20s, Woodruff is one of the world’s leading authorities on hacking and cyber security.

Woodruff entered the public eye when he successfully hacked Facebook as part of a student competition at Bangor University where he was studying computer information systems. He has since uncovered security holes in numerous high-profile operations, including Kim Kardashian’s website, which he hacked to reveal that it was putting her fans’ data at serious risk.

Woodruff is a director of Metrics Cloud specialising in training, penetration testing, and recruitment. He is also the cyber safety advisor for the Cyber Smile Foundation which specialises in online cyber bullying.

Woodruff talks about the importance of system and network security and is known for disclosing world-wide exploits and vulnerabilities within leading security applications such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Apple, and Google. He finds existing exploits by infiltrating the companies in question. He demonstrated this by impersonating a Domino’s pizza delivery boy at a large financial institution and gaining access to their server room via pick-locking. All carried out under fully authorised, ethical penetration testing.

Simon Taylor

Why Blockchain Is The Next Generation Of The Internet

Taylor is Co-Founder and Blockchain Practice Lead at 11:FS. He led Blockchain Research and Development at Barclays, where Barclays became the first bank in the world to perform a live trade finance transaction over a Blockchain / DLT with a real customer attached. Today at 11:FS, Taylor advises governments, regulators and some of the worlds largest banks, financial institutions, and corporations on how blockchain and DLT will impact their business in the short, medium, and long term. In addition Taylor also co-hosts the industry-leading podcasts Fintech Insider and Blockchain Insider.


We’ll see you on 6 through 9 of March at the ExCel Center in London. If you haven’t saved your spot, register today. And don’t hesitate to contact us with any enquiries or customer service needs.

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • Opentech ranked third in the Mastercard’s worldwide Directory of Digital Wallet providers. Come see Opentech’s live demo at FinovateEurope next week.
  • Yoyo named Best Mobile Payment Solution at MPE Awards. Come see Yoyo’s demo at FinovateEurope next week in London.
  • CapitaWorld launches smart loan disintermediation ecosystem for micro, small, and medium (MSM) enterprises.
  • Unison launches 5% down payment program in conjunction with an 80% LTV mortgage.
  • Sberbank adds Google Pay and Samsung Pay services for the customers using its business cards.
  • Railsbank partners with Carta Worldwide.
  • Lendio Franchise Announced in Clemson Region.

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.

Pendo Systems Ships New Release of Pendo Machine Learning Platform

Pendo Systems Ships New Release of Pendo Machine Learning Platform

Data insight company Pendo Systems launched the latest release of the Pendo Machine Learning Platform (PMLP) this week.

The new iteration, version 4, of PMLP balances improving productivity while keeping user requirements convenient. New features in this latest release are:

  • Improved machine learning toolset that accelerates time to implementation and solves complex processing challenges
  • Ability to create and train models against training data
  • New connectivity options with Content Management Interoperability Services support
  • New plugins that integrate with other systems to provide access to a range of machine learning algorithms

In the press release, Phillip Dodds, Pendo Systems CTO said that this release is a “significant step forward” for Pendo because it is designed with the business user in mind. “By enabling onsite training of models that are less IT-dependent means our clients can now use their own data to train Machine Learning algorithms in an agile and cost-effective way, irrespective of whether it is behind their own firewall or in a secure cloud environment,” Dodds added.

Pam Pecs Cytron, CEO at Pendo Systems, who described the release as a demonstration of the company’s “ruthless commitment” to product innovation, said that empowering the business user is an essential component of Pendo’s strategy.

Founded in 2007, and with headquarters in New Jersey, Pendo converts unstructured data into AI-ready datasets and improves on natural language processing libraries by applying real-world, customer training data. With this approach, the company helps improve accuracy to over 95%. At FinovateAsia 2012, the company debuted BasisPoint to offer multi-jurisdictional processing for capital markets firms. Earlier this month, the company announced its intention to target the insurance sector.