Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “FinovateFall 2015 Presenting Companies Announced

Around the web

  • Pymnts interviews Karmic Labs CEO Ryan Weidenmiller.
  • Kony Announces Asia Pacific and Japan Expansion.
  • Bankless Times features Cloud Lending Solutions.
  • Let’s Talk Payments names multiple FinDEVr alums in its list of 29 APIs to Consider Before Building Any Fintech Product.
  • Betterment, Financial Guard, Personal Capital, Vanguard, and Wealthfront are featured in a Bloomberg Business column on options for new investors.
  • Samsung introduces its Loop-equipped Samsung Pay app in South Korea.
  • Tamebay interviews Peter Plewman, CurrencyTransfer.com director, on the volatility of the euro.
  • Trulioo taps identity and fraud specialist, Jon Jones, as new company president.
  • Business Insider looks at “transformative” fintech leadership at companies like Braintree, Coinbase, PayPal, SamsungPay (with Loop), and Venmo.
  • Forbes highlights Zopa in its review of the growth of P2P lending in the United Kingdom.

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.

FinovateFall 2015 Presenting Companies Announced

FinovateFall 2015 Presenting Companies Announced

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Since we received the highest-ever number of applications to demo during our FinovateFall conference in New York, we quickly discovered that electing presenters would not be easy. After a month-long screening process, we narrowed the pile to the newest and most innovative ideas in fintech.

Today, we’re revealing the first group of companies that will take the stage at the event.

Don’t miss your chance to see all of these companies, and more, demo their technology live. Tickets have been selling fast for the event, which will be held 16/17 September at the New York Hilton Midtown. See you there!

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Advisor Software uses APIs and apps in a hybrid cloud architecture to steer investment advisers away from traditional wealth-management software that’s too rigid, difficult to integrate, expensive, and hard to scale.

Alfa-Bank’s Sense Financial Advisor brings personalization to larger universal banks by using big data analysis and artificial intelligence.

Avoka offers a rapidly deployed, omnichannel customer onboarding and engagement software with a simplified customer interface to help financial institutions better cross-sell.

BehavioSec’s BehavioMobile offers fraud detection by monitoring device rhythm and interaction patterns that are unique to each end user.

Big Data Scoring’s credit scoring methods help the consumer credit industry by using publicly available, unstructured data to evaluate clients without traditional credit bureau data.

Blockstack’s software platform uses private blockchains to eliminate back-office inefficiencies for financial services firms.

The Buzz Points mobile app and merchant portal benefits local financial institutions and local businesses by creating a currency to incentivize account holders.

Capriza uses an enterprisemobility platform to solve for complex, customized, desktop-only workflows using zero coding, APIs, application upgrades, or integrations.

Credit Karma will launch a free and efficient mobile app to remove the complexities of understanding and managing credit and personal finance for U.S. consumers.

Crowdability is a screening tool to help individual investors rapidly filter thousands of private start-up deals using a proprietary algorithm developed in conjunction with top angels and venture capitalists.

D3 Banking has developed Small Business Banking to bring omnichannel, data-driven, digital banking solutions to financial institutions’ small business customers.

DAVO Technologies’ automated technology solution solves small- to mid-sized merchants’ sales-tax pain-points.

Dynamics’ Next Generation Payment Cards crack a 30-year lack of card innovation by embedding full computer architecture inside a payments card.

ebankit’s banking solution uses the latest technologies to offer a unified experience across channels with a holistic view.

Eco-Mail’s exchange-based technology eliminates physical mail delivery for mailers, consumers and large enterprises by using its proprietary platform to eliminate paper-based B2B, C2B and B2C mail.

Euronovate’s new generation pad offers customers strong authentication.

Fern Software’s FaaS system incorporates free-standing apps to offer tools from vendors with no core system.

Finanteq’s white-label SUPERWALLET helps banks take full advantage of their potential by integrating m-commerce and remote services with mobile banking apps.

First Performance’s communication and processing platform offers financial institutions a more direct issuer-to-cardholder engagement solution that solves the problem of decreased card usage due to fraud-related concerns.

Fiserv’s Digital Banking Solution helps financial institutions deal with the continuously increasing demand to create a banking experience with impact for end users.

Flybits’ cloud-based, context-aware technology steers companies away from generic content and manual searching on mobile apps.

Gro Solution’s account-opening solution uses a concise workflow and multilayered approach to solve high mobile abandonment for financial institutions.

Hedgeable’s NEXT Partner Network makes private banking platforms available to millennials.

HelloWallet’s Retirement Explorer brings high-quality, user-friendly retirement guidance to 401(k) participants.

Hypori’s Virtual Mobile Infrastructure brings a defense architecture to enterprises’ Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies.

ID Analytics brings patented analytics and real-time behavioral insight to consumer risk management.

Lexmark’s Kofax brings retail banking customers a real-time, voice driven, voice response, collaborative onboarding solution in a mobile app.

Ldger offers its distributed ledger technology to modern credit market investors and originators to avoid inefficiencies in traditional capital market processes.

LiftForward’s SaaS analyzes consumer or business credit default risk to help a business determine whether to provide terms or credit to its customers.

LiquidLandscape is an interactive notebook that uses data visualization to prevent financial decision-makers from drowning in data.

Mogl’s card-linked-offer technology bridges the gap between online to offline commerce for businesses across the country.

North Side offers a more natural, fun, and efficient natural language interface that enables banks to know their customers better and sell them credit, investment and cash-management services.

Novabase offers wealth clients and their financial advisers a customizable app ecosystem that enables engagement for self-service clients along with adviser contact.

PaySwag helps lenders, municipalities, utilities, medical and other creditors collect delinquent payments from the underbanked using a gamified mobile application combining payments with cash or cards, financial education, communication, payment plans, and rewards.

Quisk’s digital cash payment and integrated marketing and loyalty solution uses its patented, cloud-based software platform that enables a simple, secure and convenient solution.

RMS distributes its referral and rewards platform consumer channels online, and via a mobile app.

SaleMove’s live engagement platform makes it easier for financial institutions to sell and service complex financial service products online by using instant video chat and guided browsing.

Sliced Investing is an online platform that provides accredited investors access to alternative investments, such as curated hedge funds, private equity and late-stage private-company investments.

Socure’s solution for consumers and companies facing ever-increasing challenges with usernames, passwords, and verification employs facial biometrics technology.

Soundpays‘ universal mobile wallet enables users to pay online, in-store and on TV with a single app that uses sound waves to initiate a transaction.

Thetaray helps financial institutions with fraud detection and credit-risk reduction by using its anomaly-detection algorithm that leverages big data analytics in real time.

TransferTo’s Mobile Money Hub offers money-transfer operators a solution that enables developing markets to send money remittances via mobile.

Tranwall offers card issuers, processors, and corporations a card payment control solution.

Trulioo’s GlobalGateway helps fintech companies with the electronic identity-verification process by using its AML/KYC-compliant ID verification and normalized API.

Urban FT’s white-label, digital banking solution helps smaller and regional banks and credit unions to compete with larger FIs by enabling them to create, customize, and edit digital solutions for each card program via its Platform Management Portal.

Voitrax’s trade reconstruction engine uses transcription, machine learning and natural language processing to help financial institutions comply with regulations by enabling them to provide trade reconstruction reports in real time.

Walletron’s moBills mobile wallet, data integration and push notifications help any biller deal with today’s underwhelming mobile bill presentment and payment options.

Xignite’s cloud-based market-data APIs help financial services, media, software and corporate developers simplify the complexity of sourcing and integrating market data.

Xpenditure solves the hassle of expenses by eliminating the expense claim as it’s known today for businesses of all sizes.

Yseop’s Smart BI helps analysts, advisers and bankers draw insights from financial data in real time using self-service products.


FinovateFall is sponsored by The Bancorp, CapitalSource, Envestment, Financial Technology Partners, Hudson Cook, KPMG, and Zions SBIC.

FinovateFall is partners with Aite, American Bankers Association, Bank Innovators Council,BankersHub, bobsguide, Breaking Banks, California Bankers Association, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Celent, CoinTelegraph, Crowdfund Beat, Ebanking News, Hotwire, IDC Financial Insights, Javelin,Let’s Talk Payments, Mapa Research, Mercator Advisory Group, MergerMarket, The New Economy, NYPAY, The Paypers, SME Finance Forum, and World Finance.

Malauzai Raises $11 Million in Venture Funding

Malauzai Raises $11 Million in Venture Funding

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Malauzai Software has just filed a form D with the SEC for $11 million in equity financing.

The investors in the venture round of funding were not disclosed. But the new capital takes Malauzai Software’s total to more than $24 million. Austin Business Journal quoted Robb Gaynor, Malauzai Software founder and chief product officer, who said the funding will help support the company’s growth and “market expansion.”

Previous investors in the company include Live Oak Banking Company and Wellington Management, which led the company’s last funding round, a $6.5 million fundraising, in May 2014.

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From left: Malauzai Software co-founders, CTO Danny Piangerelli and CPO Robb Gaynor who are joined here by a handful of their partners in demonstrating Malauzai’s Virtual Banking Experience at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose.

Malauzai specializes in developing innovative banking apps for community banks and credit unions. The company’s mobile apps and internet products give banks and CUs the ability to offer features such as P2P payments, mobile account registration, remote capture, picture billpay, and more, to their customers wherever they are and on whatever device they choose. This week, Malauzai announced a deployment of its mobile remote capture technology at Citizen’s 1st National Bank in Iowa. And in April and May, Malauzai’s new SmartwearApp for use with the Apple Watch went live with eight credit unions and community banks.

Malauzai demonstrated its Virtual Banking Experience at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, Malauzai has more than 350 bank and credit union customers. Tom Shen is CEO.

Bill.com Unveils iOS App for Small Business Owners

Bill.com Unveils iOS App for Small Business Owners

Billcom_homepage_july15

Small business billpay specialist Bill.com has launched a mobile iOS app to help small business owners manage and pay bills remotely.

Bill.com CEO Rene Lacerte said the new app will help “make sure no business is left behind” as payments become increasingly digital and mobile. SME business owners using the platform can sort bills by due date, vendor, and amount; change payment dates and amounts, and originate payments from more than one bank account. The mobile app also provides a complete payment history, including access to the original invoices.

Available from the iOS app store, the Bill.com mobile app is free for current Bill.com customers and works for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. An Android version is expected in the next few months.

Billcom_newiosapp_july15

Bill.com’s new mobile app is part of the company’s plan to automate the full, end-to-end, accounts payable and accounts receivable processes on any device at any time. With its more than 600,000 network members processing more than $19 billion in payments a year, Bill,com says its mobile app will save users up to 50-70% of the time typically consumed by traditional bookkeeping. Three of the top-ten U.S. banks and more than 40% of the top-100 accounting firms use Bill.com’s technology as their primary payment solution.

2015 has been a big year for Bill.com. The company raised $50 million in funding in February, taking its total capital to more than $100 million. That month Bill.com’s Fast Pay was recognized by Accounting Today as a Top New Product for 2015. In March, the company bolstered its executive ranks with new hires in payments, risk and compliance, as well as sales and customer experience.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Bill.com demonstrated its CashView solution at FinovateSpring 2012 in San Francisco.

 

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Finovate Debuts: Dream Payments Solves Your Payment-acceptance Nightmare”
  • “Bill.com Unveils its iOS App for Small Business Owners”
  • “Malauzai Software Raises $11 Million in Venture Funding”

Around the web

  • Bloomberg: Barclays’s Michael Rake to Become WorldPay Chairman in September. See WorldPay at FinDEVr this October.
  • PaySimple introduces BookSimple, its cloud-based scheduling software.
  • Check Point partners with Vmware partner to bolster security in data centers.
  • Boston Business Journal: peerTransfer to open office in Shanghai, China, this year.
  • Bank Innovation reviews Narrative Science and its plans to enter the robot-advisor market.
  • Let’s Talk Payments interviews Ron Suber, Prosper President.
  • Credit Union Times features Rippleshot CEO and co-founder Canh Tran in its column on fraud detection for CUs.
  • Sang Lee, CEO of DarcMatter, quoted in RIA Biz column on robo-advisors.
  • PYMTNs.com profiles Kreditech as the company pursues Series C investment.
  • Belvoir FCU launches Belvoir Buck$ loyalty program courtesy of partnership with Larky.

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.

Finovate Debuts: Dream Payments Solves Your Payment-acceptance Nightmare

Finovate Debuts: Dream Payments Solves Your Payment-acceptance Nightmare

DreamPaymentsHomepage

Dream Payments works with banks and merchant acquirers to help businesses process payments and track operations. Its specialized mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) terminal, combined with a free mobile app, enables merchants to accept cash, credit, or debit card payments. This, coupled with Dream Payments’ sales insights and analytics, offers an end-to-end solution that is magstripe, EMV, and NFC compatible.

PaymentMethods

Merchant acquirers and banks can guard against disintermediation from alternative payment platform providers by offering the Dream Payments mPOS on a white-labeled basis.

Company facts:

  • 20+ employees
  • Raised $6 million in seed funding
  • Based in Toronto, Canada
  • Founded in 2014

The payment experience

ChargeMobileAppPaymentMethodUsing the mobile app, the merchant selects the item the customer would like to purchase, or manually enters the amount to charge. After entering the quantity and payment method (cash, debit, or credit), the merchant selects pay.

Once the device is authenticated and the transaction is validated, the customer receives a digital receipt via email, SMS, or a hard copy from a bluetooth printer.

Because of the upcoming liability shift, Dream Payments offers an EMV option. While EMV-compliant POS terminals typically cost $250 to $1,000, the Dream Payments hardware costs $50 for the device and comes with a free mobile app that works on multiple devices.

DreamPaymentsApplePayDream Payments works with NFC payments such as ApplePay

Merchant dashboard capabilitiesMerchantPortal

The Merchant Dashboard for business clients enables them to view their transaction history, reissue receipts, and process returns. Similar to the mPOS, banks and merchant acquirers can tailor this administrative view to match their brand.

The dashboard serves as a toolbox for merchants to manage and track sales, view deposits, as well as adjust POS settings. They can, for example, add and adjust user permissions, create and review sales reports, and manage customer receipts.

For banks and merchant acquirers

OpsDashboardUsing the Operation Portal, banks service multiple merchant client accounts. The portal provides a tier 1 and tier 2 support tool. It offers a high-level view of all merchants and their basic profile information, along with a complete list of each merchant’s transactions.

The Operation Portal also enables banks to activate, deactivate, and manage the merchants’ EMV card readers.

 

Dream Payments debuted at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose.

 

FinDEVr APIntelligence

FinDEVr2015LogoV2DateAre you building new financial technology? Be sure to register now for the only event exclusively for fintech developers, FinDEVr 2015, 6/7 October, in San Francisco.

The latest from FinDEVr 2015 presenters

  • Business Insider names executives of Braintree, PayPal, Coinbase, and Venmo as 5 of 10 execs who are transforming the fintech industry.
  • Swiss Re partners with Backbase to develop a new platform for selling and servicing life and health products online.
  • Avalara Integrates Automated Sales Tax Solution with Stripe.
  • PayPal’s Braintree supports Apple Pay in the United Kingdom with its v.zero SDK.

Alumni updates

  • InComm adds new brands to its Incentives e-commerce site, including vacation brands.
  • MetaBank partners with InComm to become an issuing bank for InComm’s prepaid card programs.
  • Xero updates Tracked Inventory feature.

Stay up to date on daily developments by following FinDEVr on Twitter.

Fastacash Secures $15 Million in Series B Investment

Fastacash Secures $15 Million in Series B Investment

Fastacash_homepage_July15

In one of the largest Series B rounds to date for a Singapore-based financial technology company, the social payments specialist Fastacash raised $15 million in new funding. The investment was led by Rising Dragon Singapore, UVM 2 Venture Investments, and frequent Finovate sponsor Life.SREDA, along with additional unnamed existing investors.

The funding takes Fastacash’s total capital to more than $23 million and will help the company deepen its presence in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and India, as well as Europe, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

“Our technology has made what was a cumbersome and often laborious process as easy as the swipe of a finger,” says Vince Tallent, fastacash CEO and Chairman. “We have an unwavering focus on simplifying the consumer payments experience.”

Fastacash_stage_FEU15

From left: Gilberto Arredondo, fastacash chief commercial officer, and Vince Tallent, chairman and CEO, at FinovateEurope 2014.

Fastacash is a global social platform that enables users to transfer value, such as cell phone airtime or money, as well as content, such as video, from one person to another securely using social media and messaging platforms. Fastacash partners with banks, PSPs, mobile operators, remittance companies, digital wallet providers and others to enable P2P and “person-to-merchant” value and content transfers.

Founded in April 2012 and headquartered in Singapore, Fastacash currently operates in India, Indonesia, Russia, Singapore, and Vietnam. Recent partnerships with India’s Axis Bank and Visa Europe have helped raise Fastacash’s profile among FIs looking to take advantage of the growth in the international money-transfer market valued at more than $685 billion.

Fastacash made its Finovate debut in London at FinovateEurope 2014.

Realty Mogul Builds $35 Million in New Funding

Realty Mogul Builds $35 Million in New Funding

RealtyMogulHomepage

Realty Mogul, a platform for crowdfunding real estate transactions, pulled in $35 million in funding early this week. This Series B installment is the company’s fifth round of funding since it was founded in 2012, bringing the total to $45.1 million.

Canaan Partners, the leader of Realty Mogul’s Series A round, participated in this year’s round, which was led by existing investor, Sorenson Capital.

For buyers, Realty Mogul offers debt financing of up to $1.5 million for residential properties and $25 million for commercial properties. It also has a commercial property equity option for up to $5 million. Additionally, the platform caters to both accredited retail investors and institutional investors.

RealtyMogulLendingOpps

Since launch, the California-based company’s platform has been used to furnish $80 million in funding for 250+ properties worth a total of $500 million. In the past year, Realty Mogul has added 70 employees and plans to hire more. In fact, the company will use the new funding to bolster its technology and data team to better analyze deals and risk.

Realty Mogul debuted its crowdfunding tool for real estate at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose. Check out the live demo video below.

Fenergo Raises $75 Million from Insight Venture Partners

Fenergo Raises $75 Million from Insight Venture Partners

fenergo_homepage_july2015

A $75 million investment from Insight Venture Partners will help fuel international expansion for Irish client onboarding lifecycle management specialist, Fenergo.

The funding is expected to close within weeks, and will take the company’s total funding to more than $80 million. In addition to helping Fenergo enter new markets around the world, the investment will support development of a partner ecosystem including Fenergo University and Consulting Accreditation Program.

Marc Murphy, Fenergo CEO, pointed to the company’s growth in recent years as evidence that Fenergo “can deliver the solutions that financial institutions need” with regard to regulatory onboarding and client lifecycle management. “We are thrilled to have a firm like Insight Venture Partners join our team,” he said. For its part, Insight underscored Fenergo’s brand and product strength, as well as the management team, in explaining the reasons behind his firm’s investment. The hope is that continued investment, innovation, and growth will help Fenergo’s technology become the industry standard in its field.

Fenergo_stage_FEU12

From left: Fenergo’s Niall Twomey, CTO, and Marc Murphy, CEO, demonstrated Deal Manager at FinovateEurope 2012.

Fenergo is a leading provider of client lifestyle management solutions for investment banks, private banks, and capital markets firms. The company’s technology helps institutions manage key processes, ranging from onboarding to mangement of client and counterparty data. Fenergo also makes it easier for institutions to remain compliant with both existing and emerging regulations. With clients including Scotiabank, Sun Trust, and Royal Bank of Canada, Fenergo has reported year-over-year growth of more than 100% for the past three years in a row.

Founded in 2009 and based in Dublin, Fenergo made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2012 in London. The company demonstrated its Deal Manager platform.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Realty Mogul Builds $35 Million in New Funding”
  • “Fastacash Secures $15 Million in Series B Investment”
  • “Fenergo Raises $75 Million from Insight Venture Partners”

Around the web

  • InComm adds new brands to its Incentives e-commerce site, including vacation brands.
  • Green Dot opens subsidiary in Shanghai.
  • Citizens 1st National Bank introduces mobile remote deposit capture with integration of Malauzai SmartApp, Ensenta mRDC.
  • Liz Loewy, senior vice president for EverSafe, spoke about elder financial abuse at White House Conference on Aging.
  • Arxan Technologies partners with Sequent to develop new security solution to protect HCE-based payment systems.
  • Five Degrees appoints Peter-Jan van de Venn as new chief commercial officer.
  • BBVA Group inks strategic agreement with the Alliance for Financial Inclusion.
  • Business Insider names executives of Braintree, PayPal, Coinbase, and Venmo as 5 of 10 execs who are transforming the fintech industry.
  • Kotak Securities and Heckyl launch real-time news and market-info apps.
  • Cachet Financial Solutions to deploy Select Mobile Money platform for SOLE Financial’s Visa Paycard.
  • MyOrder teams up with WirecardGroup to issue contactless mobile cards using HCE technology.
  • Algomi wins “FinTech Innovation of the Year” honors at 2015 Euromoney Global Awards for Excellence.
  • Wealthfront lowers its minimum investment to $500.
  • Bank Innovation takes a look at how startups like SizeUp help banks work better with small businesses.
  • Authentication specialist BioCatch earns a pair of patents from the U.S. Patent Office.

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.

Redesigning the Value Chain: Q&A with Michiel Schipper of Topicus

Redesigning the Value Chain: Q&A with Michiel Schipper of Topicus

TopicusFinance_homepage_july15

Topicus demonstrated its Force Business Lending solution in February at FinovateEurope 2015. The technology is a straight-through business process platform for loan origination for SMEs and corporate businesses.

The idea was to help companies not able to take advantage of more sophisticated BPM solutions such as the self-serve loan origination technology that Topicus demonstrated in its Finovate debut the previous year.

“Our internal processes are not really ready for self-service, yet,” Topicus Managing Director Michiel Schipper said, quoting from queries about his company’s technology. “What’s your solution for that?”

The solution, Force Business Lending, is a financial business process engine built specifically for the needs of lending institutions. The platform “knows” financial products, their structures and pricing, and provides fully automated ratings, dynamic pricing, and the ability to customize policy rules and other lending criteria.

We exchanged e-mails with Schipper earlier this year to find out what Topicus has been working on since its FinovateEurope appearance. We also wanted to know what to expect from the Netherlands-based, cloud-banking software specialist in the second half of 2015.

Finovate: You mentioned at FinovateEurope 2015 that your second appearance at Finovate was largely influenced by comments you received at your first appearance. What was that feedback and how did you take it to heart?

MichielSchipper_TopicusMichiel Schipper: During our first appearance, we showcased a solution where medium-sized enterprises could build their own financing solution from the bank’s assortment. Visitors to our booth told us that they’d love to be able to provide that service, but their mid-office ICT systems and processes would not cope. Therefore, we decided to take a step back and showcase our mid-office solution for loan origination and review that was servicing last year’s portal.

Finovate: Your company’s mission is described as “redesigning the business lending value chain.” Can you tell us a little more about that? What is the problem with business lending right now as you see it?

Schipper: It’s a very in-transparent marketplace for SMEs and mid-corps to be in right now. The traditional role of the banker taking time to challenge the business plans and financial health of his clients is disappearing. And the bank is no longer a one-stop shop for finance. Who is going to help the client find the right solutions for financing growth? Who is monitoring his financial health and acting as a true stakeholder?

New intermediaries, innovative accountants, and smart ICT will need to fill this gap. We believe that the crowd could play a role here as well.

At Topicus, we have been redesigning the value chain by equipping accountants and intermediaries with Basel-II ratings and instruments, software to play “what-if” scenarios for financing solutions, and stacked finance products.

Finovate: This year you demoed the Force Financial Business Process Management (FBPM) solution. How was the reception and how does FBPM differ from other BPM platforms?

Schipper: The most important discriminator is that traditional BPM platforms with a rule engine lack the product dimension. Our system knows about financial products, acceptance criteria, qualitative and quantitative risk assessment, risk-based pricing, etc. The process will adapt itself depending on which products are part of, say, a potential credit agreement. This results in a shorter time-to-market and a roadmap that has a strong focus on the financial industry.

Topicus_FEU15_stage2

Pictured: Force Business Lending provides a credit risk rating based on the financial data provided, displaying the risk profile in an easy, read-at-a-glance format.

Finovate: What were some of the biggest technical challenges when it came to developing the FBPM solution?

Schipper: The sheer complexity of the business-lending domain. Our aim is to achieve a very high level of automation, or Straight Through Processing. This requires that all aspects of business lending are specified. Most banks still work with paper product sheets, a simple data-entry system for the mid-office, Word templates for the credit proposal, and manual data entry on the back-ends. Harvesting the requirements for Force Business Lending was and is more complex than the mortgage domain.

Finovate: Thinking about user interface and experience for a moment. What does the business user want that is different from what the average individual technology user wants in terms of UI/UX?

Schipper: A professional user wants a lot of information and many buttons on a single screen, because he will quickly learn where to glance to find the info he needs. This results in screens that seem ugly and hard to use at a first glance, but reduce the need to flip back and forward across pages. Casual users need more explanation, canned customer journeys, and something pretty to look at to keep them going. Therefore, casual users and professional users should never have to share screens.

Finovate: More players are getting into the market for developing financial models for SMEs. What is your edge?

Schipper: Our domain is slowly moving from traditional statistical models based on finances to big data and risk assessment. Creating a risk model based on big data and open systems is not very hard any more. The hard part is enabling banks and risk departments to take those steps, as well. Our software embraces the traditional risk models that are still leading today, and allows banks to add qualitative scorecards and external data sources into the equation. The underlying data can be used not only as input for traditional statistical analysis to create a better risk model, but also for correlation discovery methods. We enable change through evolution.

Topicus_FEU2015_stage

From left: Topicus Head of Business Lending Jamie Burink; Managing Director Michiel Schipper.

Finovate: What fintech innovations are people talking the most about in the Netherlands?

Schipper: That would probably be crowdfunding, with blockchain technology coming in second. We currently have around forty crowdfunding platforms, which seems too much. It is impossible to identify which platforms will survive, so it’s a real immature market.

Finovate: What are your growth goals? Is European expansion a major priority? What about the U.S. or Asia?

Schipper: We are currently working with Gartner to take our next steps in internationalization. The U.S., Middle East, and Northern Europe are the regions we are focusing on. International expansion for our mortgage and business lending propositions is a major priority within the organization. In fact, this receives higher priority than starting new verticals like software for pensions or insurances.

Finovate: What can we expect from Topicus in the second half of 2015?

Schipper: Expect a lot of highlights from Topicus this year. The two most important ones are:

  • We are launching our software for crowdfunding, which is based on our fund broker software. It will have all the Force BPM magic built in, as well, so crowdfunding platforms can scale incredibly well with products of all levels of complexity. Crowdfunding a mortgage with automatic execution of all applicable rules and directives can be done against low operational costs, even down to automated arrears processes. We are looking into combining consumer crowdfunding with business crowdfunding to create crowdfunding funds that investors of all sizes can invest in.
  • Another highlight is the launch of Force Business Lending as-a-Service, which should enable small funds to reach SMEs through a professional process. These funds now lack a go-to market option, and remain unused. This would really open up the non-banking finance market in the Netherlands and change the business-lending value-chain again.

Learn more about Topicus and its Force Business Lending platform in the company’s demo video from FinovateEurope 2015.