FinDEVr Preview: Teneo & Riverbed Technology

FinDEVr Preview: Teneo & Riverbed Technology

FDNY17-Logo-RevFinDEVr Previews highlight companies presenting new developer tools, platforms, and integrations at FinDEVr New York 2017, March 21 & 22. Tickets are on sale now. Visit our registration page and save your spot today.

Teneo, in partnership with Riverbed Technology, will present holistic application performance monitoring for the modern financial services enterprise.

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Why it’s a must-see:

See how performance visibility can be enhanced and coordinated across the application life cycle from development, quality assurance, to production.


Check out more previews of upcoming FinDEVr New York 2017 presentations and don’t forget to register before it’s too late.

FundAmerica Unveils New RegTech Tools

FundAmerica Unveils New RegTech Tools

FundAmerica_homepage_March2017

Regtech may be hot in the U.K. But the flame of regtech innovation is burning brightly in the U.S., as well. FundAmerica, builder of compliance solutions for crowdfunding platforms, rolled out a series of “new tools and upgrades” this month. “Technology (and our engineers) never sleeps,” FundAmerica CEO Scott Purcell announced in an email to subscribers. The enhancements enable users to:

  • Allow potential investors to “test the waters” with plug ‘n’ play buttons and at-launch support
  • Quick-launch escrows
  • Issue investor statements using FundAmerica’s registered transfer agent
  • Levy fees and commissions as part of the transaction
  • Record partial funds received for more accurate reporting

The upgrades also include new APIs and Invest Now dashboards, as well as administrator integration “so traditional fund admins can still perform services to direct-to-crowd funds but offload the ‘crowd’ reporting and statement stuff to us,” Purcell wrote. Another major addition to the platform is the ability to customize the automated emails sent to investors during the streamlined Invest Now process. This flexibility, the result of “countless requests and man-hours in engineering,” enables issuers to add legal disclaimers, modify the language to better align with marketing copy, or simply provide additional information about a deal.

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Pictured: FundAmerica founder and CEO Scott Purcell during the demonstration of his company’s platform at FinovateSpring 2015.

Founded in 2011, FundAmerica demonstrated its API for crowdfunding platform compliance at FinovateSpring 2015. The company’s backend solutions cover AML, escrow, and payment processing, enabling broker-dealers, listing services, and platforms to remain compliant to relevant laws and regulations, such as Reg A+ and rule 4(a)(6), when operating their crowdfunding business. FundAmerica’s Invest Now transaction engine keeps capital raising smooth and efficient for the investor, as well, leveraging APIs and copy ‘n’ paste functionality to make it possible for investors to complete the process in a single sitting.

Since inception, FundAmerica has processed more than $400 million in investments from more than 75,000 investors in more than 300 offerings. Having managed the back office work for the industry’s first successful Reg A+ offering, Elio Motors, last year – en route to handling the back office for more than a dozen additional Reg A offerings in 2016 – FundAmerica anticipates both more hiring and more solution-building in 2017. “2016 was a great start, as we finally have Reg’s D, A & CF, and 2017 will see an acceleration of capital rising using those new tools,” Purcell noted in a year-ending post on the company blog.

FundAmerica was featured in our “RegTech Reality Check” post last fall, and profiled in our Finovate Debuts series of new Finovate alums. The company has raised more than $2 million in funding courtesy of a seed round in 2013.

FinDEVr Preview: ChartIQ

FinDEVr Preview: ChartIQ

FinDEVr PreviewsFDNY17-Logo-Rev highlight companies presenting new developer tools, platforms, and integrations at FinDEVr New York 2017, March 21 & 22. Tickets are on sale now. Visit our registration page and save your spot today.

ChartIQ will present Finsemble, an Openfin Application Framework that provides infrastructure, services and components for quickly building multi-window financial desktop applications. This presentation will describe the process of building these apps in Finsemble, outline the key problems addressed, and conclude with a quick coding demonstration.

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Why it’s a must-see:

ChartIQ will show how quick and easy it is to build a functioning multi-window financial desktop application in minutes with Finsemble.


Check out more previews of upcoming FinDEVr New York 2017 presentations and don’t forget to register before it’s too late.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • FundAmerica Unveils New RegTech Tools.
  • Qapital Raises $12 Million, Adds Debit Card Functionality

On FinDEVr.com

  • Check out these previews from upcoming FinDEVr New York presentations:

Around the web

  • OutsideIQ teams up with Genpact to bring better risk management, KYC, and AML compliance solutions to banks.
  • Ixaris Technologies unveils its Open Payments Cloud platform for developers at upcoming hackathon.
  • Top 10 global bank deploys mobile capture technology from Kofax.
  • IBM forges strategic partnership with Salesforce, connecting AI platforms IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein.
  • Bluefin Payment Systems joins forces with The Pinnacle Corporation, bringing point-to-point encryption (P2PE to the latter’s Palm POS platform.
  • CB Insights lists NetGuardians on the regtech map.
  • WeInvest piloting roboadvisory service with OCBC Bank.
  • eWise to power customer loyalty app for Gini.

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.

Dwolla Launches Same-Day Bank Transfers

Dwolla Launches Same-Day Bank Transfers

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Bank access API provider and money transfer system, Dwolla, launched same-day ACH transfers today. This new development allows businesses to deliver money to a client on the same day they initiated the transfer. The same-day ACH capability is much faster compared to the industry standard wait time of two-to-four business days.

In the press release, Dwolla CEO and founder Ben Milne said, “Whether it’s making emergency payouts, improving customer satisfaction through faster refunds, or allowing partners to capture float or vendor discounts, the addition of Same Day ACH to Dwolla’s Access API provides our partners with another competitive advantage for them to own and apply as they see fit.”

Dwolla’s new same-day ACH transfer capability benefits not only the customer experience, but it also complies with upcoming regulations. NACHA, the administrator of ACH, issued new rules last year regulating the sending and receiving of money over ACH rails. Starting September 15, 2017, all banks must be able to receive and process same-day debits and credits.

Founded in 2008, Dwolla set out to make sending money faster and less expensive. The company launched a consumer-facing money transfer product in 2010 and has since phased out of the consumer market to focus on its business offerings. The first product, Access API, helps developers connect their app to the banking ecosystem. Transfer, the second product, helps businesses send and receive bank transfers using a straightforward platform.

Earlier this year, Dwolla closed on $6.85 million in funding, bringing its total raised to just over $39 million. The company last presented at FinovateSpring 2015.

Patch of Land Picks Matthew Zall for Chief Investment Product Officer

Patch of Land Picks Matthew Zall for Chief Investment Product Officer

PatchofLand_homepage_March2017

Online real estate marketplace lender Patch of Land added commercial real estate specialist Matthew Zall as Chief Investment Product Officer. In his new role, Zall will focus on supporting Patch of Land’s expansion into the single-family rental market, developing longer term, permanent financing products. “The addition of Matt enables us to continue the expansion of our marketplace to fully serve the lending needs of more than 10 million Americans who directly invest in single-family residential properties and need consistent, reliable access to capital to fuel their businesses,” Patch of Land CEO Paul Deitch said.

PatchofLand_MatthewZall_1Before being picked as CIPO for Patch of Land, Zall was Director at B2R Finance, where he was the head trader and architect of fixed and floating rate mortgage products. While at B2R Finance, Zall led the team that developed the first, multi-borrower single family rental (SFR) securitization, winning the 2015 CMBS Deal of the Year award from Global Capital. Previous to B2R Finance, Zall was a commercial real estate trader at JP Morgan, specializing in new origination, securitization and marketing of new deals. He has a Bachelor of Science in Finance and a Bachelor of Arts in Film/Video from Penn State University, and an MBA in Finance and Communications from Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business Administration.

Patch of Land provides a marketplace and platform for accredited and institutional investors looking for high-yielding, short-term asset-backed investments, and borrowers looking for alternative sources of funding. The company’s technology retrieves data from a diverse set of sources to build proprietary models and risk analysis summaries. This information enables the platform to provide more loan preapprovals as well as give existing borrowers automatic term extensions. As of the fourth quarter of 2016, the company has funded 400 loans with an average size of more than $545,000 and a realized rate of return of 11%.  The majority of the real estate on the platform is residential (71% single-family; 16% multi-family), with commercial real estate – added in August 2015 – making up 13%.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Patch of Land demonstrated its Peer-to-Real-Estate (P2RE) lending marketplace at FinovateFall 2014. A player in the “real estate investment tech” scene of the growing Proptech/Mortgagetech industry within fintech, Patch of Land has raised more than $24 million in funding, including a Series A completed in the spring of 2015. Last August, the company announced a “forward flow arrangement” with an “East Coast credit fund” that would invest $250 million across its platform.

Envestnet | Yodlee Launches Suite of Risk Reporting Tools

Envestnet | Yodlee Launches Suite of Risk Reporting Tools

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Data aggregation and analytics platform Envestnet | Yodlee launched a Risk Insight Suite today. The collection of reporting tools are aimed to help lenders bolster information gained from traditional credit reports by leveraging consumer financial data.

Using a co-brandable experience, the reports pull information directly from a prospective borrower’s banks to offer lenders an up-to-date picture of the borrower’s assets, income, and expenses. This detailed level of account information helps lenders with underwriting, origination, pre-qualification, and account review. The system leverages machine learning, along with a risk-based engine to simplify the review process and highlight any issues that may indicate a riskier borrower.

In the press release, Terry McKeown, Practice Manager, Credit Analytics at Envestnet | Yodlee said, “By using consumer permissioned financial data, lenders can obtain a complete financial picture of a borrower. This is especially true for credit invisible consumers who have no credit file or cannot be scored with traditional models, and for subprime consumers whose transactional data can help lenders make more accurate assessments of risk.”

Along with providing more valuable metrics for the lender, the Risk Insight Suite creates a smoother user experience for the end client. Because Envestnet | Yodlee pulls all necessary information directly from the user’s bank, there is no need for the client to supply paper bank statements and tax returns.

This is similar to the company’s Mortgage Asset Verification product launched in December of last year. In comparison, that offering is exclusive to mortgage borrowers, while the Risk Insight Suite of reporting tools caters to a larger audience. Envestnet | Yodlee most recently demoed at FinovateFall 2016 and at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016 where Deviprasad Kocherry, director of platform and product management, and Deven Maru, senior product manager of mobile platform, presented on fast integration using the company’s APIs. Since acquiring Yodlee in August 2015 for $660 million, Envestnet | Yodlee has built out its Advisor Now solution and landed a partnership with Morgan Stanley’s wealth management arm.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Patch of Land Picks Matthew Zall for Chief Investment Product Officer.
  • Dwolla Launches Same-Day Bank Transfers.

On FinDEVr.com

  • Envestnet | Yodlee Launches Suite of Risk Reporting Tools.

Around the web

  • UK food retailer, The Co-operative Group chooses ACI Worldwide to run wallet service.
  • Palestine’s The National Bank deploys core banking technology from Temenos.
  • Experian joins Marketplace Lending Association as an associate member.
  • Maine Startups Insider features David Joseph, co-founder of Davo Technologies.
  • Dallas News founder features Bruce Parker, founder and CEO of ModoPayments.

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.

Euronext Invests $10 Million in Algomi; Expands Joint Venture Agreement

Euronext Invests $10 Million in Algomi; Expands Joint Venture Agreement

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Fixed income technology innovator and FinovateFall alum Algomi raised $10 million in funding today. The capital from Euronext is the company’s most recent investment since a 2016 infusion of an undisclosed amount from former Thomson Reuters CEO and current Algomi strategic advisor, Tom Glocer. Euronext’s minority stake in the company comes with governance rights and a included a decision to globally expand a 10-year joint venture agreement between the two companies announced back in November.

“This long term commitment to Algomi by Euronext cements our position in the market,” Algomi CEO and co-founder Stu Taylor said. “We are particularly excited by the access to the Euronext network of global regulated exchange and the liquidity opportunities this will provide our clients.” Underscoring the crucial challenge of liquidity when it comes to the fixed income markets, Taylor added, “(this) will allow us to bring Algomi’s unique bond information network to new parts of the credit market, something which has been very positively received by our existing bank clients.”

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Pictured: Algomi CEO Stu Taylor demonstrating Honeycomb at FinovateFall 2014.

Algomi specializes in technologies that optimize fixed income trading between sales professionals, traders, and clients. The company’s solutions collect and organize data points inside the FIs credit trading system and uses custom algorithms to drive the most appropriate fixed income trading opportunities to the most appropriate sales professional in order to facilitate the optimal, risk-free transaction. The company calls its buyside interface, Honeycomb, “smart marketing” that raises client marketing to the level of the highest quality online retailing.

Euronext sees the combination of Algomi’s technology and its own position as a leading exchange as a boon for both companies. Stephane Boujnah, Euronext CEO, cited the diversification of revenues and expansion into markets outside of Europe as upsides of a partnership he called “central to our fixed income ambitions and our wider FICC diversification plans as part of our ‘Agility for Growth’ plan.” Euronext’s Head of Fixed Income, Rates and FX, Paul Humphrey will join Algomi’s board of directors as part of the investment.

Founded in 2012 and based in London, Algomi demonstrated its technology, Honeycomb, at FinovateFall 2014. The company’s buyside GUI, Honeycomb promotes market efficiency by giving investors visibility into the ability of different dealers to move illiquid block trades without roiling the markets. The company’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Usman Khan was listed as one of the “40 most exciting people in fintech in the U.K.” by Business Insider magazine last August, the same month the company introduced its SaaS, sell-side engine, Synchronicity. Last spring, Algomi teamed up with IPC Systems to support users of its Honeycomb technology. Algomi was named to FinTechCity’s FinTech50 for 2016 and was featured by Tech Tour in its 2016 Growth 50 of the fastest-growing technology companies in Europe.

LikeFolio Begins Licensing Brand-Mapping Database

LikeFolio Begins Licensing Brand-Mapping Database

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Likefolio, a website that uses social media connections to introduce investing concepts, recently began licensing its Brand Mapping Database. The database, which maps every publicly-owned brand and product, is aimed to help investors and financial research firms discover new insights.

The Brand Mapping Database is more powerful than ticker symbol searches since it analyzes unstructured content, such as positive and negative sentiment on Twitter. The database can also pull data from sites such as Reddit, Facebook and LexisNexis. As Likefolio founder Andy Swan describes it, the Brand Mapping Database informs investors “what consumers are doing on Main Street before it hits Wall Street.”

The licensed version of the Brand Mapping Database will deliver insights into firms’ existing data feeds and will be available to institutional investors, hedge funds, and quant analysts. Additionally, the company is working on deals with a few undisclosed financial app companies.

Swan debuted the LikeFolio platform along with TD Ameritrade’s Managing Director of Active Trading, Nicole Sherrod, at FinovateSpring 2014. Since then, the company took home a win at the Benzinga Fintech Awards and analyzed stocks based on the social buzz around brands’ 2017 Super Bowl commercials.

LendUp Lands $100 Million Credit Facility

LendUp Lands $100 Million Credit Facility

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Payday loan alternative startup, LendUp, announced this week it has received a $100 million credit facility. The financing comes from the company’s long-time partner, Victory Park Capital, and will be used to fund future loan growth. The San Francisco-based startup’s combined debt and equity now totals $325 million.

In addition to the financing news, LendUp also surpassed $1 billion across 3.3 million loan originations since launching in 2012. Sasha Orloff, LendUp CEO and co-founder said, “This is an important milestone for LendUp because it proves the viability and sustainability of the market opportunity for socially responsible lending.”

The company’s team of 200+ aims to help consumers rejected by banks find a safe alternative to payday lenders. LendUp’s flagship products include LendUp Loans, a short-term loan that lets users borrow up to $250 for 30 days; and LCard, a credit card made for those who struggle with credit. In 2016, these products helped borrowers save $55+ million in interest and fees (up from $16 million in 2015). LendUp also offers educational materials, such as free online courses, to give cardholders the information they need to make decisions about their financial future. These videos have been viewed more than 1.2 million times.

CEO Sasha Orloff debuted the company’s API at FinovateSpring 2014. The API exposes LendUp’s core to allow partners to leverage its platform. The company won Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2013 for debuting its product that helps the underbanked build credit. In October of last year, H2Ventures and KPMG placed LendUp in the Leading 50 category of its Fintech 100 list.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • LendUp Lands $100 Million Credit Facility.
  • LikeFolio Begins Licensing Brand-Mapping Database.
  • Euronext Invests $10 Million in Algomi; Expands Joint Venture Agreement.

Around the web

  • Yoyo hires former PayPal GM Simon Moran as first VP of Commercial.
  • Fiserv expands its Florida contact and servicing center by 22%.
  • Trustly partners with UATP to enable online bank payments for airfare.
  • NICE extends real-time authentication across all voice channels.
  • The Asian Review covers Ayondo’s upcoming listing on the Singapore Exchange.
  • Signifyd wins Finance Monthly’s 2017 Fintech Award for Fraud.

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.