Alumni News Archives - Page 84 of 87

Bankjoy Inks a Pair of Credit Union Partnerships

By David Penn Posted on July 13, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Bankjoy

Michigan-based Bankjoy announced a pair of new credit union partners late last week. The company, which enables credit unions and community banks to offer their members and customers a variety of mobile banking and online banking solutions, will work with both CACL Federal Credit Union of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and SIU Credit Union of Carbondale, Illinois, to help them add new members and enhance the experience for current customers.

“As digital demands continued to rise – as well as fraud – within the credit union industry because of COVID-19, we are pleased to provide our technology offerings to meet these growing demands at SIU and CACL,” Bankjoy CEO Michael Duncan said. “Having these progressive tools to make online processes more efficient and user friendly enhances the value of credit unions not only right now but for the foreseeable future, as well.”

CACL FCU, with 11,600 members and $146 million in assets, will leverage its new relationship with Bankjoy to boost its membership base by offering more mobile options. “We were blown away by the layout and advancements within the platform compared to the competition,” CACL FCU COO Joshua Burgess said in a statement. Burgess also praised Bankjoy’s voice banking solution Joy, which he called a “huge selling point.”

Bankjoy’s online and mobile solutions are equally likely to make a big impact with the even-larger SIU CU – which boasts 40,800 members and $344 million in assets.

These deals reflect a resumption of Bankjoy’s aggressive, partner-making pace from earlier this year. In April alone, the company announced that it was working with seven different credit unions representing 87,000+ members and more than $1 billion in assets combined. Also this spring, Bankjoy hosted a COVID-19 Online Summit to help address the impact of the global health crisis on the credit union industry.

“Our COVID-19 Online Summit was a very transparent event for credit union executives to freely exchange ideas and help each other,” Duncan told CU Times. “We’re all looking for more information to stay in front of this crisis and when you can get it from a peer that’s always a good thing.”

The global health crisis has been hard on credit union members, as well. The impact of COVID-19 on those who rely on credit unions for their banking was the focus of a Gallup study earlier this year. The survey revealed that credit union members were feeling more disruption in their financial lives due to the pandemic compared to the national average (76% versus 70%). The data also showed a significant increase in the number of credit union members who characterized their financial wellbeing as “struggling” or “suffering”.

Many of the recommendations – helping increase peace of mind, building hope, and reducing unnecessary stress – mirror those suggested by other financial institutions looking for ways to help their customers during the fight against the coronavirus.

Photo by Brett Schaberg from Pexels

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Trulioo Adds Document Verification, Facial Recognition to EmbedID

By David Penn Posted on July 9, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Trulioo

Advanced biometric technologies like facial recognition have their critics. The city of Boston, Massachusetts, just a few weeks ago, became the second community in the world to ban the use of facial recognition technology over concerns of bias against ethnic minorities. And the use of facial recognition in places like China has heightened concerns over the potential privacy-violating aspects of the technology.

Nevertheless, the fact that companies continue to innovate in the biometric authentication space suggests that these issues are more likely to be seen as contemporary challenges rather than permanent obstacles. This is all the more so in a world that is coming more – rather than less – connected, and digital.

Trulioo, a leading global identity verification provider, is one the companies that is helping small businesses take advantage of these technologies. The company announced today that its low-code developer tool, EmbedID, will now feature both facial recognition and document verification functionality. This will enable SMEs to verify new users during the account opening process more efficiently and accurately, and assure that KYC and AML requirements are met.

“Taking a multi-layered approach to identity verification offers businesses the strongest defense against increasingly sophisticated bad actors,” Director of Growth at Trulioo Rutherford Wilson explained. “Adding document verification gives another layer of protection to help reduce risk, especially when combined with reliable identity verification.” Wilson credited the combination of these features for providing businesses with the “increased confidence in knowing the user is tied to a real identity and that they are who they claim to be online.”

Small businesses can use the technology by copying a snippet of code and pasting it on their website. This will automatically generate a stylized registration form that is prewired to Trulioo’s GlobalGateway to provide instant verification of personal identification information. Via the connection to GlobalGateway, small businesses can verify the authenticity of government-issued ID documents and leverage facial recognition technology – equipped with liveness detection – to establish that the individual opening the account is the same person in the photo on the ID document.

“In an age of ongoing digital transformation, it’s essential for SMBs to be able to access the same identity verification solutions used by large organizations to protect their business and scale their company,” Wilson added. He cited cost as the main barrier for most small businesses when it comes to accessing “bank-grade” technology and security. This leaves them more vulnerable to fraudsters than their larger rivals, and makes it more difficult for them to compete.

“We designed EmbedID to help level the playing field to allow for accelerated innovation, customer acquisition, and competition in the marketplace,” Wilson said.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Trulioo has been a Finovate alum since 2014 and most recently demonstrated its technology at our European conference in February. Named to CNBC’s 2020 Disruptor 50 roster in June, Trulioo was featured in our look at Canadian fintech innovators on Canada Day earlier this month.

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Xignite Unveils its Enterprise Microservices Suite

By David Penn Posted on July 8, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Xignite

Financial market data distribution and management solutions provider Xignite has launched a new set of market data management services to change the way businesses manage their data in the cloud. Xignite Enterprise Microservices is a suite of solutions that make it easier and more efficient for companies to store, distribute, manage, and control market data.

The microservices approach – embraced by Xignite in this latest offering – provides core functionality via a combination of “loosely coupled, independently deployable components.” Not only can these components work together or separately, but also they can be massively scaled at a very low cost. This compares favorably to legacy systems, which often consist of monolithic platforms that are more expensive, difficult to scale and manage, and typically not used at full capacity.

Xignite Enterprise Microservices runs on Xignite’s cloud-based architecture, which supports 250+ different data sources and 12 billion API calls daily for more than 750 clients in fintech and financial services. The vendor-agnostic solution has already been deployed by fellow Finovate alum NICE Actimize.

“We are incredibly excited to launch Xignite Enterprise Microservices, which we believe will truly revolutionize market data management,” Xignite founder and CEO Stephane Dubois said. “The culmination of over 10 years of nonstop innovation, we have taken the cloud-native architecture that has powered some of the world’s most prominent fintechs and scaled it to meet the unique requirements of institutional players that consume huge amounts of data but often have no way of integrating and optimizing it in an efficient and cost-effective way.”

The suite consists of seven cloud-native microservices tailored for both buy and sell-side firms, fintechs, and exchanges. These include:

Data Lake
Optimization
Entitlements and Usage
Reference
Historical
Real-Time
Fundamentals

Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Xignite introduced its data-as-a-service market data solution in 2006, and has been a Finovate alum since 2014. Recently, the company announced that it had enhanced its financial data cloud APIs to streamline delivery of news headlines and company earnings during the global public health crisis. This announcement followed news from the company that it was seeing “record demand” for its financial data during the pandemic.

“The past two-and-a-half months have been difficult both within our industry and in the wider world,” Dubois said. “It is reassuring to know that we’ve been a reliable source for our clients in these trying times. There is enough to worry about right now and nobody wants their market data providers to be a part of that.”

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels

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Mambu and CredoLab Drive Digital Lending for GoBear’s Expansion to Philippines

By David Penn Posted on June 30, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, CredoLab, Finovate Global, Mambu

A pair of Finovate alums have joined forces to help a leading financial platform in Asia launch a lending solution as part of its planned expansion in the region.

German cloud banking platform provider Mambu and alternative credit score provider CredoLab have announced a partnership with GoBear, a financial services platform based in Singapore. The company, founded in 2015 as a metasearch engine and now operating as a financial services platform that has served more than 55 million consumers, plans to expand into the Philippines later this year. Technology from Mambu will power the core system in GoBear’s lending architecture, with CredoLab’s credit scoring helping ensure the company is able to bring financing to those communities that need it most – and often struggle to secure it.

“Having access to responsible credit should be a financial right for all,” GoBear Chief Lending Officer Mike Singh said. “Tapping into fintech solutions like Mambu’s and CredoLab’s brings us one step closer to making this a reality for the region’s 296 million unbanked or underbanked.”

The tripartite partnership was the result of a pair of relationships; Mambu and CredoLab have been long-time partners, while CredoLab and GoBear collaborated as recently as November 2018, when the two companies worked together on a credit solution for the underbanked.

“In less than five years of operation, GoBear has built a stellar reputation as a leading financial services platform and we envisage great things for the company as it continues to build its lending business,” Mambu Managing Director for APAC Myles Bertrand said. He pointed out that the company’s technology would enable GoBear to readily add new products while maintaining a high level of customer service.

CredoLab CEO Peter Barcak pointed to his company’s SDK, API, and alternative credit score – which leverages metadata from smartphone usage – as powerful tools for companies like GoBear that are trying to serve a broader array of customers. “Our ability to generate a credit score for customers who cannot prove their creditworthiness in the conventional financial system makes us uniquely positioned to support GoBear as they diversify their business and move into lending in a controlled way.”

Finovate alums since 2013 and 2018 respectively, both Mambu and CredoLab made their Finovate debuts at FinovateAsia events. Mambu demonstrated its technology the year we held our Asian conference in Singapore. CredoLab unveiled its CredoScore the year we held FinovateAsia in Hong Kong.

Speaking of FinovateAsia, remember that our new, all-digital FinovateAsia conference begins next week. Check out our FinovateAsia hub for more details!

Photo by Janko Ferlic from Pexels

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Stratyfy Earns Spot in FIS Fintech Accelerator Incoming Cohort

By David Penn Posted on June 30, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, FIS, Stratyfy

Predictive analytics innovator Stratyfy is one of ten companies selected to participate in the incoming cohort of FIS’ 2020 Fintech Accelerator program.

“The ten companies selected for the fifth year of FIS’ Accelerator program bring a wealth of promising ideas and technologies,” FIS Chief Growth Officer Asif Ramji said. “We look forward to working with these firms to bring their ideas to life.”

Joining Stratyfy in the program are:

Cirrus Secure
Cobbler Technologies
Dasceq
Mall IQ
Sequretek
Silot
Surfly
TrustStamp
XpenseOne

Seven of the companies in the cohort have headquarters in the United States. Of the others, Sequretek is based in Mumbai, India; Silot in Singapore; and Surfly in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. And after four years in operation, the accelerator, in partnership with The Venture Center, will conduct its fifth program virtually due to the challenges of the global public health crisis.

In addition to being entirely virtual, this year’s program will run for 18 weeks instead of the usual 12 weeks to allow for increased mentoring and training time. The program will culminate with a Demo Day technology presentation on October 14th. Participating startups will also receive a monetary investment; the amount was not disclosed.

Executive Director for The Venture Center, Wayne Miller, pointed to the program’s success in empowering startup companies and helping improve access to financial services and technology. “With our partners at FIS and the State of Arkansas, we’re honored to be a part of bringing cutting-edge technologies to the places and people who need them, particularly in this moment of monumental technological advancement,” Miller said.

The news comes in the wake of Strayfy’s announcement of a new strategic partnership with Innovesta Technologies. The two companies are collaborating on a machine learning solution that will help businesses better measure the risk of and opportunity in non-public companies. The partnership combines Stratyfy’s decision engine and advanced machine learning technology with Innovesta’s comprehensive data assets to deliver real-time insights into the forces that impact business performance.

“Models built from historical data offer little help during an unprecedented health and economic crisis like the current global pandemic,” Stratyfy co-founder and CEO Laura Kornhauser said when the partnership was announced in May. “Achieving an inclusive global financial recovery requires robust risk management strategies, and those strategies necessitate an understanding of the unique challenges being faced by every business. Stratyfy’s decision management solutions will leverage Innovesta’s trustworthy data to directly address this need.”

Founded in 2016, Stratyfy is headquartered in New York City. The company was named one of the world’s 100 most promising startups to watch last year by CNBC.

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Sallie Krawcheck’s Ellevest Launches Debit Card & Banking Services

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 24, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Ellevest

Women-focused wealthtech firm Ellevest unveiled its newest offering today. The company, which was founded by former Merrill Lynch CEO and former Citigroup CFO Sallie Krawcheck, has expanded its online investing platform to launch banking services.

“At Ellevest, our mission is to get more money in the hands of women+ — because we know that everyone deserves the opportunity to build wealth, and that nothing bad happens when women have more money,” the company announced in a blog post. “Today, we’re launching the first-of-its-kind money membership designed to get more money in the hands of women+.”

The new banking services are available with an Ellevest membership, which ranges from $1 per month for the Essential plan to $5 per month for the Plus plan, and $9 per month for the Executive plan. All membership options include banking services, investing opportunities, and educational resources. Other services include personalized retirement recommendations and multi-goal investment accounts.

Members can access two accounts– one for spending and one for saving. The checking account comes with a World Debit Mastercard connected to an FDIC-insured account. The accounts boast no hidden fees, no minimum balance requirements, no transfer fees, no overdraft fees, and ATM fee reimbursements.

In the competitive world of challenger banks, none of these features stand out. However, Ellevest has created a bit of a cult following with its women-focused approach and content generation. The company has 180,000 followers on Instagram, which is 10x the number of followers that BBVA-owned Simple has, and more than Revolut, Monzo, and N26.

Ellevest’s gender-filtered approach further differentiates it when it comes to investing. The company’s personalized investment portfolio “includes a gender-aware investment algorithm that factors in important realities like pay gaps, career breaks, and average lifespans.”

Today’s announcement isn’t the first time a wealthtech platform has broadened its offerings to become a challenger bank. Betterment, Wealthfront, SoFi, M1 Finance, and Personal Capital all offer online-only checking accounts.

Ellevest was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in New York. The company has raised $77.6 million.

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nCino Readies for IPO

By David Penn Posted on June 23, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, IPO, nCino

Cloud banking specialist nCino is the latest fintech to announce its intention to go public.

In a brief statement shared on Monday, the Wilmington, North Carolina-based company reported that it had publicly filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for their proposed initial public offering. nCino made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2017.

The company’s announcement did not disclose the number of shares to be offered, nor the price range of the offering. Renaissance Capital reported that nCino is seeking to raise $100 million. The company expects to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker “NCNO.”

Underwriting the IPO are Bank of America Securities, Barclays, KeyBanc Capital Markets, and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

nCino’s Bank Operating System, built on the Salesforce platform, provides financial institutions of all sizes with an end-to-end banking solution that enables them to deliver the kind of digital experience banking customers have come to expect. The platform combines customer relationship management, loan origination, workflow, enterprise content management, as well as business intelligence and reporting, all in a single, secure, cloud-based environment. On average, financial institutions using nCino’s Bank Operating System have enjoyed a 40% decrease in loan closing time, a 92% reduction in servicing costs, and a 127% increase in account opening completion rates.

Founded in 2012, nCino has raised more than $213 million in funding. The company reported revenue growth of almost 50%, reaching $44.7 million, for the quarter ending in April. nCino also reported revenue of $138.2 million in its most recent fiscal year, ending in January. This year, the company has forged partnerships with Alterna Bank, a subsidiary of Alterna Savings and Credit Union Limited, and with Swedish SME lender Yourban. Additional partnerships announced in the first half of the year include collaborations with Fulton Bank and Black Hills FCU. Pierre Naudé is President and Chief Executive Officer.

Photo courtesy of Les Finances

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Finovate Alums Earn Spots in CNBC’s 2020 Disruptor 50

By David Penn Posted on June 19, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Kabbage, Klarna, Marqeta, Ripple, SoFi, Trulioo

Six companies that have demonstrated their fintech innovations on the Finovate stage have been recognized this year by CNBC as part of their Disruptor 50 roster for 2020.

This year’s list, the eighth in the series, is marked by the high number of billion-dollar companies, or “unicorns.” Fully 36 of the firms in the 2020 CNBC Disruptor 50 have reached or surpassed the $1 billion valuation mark. Combined, the 50 companies have raised more than $74 billion in VC funding and achieved an implied market valuation of almost $277 billion.

The companies making the cut range in industry from cybersecurity and healthcare IT to education and, of course, fintech. In fact, the top-ranked company in the 2020 Disruptor 50 is none other than Stripe, the $36 billion payments platform founded in 2010. Stripe earned a #13 ranking in last year’s Disruptor 50 roster, and likely owes its first place appearance this year to a major $600 million funding raising – the company’s largest to date – and the economic and social consequences of the global health crisis.

“With many people throughout the world under lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19,” CNBC’s capsule on the company noted, “the move to shopping online has never been greater. That’s good news for digital payments platform Stripe.”

Stripe was not the only fintech to earn high marks from the 2020 Disruptor 50’s methodology. In addition to the half dozen Finovate alums below, some of the other fintechs on this year’s roster include:

Virtual bank WeLab (Hong Kong)
Digital mortgage company Better.com (New York City)
“Buy now pay later” e-commerce company Affirm (San Francisco, California)
Challenger bank Chime (San Francisco, California)
Banking app Dave (Los Angeles, California)
Microfinancier TALA (Santa Monica, California)
Trading and investing platform Robinhood (Menlo Park, California)

Also earning spots in this year’s list were a pair of insurtech companies, Lemonade and Root Insurance, as well as cybersecurity and biometric authentication firms SentinelOne and CLEAR, respectively.

Here’s a look at the Finovate alums that made this year’s list.

#5 Klarna

Founded: 2005
Headquarters: Stockholm, Sweden
CEO: Sebastian Siemiakowski
Valuation: $5.5 billion
Previous ranking: #8 in 2016

#8 SoFi

Founded: 2011
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
CEO: Antony Noto
Valuation: $4.8 billion
Previous ranking: #26 in 2019

#24 Kabbage

Founded: 2009
Headquarters: Atlanta, Georgia
CEO: Rob Frohwein
Valuation: $1.1 billion
Previous ranking: #14 in 2019

#27 Trulioo

Founded: 2011
Headquarters: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
CEO: Steve Munford
Valuation: N.A.
Previous ranking: #37 in 2017

#28 Ripple

Founded: 2012
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
CEO: Brad Garlinghouse
Valuation: $10 billion
Previous ranking: First appearance

#33 Marqeta

Founded: 2010
Headquarters: Oakland, California
CEO: Jason Gardner
Valuation: $4.3 billion
Previous ranking: First appearance

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Expensify Unveils New Virtual Travel Assistant Concierge Travel

By David Penn Posted on June 17, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Expensify

Expense management platform Expensify launched its latest solution today. The offering, Concierge Travel, is a virtual travel assistant that makes it easier for travelers to build their itineraries and plan their excursions in the COVID-19 era.

“While most of us are avoiding travel right now, there are still essential workers whose trips can’t be cancelled or postponed,” Expensify CEO and founder David Barrett explained. “We want to help them travel in the safest possible way.”

Concierge Travel is available to Expensify cardholders and can be used to book flights, make hotel reservations, reserve rental cars and more – free of charge. All bookings via Concierge Travel also feature complimentary safety alerts and travel risk advisories from Global Rescue. The free Global Rescue membership offers a range of services for travelers including transportation to the cardholder’s hospital of choice in an emergency, as well as health and security assessments and entry and exit requirements for international travelers.

“With Concierge Travel, your free Global Rescue membership provides world-class safety and medical services,” Barrett added. “On top of that, Concierge lets you know about any COVID-related travel restrictions in advance, including specific stay-at-home orders in place, social distancing measures, and other info on the city you’re visiting.”

A Finovate alum since 2009, Expensify demonstrated the technology behind its expense management platform at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, in 2016. The company introduced its corporate card last fall, offering spending controls and expense management in a single solution that in some ways harkens back to the firm’s origins more than a decade ago.

“Expensify started as a corporate card way back in 2008 before we decided to focus on expense,” Barrett said when the card was launched, “so it’s fun to see the product come full circle with a card that naturally extends our existing platform.”

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Expensify has raised $38.2 million in funding according to Crunchbase. The company includes Redpoint Ventures, OpenView, PJC, and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) among its investors.

Photo by Leah Kelley from Pexels

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Socure Unveils New Digital Identity Verification Solution Intelligent KYC

By David Penn Posted on June 15, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Socure

Photo by **Alexander Vayionis** from **Pexels**

Digital identity verification specialist Socure has introduced a new solution to help accelerate and scale customer acquisition. Intelligent KYC, launched last week, leverages advanced graph analytics, unsupervised machine learning, and a sizable volume of data sources to give businesses higher auto-approval rates compared to legacy identity verification systems, as well as fewer manual reviews.

“In the digital-first world, compliance teams need hyper-accuracy in their use of KYC tools without introducing more friction for customers or costly reviews for their operations teams,” Socure CEO Tom Thimot explained. “Intelligent KYC is the industry’s most sophisticated KYC solution and will push our clients far beyond check-box compliance.”

Available as both an individual solution as well as part of an end-to-end integrated, identity fraud engine, Intelligent KYC is especially suited for institutions serving underserved populations – from millennials with thin credit files to newly-arrived immigrants with no domestic credit record. Intelligent KYC leverages machine learning to access more than 310 million entities and three billion records from a wide variety of authoritative sources including credit header and inquiry, utility and telecommunications companies, and more.

Writing about the concept of Intelligent KYC on the Socure blog, privacy, data security, and fintech attorney and company advisor Annie C. Bai noted the emphasis that Socure’s solution places on precision accuracy in the initial phases of the KYC process. This accuracy, Bai explained, “is not only valuable for initial results but has downstream benefits as the cornerstone of understanding the customer.” Bai highlighted diversity in data, automated analytics, and user empowerment as three key differentiators between traditional legacy KYC and Socure’s latest offering.

“Socure’s market-leading identity fraud scores, (enable) an automated 90% customer acceptance rate, a 95% fraud capture rate, a 10% reduction in false positives, and over 50% reduction in manual reviews,” Bai wrote.

Founded in 2012 by Sunil Madhu, Socure most recently demonstrated its digital identity verification and fraud protection solution, Socure ID+, at FinovateFall in 2017. Recognized in March as one of America’s Best Startup Employers by Forbes, and named to Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces 2020 roster in May, Socure was also recently featured as a Gartner Cool Vendor in Artificial Intelligence for Banking and Investment Services.

Headquartered in New York City, Socure has raised nearly $62 million in funding from investors including ff Venture Capital, Scale Venture Partners, Commerce Ventures, and Flint Capital.

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Arival Announces Beta Launch of its Banking Account for Abnormal Customers

By David Penn Posted on June 4, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Arival Bank

Photo by **Expect Best** from **Pexels**

“As a matter of fact, I went to the doctor and he said that I was above normal. Or, as he put it, ‘abnormal.'” Andrew “Squiggy” Squiggman, Laverne & Shirley, 1976.

Whether you consider yourself “above normal” or just another banking consumer with unique needs, Arival Bank, which launched in 2018 as a spin-off venture from Life.SREDA, has you covered. The bank announced today that it is launching its Arival beta account to provide banking services to “abnormal customers.”

“Too many clients today are rejected by traditional even digital banks because they are viewed as ‘abnormal’, ‘too risky,’ or ‘unusual,” Arival Bank COO Jeremy Berger noted in a blog post announcing the beta launch. “International startups, new tech ventures, crypto-related businesses, investment funds, e-residency businesses, freelancers, charities, expats, digital influencers, bloggers, gamers and streamers, and many others are rejected by traditional and even digital banks. It’s only a matter of time (before) the demand from abnormal customers will outgrow that of traditional customers.”

Arival is introducing an online bank account that is tailored to the needs of businesses and entrepreneurs like these. The company is opening the beta release to 3,000+ early signups from its waiting list. Arival will be adding a business bank account and an individual bank account soon, and said that it is already accepting applications for both accounts. Beta participants also will get an early look at Arival’s banking platform, ArivalOS, with no fees for the first 90 days.

A Best of Show winner in its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia in 2018, Arival was founded to help underbanked businesses maximize the opportunities of digital banking. Powered by open API fintech banking, the company’s ArivalOS provides a digital banking platform that integrates a comprehensive suite of third-party fintech solutions and services geared toward the needs of SMEs and entrepreneurs. Headquartered in Singapore and co-founded in 2017 by Vladislav Solodkiy (CEO) and Igor Pesin (CFO), Arival raised more than $2.3 million in its equity crowdfunding campaign last fall, earning a pre-money valuation north of $14.8 million.

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Fintech’s Latest Female CEO: Christine Ciriani Takes Top Spot at Finantix

By David Penn Posted on June 4, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Finantix, Women in Fintech

Photo by **Miguel Á. Padriñán** from **Pexels**

Wealth management technology provider Finantix announced today that it has appointed Christine Ciriani as its new CEO. Company co-founder and former CEO Ralf Emmerich will transition to the role of Executive Chairman.

“I am delighted to take up this leadership position at Finantix,” Ciriani said in a statement. She praised the company’s “award-winning” solutions for wealth managers, banks, and insurance companies, as well as Finantix’s “client-first culture” and strong teams. She pledged to continue working “to ensure that both our integrated and point solutions are rapidly adopted in the market to deliver the data-enabled, digitally-connected, and content-rich services today’s clients demand.”

Ciriani will continue to serve as the company’s Chief Commercial Officer, a position she has held since the fall of 2019. The wealth management and professional services veteran came to Finantix in February of that year, joining Finantix’s board of directors as a non-executive director as part of the Motive Partners investment in the company. During her time at Finantix, Ciriani has helped drive talent acquisition, commercial strategy, and market positioning, overseeing expansion in Switzerland, Japan, and Australia. She also has been praised for her role in the company’s acquisition of AI and data science-based solution provider InCube earlier this year.

“Under Christine’s leadership and working with our management team, we have successfully accelerated the process of expanding our extensive portfolio of innovative products,” Emmerich said. He added that the leadership shift would enable Finantix to maximize the next phase of its evolution as a leading provider of technology solutions for the wealth management, banking, and insurance industries.

“Now is the ideal time for me to hand over the reins to Christine so she can continue to build on the strong foundations we have created.” Emmerich said.

The C-suite news follows the launch of Finantix’s latest Digital Collaboration Hub. A client servicing solution, the Hub enables institutions to establish omni-device, multi-media collaboration channels with virtual private lounges that can be used to digitally enhance client interactions. Market updates and advisories, as well as onboarding and document exchange are among the client-oriented activities possible via the Hub. Banco Itaú International is one of the FIs that has deployed the technology, offering the Hub to its U.S. and Swiss clients.

A Finovate alum since 2011, when the company debuted at FinovateEurope, Finantix was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Venezia, Vento, Italy. Acquired by Motive Partners in December 2018, Finantix won Best Front Office Solution at the WealthBriefing Swiss Awards 2020 in February.

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