Alumni News

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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MoEngage Leverages Personalization to Solve the Engagement Challenge for Brands

MoEngage Leverages Personalization to Solve the Engagement Challenge for Brands
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Funding, MoEngage

Insights-led customer engagement platform MoEngage made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019 in New York. Three years later, the company returned to the Finovate stage for FinovateEurope 2022 in London. At this year’s conference, MoEngage demonstrated its full-stack solution featuring customer analytics, automated cross-channel engagement, and AI-driven personalization.

“71% of banking customers expect to receive personalized digital offers yet banks fail to do so because they have data silos,” MoEngage Senior Director Saket Toshniwal said during his demo at FinovateEurope in March. “We are here to solve that (problem), leveraging MoEngage.”

Founded in 2014, MoEngage enables hyper-personalization at scale across multiple channels including mobile, email, SMS, web, on-site and in-app messaging, and more. The MoEngage platform leverages AI-powered automation and optimization to enable brands to analyze behavior and serve consumers with personalized communications at every stage of engagement.

“Using MoEngage technology to create effective campaigns based on customers insight will increase your engagement, increase retention, and definitely increase your revenue,” Toshniwal said.

And while MoEngage’s return to the Finovate stage was certainly a big deal for the company, we’re willing to bet that the $77 million raised at the end of May represents an even bigger deal for the San Francisco, California-based firm. The Series E round, led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and B Capital, represents the third round of funding raised by MoEngage in the past year. The company secured $23.5 million in July 2021 and another $30 million in December of that year.

Also participating in the round were existing investors Steadview Capital, Multiples Alternative Asset Management, Eight Roads Ventures, and Matrix Partners India. MoEngage said in a statement that it would use the new capital to deepen its presence in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as fuel its expansion into new markets in Latin America and Australia. The investment also will give MoEngage the ability to pursue strategic acquisitions that would extend the platform’s capabilities and bring greater value to users.

“Our rapid growth and the leadership position is a validation that consumer brands today are moving beyond campaign-centric tools and adopting an insights-led multi-channel approach to customer engagement,” MoEngage CEO and co-founder Raviteja Dodda said when the Series E was announced. “We now have over 1,200 customers in 35 countries and more than 650 employees across our offices in the U.S., U.K., Germany, UAE, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand.”

Photo by Rodolfo Clix

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Mastercard Forges Multi-Year Strategic Alliance with Quantum Computing Company D-Wave Systems

Mastercard Forges Multi-Year Strategic Alliance with Quantum Computing Company D-Wave Systems
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, MasterCard
  • Mastercard announced a multi-year strategic alliance with quantum computing leader D-Wave.
  • The partnership will explore applications for quantum computing technology in financial services.
  • D-Wave builds both annealing and gate-model quantum computers, the only firm in the world to do so.

Will quantum computing take the place of crypto in terms of the fintech zeitgeist?

Mastercard announced this week that it has forged a multi-year strategic alliance with D-Wave Systems, a leader in quantum computing systems, software, and services. The goal of the collaboration will be to accelerate the adoption of quantum-based computing solutions.

Specifically the partnership will seek to develop “quantum-hybrid” solutions to solve problems in consumer loyalty and rewards, cross-border settlement, and fraud management. The two companies will use D-Wave’s annealing quantum computers and quantum hybrid solvers through the Leap quantum cloud service to deliver real-time access to quantum applications powered by Mastercard’s network.

“People expect hyper-personalized experiences,” Mastercard Chief Innovation Officer Ken Moore said. “Quantum computing’s unique ability to analyze huge numbers of potential combinations can deliver optimal solutions that will improve efficiency and provide choice.” Moore said that the partnership will explore applications of quantum computing technology that offer “practical, real-world” solutions in financial services.

The world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers, D-Wave is the only firm building both annealing quantum computers and gate-model quantum computers. D-Wave’s technology has been used to solve challenges in a wide range of fields including logistics, drug discovery, cybersecurity, and financial modeling. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, D-Wave has partnered with firms such as NEC Corporation, Volkswagen, Lockheed Martin, and the University of Southern California. PSP Investments, Goldman Sachs, and BDC Capital are among D-Wave’s investors.

“D-Wave and Mastercard have a shared vision of harnessing the power of technology to positively affect business and society,” D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz said. “This alliance supports that vision by delivering quantum innovation that will tackle increasingly complex problem sets across applications like loyalty programs, fraud management and anti-money laundering in financial services and, ultimately, unlock more value for customers.”

Photo by Antonio Friedemann

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Wealthtech Orion Advisor Solutions Acquires TownSquare Capital, Redtail Technology

Wealthtech Orion Advisor Solutions Acquires TownSquare Capital, Redtail Technology
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Orion
  • Wealth management solutions provider Orion Advisor Solutions has closed two acquisitions in recent weeks.
  • The Omaha, Nebraska-based fintech closed its acquisition of CRM company Redtail Technology in June, and finished its acquisition of investment and trading platform TownSquare Capital in July. Terms were not disclosed about either transaction.
  • Orion Advisor Solutions made its Finovate debut in 2019 at FinovateFall, demonstrating its trading and rebalancing platform, Eclipse.

Wealthtech innovator Orion Advisor Solutions has recently closed a pair of acquisitions. Both deals are designed to help Orion expand its wealth management business and give financial advisors a “single-source solution to prospect, plan, invest, and achieve,” said Orion founder and CEO Eric Clarke.

At the beginning of the month, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company announced that it has completed its acquisition of investment and trading platform TownSquare Capital (TownSquare). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the acquisition will add $6 billion in turnkey asset management program (TAMP) assets to Orion’s wealth management platform.

Post-acquisition, TownSquare will continue to operate as a standalone entity, serving as an indirect subsidiary of Orion Advisor Solutions. Headquartered in Provo, Utah, and founded in 2016, TownSquare offers custom investment solutions for institutions, wealth advisors, accounting firms, high net worth individuals, and banks.

“Combining TownSquare with Orion’s wealth management and advisor technology capabilities brings tremendous value to financial advisors and their clients,” Orion Chief of OCIO Services Kurt Brown said. “With the full weight of Orion’s resources and relationships behind us, we can continue providing best-in-class investment strategies to the advisors and clients we serve.”

Orion’s TownSquare announcement comes just one month after the wealth management firm reported that it has completed the acquisition of web-based client relationship management (CRM) software company Redtail Technology. Announced this spring, the combination of the two firms will provide financial advisors with a range of technology and outsourced solutions to help them serve their clients better. Specifically, the integration of Redtail’s CRM technology into Orion’s open architecture will give advisors a foundational tech stack courtesy of an integrated “most-in-one” platform that is built around a CRM hub.

“Redtail joining Orion will greatly benefit financial advisors who seek an integrated suite of technology to grow their businesses,” Orion’s President of CRM Brian McLaughlin said. “We aim to solve some of advisors’ tech integration challenges by bringing together the technology pieces they need to be successful and freeing advisors up to spend more time engaging with their clients and prospects in meaningful ways.”

With Redtail on board, Orion gained insights into more than $3 trillion in assets under management. Before closing its deal with Redtail, the company had been serving 4.7 million technology accounts and supported more than 2,300 independent advisory firms representing $1.9 trillion in assets under administration and $60 billion of wealth management assets.

Founded in 1999, Orion Advisor Solutions made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019. At the event, the company demoed its fully-integrated trading and rebalancing platform, Eclipse. The technology leverages ASTRO’s institutional-grade portfolio optimization engine to create custom Direct Indexing products, as well as provide advisors with client-specific overlays to strategies that feature custom ESG solutions.

Photo by Leonardo Rossatti

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Klarna Integrates with Blackhawk Network Bringing Buy Now, Pay Later to Grocery Stores and Beauty Salons

Klarna Integrates with Blackhawk Network Bringing Buy Now, Pay Later to Grocery Stores and Beauty Salons
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Blackhawk Network, Daily news, Klarna
  • Blackhawk Network and Klarna have teamed up to bring Klarna’s alternative payment solutions to customers shopping with physical merchants.
  • The partnership comes as consumers show greater interest in using Buy Now, Pay Later payment options at retailers such as grocery stores, as well as for services.
  • Among Finovate’s earliest alums, both companies made their Finovate debuts in 2012: Klarna at FinovateSpring, Blackhawk Network at FinovateFall.

Branded payments provider Blackhawk Network and ecommerce innovator Klarna have forged a new partnership that will make it easier for consumers to use Klarna’s interest-free alternative payment offerings with brick-and-mortar merchants. Specifically, consumers will be able to use payment alternatives including Buy Now, Pay Later at physical retailers in Blackhawk’s U.S. network ranging from grocery stores to electronics shops to beauty salons.

“During a time of strained budgets and increasing costs, our partnership with Klarna is a significant development for retailers and grocers who are focused on meeting the needs of consumers and enabling them to shop how they want, where they want,” Blackhawk Network Head of Global Commerce Brett Narlinger said. “With Buy Now, Pay Later on a major growth trajectory, the collaboration between Blackhawk and Klarna will provide innovative purchasing options for consumers and retailers.”

The partnership demonstrates the growth in use cases for Buy Now, Pay Later by including both consumer staples like groceries as well as services such as beauty salon visits. In its 2021 Shopping Pulse Report, Klarna noted that not only are grocery stores among the most frequently shopped categories in physical stores, but also that 64% of the report’s respondents would use Buy Now, Pay Later to purchase groceries if the service were available.

“While online retail is on the rise, consumers today still value the in-store experience and expect the same level of service and convenience everywhere they shop,” Klarna Head of North America Kristina Elkhazin said. “We are proud to partner with Blackhawk, an industry leader and pioneer, to integrate its in-store capabilities with Klarna’s in-store payment solutions to make this new commerce and shopping opportunity for retailers across all categories a reality.”

The partnership follows news of Klarna’s launch of a new Loyalty Card feature in its app. The additional functionality, which comes courtesy of Klarna’s acquisition of mobile wallet provider Stocard last year, enables users of the app to store and access their physical loyalty cards as digital cards. The feature supports more than 8,000 loyalty reward programs around the world.

Blackhawk Network most recently made fintech headlines with its partnership with LibertyX. The collaboration, announced in June, will enable consumers to use their LibertyX accounts to purchase bitcoin at participating U.S. retailers such as Fresco y Más, Tops, and Winn-Dixie. A part of the NCR Corporation, LibertyX operates one of the oldest and largest retail networks of bitcoin ATMs, cashiers, and kiosks in the U.S.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

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3 Things You Need to Know About Highnote’s New Partnership with Plaid

3 Things You Need to Know About Highnote’s New Partnership with Plaid
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Highnote, List series

All-in-one card issuer and program management platform Highnote has teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Plaid. The new partnership will enable frictionless money transfers for card solutions powered by Highnote. The company will leverage Plaid’s account auth and balance solution to enable its customers to seamlessly make their transactions without needing to worry about account or routing numbers. Highnote customers will also be able to use Plaid Link to instantly authenticate cardholder accounts and then automatically create a Highnote Processor Token to enable fund transfers between card accounts and external bank accounts.

Here are three things you need to know about Highnote and its partnership with Plaid.

Highnote helps open finance work for embedded finance

Companies have pursued embedded finance as a way to expand or re-envision their business models. Those businesses that seek to make card issuance a part of their business face challenges in terms of providing a secure, frictionless user experience. Courtesy of Highnote’s partnership with Plaid, businesses will be able to instantly authenticate cardholder accounts, and end users will be able to easily authenticate with their financial institutions and choose which accounts to use for payments.

Removing friction is key to enhancing the customer experience

Helping customers – individuals or businesses – get from point A to point B quickly is the most immediate way for businesses to show they have their customers’ interests – and their time – top of mind. Highnote’s partnership with Plaid is all about removing friction and creating seamless experiences for customers of all kinds. By automating and making instantaneous operations such as account authentication and bank verification, the partnership between Highnote and Plaid is one small step for money movement, and a large leap in the direction of making financial services more accessible and convenient.

The collaboration with Plaid is Highnote’s newest strategic partnership

Highnote – in collaboration with Mastercard – began the year helping business credit platform Tillful launch its Tillful Card. This spring, Highnote announced a collaboration with GoDo as the company introduced its GoDo Card designed to bring earned wage access to underbanked workers.

“We built Highnote to enable companies like GoDo to create truly unique and game-changing payment solutions for their customers,” Highnote co-founder and CEO John MacIlwaine said. “The earned-wage-access market needs modernized payment solutions that can power innovative digital experiences and we’re here to deliver that.”

Highnote made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. At the event, Highnote demonstrated the developer experience on its cloud-native, GraphQL API-based issuer-process platform. The company also showed how the platform’s interface gives customer management teams control over the payment transaction lifecycle, as well as provide access to transaction processing data.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Highnote has raised $54 million in funding. This include a $42.5 million Series A round closed in September of last year.

Photo by César Vonc

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Zeta Appoints FIS Veteran Karla Booe as Chief Compliance Officer

Zeta Appoints FIS Veteran Karla Booe as Chief Compliance Officer
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Zeta
  • Modern core processing provider Zeta appointed FIS Veteran Karla Booe as Chief Compliance Officer.
  • Booe has spent more than 27 years working at FIS, where she served as Deputy Chief Compliance Officer.
  • Zeta was voted Best of Show at FinovateWest Digital 2020.

Modern core processing provider Zeta is introducing a fresh face this week. The California-based company recently brought on FIS Veteran Karla Booe as Chief Compliance Officer.

Booe will drive regulatory compliance programs for Zeta’s U.S. based clients from her office in Little Rock, Arkansas. She has spent the past 27+ years working at FIS, where she most recently served as the company’s Deputy Chief Compliance Officer. 

Commenting on Booe’s appointment, Zeta CEO and Cofounder Bhavin Turakhia said, “She will further our already strong commitment to regulatory risk and compliance.”

“There has been little-to-no tech innovation with regard to the management of regulatory risk compliance for credit cards in the last decade,” said Booe. “I am excited to help drive that change for Zeta’s clients. Zeta’s mission to provide next-gen capabilities to banks so they can launch products, programs, and innovations faster are underscored by a technology framework and by design principles that will completely change the processing landscape.”

Zeta, which was voted Best of Show at FinovateWest Digital 2020, offers modern core and processing for banks and embeddable banking for fintechs. Earlier this year, Zeta received $30 million in new funding, bringing its valuation to $1.5 million.

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

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Arcadia Acquires Data Aggregator Urjanet to Help Promote a “Zero-Carbon” Future

Arcadia Acquires Data Aggregator Urjanet to Help Promote a “Zero-Carbon” Future
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Urjanet
  • Utility data aggregator Urjanet has been acquired by energy technology company Arcadia.
  • Urjanet made its Finovate debut last fall at FinovateSpring 2021.
  • Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Atlanta, Georgia-based Urjanet facilitates access to data from more than 6,500 utility, telecom, and cable providers around the world.

Here’s some big news from a Finovate newcomer that slipped beneath our radar in the wake of FinovateSpring this year. Urjanet, a leading utility data aggregator that made its Finovate debut last May, has been acquired by energy technology company Arcadia.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal will integrate Urjanet’s global data access with Arcadia’s data and API platform, Arc. This will enable Arc to serve as a universal software layer for the “zero-carbon economy.”

“Without data access, it will be impossible to meet the urgency and size of the climate crisis,” Arcadia CEO Kiran Bhatraju said. “Through our combined capabilities, Arc will help companies in every industry plan for and act on their climate responsibilities, pulling forward a zero-carbon future.”

Urjanet, founded in 2010 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is the world’s leading utility data aggregator. The company enables businesses to securely access consumer-permissioned data from more than 6,500 utility, telecom, and cable providers in 47 countries. Urjanet accesses more than one million utility bills a month and flows $150 billion in utility spend through its platform. With 50,000 connected utility accounts around the world, nearly a third (30%) of the Fortune 500 utility bills are captured with Urjanet’s technology. Bhatraju said that the integration with Arc will enable Arcadia’s platform to include more than 95% of all residential and commercial accounts in the U.S., as well as data from 9,500 electric, water, gas, and waste utilities globally. More than 1.35 million utility accounts around the world will be connected courtesy of the acquisition.

“Urjanet and Arcadia have long known the same secret: that on-demand, high-fidelity energy data is key to rapid decarbonization,” Arcadia’s Bhatraju wrote when the acquisition was announced earlier this year. “By integrating Urjanet’s global data access, Arc, Arcadia’s industry-leading data and API platform, becomes a universal software layer for the zero-carbon economy with the ability to serve all customers – residential and commercial – across the globe.”

At its Finovate appearance last May, Urjanet showed how its technology could be used to boost financial inclusion and expand credit access. The company partnered with Equifax to launch a new Payment Insights solution that enables banks and lenders to use utility payment history to help establish worthiness for loans.

More recently, Urjanet launched its new flagship platform, Utility Cloud, which provides easy and automated access to credentialed utility account information. Unveiled in April, Utility Cloud provides universal access to utility data, delivering sustainability reporting, energy consumption, utility bill data, and bill images on-demand. This allows businesses to become more energy-efficient, reduce energy spending, and produce quality, aggregated data for ESG reporting.

“Going forward, our customers’ data will be available on-demand in one central location, simplifying their utility data access even more. “Urjanet CEO Sanjoy Malik said. “This one-of-a-kind platform will help organizations streamline very manual and expensive business processes associated with organizing bills from all over the world.”

Photo by Alena Koval

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Envestnet to Acquire Redi2 Technologies to Boost Billing & Accounting

Envestnet to Acquire Redi2 Technologies to Boost Billing & Accounting
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Envestnet, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Envestnet acquired revenue management and hosted fee-billing solutions company Redi2 Technologies.
  • Envestnet will use the buy to modernize its billing, accounting, and back office capabilities.
  • Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Financial wellness technology firm Envestnet announced its 16th acquisition today. The Chicago-based company announced it has purchased revenue management and hosted fee-billing solutions company Redi2 Technologies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Massachusetts, Redi2 offers a revenue management platform tailored to financial services companies. The tool offers fee calculation, invoice creation, payouts and accounting, and billing compliance. Among Redi2’s products are Revenue Manager, which provides client revenue accounting and billing services for asset managers; Wealth Manager, which delivers multi-party billing and payouts for broker-dealers and asset managers; and BillFin, which offers advisory billing and invoicing for financial advisors.

Envestnet will use Redi2’s technology to modernize its billing, accounting, and back office capabilities. The company anticipates the additional expertise will drive client engagement and ultimately boost revenue.

“Redi2 is a pioneer and innovator in the cloud-based delivery of wealth and investment management billing software, making them an ideal partner as we continue to strengthen our financial wellness ecosystem,” said Envestnet Executive Vice President of Business Lines Tom Sipp. “This acquisition enhances our strategic enablement of service and data, and over the next two years will create operating leverage by bringing Envestnet and Redi2’s administrative, revenue, and billing services together.”

Envestnet was founded in 1999. The company’s most noteworthy acquisition was its purchase of Yodlee in 2015. The Yodlee acquisition broadened Envestnet’s wealthtech offerings, launching it into the world of open finance. Envestnet is a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ENV and has a market capitalization of $4.66 billion.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich

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GoCardless to Acquire Latvian Open Banking Data Platform Nordigen

GoCardless to Acquire Latvian Open Banking Data Platform Nordigen
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Nordigen
  • Bank payments company GoCardless has announced its intention to acquire open banking platform Nordigen.
  • The Latvia-based fintech, a Finovate alum since 2018, connects to 2,300 banks in Europe and the U.K. via its free API.
  • Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close later this summer, were not disclosed.

Bank payments company GoCardless has announced its intention to acquire Nordigen, an open banking platform based in Latvia. GoCardless will integrate Nordigen’s open banking connectivity into its account-to-account network. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close later this summer.

“The Nordigen acquisition will take us to the next level,” GoCardless co-founder and CEO Hiroki Takeuchi said. “By intelligently combining free, state-of-the-art open banking connectivity with deep payment expertise, we can now offer open banking-as-a-service to any developer, partner, or fintech.” Takeuchi added that the acquisition will “lead to experimentation … that will create even more compelling use cases.”

Nordigen leverages open banking to help banks and lenders make more creditworthy loans. The company offers solutions that automate income and liability verification, and provides critical insights into prospective borrowers from account data for scoring models. Nordigen offers high-performance analytics including transaction categorization, feature engineering for credit modeling, and the capacity to generate risk scores from account data. Operating in 13 countries and partnered with more than 50 banks and lenders around the world, Nordigen connects to more than 2,300 banks in Europe and the U.K. via its free API.

“Our mission at Nordigen is to help companies around the world adopt and use Open Banking to enable greater financial transparency and financial inclusion,” Nordigen CEO Rolands Mesters said in a statement. “We share GoCardless’ enthusiasm for the growth of Open Banking and are excited to partner with people who not only share our passion for disruptive innovation in financial services, but who will also help us bring Open Banking freely to a much wider audience.”

Acquisition talk has not slowed down Nordigen, which has forged partnerships at an impressive pace this year alone. In June, Nordigen announced that it was working with Sherpa CRM, Landlord Fusion, HES FinTech, BUNNI, and Acounto. Already this month, Nordigen reported that it has expanded its collaboration with Latvian financial services company AS DelfinGroup.

Founded in 2016, Nordigen made its Finovate debut in 2018 at FinovateFall in New York. The company returned to the Finovate stage the following spring for FinovateEurope in London. Prior to the acquisition announcement, Nordigen had raised $4.2 million in funding from investors including Black Pearls VC and Superangel.

Photo by Mariya Todorova

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