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CREALOGIX Wins First Best of Show Award at FinovateEurope; Appoints New CEO

By David Penn Posted on February 14, 2017
Categories: CREALOGIX

February has been a big month for the innovators of Swiss digital banking leader, CREALOGIX. The company won its first Best of Show award at FinovateEurope last week, taking home top honors for its live demonstration of a virtual reality interface integrated into its digital banking hub. The technology is geared toward millennial and Generation Z customers, the company explained from the Finovate stage last week, to deliver a user experience that incorporates emotion, creativity, and logic into financial decision-making.

“Normally, online banking is a dry affair,” Head of Sales and CMO at CREALOGIX, Marc Stähli said. “Our technology, however, is an invitation to active discovery.” Beyond the immersion of the virtual reality experience, CREALOGIX Predictive Banking in Virtual Reality also features intelligent algorithms to calculate “what if” scenarios that can be explored in depth simply by following lines of vision and gesture.

CREALOGIX also has a new CEO. Thomas Schneider (pictured), who served as managing director for UBS in Zurich for more than 21 years, will take the helm of the company’s Swiss digital banking business. Schneider’s expertise includes implementing electronic customer systems and internal control systems. He has also served as a consultant for CREALOGIX, as well as for Accenture and via his own TSC Consulting firm. “Through my consulting work at CREALOGIX, I have been able to get to know the business unit and the tasks very well over the past few years and am now looking forward to my new operational role,” Schneider said in a statement. Schneider was educated at Albert Ludwigs Universitat Freiburg, and has a Ph.D from the University of Freiburg.

Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, CREALOGIX demonstrated its Digital Banking Hub / Predictive Banking in Virtual Reality technology at FinovateEurope, winning Best of Show. A Finovate alum since 2011, CREALOGIX named Phillipe Wirth as CFO in January. Wirth, former head of finance and controlling at subsidiaries of Mettler Toledo Group in Switzerland and the U.S., will join the company officially in May.

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BioCatch Teams Up with Nuance Communications

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 14, 2017
Categories: BioCatch

Behavioral biometrics solutions company BioCatch announced a partnership with Nuance Communications this week. Through the partnership, Israel-based BioCatch will leverage consumer behavior to power continuous authentication for the Nuance Security Suite solution.

BioCatch’s technology builds a profile for users that consists of how they use their keyboard, mouse, or mobile phone screen. When the system detects anomalies within a client’s session, it generates an alert that signals the user may be a fraudster. This fraud prevention solution will be available through Nuance’s FraudMiner interface and to help banks to more accurately detect fraud across channels.

In the press release Eyal Goldwerger, CEO of BioCatch said, “In today’s digital world, hackers have figured out how to bypass the initial authentication and piggyback on existing logins,” he added, “One of the only ways to detect
this is through continuous authentication and by extension, behavioral biometrics, because it works in the
background, passively, without disrupting the user experience. By bringing together our behavioral biometrics
and Nuance’s voice biometrics, we are able to solve this problem and secure transactions holistically across
multiple channels.”

After the user logs into a session, BioCatch can accurately detect fraud that comes from malware, account takeovers, and social engineering. Since these methods can be very difficult to detect using traditional fraud detection methods, Nuance anticipates that the addition of BioCatch’s technology will augment the immediate return on investment for its clients.

Founded in 2011, BioCatch demonstrated its Passive Biometrics and Invisible Challenges at FinovateFall 2014 in New York. In late 2016, the company launched an enterprise version of its behavioral biometrics platform and in April, BioCatch appointed Eyal Goldwerger as CEO.

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FinovateEurope 2017: Tweetspotting

By David Penn Posted on February 14, 2017
Categories: FinovateEurope 2017

With more than one wit referring to the new President of the United States as the “Tweeter in Chief,” it is clear that the Age of Trump means one thing if nothing else: time to up your Twitter game.

While the majority of the action at Finovate conferences takes place on stage or in the networking hall, our live Twitter feed @Finovate is often an attraction in and of itself. Curious what the hot trends are in fintech heading into FinovateEurope? Our Twitter audience has you covered. Got a sharp observation or spontaneous insight on a company’s technology midway through its live demonstration? No better place than Twitter to share it. Wondering if startup ABC has an inside track to a Best of Show award? A quick heat check on Twitter can tip you off to likely frontrunners and crowd-favorites.

And, of course, if you can’t be at our conference live and in person, there’s no better way to follow the action than via our @Finovate live Twitter feed. This year’s FinovateEurope tweets are a mix of live and remote viewpoints – including many in languages other than English – all asking questions, praising impressive performances, and encouraging our presenting companies to show us (not tell us) how their solutions will solve some of our most persistent problems when it comes to everything from authentication and e-commerce to payments and wealth management.

This year, our Twitter coverage is complimented by the observations of frequent Finovate sponsor, Hotwire. Felicity Hudson (pictured), Head of Hotwire’s Fintech practice, kept a sharp eye on #Finovate over the two days of the conference and here’s what she saw:

Great. Exciting, Fab, Impressive, Cool, Smart, Delight, Proud … are some of the most popular words to appear in the 4,620 tweets around this year’s event in London. After ‘great’ and ‘#fintech’, the next most talked topic was PSD2, reflecting the amount of debate this upcoming regulation is stirring up. The general consensus from this audience is that this major legislative shift represents an opportunity, rather than a threat for banks.

The top Tweeters over the few days were Global Data Financial and Finovate, followed by brands including EarlyBird, Meniga, Wealthify, and Memento Payments, with the latter going on to win a Best of Show award. The most prolific tweeter was Private Banker reporter John Schaffer, with Robby Hilkowitz taking the investor crown. And the most vocal publication? FinTech Futures.

And with that, let’s take a look at some tweets from the week.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 14, 2017
Categories: BioCatch, iSignthis, NetGuardians, PayPal, Standard Chartered Bank, The Beast Apps, Tink, Virtual Piggy, Wealth Wizards, Worldcore

On Finovate.com

BioCatch Teams Up with Nuance Communications.

Playing Fintech Tinder.

Around the web

Worldcore Payment Institution teams up with BioID and presents face recognition authentication at FinovateEurope 2017.

Standard Chartered launches banking API portal.

PayPal launches Bot for Slack users.

Tink now helps banks empower their customers to take control over their finances by leveraging the Tink platform.

NetGuardians joins Swiss academic institute HEIG-VD to develop fraud-seeking AI tools.

BioCatch brings continuous online and mobile authentication to Nuance Communications’ Security Suite solution.

Wealth Wizards launches New mobile version of Pension Wizard.

Virtual Piggy launches beta test of its mobile payment platform for children under 17.

iSignthis enters agreement to provide KYC services to Calforex and GoInterpay.

The Beast Apps joins Symphony Software Foundation.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Mobile Paths

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 13, 2017
Categories: Mobile Banking, Strategic Planning, Strategies

Mobile has been an important part of banking for six or seven years, but have you recently thought through the longer-term strategic implications?

For younger customers, the relationship with their bank, like with most large tech companies, is through their phone. Young customers don’t even think about the people behind the service. As long as it’s working.

Given this reality you have two choices.

Embrace the anonymous service provider model of Google, Microsoft, Facebook and most big tech companies. Go for scale, low costs, and state-of-the-art digital services. Offer robo-savings, automated chat bots, and self-service. Hire great programmers.
Go in the other direction. Humanize your service by inviting customers to connect with people at your financial institution, either in person (traditional banking model, also used by Apple with its hardware) or through chat services (Amazon). Optimize around people and connections with the customer. Have new customers in for a chat, invest in social networking and custom interfaces. Hire great account reps.

It’s easier to stay anonymous. You avoid all those messy interactions with customers. But it may be harder to gain loyalty, cross sales and referrals as a no-name service provider. Another concern on the credit side, is whether that anonymity comes at a price in terms of higher loan defaults?

Building a human connection can cement customers possibly for generations, but has higher costs in terms of staffing, customer service, and brick and mortar investment.

Either way is a legitimate strategy. But you need to choose.

Author: Jim Bruene is Founder & Senior Advisor to Finovate as well as
Principal of BUX Advisors, a financial services UX consultancy.

Notes:

1. Picture by 123rf.com (licensed)
2. Inspiration by Seth Godin

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Rippleshot Racks Up $2.6 Million in Second Seed Round

By David Penn Posted on February 13, 2017
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Rippleshot

Chicago-based anti-fraud, transaction monitoring specialist Rippleshot has raised an additional $2.6 million in seed funding. The investment, led by the venture capital arm of CUNA Mutual Group, CMFG Ventures, takes the company’s total funding to $4.6 million. Rippleshot will use the additional capital to add technical talent, specifically developers and data scientists, and will leverage its relationship with CMFG to market its solutions to 9,000 of CMFG’s affiliated credit unions.

Rippleshot co-founder and CEO Canh Tran said that the funding comes as his company finds itself “in a unique place to help bridge the fraud detection gap between issuers and merchants.” Rippleshot’s technology enables card issuers to catch card data breaches early, track trends in compromised card activity to identify future vulnerabilities, reissue new cards to customers whose cards have been compromised, and issue real-time declines to limit losses. Rippleshot’s cloud-based technology monitors millions of credit card transactions a day and the company says it can prevent “more than half of the fraudulent spend from compromised cards.”

Pictured: Rippleshot Chief Scientist and Co-Founder Randal Cox demonstrating Rippleshot’s platform at FinovateFall 2014.

In addition to the funding from CMFG, Rippleshot announced that emerging payments specialist – and former PYMNTS.com president – Gloria Colgan will join the company’s advisory board. Tran said that Colgan’s presence on Rippleshot’s board “will be invaluable as we take the next step in growing our footprint.” Colgan was managing director for Market Platform Dynamics and an SVP at both Discover Financial Services and JP Morgan Chase.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Rippleshot demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2014. Last fall, the company was recognized by H2 Ventures and KPMG as one of its “50 Emerging Stars.” And last June, Rippleshot’s card-compromise detection solution, Sonar, was endorsed by the American Bankers Association. A graduate of the SixThirty accelerator program, Rippleshot was a finalist in BBVA’s Open Talent Competition.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on February 13, 2017
Categories: Fiserv, IBM, Misys, On Deck Capital, Revolut, Rippleshot

On Finovate

Rippleshot Racks Up $2.6 Million in Second Seed Round.

Around the web

Wave to offer OnDeck business loans and lines of credit courtesy of new partnership.

Poland’s Alior Bank ($15 billion USD) to deploy FusionCapital from Misys.

UK-based Revolut launches new customer service chatbot, Rita – “Revolut’s Intelligent Troubleshooting Assistant.”

IBM leverages Hyperledger Fabric to support a trade finance-oriented blockchain project in Dubai.

Fiserv wins inaugural Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Fintech ADVANCE Award for its Verifast palm authentication technology.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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You’ve Got Mail: Vera Launches Security Solution for Enterprise Communications

By David Penn Posted on February 10, 2017
Categories: Vera

With Vera for Mail, Palo Alto-based data security specialist Vera gives businesses the ability to protect and audit corporate communications, restrict sharing, and revoke access to sent emails. “With Vera for Mail,” said Vera co-founder and CEO Ajay Arora, “the days of email leaks are finally over.”

Vera for Mail enables enterprise customers to take advantage of the convenience of email while enjoying the seamless protection of Vera’s data-centric security platform. From a single console, administrators have complete control and “360 degree visibility” over the contents and attachments in enterprise email communications even after emails have been downloaded, forwarded, or accessed offline. And both email senders and recipients can use the technology without having to rely on key exchanges or proprietary plug-ins.

Pictured: Vera co-founder and CEO Ajay Arora demonstrating Vera Security at FinovateSpring 2016.

Ajay Arora, Vera co-founder and CEO referred to Vera for Mail as “the next stage in our long-term quest to protect enterprise data through the last mile, secure every collaboration channel, and ensure the confidentiality and integrity of our customers’ most valuable data.” Calling data encryption, access, and auditing “an absolute necessity” in an increasingly collaborative corporate environment, Arora pointed out that other solutions often fail due to being too complicated or not “foolproof enough” to be relied on for everyday use in the enterprise. In its press release, the company noted a 2017 Cybersecurity Report from Cisco that said that while email continues to be “the primary tool” for transmitting and sharing sensitive data, only 12% of cybersecurity professionals queried said they trusted their firm’s current email security strategy.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Vera demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2016. The company’s solutions – including Vera for Files and Vera Platform – are used by more than 300,000 professionals across the Fortune 100, and Vera notes that it actively secures more than 10 million files for its corporate clients.

A finalist in the 2016 RSA Innovation Sandbox Competition in the “Most Innovative Startup” category, and recognized as a SINET 16 winner by Security Innovation Network, Vera was honored as a 2017 SC Magazine Trust Award Finalist for Cloud Computing Security in January. The company has raised $35 million in funding, with its most recent investment a $21 million Series B completed in the spring of 2016.

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Narrative Science Brings Automated Portfolio Commentary to FactSet Platform

By David Penn Posted on February 9, 2017
Categories: Narrative Science

The new partnership between advanced natural language generation specialist, Narrative Science, and investment analytics service provider, FactSet, will add automated portfolio commentary to the latter’s analytics and client-reporting platform.

Calling FactSet’s platform an “ideal match” for advanced NLG technology, Narrative Science COO Nick Beil said the integration would “reduce time-to-market, streamline client reporting, and raise the bar for prompt and comprehensive service.” Vice President of Analytics for FactSet, Ali Stewart added that with client reporting being a “rapidly evolving area of the market,” technologies such as those developed by Narrative Science are providing what Stewart called “a truly client-centric, cost-effective customer reporting solution.” Empowering investment managers with automated portfolio commentary, the new integration will enable companies to scale their reporting efforts to serve a larger and broader client base – and to do so within the monthly and/or quarterly reporting cycles customers and regulators demand.

In an infographic at the Narrative Science website, the company compares the current practice of creating portfolio commentary – from sourcing internal talent or finding able freelancers through the process of data access, drafting and reviewing, and publishing and distribution – to the process as run by the combination of solutions from Narrative Science and FactSet technology. What takes a team of human authors and editors as much as four work-weeks to accomplish is completed by FactSet Portfolio Analysis and Narrative Science’s Quill Portfolio Commentary in a matter of seconds.

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Narrative Science demonstrated Quill Financial at FinovateFall 2013. Forging partnerships with Deloitte last October and with Franklin Templeton Investments last September, Narrative Science launched Narratives for Tableau back in August. The company has raised more than $29 million in funding and includes Battery Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Jump Capital, and Sapphire Ventures among its investors. We highlighted Narrative Science’s technology in our overview of artificial intelligence and fintech last month. Stuart Frankel is founder and CEO.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on February 9, 2017
Categories: D3 Banking, Fiserv, Narrative Science, Tradeshift, Vantiv

On Finovate.com

Narrative Science Brings Automated Portfolio Analysis to FactSet Platform.

Around the web

Vantiv to provide debit, credit, and ATM processing services for Financial Technology Solutions International. Join Vantiv at FinDEVr New York next month.

Tradeshift clients gain access to Biz2Credit ‘s small business lending marketplace courtesy of new agreement.

Massachusetts-based bank, Salem Five ($4.2 billion in assets) picks Fiserv as its new technology partner.

D3 Banking promotes former VP of Development, Jeff Marshall to Chief Technology Officer.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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FinovateEurope 2017 Best of Show Winners Announced

By David Penn Posted on February 8, 2017
Categories: Backbase, Best of Show, CREALOGIX, Dorsum, eToro, FinovateEurope 2017, Memento, SaleMove, Tink

After two days of live demonstrations of some of the most novel innovations in fintech, our FinovateEurope audience has made its voice heard as to which technologies represent the Best of Show.

This year’s award winners are a fascinating mix of Finovate veterans like Backbase, eToro, SaleMove, and Tink, all of whom have been honored with Best of Show trophies in the past, as well as newcomers like Dorsum and Memento, which accompanied their Finovate debuts with Best of Show awards of their own. And how fun is it to celebrate a company like CREALOGIX, a Finovate alum since 2011, that picked up its very first Best of Show honors this week?

A hearty congratulations to all seven of FinovateEurope 2017’s Best of Show winners – and to all of the companies that demonstrated their technologies at our London conference this year. From artificial intelligence and chatbots to technologies that make it easier for us to earn, save, and invest, yours are the innovations that remind us how valuable the relationship between finance and technology can be.

Backbase for showing how artificial intelligence and PSD2 can turn a mobile app into a smart virtual assistant.

CREALOGIX for its predictive banking in virtual reality technology that transcends complex interfaces to provide a user experience that accommodates emotion, creativity, and logic when it comes to making financial decisions.

Dorsum for its chatbot factory and botboarding platform that creates chatbots that combine human-like, natural language communication with traditional customer data collection and profiling.

eToro for its worldwide social trading network of more than five million members that makes the trading and investing environment more social, more enjoyable, and more transparent.

Memento for its Bank-to-Social Relationship platform and next generation mobile money app that helps banks deepen engagement with current customers and better attract and acquire new customers, as well.

SaleMove for its Engagement Platform that enables FIs and other companies to communicate with online visitors via chat and dual-cursor guided cobrowsing, as well as video and voice.

Tink for its independent, consumer PFM app that brings together aggregation, account information, and payment initiation services to provide a truly PSD2-compliant, virtual bank experience.

We had a great time this year at FinovateEurope and hope you enjoyed getting to know our presenting companies and the unique ways they leverage technology to solve problems. Thanks and gratitude to all of our sponsors, partners, presenters, and – of course – our attendees, for making this celebration of financial technology possible. We’ll see you next year!

Notes on methodology:

1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 and 2016 conferences are below:

FinovateEurope 2015
FinovateSpring 2015
FinovateFall 2015
FinovateEurope 2016
FinovateSpring 2016
FinovateFall 2016
FinovateAsia 2016

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Welcome to FinovateEurope 2017: Day 2

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 8, 2017
Categories: FinovateEurope 2017

Leveris demoing its lending platform on the first day of FinovateEurope 2017 (photo credit: Paul Brennan ‏@paulbrennan_3)

Yesterday’s demos sure gave us something to Tweet about, and we’re back at Old Billingsgate Market Hall for another round of fintech fun!

Day two of FinovateEurope is packed with more fintech. If you weren’t able to make it yesterday but want to drop in today, we have special one-day tickets available (ask at the registration desk).

Here’s today’s lineup:

Registration opens at 8:00 a.m.

8:45 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.

10:15 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Intermission & refreshments

10:45 a.m. – 12:05 p.m.

Lunch 12:05 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m. – 2:40 p.m.

Best of Show winners will be announced at 4:15

2:40 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Networking, open bar & appetizers

Thanks to everyone who attended and braved the Finovate stage to present their very biggest and brightest fintech innovations! We look forward to seeing you all again next year.

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

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