Alumni News

FinGoal Secures New Funding in Round Led by Naples Technology Ventures

FinGoal Secures New Funding in Round Led by Naples Technology Ventures
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, FinGoal, Funding
  • Banking and insights platform FinGoal announced a new investment this week. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
  • The funding round was led by existing investor Naples Technology Ventures (NTV).
  • FinGoal won Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2022 for its Aggregator Switch Kit, developed in partnership with fellow Finovate alum Envestnet | Yodlee.

Digital banking and personal finance insights platform FinGoal secured new funding this week. The Boulder, Colorado-based fintech announced that it has closed an investment round led by existing investor Naples Technology Ventures (NTV). The amount of the funding was not immediately disclosed.

“We believe FinGoal’s offering is a game changer in the banking and finance space,” NTV Managing Partner Mike Abbaei said. “Their platform will be a thriving success in the new digital world.”

This week’s funding marks the second time NTV has backed FinGoal. The company first invested in FinGoal in early 2022.

A specialist in enabling greater personalization in banking, FinGoal helps financial institutions understand where their customers are spending their money. These insights not only help FIs learn which banking products and services to offer their customers. This analysis also informs banks and other financial institutions on how best to market new offerings to their customers, as well.

“A business owner isn’t shopping for a business payments product – they want a way to better serve their customers and reduce costs,” FinGoal CEO David Nohe said. “Knowing what is really happening in the lives of customers allows FIs to do more with the account holders they already have.”

Making its Finovate debut in 2021, FinGoal returned to the Finovate stage less than a year later, securing a Best of Show award for its Aggregator Switch Kit that makes it easier for developers to quickly and easily transition away from their current data aggregator. The solution was developed in partnership with fellow Finovate alum Envestnet | Yodlee and provides a translation layer API that enables engineering teams to switch to Envestnet | Yodlee’s enrichment and make their first API call soon afterwards.

“Before today, switching aggregator was a pain in the butt,” FinGoal’s VP of Product Ariam Sium said from the FinovateSpring stage last May. “It took a lot of time and put a lot of product road maps at risk. At FinGoal, we believe that the best data made available through reliable and safe infrastructure is key to the future of financial services. That’s why we’re going to show you how to switch aggregators in minutes.”

Learn more about FinGoal in our podcast interview with Finovate VP Greg Palmer and FinGoal’s Sium.

Photo by Pixabay

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Sezzle Revisits Plan to Publicly List in the U.S.

Sezzle Revisits Plan to Publicly List in the U.S.
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Sezzle
  • Sezzle announced plans to publicly list on the Nasdaq by the end of September.
  • The company will continue to sell common stock on the Australian Stock Exchange.
  • The news comes two years after Sezzle’s original announcement of plans to publicly list in the U.S.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) technology provider Sezzle announced on Monday it plans to list publicly in the U.S. on the Nasdaq, while continuing to sell common stock on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).

The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company originally listed on the ASX in 2019 using Chess Depositary Interests (CDIs), which are traded on the ASX to allow non-Australian companies to list their shares on the exchange. Prior to listing on the Nasdaq, Sezzle plans to remove the Foreign Ownership Restricted on United States Person Prohibited tag from the CDIs to allow participation from U.S. investors.

“A listing on the Nasdaq is a natural evolution for Sezzle given the company is already filing the necessary reports with the SEC,” said Sezzle Chairman and CEO Charlie Youakim. “Although we are not seeking to raise capital as part of the Nasdaq listing, we are excited to expand the universe of potential investors to the United States.”

Sezzle plans to list in the U.S. no later than the end of September 2023.

Avid fintech nerds may have a sense of déjà vu reading Sezzle’s headline today. In fact, it echoes a news post we published in 2021: Sezzle Plans to File for U.S. IPO. According to that release, “Plans for the public listing are still in early stages. Details, such as the timing, price, and use, have not been revealed.” Sezzle’s release today revisits the plan for a U.S. IPO, but with more concrete details.

Sezzle was founded in 2016 and the company’s growth ballooned alongside the increasing interest in BNPL in 2020. In turning its focus from growth to profitability, Sezzle has made significant cost-saving efforts, including exiting a handful of foreign markets and cutting 20% of its North American workforce. Last February, we reported that fellow BNPL player Zip planned to acquire Sezzle. The deal was terminated in July in light of macroeconomic and market conditions.

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Intuit Pulls from Mint to Build New Credit Karma Net Worth Tool

Intuit Pulls from Mint to Build New Credit Karma Net Worth Tool
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Credit Karma, Daily news, Mint
  • Credit Karma is launching Net Worth, a new tool that will enable users to view and track their net worth in a single place.
  • Intuit’s Mint business has joined the Credit Karma team to facilitate the new Net Worth tool.
  • At launch, the Net Worth tool will be available to U.S. consumers with credit scores above 720.

Intuit-owned Credit Karma is expanding from credit building into wealth building this week with its new launch, Net Worth. The new tool aims to help the company’s 120 million U.S. members track their net worth, and places Credit Karma one step closer toward its goal of becoming a full service personal financial management platform.

Intuit subsidiary Mint is key to today’s launch and has joined the Credit Karma team to implement the new offering. Mint launched in 2007 to help users keep track of all of their accounts in a single place. The company was one of the first to offer account aggregation in a direct-to-consumer offering.

“Credit Karma’s mission is to champion financial progress for all, but we know that financial progress looks different for everyone,” said Credit Karma CEO and Founder Kenneth Lin. “This next evolution of Credit Karma will combine the expertise and momentum generated by Mint with Credit Karma’s scale and technology, and enable us to help more Americans, in particular those who are faced with a new set of financial challenges and are looking to elevate and protect their net worth.”

At launch, Net Worth will be quite simple. The tool will help members understand the components of their net worth, monitor changes, and track their transactions over time. Future iterations will enable users to protect their net worth, maximize credit card rewards based on spending habits, and view investment insights. Interestingly, each of these secondary iterations comes with potential revenue streams, such as selling insurance, credit card promotional partnerships, etc.

Credit Karma is making Net Worth available to U.S. consumers with credit scores above 720 and hopes to expand the tool to more users over time. “Net Worth was built for U.S. consumers who have already made significant progress on their credit score and are looking for that next financial health indicator to track and take action on, as they continue their financial journey,” said Mint General Manager Ryan Steckler. “Before we can help consumers grow their net worth, we’ve built a seamless product experience that gives consumers a holistic view of all of their financial accounts, directly within the Credit Karma app.”

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

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Maine-Based Kennebec Savings Bank Launches Alkami Digital Banking Platform

Maine-Based Kennebec Savings Bank Launches Alkami Digital Banking Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alkami Technology, Alumni News, Daily news
  • Kennebec Savings Bank, based in Maine, went live with the digital banking platform from Alkami.
  • The technology will help the $1.6 billion financial institution provide a seamless and consistent user experience for its business, retail, and mobile banking customers.
  • Alkami made its Finovate debut in 2009 as “iThryv.” The company is headquartered in Plano, Texas.

Kennebec Savings Bank launched the Alkami Digital Banking Platform this week. The Maine-based financial institution, with $1.6 billion in assets, will leverage the newly integrated solution to provide a seamless digital banking experience for its business, retail, and mobile banking customers. Founded more than 150 years ago, Kennebec Savings Bank has a team of nearly 200 employees and maintains offices in Augusta, Farmingdale, Freeport, Waterville, and Winthrop.

“One of our key goals is to expand support for local businesses,” Kennebec SVP and Chief Information Officer Kevin Dono explained. “Alkami’s platform enables us to provide a seamless and consistent user experience for our business customers by giving them access to all accounts through a common user interface within a single system. Self-service capabilities help them manage multiple accounts and enable functionality options for individuals through permission settings.”

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Alkami made its Finovate debut as “iThryv” in 2009. The company’s digital banking platform offers an intuitive solution for enhancing the onboarding process for new customers, and accelerating deposit and loan growth. The platform also supports digital cards and P2P transfers, offers financial wellness tools, and will enable Kennebec to leverage data to provide customers with greater personalization.

“We are excited to support Kennebec’s efforts to go beyond the traditional banking footprint and further empower and engage with customers,” Alkami CEO Alex Shootman said. “The Alkami Platform, combined with Kennebec’s outstanding service, will position them to deliver even greater value and service benefits to both current and future customers.”

Alkami began the year earning special recognition from AMOCO Federal Credit Union, which named Alkami its “Partner of the Year.” The award is designed to recognize the “outstanding positive impact” that the FCU’s business partners have had on the institution’s member service, growth, and innovation. AMOCO FCU, with 78,000 users — including 56,000 active digital banking users – has relied on Alkami’s Digital Banking Platform since 2019.

“We were very specific about the user experience (UX) and capabilities we needed for our members,” AMOCO SVP of Operations Technology Nate Ashworth said. “Alkami not only brought a best-in-class UX to the table, but also has the extensibility to build in the integrations we require now and into the future.”

Photo by Leah Kelley

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Coinbase Launches Wallet-as-a-Service

Coinbase Launches Wallet-as-a-Service
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Coinbase, Daily news
  • Coinbase is launching a Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS).
  • The offering will enable businesses to build web3 wallets for their customers, using only web2 skills.
  • Initial customers for the launch include NFT marketplace Floor, gaming platform Moonray, and token-gated events site Tokenproof.

Digital currency platform Coinbase launched a Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) this week. The new offering is aimed to help any company build customizable wallets for their clients, bringing them into the web3 era.

The launch comes after Coinbase realized that web3 wallets were out of reach for many businesses. These on-chain wallets– which help users store digital assets, facilitate transactions, and act as a digital identity– are complex and require technical knowledge. Coinbase’s WaaS aims to simplify things by enabling companies to offer a digital wallet onboarding experience that requires only a username and password. Coinbase will also enable companies to offer the wallet within their own app, enabling in-app transfers of currency or digital assets all in one place.

The WaaS tool enables users to access a web3 wallet using a web2 interface. Also making things easier for those new to web3 is the security. With WaaS, users are not required to manage their own keys. Instead, Coinbase uses advanced multi-party computation to securely divide, encrypt, and distribute keys among multiple parties.

Coinbase has already secured a handful of clients for its WaaS, including NFT marketplace Floor, gaming platform Moonray, and token-gated events site Tokenproof. “Individuals will no longer have to come with knowledge of how the blockchain works in order to interact with the brands they love,” said Tokenproof Founder Fonz. “When users download the tokenproof app, we’ll help welcome them into web3 by creating their first wallet, which will be powered by Coinbase.”

With 1,110 verified users on its platform, Coinbase sees $145 billion in quarterly volume traded and has $80 billion in assets on its platform. The company went public in 2021 and now trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker COIN with a current market capitalization of $14 billion. Earlier this month, Coinbase acquired digital asset management company One River Digital Asset Management in an effort to bridge the gap between financial institutions and the crypto economy.

Photo by Lukas

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Digital Banking Platform HMBradley Inks Deal with Thought Machine

Digital Banking Platform HMBradley Inks Deal with Thought Machine
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Thought Machine
  • Digital banking platform HMBradley forged a strategic partnership with banking technology provider Thought Machine.
  • HMBradley will leverage Thought Machine’s Vault Core solution to offer new and more personalized financial products to its customers.
  • U.K.-based Thought Machine made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2018.

Fintech platform HMBradley announced a strategic partnership with banking technology provider Thought Machine this week. Courtesy of the collaboration, HMBradley will be able to clear its waitlist and begin opening new accounts for the first time in nearly a year and a half. To this end, HMBradley also has teamed up with New York Community Bank (NYCB), a division of Flagstar Bank, who will maintain the customer deposit accounts.

“With Thought Machine’s cutting-edge technology, we can quickly create and build the products we’ve imagined, and with NYCB’s long-standing reputation as a stable and successful financial institution, we can exceed customer expectations at scale,” HMBradley co-founder and CEO Zach Bruhnke said. “This will result in an unparalleled customer experience with more personalized tools and benefits for our customers.”

The adoption of Thought Machine’s configurable, cloud-native core banking platform Vault Core has enabled HMBradley to transition away from overnight batch transaction processing to real-time ledger capabilities. Features like Thought Machine’s smart contract technology gives HMBradley the ability to respond to market demands in real time, as well as enhance the customer experience with more personalized solutions and actionable insights into their financial status.

“By running on Vault Core,” Thought Machine CEO Paul Taylor said, “HMBradley will undoubtedly grow and improve its service in ways customers never imagined. We look forward to supporting HMBradley as it bakes power and efficiency into its operations and rolls out innovative new features with speed.”

Thought Machine’s partnership with HMBradley comes less than a month after the company announced that U.S.-based Arvest Bank was launching a new loan offering using Thought Machine’s core banking technology. Thought Machine and Arvest Bank have worked together since the fall of 2021, when the $26 billion financial institution brought Thought Machine on board to help drive its digital transformation strategy. Laura Merling, the bank’s chief transformation and operations officer, praised Thought Machine’s Vault Core for its ability to enable the bank to “build, launch, and manage any financial product through its Universal Product Engine” which offers “highly personalized, targeted products to specific customer segments.”

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in London, U.K., Thought Machine made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018. The company has raised more than $562 million in funding according to Crunchbase, from investors including Temasek Holdings, Intesa Sanpaolo, and Nyca Partners.

Photo by Pixabay

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Digital Banking Solutions Provider Bankjoy Secures New Funding

Digital Banking Solutions Provider Bankjoy Secures New Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Bankjoy, Daily news, Funding
  • Bankjoy, a Michigan-based digital banking solutions provider, has secured new funding. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
  • The round was led by credit union service organization (CUSO) Curql Collective and featured participation by current and prospective credit union clients of Bankjoy.
  • Bankjoy made its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateFall last September.

Digital banking solutions provider Bankjoy announced a new investment round led by credit union service organization, Curql Collective. The amount of the funding was not immediately disclosed. In addition to Curql, a number of Bankjoy’s current and prospective credit union clients also participated in the round. Among these investors were AEA Credit Union, Community Wide Federal Credit Union, and Statewide Federal Credit Union.

“We are thrilled to bring Curql on as an investor as Bankjoy continues to grow, as this latest round of funding will allow us to pursue new opportunities to redefine the digital banking experience and help more community financial institutions thrive in an increasingly competitive environment,” BankJoy CEO Michael Duncan said.

A Finovate alum since 2016, Bankjoy most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall last September. At the conference, the Detroit, Michigan-based company showcased its business banking platform that makes it easier and more cost-effective for FIs to deliver digital banking technology to their banking customers. The platform provides a single portal for multiple business accounts, as well as the ability to manage multiple users, control permissions, send transfers to multiple recipients, and more. The Bankjoy Business Banking Platform features more than 60 integrations with core banking platforms and other third-party vendors.

“We build all of our products in-house,” Duncan said at the beginning of his FinovateFall demo in 2022, “because we believe that’s the best way for us to deliver the most seamless, and the most beautiful, and the most visually consistent digital experience across all these channels.”

Bankjoy’s funding news comes a little over a month after the company launched its Online Account Opening 2.0 solution. The new offering enables financial institutions to quickly and seamlessly onboard new customers. The process takes 90 seconds, including ID upload and a selfie match, to ensure a secure and efficient experience for members and clients. The company ended last year having inked deals with a trio of credit unions – Mobility CU of Irving, Texas ($350 million in assets); Lafayette FCU of Rockville, Maryland ($1.6 billion in assets); and SIU CU of Carbondale, Illinois ($465 million in assets).

“Over the last 12 months, 43 percent of small businesses have increased their use of online banking services via computers or tablets, and 40 percent used more mobile banking services, according to Ernst & Young data,” Duncan said. “Clearly, a majority of businesses now expect to be able to engage with their financial institutions through digital channels and this is what Bankjoy’s business banking platform was designed to solve.”

We featured Michael Duncan in our look at black and African American Finovate alums as part of our Black Heritage Month commemoration in February.

Photo by Andre Furtado

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Natural Language Analytics Innovator SESAMm Locks in $37 Million in New Funding

Natural Language Analytics Innovator SESAMm Locks in $37 Million in New Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, SESAMm
  • Paris-based natural language analytics data provider SESAMm raised $37 million (€35 million) in Series B2 funding this week.
  • The company will use the investment to grow its workforce and fuel global expansion.
  • A Best of Show winner at FinovateEurope 2022, SESAMm culls billions of web articles and other content to provide organizations and businesses with sentiment and ESG data on public and private companies.

Natural language analytics data provider SESAMm has raised $37 million (€35 million) in Series B2 funding. The investment will help accelerate the Paris, France-based company’s growth and plans for global expansion. SESAMm also will use the capital to add to its workforce in sustainability, technology, sales, and marketing.

“We are happy and grateful to close this €35 million Series B2 round to continue our growth journey and expand to new international markets such as Singapore,” SESAMm CEO and co-founder Sylvain Forté said. “Raising a significant amount during challenging market conditions highlights the relevancy of SESAMm’s focus on two key trends: AI and sustainability. In turn, these tools enable organizations to make better decisions and fill the data gaps, particularly in ESG, on both public and private companies.”

SESAMm’s funding comes almost a year after it won Best of Show at FinovateEurope in London for the live demo its TextReveal solution. Powered by SESAMm’s natural language processing engine, the platform analyzes over 20 billion web articles and messages to deliver daily sentiment and ESG data. The company serves top private equity firms, hedge funds, and other asset management companies, as well as both small and large corporations, with services ranging from controversy detection and private equity due diligence to ESG and SDG sentiment scores and suppliers monitoring.

This week’s round was co-led by deep tech VC firm Elaia and BNP Paribas’ venture capital arm, Opera Tech Ventures. The funding takes SESAMm’s total equity funding to $53 million (€50 million). Also participating were asset manager Unigestion, Raiffeisen Bank International’s venture capital arm Elevator Ventures, AFG Partners, and CEGEE Capital. Investors in SESAMm’s previous Series B1 round, including Carlyle and New Alpha Asset Management, also participated.

Founded in 2014, SESAMm finished last year as the recipient of the Real Deals ESG Tech Award, which recognizes both demonstrated customer and revenue growth, as well as the impact of the recipient’s work on businesses and clients. In November, SESAMm announced a partnership with EthiFinance to help the European risk analysis and ESG rating specialist launch its EthiMonitor solution. The technology provides ESG controversy analysis “for any SME universe.” Also late last year, SESAMm teamed up with South Korea-based Kyobo AXA Investment Managers to develop machine learning models based on SESAMm’s NLP alternative data.

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Wise Launches Two New Products, Undergoes Rebrand

Wise Launches Two New Products, Undergoes Rebrand
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, TransferWise, Wise
  • Wise is unveiling a new look and feel, as well as two new products.
  • The company anticipates its “visual makeover” will create a more consistent user experience.
  • The two new products include the Wise Business Card and a money transfer link.

It can be tough for a legacy fintech to make noise among the onslaught of new competing digital tools released on a weekly basis. Despite the challenge, cross-border money transfer product Wise is finding a way.

The U.K.-based company has swapped its color scheme from blue to green. But that’s not all that has changed. As Wise described in a press announcement, “The complete visual makeover features a fresh green palette and a bold new font, and draws from global currencies, languages, alphabets and places around the world.”

Interestingly, Wise changed its name from Transferwise two years ago in an effort to broaden its image from a money transfer company to a more holistic global banking services provider. Today’s change could be seen as a next step in that process. Wise explained that the new look and feel will make its customer experience consistent regardless of the customer’s geographical location or language. This new experience reinforces Wise’s mission to “build money without borders.”

Describing the visual change, Wise Co-founder and CEO Kristo Käärmann said, “Our new look is inspired by the millions of people and businesses worldwide that use Wise today. It draws from where they come from, but also represents the excitement of the world open for them to conquer.”

Today’s announcement also highlighted two new products for the global money firm. The first is the Wise Business Card, which is an extension of the company’s Wise Account. The card is currently available to U.S. customers. The second new product– also for U.S. users– enables users to transfer money to recipients via a link. Instead of requiring the sender to know the recipient’s bank details, the recipient can securely enters their bank credentials after clicking on the link.

Despite today’s progress, Käärmann says the company still has a long road ahead. “People and businesses are still being duped by hidden fees, and losing over £180 billion each year to their banks,” he explained. “This is money they could have otherwise used to pay bills, expand their businesses or even save for a rainy day. We don’t accept it and we’re committed to solving this for everyone, everywhere.”

Wise also celebrated a new milestone in today’s announcement. The company has reached 16 million customers since launching in 2011. Wise’s technology enables people and businesses to hold funds in more than 50 currencies, as well as move money between countries and spend money across international borders. The company went public in mid-2021 and now trades on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker WISE with a current market capitalization of $5.94 billion.

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Klarna Reports Loss But Plans to Return to Profitability by Summer

Klarna Reports Loss But Plans to Return to Profitability by Summer
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Klarna
  • Klarna reported a $1 billion operating loss in 2022, up from a $680 million operating loss in 2021.
  • Despite the loss, Klarna plans to return to profitability by this summer.
  • Klarna last reported a full year profitability in 2018.

Consumer payment services company Klarna is inching toward profitability, but is still in the red.

The Swedish company released its operating figures this week, reporting an operating loss of $1 billion for 2022 (10.5 billion crowns). The negative side of the news is that Klarna’s operating loss increased– the company reported a loss of $680 million in 2021. But the positive spin is that Klarna plans to return to profitability by summer.

Last week, the buy now, pay later (BNPL) player reported it has seen a large amount of growth in its U.S. market. The region generated a 71% year-over-year increase in gross merchandise volume, while improving credit loss rates by 37%. As of December 2022, the U.S– with its 34 million consumers– has become Klarna’s largest market by revenue.

Klarna, which last posted a full-year profit in 2018, may be able to reach its 2023 profitability goal. The company has seen increased growth in the U.S. and the U.K. “The U.S. and the U.K. [are] growing at a very high pace, pushing up the average growth number for the whole company,” said company Chief Executive Sebastian Siemiatkowski in a statement to Reuters. Additionally, the company restructured in 2022. Klarna let go of 10% of its staff in May of last year in an effort to rein in costs.

With 150 million customers across the globe, Klarna is one of the pioneers in the BNPL arena and currently offers its BNPL payment tools in 45 markets. More than 400,000 retailers, including H&M, Macy’s, and IKEA, offer Klarna within their checkout flow. The company has raised $4.5 billion since it was founded in 2005.

Photo by Mac Mullins

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CoreLogic Acquires Digital Mortgage Platform Roostify

CoreLogic Acquires Digital Mortgage Platform Roostify
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Roostify

Almost a decade after the company made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring, digital mortgage platform Roostify has agreed to be acquired by property information, analytics, and data-enabled solutions provider CoreLogic. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“We believe that this is an important transaction for the industry,” Roostify co-founder and CEO Rajesh Bhat said. “From inception, Roostify’s mission has been to accelerate and streamline the home lending journey. Bringing together the power of CoreLogic’s data and analytics suite with the Roostify digital lending platform allows us to accelerate the journey towards a truly data driven digital origination experience in one single platform.”

The integration of the two technologies will help clients secure key data about both borrowers and properties at the beginning of the lending process. This not only saves time and money, but the transparency also helps ensure that lenders receive the information they need as early as possible – before processing and underwriting – in order to minimize errors and make loan conditions clear to all parties. The result is an improved customer experience with less processing and lower underwriting expenses.

Founded in 2012, Roostify currently helps home lenders process more than $50 billion in loans every month. With clients ranging from TD Bank and Santander to CIS Home Loans and First American Mortgage Solutions, Roostify helps lenders close more loans, improve margins, increase the ability to scale their operations, and maximize customer satisfaction. The San Francisco, California-based company offers a 45% decrease in time to close for a customer within 90 days of go-live, an application submission rate of 85%, and only 14 days on average between submission and delivery to underwriting.

“We sit on an incredible amount of data, analytics, and essential workflow solutions that when properly integrated to the loan lifecycle, can deliver a better mortgage experience for borrowers as well as lenders,” CoreLogic President of Mortgage Solutions Jay Kingsley said. “The Roostify acquisition will unlock our ability to quickly execute on this mission.”

Roostify has raised $65 million in total equity funding, securing investments from Mouro Capital, Cota Capital, and USAA among others. Ten Coves Capital led Roostify’s most recent fundraising, a $32 million Series C round in January 2021. Dan Kittredge, Managing Partner at Ten Coves Capital praised Roostify as “well-positioned to accelerate the digitalization of home lending infrastructure,” especially given the fact that “the mortgage lending industry has been relatively slow to embrace digital technologies.” Kittredge added, “the opportunity to re-design the future of home lending through technology cannot be overstated.”

Photo by Pixabay

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eToro Teams Up with Sentifi to Launch Social Sentiment Portfolio

eToro Teams Up with Sentifi to Launch Social Sentiment Portfolio
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, eToro, Sentifi
  • eToro launched its SocialSentiment portfolio of stocks with high ESG and social sentiment criteria this week.
  • The new offering was made possible courtesy of a partnership with alternative data provider – and fellow Finovate alum – Sentifi.
  • Sentifi’s technology analyzes more than 500 million tweet – and two million news articles, forums, and blog – in order to create its social sentiment rating (sentScore) for positive social chatter.

eToro has unveiled a new solution for investors looking for exposure to U.S. companies with strong ESG performance. The social investing network has teamed up with alternative data provider Sentifi to launch SocialSentiment, a new portfolio offering that features the top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 that meet ESG and social sentiment criteria. Rebalanced monthly, the initial roster of stocks in the SocialSentiment portfolio are: Verisign, Teradyne, Northern Trust, Mid-America Apartment Communities, Intuitive Surgical, Fifth Third Bancorp, F5 Networks, Equity Residential, Dollar Tree, and Allstate.

‘With this portfolio, we aim to offer retail investors exposure to stocks that are being discussed in a positive light on social and digital channels, adding an extra layer of insights,” eToro Head of Investment Portfolios Dani Brinker said. “We look forward to partnering with the Sentifi team, and working together to harness the power of social networks.”

Sentifi made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia in Hong Kong in 2016, and returned to the Finovate stage a year later for FinovateEurope in London. The company’s AI-enabled technology analyzes more than 5,000 stocks, currencies, commodities, and indices – as well as passive and active mutual funds. Sentifi combines market metrics with social sentiment (sentScore) and an ESG score to create a roster of stocks that have both high ESG credentials and positive social chatter and awareness. Sentifi builds its sentScores by analyzing more than 500 million tweets, as well as two million news articles, forums, and blogs.

“The events over the past several years relating to the meme stock rallies are evidence of how the herd can change direction, and where these changes happen, which is largely in social networks and forums,” Sentifi CEO Marina Goche said. “Social networks, news, blogs, and forums are also a valuable source of changing risk for asset classes and offer dynamic views on ESG performance appreciation and degradation for companies globally — essential for constructing portfolios that outperform a benchmark.”

Investors can buy into the SocialSentiment portfolio with as little as $500. Investors can access tools and charts to track the portfolio’s performance, as well as monitor eToro’s social feed to stay up-to-date on developments in the sector. At this time, the portfolio is not available to investors in the U.S.

eToro’s SocialSentiment portfolio is the latest addition to the company’s suite of Smart Portfolios that give investors exposure to a variety of market themes. The portfolios are for long-term investments, feature unique investment strategies, are curated by eToro analysts, and give investors a way to gain exposure to a diverse range of major market trends without having to pay portfolio management fees.

Founded in 2007, eToro has more than 30 million registered users on its social investing network. Among Finovate’s earliest alums, the company won Best of Show in its debut at FinovateEurope in 2011.

Photo by Leeloo Thefirst

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