Balance Street Helps Consumers Settle Delinquent Debt

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The final demo to take the FinovateSpring 2012 stage was Balance Street, who demonstrated how it helps consumers and creditors benefit from delinquent debt settlements:
“Balance Street shows consumers how much their debt costs them (as well as the high costs of debt settlement companies), then provides an easy way for them to enter delinquent credit card debt, save money for settlement, and make, accept, and counter offers from creditors. It’s a free, secure and easy way for consumers to settle delinquent debt that also provides creditors with critical information to help them recover more debt faster. 
Creditors can also benefit from making large, lump sum settlements with blocks of consumers, saving millions in customer service, mail, fax, email and money transfer costs. Furthermore, Balance Street will introduce and sell diverse metrics to the credit industry, derived from the unique transaction engine it built to help struggling consumers and overburdened creditors.”
Product Launched: May 2012
HQ Location: Los Angeles, CA
Company Founded: January 2011
Metrics: Raised $250,000, 3 employees, pre-revenue, 3 registered users, 2 successful settlements. Patent filed for online consumer debt transaction engine.
Introducing Johnny Simon (Founder and CEO) and Michael Lees (Corporate Development)

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InvestorBee Uses Wisdom from the Crowd to Help Users Make Smart Investment Decisions

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Next, DCisions took the stage to demo InvestorBee:
“InvestorBee puts data at consumers’ fingertips so they can make smart, confident investments.
        • It’s fact, not opinion. Users can tap into the database to learn from the experiences of other investors.
        • It’s an investment health check. Users can compare their portfolios and multi-asset products with fact-based, relevant benchmarks to understand whether they receive fair value.
        • It’s simple investing without guesswork. Users can choose an objective risk-based strategy to track what’s right for them in a few easy steps.
Our users extract wisdom from the crowd to make better, simpler investment decisions – all for free at InvestorBee.”
Product Launched: December 2011
HQ Location: London, UK
Company Founded: 2005
Metrics: 15 employees, holds data on approximately 1.5 million investors
Website: dcisions.com
Introducing Graham Mannion (Managing Director & Founder) and Maya Kuzalti (Director, Product & Analytics)

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Access Development Launches PowerDeals

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Afterwards, Access Development unveiled PowerDeals, a loyalty rewards program, for the first time:

“Access is proud to debut PowerDeals, a micro-redemption rewards engine that increases engagement and loyalty while lowering the cost per point for financial institutions. Studies show that the more frequently consumers transact with rewards programs, the more loyal they become. However, the costs associated with driving this behavior have led many FIs to implement lower earn rates, higher redemption hurdles, and expiration strategies. 

PowerDeals allows consumers to redeem their loyalty currency for deals at thousands of in-store and online merchants for a fraction of the face value. By presenting highly attractive, relevant offers with low redemption hurdles, PowerDeals produces more transactions – thereby boosting the program’s impact on loyalty – while the low cost per offer to administrators can help to dramatically reduce program costs and accrual liability.”

Product Launched: May 9, 2012
HQ Location: Salt Lake City, UT
Company Founded: 1984
Metrics: Access has nearly 300,000 merchant partners, including 115,000 on the Access Mobile Network, over 300 clients who collectively represent more than 15 million members, 150 employees and zero debt. Access is self-funded.
Introducing Kelly Passey (EVP Business and Product Development) and Bryce Benson (Operations Manager, Product & Bus Dev)

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The Thomson Reuters App Store Enables Financial Institutions to Create Market Monitoring Apps

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Then, Thomson Reuters showed off its App Store:

“Thomson Reuters is pleased to introduce their new App Store solution that enables access to the latest innovative capabilities and tools for use across the digital enterprise. 

The Thomson Reuters solution enables financial institutions and 3rd party developers to effortlessly create pioneering market-monitoring and investing apps. By seamlessly integrating the combination of Thomson Reuters content assets with a firm’s customer account data and other data sources, Thomson Reuters is helping institutions leverage the providers of financial insight to deliver a differentiated experience for their customers while lowering both development costs and time to market.”

Product Launched: October 2012
HQ Location: New York, NY
Company Founded: 1851
Metrics: 50,000 employees, $12.9 billion revenue
Introducing Jaime Punishill (Global Head of Digital Distribution) and Chris Barrett (Proposition Owner, App Store)

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Klarna Demonstrates an Easy Payment Process

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Next, Klarna showed off its payment process:

“Smooth and frictionless payment process is the trademark of the Klarna experience. No one approaches payments the way Klarna does. In less than a second, Klarna performs an extensive analysis of the buyer and assesses the specific risk of fraud and default for that transaction.”

HQ Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Company Founded: 2005
Metrics: 650 employees, 14,000 merchants, $155 million raised in 2011, $118 million in revenue in 2011
Website: klarna.com
Introducing Ohad Samet (Chief Risk Officer) and Jakob Söderbaum (SVP, Sales)

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SoMoLend Debuts its P2P Lending Platform

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Second, SoMoLend launched its P2P lending platform:

“SoMoLend is debuting its peer-to-peer lending experience by which business borrowers can raise capital by securing loans from friends and family, customers, and community supporters. 

Simultaneously, lenders can invest in the industries they care about most in their own neighborhood, fueling local economy and doing well by doing good all while earning a return.”

Product Launched: Beta Launch: December 2011; Full Product Launch: May 2012

HQ Location: Cincinnati, OH
Company Founded: May 2011
Metrics: SoMo has over 1,000 borrowers seeking loans on our platform and we have closed on $1.2 million in seed capital. SoMo has 5 full-time employees and 6 contract employees.
Website: somolend.com
Introducing Candace Klein (Founder & CEO) and Eric Elias (Director, Product Development)

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FutureAdvisor Announces its Premium Beta

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Kicking off the final afternoon session, FutureAdvisor showed how its new platform gives actionable investment advice:
“FutureAdvisor is demoing FutureAdvisor 401(k) Advice, which supports more than 100 of the largest 401(k) plans in the country. With company-specific data about which 401(k) Plans have which specific investment options, FutureAdvisor is able to algorithmically give step-by-step investment advice to investors that takes into account their investment goals, their existing investments elsewhere, and their 401(k)’s limited plan options. 
Though other companies have tried to tackle the problem of advising users on their IRA or taxable accounts, no free web service has been available to give specific, actionable advice on investors’ 401(k) accounts because of the complexity involved, until now. 
With FutureAdvisor’s step-by-step advice that takes an investor’s 401(k) and other accounts holistically into consideration, investors will be able to save on hidden fund fees, better diversify, and improve their tax efficiency.”
Product Launched: May 2012

HQ Location: Seattle, WA
Company Founded: May 2010
Metrics: Team of eight CFAs, Math PhDs, and Engineers
Introducing Bo Lu (Co-Founder)

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Pindrop Security Helps Financial Institutions Prevent Fraudulent Calls

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Last to demo in this session, Pindrop Security demonstrated its phone call fraud prevention technology:
“Pindrop Security’s Phone Fraud Call Analyzer is the first technology of its kind to uniquely identify callers, regardless of spoofed Caller ID data or other deception attempts. Pindrop is able to provide a “call thumbprint” based on over 160 characteristics of the call, to provide accurate and actionable information on where the call is coming from and the type of device. In addition, the call is matched against Pindrop’s database of over of over 40,000 known fraud callers and matched. This information can allow financial institutions to improve identification of fraud callers, block or reroute calls and save time and money in call centers.
Pindrop Security’s Phone Fraud Intelligence Service (PFIS) provides access to the most accurate and complete database of phone numbers associated with fraud. The PFIS is used by fraud investigation teams, law enforcement, and intelligence to quickly evaluate call provenance as part of their anti-fraud decision process, including supporting caller validation, caller investigations and fraud forensics. This allows organizations to look for ongoing attacks from known fraudsters as well as to prevent future attacks.
The data is accessed via the PFIS portal, which provides detailed information both on specific number queries and on the worst offenders on a variety of criteria. PFIS can be accessed via a web-based portal or integrated into your systems through our API.”
Product Launched: January 2012
HQ Location: Atlanta, GA
Company Founded: 2010
Introducing Vijay Balasubramaniyan (CEO)

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Serverside Group Makes Personalized Card Design Easy and Social with Facebook Integration

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Then, Serverside Group showed how easy it is for users to customize their own card and share the design with their Facebook friends:

“The app uses card customization as a new and unique way to leverage Facebook in an exciting and engaging way that can drive real brand value, loyalty, and engagement from a bank’s customers. Customers can design a card using an image from one of their Facebook photo galleries. Once the design is approved, it is posted to the user’s wall where all their friends can view it and click on the link to design their own card and thus create a viral marketing effect!”

Product Launched: March/April 2012
HQ Location: London, UK
Company Founded: 2003
Metrics: Serverside Group Limited is a UK-based trading company with 100% owned subsidiaries in the U.S. (Serverside Graphics Inc.) and NZ (Serverside Graphics (NZ) Ltd). The company has 50 global employees and is a fully owned subsidiary of Gemalto NV. 
Website: ssgl.com
Introducing Gareth Jones (Global Head of Sales & Development) and Andrew Cox (Vice President Development)

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Clover Network Demonstrates Mobile Payment Solutions

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Clover Network took the stage with its payment solution for mobile devices:

“Clover empowers payment processors and value added resellers to provide merchants with the best customer checkout experiences.”

Product Launching: June 2012
HQ Location: Mountain View, CA
Company Founded: October 2010
Metrics: $5.8 million Series A, 10 Employees
Website: clover.com
Introducing Leonard Speiser (Co-Founder)

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inStream Shows How it is Changing the Financial Planning Software Industry

InStreamSolLogo.jpgAfterwards, inStream demonstrated its innovations within the financial planning software industry:

“inStream is changing the market standard for what is generally referenced today as “financial planning software” through multiple innovations highlighted below. 
  • Financial services coordination via lead generation puts the advisor in the center of the client relationship.
  • Leveraging community-generated planning metrics effectively creates a best practices knowledge base of wealth management services for clients.
  • Proactive planning made easy through rules-based planning (setting alerts for every-day planning), milestone-based (setting alerts based on key life milestones), and touchpoint based planning (pre-set client communication plan based on personal client interests).”
Product Launched: October 2011
HQ Location: McLean, VA
Company Founded: September 2010
Metrics: Money raised: $800,000, number of employees: 7, revenues: $100,000, 
registered users: 727 advisory firms
Introducing Alex Murguia (CEO)

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Applause Learning Demos Coindexter Club, a Financial Literacy Program for Kids

ApplauseLearningLogo.jpgNext, Applause Learning introduced the Coindexter Club, a program that gamifies earning, saving, spending, and investing to help kids learn personal finance:

“The Coindexter Club is a financial literacy program for children ages 6 to 12 that includes many dynamic features. The program can be licensed by financial institutions or accessed directly by parents through our simple online subscription process. 

The foundation of the Coindexter Club is the virtual city of Econopolis found at www.Coindexter.com. Econopolis is a game-based virtual world that teaches children how to earn, save, spend, and invest money. The autonomous, non-linear learning environment of Econopolis allows children to learn at their own pace and develop strong financial behaviors that translate seamlessly from the virtual to the real world.”

Product Launched: May 2012
HQ Location: Atlanta, GA
Company Founded: October 2011
Introducing Adrian Lawrence (Creative Director) and Melissa Lawrence (Sales Representative)

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