Alumni News

Thoma Bravo Scoops Up Ping Identity for $2.8 Billion

Thoma Bravo Scoops Up Ping Identity for $2.8 Billion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Ping Identity
  • Thoma Bravo is acquiring Ping Identity in an all-cash deal for $2.8 billion.
  • The acquisition will take publicly held Ping Identity into the private markets.
  • Thoma Bravo’s other recent fintech acquisitions include Bottomline Technologies, Digital Insight, and Ellie Mae.

Cloud-based identity software provider Ping Identity has agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo. The all-cash deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year for $2.8 billion.

“We are pleased to partner with Thoma Bravo, which has a strong track record of investing in high-growth cloud software security businesses and supporting companies with initiatives to turbocharge innovation and open new markets,” said Ping Identity CEO Andre Durand.

Ping Identity was founded in 2002 and has since made seven acquisitions of its own, including passwordless identity verification company Singular Key, bot prevention and fraud intelligence firm SecuredTouch, intelligent authorization company Symphonic, blockchain-based identity startup ShoCard, AI-powered security company Elastic Beam, customer identity solution UnboundID, and Accells Technologies.

Ping Identity has leveraged this acquired expertise, in addition to its own in-house knowledge, to help enterprises remove passwords, prevent fraud, support Zero Trust. The company offers a no-code, drag-and-drop user interface to make its seemingly intimidating offerings more approachable for non-technical staff.

After the deal closes, Ping Identity, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of $2.38 billion, will transition to a privately held organization. Before the company’s debut onto the public markets, Ping Identity was majority-owned by Vista Equity, which now owns 9.7% of shares in the Denver, Colorado-based company.

“Ping Identity is a leader in intelligent identity solutions for the enterprise and is well-positioned to capitalize on the significant opportunities in the $50 billion Enterprise Identity security solutions area,” said Thoma Bravo Partner Chip Virnig. “Our shared commitment to growth and innovation, combined with Thoma Bravo’s significant security software investing and operational expertise, will enable Ping Identity to accelerate its cloud transformation and delivery of industry leading identity security experiences for the customers, employees and partners of large enterprises worldwide.”

Today’s purchase marks Thoma Bravo’s 91st acquisition. The firm takes a buy-and-build approach in which it acquires similar companies and consolidates them to create synergies and develop companies with greater scale, scope, and broader service offerings. Among the Illinois-based company’s most recent fintech purchases are Bottomline Technologies, Digital Insight, and Ellie Mae.

Photo by Fábio Lucas

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Best of Show Winner BOND.AI Launches Embedded Finance Solutions Network for Banks and Businesses

Best of Show Winner BOND.AI Launches Embedded Finance Solutions Network for Banks and Businesses
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Bond.AI, Daily news
  • Arkansas-based fintech BOND.AI recently unveiled its latest offering, The Bond Network.
  • The technology enables financial institutions and businesses to add modern financial health solutions to their platforms.
  • BOND.AI won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2018 in New York.

BOND.AI has launched The Bond Network, which leverages open banking to enable banks, credit unions, and businesses of all sizes readily access contemporary financial health solutions.

“There is nothing like The BOND Network in the market today that combines the utility of modern financial technology with the life-changing benefit of financial health,” BOND.AI CEO Uday Akkaraju said. “Our Empathy Engine and The BOND Network together will connect the dots between financial institutions and employers to get them back at the heart of peoples’ financial lives and spark a mutually prosperous relationship between them.” Akkaraju called the new offering “the next revolution in embedded finance.”

Headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas and founded in 2016, BOND.AI demonstrated its Empathy Engine at FinovateFall 2018. The technology, which consists of three components – holistic analyzer, conversational intelligence, and path automator – helps financial institutions better understand customer behavior, provides an “age-agnostic” user experience, and meets the needs of both front-end users and back office workers.

Firms partnering with The BOND Network will get access to BOND.AI’s advanced Empathy Engine, as well as a curated set of solutions from selected fintechs. Financial institutions benefit from the ability to bring greater personalization to their banking customers as well as increase profitability. BOND.AI claimed that FIs can earn “at least one percent of their asset size” in greater revenues and savings. Employers embracing the technology can use it to embed AI-enabled banking and financial solutions, which enables them to better understand the financial health of their employees and devise strategies to increase productivity, boost engagement, and keep retention high.

Unveiled in June, the initiative went live with 16 financial institutions and employers as founding members. BOND.AI anticipates that the network will have “at least 50 partners” by the end of this year.

BOND.AI has spent much of 2022 adding talent to its team. In February, the company announced that Yogesh Asudani had joined BOND.AI as Executive Vice President of Partnerships. A month later, the company announced a pair of new hires – Kent Llewelyn and Amit Dhongde – to serve as Chief Technology Officer and Head of Technology, respectively.

Speaking of partnerships, BOND.AI also in March made fintech headlines for its collaboration with earned wage access and financial inclusion specialist GoDo. The company, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, offers a mobile app and debit card to enable employers to offer their employees real-time earned wage access. GoDo CEO James Ray said that the partnership with BOND.AI and access to its Empathy Engine will provide the kind of “intelligent coaching” that is “critical in helping people improve their financial lives and for solving the financial equity issues plaguing our country.”

BOND.AI has raised $5.2 million in funding. The company’s investors include FIS and Fund for Arkansas’ Future.

Photo by Evie Shaffer

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American Express Unveils Cross-Border Payments Tool for Businesses

American Express Unveils Cross-Border Payments Tool for Businesses
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, American Express, Daily news
  • American Express is launching American Express Global Pay, a cross-border payments tool for U.S. small businesses.
  • Businesses can use American Express Global Pay to pay suppliers in more than 40 countries and in 12 currencies.
  • American Express did not disclose exact fees, but said that it will display the fees when the business is creating the payment.

American Express is helping small businesses keep up with global competition with its launch of American Express Global Pay, a new cross-border payments tool for small businesses based in the U.S.

American Express Global Pay allows U.S. businesses to make domestic and international B2B payments to suppliers in more than 40 countries and in 12 currencies using the mobile-optimized website. Eligible customers can earn one Membership Rewards point for every $30 in equivalent foreign exchange payments.

“Businesses today start, grow and compete on a global scale,” said American Express Executive Vice President of Global Commercial Services Dean Henry. “Our U.S. Small Business Card Members told us they want an international payment solution focused on simplicity, convenience and the chance to earn rewards – so we built American Express Global Pay to enable these businesses to easily and effectively manage their B2B payments globally on a secure platform, backed by the trusted service and unique benefits of American Express Membership.”

Available to eligible U.S. American Express Small Business Card Members, American Express Global Pay enables users to access the cross-border tool in the same location they manage their American Express Business account and offers same-day delivery of funds in select countries.

While American Express has not disclosed exact fees, the company said that it will display the fees when the business is creating the payment. “In addition to these fees, we also make money from the purchase and sale of foreign currency,” American Express said. “Recipient banks or intermediary banks may charge their own fees, which can reduce the amount delivered to your recipient.”

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Yext Announces Early Access Availability for its Summer ’22 Release

Yext Announces Early Access Availability for its Summer ’22 Release
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Yext
  • Yext announced the early access availability of its Summer ’22 release.
  • The New York company specializes in helping companies improve the way customers query their websites and apps for information about their businesses.
  • Yext made its Finovate debut in 2020 at FinovateFall.

Yext, a technology firm that leverages AI to collect and organize company information and provide it to customers, employees, and partners, announced that its Summer ’22 Release is now available for early access. The company announced last week that its solution now includes a number of new features that address a variety of business needs.

“Businesses today have to contend with an increasingly complex digital landscape,” Yext SVP of Product Management Maxwell Shaw said. “Instead of managing dozens of single-purpose applications, organizations should be empowered to consolidate essential functionality into one platform that can power both first and third-party experiences.”

The new features include:

  • Listing Updates: Provide greater visibility into engagement metrics and top keywords for enhanced search results. Improve status detail messages for better troubleshooting.
  • Custom Pages Development: Offers an improved, open architecture to enable external developers to create SEO-optimized landing pages at scale.
  • AI Data Cleaning. Applies a machine learning model for cleaning data, providing greater flexibility for developers who want to write complex functions or format data manually. Available currently as a Preview feature.
  • Fully Custom Search UI: Includes a new React component library which gives businesses new tools to build custom, AI-powered search experience frontends.
  • Solstice Algorithm Update: Leverages the Solstice algorithm update to enable administrators to optimize search experiences with Custom Phrases. Introduces Multi-Hop Relationship to support more complicated user queries.

Yext demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2020. The New York-based company showed how its technology helps streamline the way customers find answers to their queries when visiting a company’s website or app, using direct answers and calls-to-action. This helps boost conversion, lower operational costs, and generate new potential sources of customer intelligence to fuel future marketing efforts.

“Your marketing teams are spending a lot of money and effort driving customers to your site. We’re going to show you how to stop losing those customers because of your site experience,” Yext Head of Industry for Financial Services and Insurance Shane Closser explained during the company’s FinovateFall 2020 demo. “There’s no other solution in the market, especially within financial services, that you can deploy within six to eight weeks and see a demonstrable marketing ROI. Typically what we see is a 2x to 3x improvement in search experiences (for) users browsing your website.”

Founded in 2006, Yext began this year with a round of new platform additions for its Winter ’21 release, including listing modernization, consumer authorization, connector updates, and a feature called “Answers Headless React” which gives businesses new tools to build custom, AI-powered search experience frontends. This spring, the company announced a significant leadership transition that put board chair Michael Walrath in the CEO seat and named former Yext Chief Accounting Officer Darryl Bond as CFO. Yext also promoted Chief Strategy Officer Marc Ferrentino to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer.

With customers such as BBVA, Banner Bank, Farmers, and Citizens Financial, Yext is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker YEXT. The company has a market capitalization of $550 million.

Photo by Pixabay

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Jack Henry Partners with Victor Technologies to Boost Real-Time Payment Capabilities

Jack Henry Partners with Victor Technologies to Boost Real-Time Payment Capabilities
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Jack Henry
  • Jack Henry & Associates announced a partnership with Victor Technologies.
  • The partnership will help Victor Technologies move forward with its instant payments strategy.
  • Jack Henry & Associates serves more than 8,000 customers in the U.S. via its Jack Henry Banking, Symitar, and ProfitStars brands.

Financial services provider Jack Henry & Associates has partnered with Victor Technologies to help advance its instant payments strategy. A subsidiary of MVB Edge Ventures and part of MVB Bank, Victor Technologies leverages both its integrated risk management technology as well as APIs to enable fintechs to embed financial services. The company has added real-time payments (RTP) capabilities via Jack Henry’s JHA PayCenter, which will enable MVB Bank’s Jack Henry core to send and receive real-time payments.

“Instant payments 24/7/365 is now table stakes and offers a huge competitive advantage for our clients,” Victor Head of Strategy and Operations said. “The features of the RTP network provide payment finality and certainty, which reduces back-office reconciliation because transactions are now settled in real-time. This is especially true for key growth verticals like gaming and crypto where transactions need to be processed at any time regardless of banking hours. The addition of real-time payments gives end-users quicker access to their money.”

MVB Bank is the first Jack Henry client to go live using the company’s RTP Send functionality, and the bank intends to offer RTP Request for Payment services, as well. The ability to offer both solutions will make it easier for Victor Technologies to provide its customers with the kind of faster payment needs their businesses require.

A Finovate alum since 2010, Jack Henry & Associates serves 8,000 clients around the country via its three signature brands: Jack Henry Banking, Symitar, and ProfitStars. The company leverages these brands to deliver innovative solutions to community and regional banks, credit unions, as well as corporate entities and large-scale financial institutions. Founded in 1976 and headquartered in Monett, Missouri, Jack Henry & Associates’ partnership announcement with Victor Technologies comes just one month after Jack Henry announced that more than 250 financial institutions have taken advantage of its JHA PayCenter – and its connections to both The Clearing House RTP network and the Zelle Network – to execute their faster payment strategies.

“We strategically built JHA PayCenter to support the diverse faster payments strategies of Jack Henry clients, financial institutions using third-party core and digital platforms, as well as other fintechs,” Jack Henry & Associates VP of Payment Solutions Tede Forman said. “The payments hub virtually eliminates the inherent technology and staffing challenges experienced by financial institutions that elect to build and maintain direct connections to one or multiple faster payments networks.”

Photo by Fabrizio Verrecchia

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MX Names Former PayPal Exec as New CEO

MX Names Former PayPal Exec as New CEO
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, MX
  • MX has appointed Jim Magats as CEO, replacing Interim CEO Shane Evans.
  • Magats comes to MX after spending 18 years as a senior executive at PayPal, where he specialized in open finance.
  • Evans will continue to serve as a senior advisor.

Open finance fintech MX named Jim Magats CEO this week.

The news comes after company Founder and former CEO Ryan Caldwell stepped down at the beginning of the year, appointing Shane Evans as Interim CEO. After the transition, Caldwell stepped into a new role as Executive Chair to spend more time with family and focus on his daughter’s health recovery.

“Jim Magats brings a wealth of experience and knowledge about how to deliver high-impact financial solutions and products for consumers, merchants, and financial organizations, along with a vast network of partners and customers at the world’s leading financial institutions and fintechs,” said Caldwell. “We have tremendous confidence in Jim’s ability to lead the organization through the next phase of our growth in establishing our leadership in the open finance economy, helping organizations of all sizes access and act on financial data to improve customer outcomes and grow their businesses.”

Magats comes to MX after spending 18 years as a senior executive at PayPal. Most recently, he served as the company’s Senior Vice President for Omni Payments Solutions where he was charged with overseeing the company’s open banking strategy and partnership network of more than 150 financial institutions and networks.

The appointment is strategic for MX, which has spent the past few years positioning itself as a leader in the open finance space, because of Magats’ experience in open finance. While at PayPal, he worked with regulators in Europe helping to create PSD2 banking standards. He also spent time building PayPal’s open, secure API capabilities to facilitate digital payments.

“Financial data is the lifeblood of a connected economy, and nobody helps organizations access and act on financial data better than MX. Our opportunity to make financial data accessible and actionable is global, extends across verticals, and has the potential to make a positive difference in the lives of billions of people,” said Magats. “After 18 amazing years at PayPal, I’m incredibly excited to join MX, a company on a mission to build the open finance economy and empower the world to be financially strong. We are going to deepen and extend our partnerships with financial institutions and fintechs to fuel the next wave of innovation while fostering greater participation in the global economy through new products, use cases, and services.”

During his seven-month tenure as Interim CEO, Evans saw the company through the tragic passing of company Cofounder Brandon Dewitt. Evans, who joined MX in 2019 as Chief Revenue Officer, will continue to serve as a senior advisor.

Photo by Pixabay

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Collaborative Banking Innovator Asa Partners with Pyramid Federal Credit Union

Collaborative Banking Innovator Asa Partners with Pyramid Federal Credit Union
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, ASA, Daily news
  • Provo, Utah-based fintech Asa announced a partnership with Pyramid Federal Credit Union.
  • Asa will use its collaborative banking approach to enable Pyramid FCU to expand its offerings via connections with customer-facing fintechs.
  • Asa made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall 2021.

Pyramid Federal Credit Union, a Tucson, Arizona-based financial institution with $168 million in assets, has selected Asa to enhance the customer experience for its more than 17,000 members. Asa specializes in connecting financial institutions with customer-facing fintechs via a secure, compliant, and easy-to-implement marketplace. The company helps credit unions, as well as community and regional banks, leverage what it calls “collaborative banking” to innovate faster and provide the most modern customer experience possible.

Pyramid FCU CEO Ray Lancaster underscored the challenge that smaller financial institutions face when it comes to providing their customers and members with the kind of up-to-date digital experience they are accustomed to in other areas of their lives. “As a community institution, it can be challenging to keep up with the rapid rate that technology and member expectations change,” Lancaster explained. “Asa and the collaborative banking model help solve for this pain point, providing members with fast and easy access to the apps and tools they want to try, all without having to share any sensitive information. This allows us to nimbly innovate without being bogged down with cumbersome one-to-one vendor due diligence, carving out a strong competitive advantage.”

The partnership with Asa will enable Pyramid FCU to connect to a community of fintechs courtesy of Asa’s digital rails, which will allow Pyramid FCU to provide its customers with a range of new innovations and capabilities. The collaboration will ensure that member data is tokenized, normalized, and anonymized before being shared with any connected fintechs in order to remove both liability and risk.

“By embracing the collaborative banking model, Pyramid FCU is improving the member experience and empowering them with unprecedented choice, all while removing much of the liability and risk that has traditionally hindered credit union-fintech partnerships,” Asa founder and CEO Landon Glenn said.

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Provo, Utah, Asa made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2021. At the event, we had the opportunity to talk with Asa’s Head of Fintech Relationships Ryan Ruff about the challenges of creating successful partnerships between financial institutions and fintechs and how Asa can help facilitate these partnerships.

Asa has raised $1.8 million in funding courtesy of an August 2021 seed round led by CFV Ventures.

Photo by Bilel Naili

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Socure and Middesk Forge Industry-First Integrated KYB/KYC Verification Solution

Socure and Middesk Forge Industry-First Integrated KYB/KYC Verification Solution
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Socure
  • Identity verification and fraud solution provider Socure is teaming up with business verification and identity platform Middesk.
  • The partnership is the first instance in which two Know Your Business (KYB) and Know Your Customer (KYC0 innovators have created an integrated, end-to-end business verification solution.
  • Socure, a Finovate alum since 2013, has raised more than $646 million in funding.

Digital identity verification and fraud solutions provider Socure announced an industry-first partnership this week with business verification and identity platform Middesk. The integration combines Socure’s real-time, predictive analytics identity verification and fraud prevention solution with Middesk’s business entity verification technology to enhance the ability of B2B companies to accurately verify their customers. The collaboration marks the first time that two innovators in the Know Your Business (KYB) and Know Your Customer (KYC) space have created an integrated solution for end-to-end business verification.

“With our partnership, B2B companies will achieve an incremental lift in their business due to Socure’s industry-leading accuracy and coverage of our identity verification and fraud risk prediction solutions,” Socure CEO and founder Johnny Ayers said. “This accuracy leads to the auto-approval of more good consumers and creates increased conversion rates and a higher assurance of onboarding trustworthy business customers.”

The integration will help B2B companies verify not only the details of new business customers such as name, address, and tax ID, but also the personal details for that business’ beneficial owners. The addition of Socure’s digital identity verification and fraud platform will ease and streamline the process through which Middesk customers can authenticate the associated beneficial owners of the businesses they register and onboard. The partnership could be a major boon for businesses in regulated industries – including banks, financial services companies, and insurance companies – that require a high degree of business identity verification. The collaboration also should prove helpful to entities such as B2B marketplaces that serve gig economy businesses and entrepreneurs who often have smaller or more incomplete data footprints that can make KYB more challenging.

Middesk co-founder and CEO Kyle Mack said that the partnership would help Middesk customers who are eager to tackle the issues of identity verification. “Customers can now leverage the Socure integration to validate personal attributes of beneficial owners,” Mack said. “Additionally, Socure delivers key risk insights that determine the likelihood that someone’s identity is legitimate, and applicants are who they claim to be, which provides even more value to our customers in uncertain, but growing market conditions.”

Founded in 2012 and making its Finovate debut a year later at FinovateFall, Socure has grown into a leading identity verification solution provider. With more than 1,000 financial institutions, government agencies, and enterprises using on the company’s verification technology, Socure reported in May that it had reached record customer growth of 236%, and currently includes companies such as EarnUp and fellow Finovate alum Sezzle among its financial services clients. Also in May, Socure introduced new Chief Financial Officer Krish Venkataraman.

“I’ve long had the sense that, no matter what type of business you’re in, solving for identity verification was critical to operating in the next phase of the internet,” Venkataraman said when his appointment was announced. “What’s really becoming clear is that the line of demarcation between a real identity and how that identity operates in the digital world no longer exists. A person’s identity is how they access everything they want and need to do, and today, those things almost all happen online.” Venkataraman called Socure “the identity verification layer for the Internet.”

Headquartered in New York City, Socure has raised more than $646 million in funding. The company’s investors include Accel, T. Rowe Price, and ff Venture Capital.

Photo by Pixabay

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Arkose Labs Integrates with Ping Identity to Better Defend Against Bot and Human-Led Fraud Attacks

Arkose Labs Integrates with Ping Identity to Better Defend Against Bot and Human-Led Fraud Attacks
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Arkose Labs, Daily news, Ping Identity
  • Finovate Best of Show winner Arkose Labs announced an integration with Ping Identity.
  • The partnership will combine Arkose’s Fraud Deterrence Platform with Ping Identity’s PingOne DaVinci no-code identity orchestration service.
  • Arkose Labs made its Finovate debut in 2019. Ping Identity has been a Finovate alum since its appearance at FinovateEurope in 2012.

Fraud deterrence and account security specialist Arkose Labs announced an integration with fellow Finovate alum Ping Identity. Arkose Labs will leverage Ping Identity’s no-code identity orchestration service, PingOne DaVinci, to create an additional level of protection against both bot and human-led fraud attacks.

The integration blends Ping Identity’s identity and access management (IAM) technology with the Arkose Fraud Deterrence Platform. The combined offering will enable enterprise clients to better identify authorized users sooner, reducing friction during account registration and log in. The technology also reduces emphasis on multi-factor authentication, creating an even more seamless experience for users.

“Arkose Labs is very excited to integrate our leading fraud detection and protection platform into DaVinci,” Arkose Labs Chief Product Officer Ashish Jain said. “Together with Ping we are providing a best-in-class experience to end users while helping to protect a company’s digital environment from malicious attacks.”

The Arkose Labs/Ping Identity partnership comes as the number of active fraudsters has grown by 10x since 2019 – according to the Arkose Global Network. Additionally, Arkose noted that consumer, account-based fraud still represents almost 33% of all cybercrime losses. Firms that have embraced Arkose Labs’ technology have seen their ability to improve bot detection by 90% or more and an improvement in authorized user throughput of 70% or more.

Partnering with Ping Identity should only enhance Arkose’s ability to help its customers defend themselves against cyberfraud. Companies that have teamed up to use PingIdentity’s PingOne DaVinci solutions – via Ping Identity’s Global Technology Partner Program – have been able to deliver protected user experiences in industries ranging from finance and e-commerce to gaming and consumer technology.

“Ping Identity is committed to expanding our technology partner ecosystem to deliver better, more frictionless customer experiences,” Ping Identity SVP of Product Management Loren Russon said. “Our partnership with Arkose Labs leverages PingOne DaVinci’s seamless orchestration to ensure dynamic user journeys are delivered quickly and efficiently at every stage of the user journey.”

Arkose Labs won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2019. The company returned to the Finovate stage two years later for FinovateFall where it demonstrated its Fraud and Abuse Prevention Platform. Headquartered in San Francisco, California and founded in 2017, Arkose Labs has raised more than $106 million in funding from investors including the SoftBank Vision Fund, the Sony Innovation Fund, and PayPal Ventures.

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Open-Finance.ai Taps FICO’s Blaze Advisor for Real Time Credit Assessment 

Open-Finance.ai Taps FICO’s Blaze Advisor for Real Time Credit Assessment 
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Fair Isaac FICO, FICO
  • Open-Finance.ai partnered with FICO to leverage the company’s Blaze Advisor decision rules management system.
  • Israel-based Open-Finance.ai will integrate Blaze Advisor into its open banking platform to offer real-time credit assessments.
  • This news comes as “Israel is on the cusp of major banking reform with the introduction of open banking,” said FICO VP of Partner Management in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa Mark Farmer.

Analytic decisioning platform FICO and risk, finance, and compliance software company Open-Finance.ai have teamed up this week.

Under the agreement, Open-Finance.ai will integrate the FICO’s Blaze Advisor decision rules management system into its open banking platform. Using FICO’s technology, Open-Finance.ai will assist its financial services clients to save time on consumer credit assessments by leveraging real-time, analytically driven appraisals.

For Israel-based Open-Finance.ai, this comes just as open banking legislation is gaining traction. “Israel is on the cusp of major banking reform with the introduction of open banking,” said FICO VP of Partner Management in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa Mark Farmer. “Automating decisions allows lenders to increase the efficiency of the lending process without sacrificing risk management regulatory rigour. This will speed up lending, increase customer satisfaction, reduce operational costs and drive economic activity.”

Open-Finance.ai anticipates the move will help remove human bias from lending decisions, improve risk decisions, and expand access to credit to more people.

FICO’s Blaze Advisor gives businesses a solution to make smarter, more transparent business decisions by offering companies multiple methods for rule authoring, testing, deployment, and management. To make this work, Blaze Advisor provides decision trees, scorecards, decision tables, graphic decision flows, and customized templates. The technology also supports business performance monitoring.

“Manual processes, a conservative approach and significant regulation have been a drag on growth of the Israeli market,” said Open-Finance.ai Co-founder Shay Basson. “Now, we have an ability to manage risk instantly, based on multiple data sources to provide an instant, yet risk-aware decision to credit and insurance consumers.”

Founded in 1956 and headquartered in California, FICO offers decisioning tools used by more than 650 clients, including nine of the top 10 U.S. banks and eight of the top 10 EMEA banks. Last year, FICO launched a new loan origination solution called FICO Originations Solution that seeks to automate the entire customer journey.

Photo by Anna Popović on Unsplash

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DeepTarget Helps Banks and Credit Unions Personalize Customer Communications

DeepTarget Helps Banks and Credit Unions Personalize Customer Communications
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, DeepTarget
  • Financial services digital marketing innovator DeepTarget has launched its 3D Story on the Go product extension to its Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
  • The new solution enables banks and credit unions to add immersive and adaptive user experiences to email, SMS, and social media marketing campaigns.
  • Alabama-based DeepTarget made its Finovate debut at FinovateWest 2020.

DeepTarget has unveiled the new 3D Story On the Go product extension to its Digital Experience Platform (DXP). The new addition leverages consumer and business intelligence, as well as AI, to help banks and credit unions personalize customer communications and launch more effective marketing campaigns via email, SMS, and social media.

“Today’s consumers are digital users first and expect their financial institutions to deliver seamless, personalized, relevant experiences,” DeepTarget CEO Preetha Pulusani said. “As much as personalization is a growing expectation for consumers, achieving it is a growing challenge for many financial institutions, especially in understanding how and when to leverage consumer data.”

DeepTarget’s 3D Story On the Go enables banks and credit unions to boost engagement through some of the most widely-used channels by creating immersive and adaptive, prismatic user experiences. These AI-powered and insights-based, visually appealing experiences can be used for onboarding new customers, sending personalized offers and promotions, product announcements, and more. Crane Credit Union VP of Marketing Michael Hostetler highlighted the way DeepTarget’s technology has brought additional value to its email marketing efforts. “We use email extensively to communicate with our members based on DeepTarget’s AI-based predictive campaigns,” Hostetler said. “With 3D Story On the Go, it will be great to easily deliver a new, elevated level of AI-based personalized experience to our members.”

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, DeepTarget made its Finovate debut at FinovateWest in 2020. At the event, the company demoed its 3D StoryTeller solution which brings an innovative, 3D user experience to DeepTarget’s Digital Experience Platform. The new offering helps financial institutions take advantage of social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

The introduction of 3D Story On the Go comes weeks after DeepTarget announced that MDT Credit Union, a credit union service organization (CUSO), would offer the DeepTarget integration into the Banno Digital Platform to its credit union customers. MDT President and CEO Larry Nichols underscored the importance of the digital experience to credit unions and their members, noting that DeepTarget’s technology helps them “maintain their differentiators – human connection, empathy, and exceptional service – within the digital network.”

Photo by Maksim Goncharenok

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People Driven Credit Union Partners with Larky to Deliver Customized Push Notifications to Members

People Driven Credit Union Partners with Larky to Deliver Customized Push Notifications to Members
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Larky
  • Customer engagement and communications innovator Larky is partnering with People Driven Credit Union (PDCU).
  • The partnership will enable the Michigan-area credit union to deploy Larky’s nudge platform to send predictive communications and customized push notifications to its members.
  • A Finovate alum since 2014, Larky also recently teamed up with Michigan State University Federal Credit Union, which will also deploy the company’s nudge solution.

People Driven Credit Union (PDCU), a full-service financial institution based in Southfield, Michigan, has teamed up with customer engagement specialist Larky. The credit union will leverage Larky’s nudge solution to send predictive communications to its target audiences. The partnership also will enable PDCU to deploy customizable push notification campaigns to market branch projects and initiatives without requiring additional staff, time, or cost.

Once integrated into a financial institution’s mobile banking app, Larky’s nudge provides lock-screen alerts and/or location-based notifications to guide account holders toward relevant and useful financial information and opportunities such as promotions for loan offers. Larky’s nudge platform enables FIs to create, edit, manage, and deploy tailored, turnkey mobile push notification campaigns based on their specific marketing priorities. The result boosts app engagement and encourages use of the FI’s mobile banking app.

“Today’s credit union member is increasingly digital-first,” People Driven Credit Union VP of Marketing Dave Sullivan said. “They check and use their mobile devices far more than they walk into the branch of a credit union.” Sullivan added that this meant ensuring that PDCU provides a quality member experience via the mobile channel that meets member needs. “Larky’s nudge makes it possible for us to share relevant, timely messages with our members regardless of their location and better support them with choice of product or service as they move throughout their daily lives,” Sullivan said.

People Driven Credit Union was founded in 1928 as Detroit Federal Employees Credit Union. The institution changed its name to Peoples Trust Credit Union in 2005 and, in 2014, merged with Community-Driven Credit Union to become People Driven Credit Union. PDCU currently has assets of more than $342 million and more than 25,000 members in Genesee, Lapeer, Livingston, Macomb, Oakland, St. Clair, Washtenaw, and Wayne counties in Michigan.

Larky’s partnership with PDCU comes just a few months after the company announced that Michigan State University Federal Credit Union would deploy Larky’s nudge platform to provide tailored messaging to its 300,000+ members. In beta testing before the launch, Michigan State University FCU has experienced an aggregate tap rate of more than 16% for its nudge messages, with the test’s most successful message – the company’s satisfaction survey – earning a 12% completion rate.

“Mobile will continue to shape the future of banking,” Larky CEO and co-founder Gregg Hammerman said. “Credit union members are accustomed to – and often prefer – leveraging the mobile channel for everything from ordering a cup of coffee to securing flights abroad. This familiarity is also seen in the usage of push notifications, keeping members abreast of a transaction in progress. With the nudge platform, credit unions and other FI leaders can now bring this experience that is widely known and encountered in the retail environment to the banking industry.”

Founded in 2012, Larky is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Photo by Uri Espinosa

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