Celebrating Earth Day: Finovate Alums Champion Sustainability

Celebrating Earth Day: Finovate Alums Champion Sustainability

Today is Earth Day. Established in 1970, the holiday is widely recognized as the start of the modern environmental movement. First proposed by peace activist John McConnell in 1969, the holiday has grown into an international commemoration with millions of participants all over the world.

In fintech and financial services, many companies have developed solutions to help banks, financial services firms, and their customers deal with issues such as climate change and environmental sustainability. From carbon tracking to investing in sustainable industries, these innovators are helping companies and individuals better understand the impact of their actions on the environment and, importantly, are showing them specific ways they can take action.

Finovate has been proud to showcase many of these companies in recent years. As part of our Earth Day celebration, we’re featuring below some of these innovators as well as the technologies they have brought to market to promote sustainability and minimize negative impacts on the climate.


ClimateTrade

Headquartered in Valencia, Spain and Miami, Florida, ClimateTrade is a climate tech company that leverages innovative technology—including a blockchain-based climate marketplace—to support large-scale decarbonization.

Founded in 2018, ClimateTrade made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023. Francisco Benedito is Co-Founder and CEO.

Cloverly

Cloverly is a climate action platform that provides solutions to help buyers and sellers of carbon credits, connect, transact, and scale their impact. The company’s API enables companies to embed climate action into their own customer’s digital experiences.

Cloverly made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2023 and returned later that year for FinovateFall. The company was founded in 2018 and is based in Atlanta, Georgia. Jason Rubottom is CEO.

Connect Earth

Connect Earth is an environmental data startup that democratizes access to sustainability data. The company offers carbon tracking API technology, Connect Insights, that financial institutions can embed in their apps to provide customers with a carbon impact estimate for every spend-based transaction.

Headquartered in London, Connect Earth made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023 and returned to the Finovate stage in New York later in the year for FinovateFall. The company was founded in 2021. Alexander Lempka is Co-Founder and CEO.

ecolytiq

ecolytiq offers a Sustainability-as-a-Service solution that uses payment transactions to calculate individual environmental impacts, including CO2 footprint.

Berlin, Germany-based ecolytiq participated in Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr 2021. The company was founded in 2020. David Lais is Co-Founder and Managing Director.

Energy Shares

Energy Shares is a FINRA-registered, broker-dealer and equity crowdfunding platform for utility-scale, renewable energy projects throughout the US. The company’s platform expands access to investment opportunities in the renewable energy space that have historically been available only to institutional, corporate, and other privileged investors.

Energy Shares made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022 in New York. Headquartered in Pasadena, California, the company was founded in 2021. Daniel Kim is Founder and CEO.

Green Portfolio

Green Portfolio offers a climate-first, AI-powered scoring system and platform that enables individuals to align their investing and banking decisions with their attitudes toward environmental sustainability and climate change.

Green Portfolio made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023. Founded in 2020, the company is headquartered in New York. Bonnie Gurry is Co-Founder and CEO.

Little Blocks

Little Blocks is a fintech platform for micro-, small-, and medium-sized (MSME) manufacturers built around industrial IoT data. The firm helps companies secure access to risk capital for machinery upgrades that make factories more productive while minimizing environmental costs and impacts.

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023, Little Blocks was founded in 2022. Based in Hyderabad, India, the company was co-founded by CEO Hanu Panchakarla.


Photo by Valentin Antonucci

Tuition.io Lands Debt Funding from ORIX Corporation

Tuition.io Lands Debt Funding from ORIX Corporation

Student loan benefits platform Tuition.io has received an undisclosed amount of debt financing from ORIX Corporation USA’s Growth Capital business. This marks Tuition.io’s sixth investment, adding to its five equity rounds that total $15.2 million.

Tuition.io was founded in 2011 to help graduates pay off their student loans while giving businesses a strategic differentiator to improve hiring and employee retention. The company debuted as a direct-to-consumer offering to help student loan borrowers view, understand, and compare their debt and get customized restructuring plans. Today, Tuition.io enables businesses to provide student loan repayment assistance, 529 plan contributions, and tuition reimbursement through a single, customizable interface.

“Partnering with ORIX USA marks a significant milestone for Tuition.io as we expand our mission to make education benefits more accessible and impactful for employers and their workforces,” said Tuition.io COO and CFO Scott Simmons. “This investment enables us to accelerate innovation, reach more organizations, and empower employees with the resources they need to thrive in their careers. We’re excited about the opportunities ahead and the support of ORIX USA to help drive our vision forward.”

ORIX USA’s Growth Capital business was founded in 2001 and has since provided $2.7 billion in funding to 200 companies in a range of sectors from biotech to energy.

“We are excited to partner with Tuition.io as they continue to transform the way employers support their workforce through education benefits,” said ORIX USA’s Growth Capital Business Director Austin Szafranski. “With student debt remaining a critical issue for employees nationwide, Tuition.io’s platform provides a meaningful solution that helps companies attract and retain top talent. We look forward to supporting their growth and impact in the marketplace.”

Not only does ORIX USA Growth Capital’s investment signal a vote of confidence in student loan repayment technologies, but it also shows strong interest in workforce benefits. As traditional compensation packages evolve to meet modern employee needs, debt financing deals such as this one point to increasing investor confidence in HR tech solutions with long-term impact.


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Showcasing Finovate Alums in Celebration of Financial Literacy Month

Showcasing Finovate Alums in Celebration of Financial Literacy Month

April is Financial Literacy Month. And while we are all getting an intensive course in trade policy these days, a few hours spent shoring up financial literacy (including how to handle market downturns!) is always time well spent.

With this in mind, today we showcase Finovate alums in recent years that have made financial literacy a key part of their mission when it comes to building new fintech solutions.


Cashy

  • Founded in 2021
  • Headquartered in Tampa, Florida
  • Mart Vainu is CEO
  • Last demoed at FinovateFall 2023
  • Offers an interactive financial game with personalized rewards from financial institutions

Debbie

  • Founded in 2021
  • Headquartered in Miami, Florida
  • Frida Leibowitz is CEO
  • Last demoed at FinovateFall 2023
  • Two-time Best of Show winner
  • The Noom for debt payoff, Debbie’s solution leverages behavioral psychology and positive reinforcement to incentivize borrowers to pay down debt

Doshi App

  • Founded in 2021
  • Headquartered in London, England
  • Daniel Rose is CEO
  • Last demoed at FinovateEurope 2025
  • Offers a plug-and-play solution that enables banks to integrate embedded financial learning into their apps and platforms

HappyNest

Horizn

  • Headquartered in Toronto, Canada
  • Founded in 2012
  • Last demoed at FinovateSpring 2023
  • Five-time Best of Show winner
  • Offers self-learning and interactive gamified digital experiences for financial services customers and frontline workers
  • Acquired by US conversational AI firm Inbenta in 2023

Plinqit

Zeed

To learn more about Finovate alums innovating in the area of financial literacy before 2023, check out our previous Financial Literacy content, including Best of Show winners that are innovating in this space!


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Rocket Companies Acquires Mr. Cooper for $9.4 Billion

Rocket Companies Acquires Mr. Cooper for $9.4 Billion

Rocket Companies has announced its second acquisition in as many weeks. The Michigan-based company is buying Mr. Cooper, one of the largest non-bank mortgage servicers and mortgage lenders in the US. The deal is expected to close in an all-stock transaction of $9.4 billion in equity value, based on an 11.0x exchange ratio.

Mr. Cooper, which demoed its mobile app at FinovateSpring 2018, was founded in 1994 to challenge the conventional mortgage experience to bring borrowers a better, more straightforward home buying process. With 9,000 employees, the Texas-based company serves more than six million homeowners with its refinancing and mortgage products.

“Mr. Cooper has been on a journey to transform the homeownership experience, and we have built the most advanced servicing platform in the mortgage industry,” said Mr. Cooper Group Chairman and CEO Jay Bray. “By combining Mr. Cooper and Rocket, we will form the strongest mortgage company in the industry, offering an end-to-end homeownership experience backed by leading technology and grounded in customer care. I am deeply grateful for the dedication of the Mr. Cooper team and look forward to our continued work as we lead our industry into the future of homeownership.”

Once finalized, Rocket Companies and Mr. Cooper will serve a combined 10 million clients with a servicing book of $2.1 trillion, which represents one in six mortgages in America. Rocket will leverage the acquisition to bring its mortgage recapture capabilities to this new, enlarged client base. This will help produce higher loan volume, drive long-term client relationships, and provide greater recurring revenue while lowering client acquisition costs.

Holding a significantly larger servicing portfolio will help Rocket sustain its retention and 83% recapture rate. And by attaching Rocket’s title, closing, and appraisal services to Mr. Cooper’s existing originations, Rocket anticipates it will generate $100 million in additional pre-tax revenue, as well as an extra $400 million in savings from streamlining operations, expense, and technology investments.

When the deal is complete, Mr. Cooper Group’s Chairman and CEO Jay Bray will become President and CEO of Rocket Mortgage, while Dan Gilbert will remain Chairman of Rocket Companies. The company’s board will consist of 11 members, nine from Rocket’s board and two from Mr. Cooper’s.

“Servicing is a critical pillar of homeownership—alongside home search and mortgage origination,” said Rocket CEO Varun Krishna. “With the right data and AI infrastructure we will deliver the right products at the right time. That’s how we build lifelong relationships, by proactively unlocking benefits and meeting needs before they arise. We look forward to welcoming Mr. Cooper’s nearly 7 million clients.”

Today’s announcement comes just two weeks after Rocket unveiled plans to acquire real estate brokerage website Redfin for $1.75 billion. Together, the two deals fuel Rocket’s vision of owning the entire homeownership journey—from search to close and beyond.

With Redfin, Rocket gains a home search platform and a network of real estate agents; with Mr. Cooper, it secures a large servicing portfolio and deep operational infrastructure. By consolidating core pieces of real estate and lending processes under one roof, Rocket is positioning itself not just as a mortgage lender, but as a full-stack digital homeownership platform with the potential to recreate how Americans buy, finance, and manage their homes.

Truework Intelligence Brings New Data Methods and Predictive Modeling to Mortgage Lenders

Truework Intelligence Brings New Data Methods and Predictive Modeling to Mortgage Lenders

Truework Intelligence, a new offering from income and employment verification technology company Truework, will provide mortgage lenders and property managers with a fully automated and comprehensive verification platform. The solution provides automatic orchestration, data standardization, and insights to provide an end-to-end verification experience that leverages new data methods, predictive modeling, and more.

“We started Truework to reinvent the way consumer data was collected and processed for maximum security and accuracy,” Truework CEO and Co-Founder Ryan Sandler explained. “From the early days, machine learning was a core part of our product. It has continued to evolve over time, both through internal modeling efforts and the latest external technologies. The Intelligence Platform is the result of this evolution to truly serve as a single solution for customers.”

Truework Intelligence replaces homegrown vendor “waterfalls” and related internal processes, removing guesswork and giving customers a plug-and-play verification solution. Among the platform’s features are the addition of bank income and tax transcripts to its current data methods, and predictive modeling for report turnaround times and the likelihood of report completion. This second feature of Truework Intelligence helps provide transparency and insights into the verification process and adds to the platform’s existing machine learning models that extract and parse data for accuracy and estimate the accuracy of income based on employment information.

“It’s not about returning the first data set we find,” Sandler added. “That’s what everyone else does. And it doesn’t work. It makes organizations leverage subpar vendors to fill data gaps. We are looking at the bigger picture by providing an accurate and complete picture of every consumer, using technology to handle data with trust and attention to detail.”

Truework’s product news comes just a few weeks after the company announced that it was working with TransUnion. The collaboration is designed to give mortgage lenders better and more reliable access to the verification of income and employment data they need to accelerate and enhance underwriting while keeping costs low. As part of the partnership, Truework’s TruVision Income and Employment Verification solution is now available via the TransUnion API. TruVision gives lenders access to instant data from more than 48 million active employee records, consumer-permissioned payroll (which covers 90% of employers in the US), as well as automated outreach to HR departments and third-party providers.

Also this year, Truework teamed up with another fellow Finovate alum—Blend Labs—to make income and employment verification technology available across both home lending and consumer banking. Blend Labs integrated Truework’s intelligent verification of income and employment technology directly into its consumer banking and home lending products in order to provide faster borrower approvals and much broader income and employment data coverage.

“Building a best-in-class lending experience means bringing together the right technology partners to streamline every step of the process,” Blend Co-Founder Nima Ghamsari said. “Partnering with Truework strengthens this commitment by delivering more seamless and comprehensive verifications, helping lenders drive efficiency and provide faster, more reliable approvals for their customers.”

Truework made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2021 in New York. At the conference, the San Francisco, California-based company demonstrated how its API enables developers to automatically verify income and employment data for any US employee. The company showed how its front-end widget, Truework.js, powered by the Truework API, allows users to log in to their payroll accounts and share source-of-truth data for those instances when their records are outside of Truework’s network of 35 million employees.

Users of Truework’s technology include eight of the top ten lenders in the US by origination volume. The company noted that its solutions have helped mortgage lenders across the country lower costs by 50% and achieve average completion rates of 75%. The company was founded in 2017.


Photo by AS Photography

FutureVault Secures $3 Million in Equity Funding

FutureVault Secures $3 Million in Equity Funding

AI-powered digital vault provider FutureVault has raised $3 million in equity capital. The funding boosts the fintech’s total capital raised to $31 million, and will be used to accelerate the development of new product functionality, continue innovating in the use of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), drive additional advancements in workflow automation, and strengthen the company’s position as the pioneer of Client Life Management Vault solutions.

“We are grateful for the confidence our existing and new shareholders have in our enormous business opportunity,” said FutureVault CEO Daniel Kenny. Company founder and executive chairman G. Scott Paterson added, “The aggregation of critical documents into a digital vault, when coupled with AI, is changing the face of financial services, advice delivery, and client engagement.”

Digital vaults play a key role in the modern technology stack for companies in financial services and wealth management. In the same way that physical vaults store and protect valuable assets—such as cash, jewelry, and important documents—digital vaults safeguard valuable digital assets, such as files and documentation. Digital vault technology enables firms to better organize, manage, store, and deliver client-facing documents, onboard and retrain customers, attract talent, manage compliance and audit readiness, and ultimately enhance engagement with both new and existing clients.

FutureVault’s platform leverages AI to provide document summaries, keyword extraction and expiration date recognition, contextualized action items and more. Users can extract structured and unstructured data to power workflows and enterprise-wide intelligence. The platform provides secure document exchange and helps firms maintain data security and compliance via better recordkeeping governance and streamlined audits.

“Digital vault platforms are becoming the next iteration and the future of secure document management by providing firms (and their advisors) accountability, efficiency, structure, compliance, and protection—all areas that enable organizations to scale document management practices across the many levels of their organization, and most importantly, to extend and enhance the value proposition delivered to their clients,” FutureVault CMO Kristian Borghesan said.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, FutureVault made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2016 in New York. Today, the company boasts more than 150,000 client vault accounts, 4,000+ partner professionals, and more than $600 billion in assets under management of partner firms. FutureVault serves investment dealers, RIAs and advisors, family offices, banks and credit unions, insurance companies, accounting firms, and more.

FutureVault began the year by teaming up with Canadian wealth compliance technology provider PortfolioAid. The partnership combines PortfolioAid’s wealth compliance technology with FutureVault’s Client Life Management Vault and Digital Vault to establish a new benchmark for digital document management, compliance transparency, and an enhanced client value proposition.

“Data embedded within documents is worth more than raw data,” FutureVault CEO Daniel Kenny said. “With FutureVault’s AI-powered Digital Vault construct, we’re enabling enterprises, advisors and their clients to tap into this data like never before—driving unprecedented advisor-client engagement and streamlining operational workflows. Our partnership with Sam Webster and the team at PortfolioAid will materially transform the modern wealth enterprise’s ability to deliver a more personalized, seamless, and compliant client experience.”


Photo by Ehtiram Mammadov

Payoneer Partners with Bancolombia’s Neobank Nequi

Payoneer Partners with Bancolombia’s Neobank Nequi

Global payments company Payoneer is growing its presence in Latin America this month. The New York-based fintech has partnered with Colombian Bank Nequi, Bancolombia’s Neobank.

By integrating Payoneer, Nequi will enable its users to transfer their dollars and euros from Payoneer to Nequi and receive them in Colombian pesos in a matter of minutes. Payoneer joins 30+ other services that Nequi offers. Notably, Payoneer will enable Nequi users to bring euros through the Nequi platform for the first time.

A business line of Bancolombia, Nequi’s digital financial platform seeks to help improve its more than 21 million users’ relationships with money. Nequi users can pay with the Nequi Card, pay for public services, recharge their cell phone, receive money from abroad, buy insurance or a bus ticket, and more.

“At Nequi we work to adapt to new global dynamics by facilitating the reception of international payments in an efficient and economical way,” said Nequi Business Strategy Leader María del Pilar Correa. “That is why this new integration with Payoneer has us very excited because we continue to strengthen the possibilities for our users and this will undoubtedly be a great option for freelancers, entrepreneurs and people who do international business, since they can receive payments from clients in other countries, with different currencies, in a fast and secure way at a global level.”

Once they link their account, Nequi savings accountholders can transfer up to $5,000 per month, with a maximum of $2,000 per transaction. Nequi low-value deposit accountholders can transfer up to $2,000 per month, with a maximum of $2,000 per transaction.

Payoneer was founded in 2005 to help small-and-medium-sized businesses to transact, do business, and grow globally. The company’s global financial stack helps remove barriers and simplify cross-border commerce to make it easier for businesses to connect to the global economy, pay, get paid, manage their funds across multiple currencies, and grow their businesses.

Payoneer went public via a SPAC merger with FTAC Olympus Acquisition Corp. in 2021. The company listed on the NASDAQ in June of that same year under the ticker PAYO and has a current market capitalization of $3 billion.

“By partnering with the most popular neobank in Colombia, Payoneer is helping to address a critical need in the region: enabling entrepreneurs in Colombia [to] receive payments with increased flexibility in fund usage,” said Payoneer SVP of Growth in Latin America Mar Fernández. “Working with Nequi to enhance our functionalities further fulfills Payoneer’s mission to empower businesses from anywhere in the world to scale to their businesses globally. We aim to support the ambitions and boost the international competitiveness of Colombian professionals.”

Payoneer has presented at FinDEVr New York in 2016, where it showcased integrating its Armor Payments API into a marketplace. Prior to that, the company demoed its commercial account at FinovateAsia 2013 in Singapore.


Photo by Camila Melo

Zeta Secures $50 Million Strategic Investment

Zeta Secures $50 Million Strategic Investment

Banking technology provider Zeta has raised $50 million in new funding. The investment — from an unnamed strategic investor — boosts the company’s valuation to $2 billion, a significant increase from the firm’s most recent pre-money valuation of $1.45 billion. That valuation followed a capital infusion of $250 million from Softbank Vision Fund 2 and other investors in 2021.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Zeta enables financial institutions and fintechs to launch a wide variety of financial products via its modern, microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native, and Headless (MACH) platform. These products include credit cards, checking accounts, savings accounts, unsecured loans, and more. Zeta’s SaaS suite provides solutions for the entire lifecycle of a banking product: core banking and issuer payments; merchant acquiring and payment services; digital banking and AI applications; issuer operations and servicing; customer engagement and rewards; as well as commercial cards and benefits.

“We are incredibly excited at the pace at which clients are embracing our modern stack,” Zeta Global CEO and Co-Founder Bhavin Turakhia said. “Over the past few years, we have supported over 25 million accounts on our cloud-native processing platform Tachyon and are on track to add 25 million more with contracts already in flight. Our clients are breaking away from decades of legacy systems to deliver amazing digital experiences, thereby increasing their customer satisfaction and accelerating new user acquisition.”

Founded in 2015, Zeta won Best of Show in its debut at our all-digital Finovate conference in 2020. The company returned to the Finovate stage the following year for FinovateFall 2021 in New York. More recently, Zeta has collaborated with fellow Finovate alum Mastercard as part of a five-year partnership and teamed up with Featurespace to combine credit card processing and fraud detection. Last August, Zeta announced that India’s HDFC Bank was leveraging its technology to power its new Credit Line on UPI (CLOU) solutions.

“Zeta’s mission to be a trusted partner to financial institutions is possible through the patient efforts of the best team ever assembled in banking technology,” Zeta Co-Founder Ramki Gaddipati said. “While the past few years have been challenging for the banking-tech industry, our organization has delivered multiple winning programs for our clients in record time.”

To date, Zeta customers around the world have issued more than 25 million cards on Zeta’s platform. The firm’s card processing capabilities were recognized by Celent in its 2023 Next-Gen Card Issuer Processors in the US report, which noted that, in the words of Celent Head of Retail Banking and Payments Research Zil Bareisis, “Zeta is among the likeliest partners for banks considering a shift to next-gen processing.”


Photo by Zyanya BMO on Unsplash

Money Squirrel Taps Moneyhub’s Open Banking Tech for New App Launch

Money Squirrel Taps Moneyhub’s Open Banking Tech for New App Launch
  • Moneyhub is partnering with Money Squirrel to provide open banking technology for Money Squirrel’s new small business financial management app.
  • Money Squirrel’s new app is aimed to automate VAT savings and optimize cash flow.
  • The collaboration comes as regulations like PSD2 continue to shape the open banking landscape across Europe.

Data and payments fintech Moneyhub unveiled this week that it has been selected by Money Squirrel to power its new small business financial management app.

Launched last month, Money Squirrel’s app aims to help businesses manage their finances and optimize their cashflow. The UK-based company will leverage Moneyhub’s open banking-enabled API technology to power the platform. Money Squirrel’s tools allow businesses to automate saving for future VAT payments. Once businesses connect their savings accounts, Money Squirrel places incoming funds into high interest rate accounts to maximize returns on sedentary cash, according to the business’ preference.

“Having Moneyhub’s API technology has been critical to launching our app, but it’s also encouraging to be aligned with them on the aim of making open banking and open finance more inclusive,” said Money Squirrel Founder and CEO Andreea Daly. “Having founded a business, I’ve experienced the frustrations of managing cash flow – spending countless hours calculating VAT and budgeting for future expenses. Therefore, we know firsthand how having the technology to remove these frustrations can unlock so much potential for businesses.”

Founded in 2023, Money Squirrel was selected to participate in the SHIFT open finance community’s dedicated fintech incubator, Ignite. The program provides financial support, expert guidance, and industry networking opportunities.

Moneyhub was founded in 2014 and sells personal finance technology tools, open data APIs, decisioning solutions, and payments capabilities. The company helps businesses leverage open data to enhance the financial wellness of their customers, communities, and businesses.

“Collaborating with Money Squirrel is a significant step in making open banking technology accessible to both SMEs and larger institutions,” said Moneyhub MD of API Kim Jenkins. “We are thrilled to help simplify financial management and unlock growth opportunities for smaller businesses by powering Money Squirrel’s app with our API. This partnership highlights our commitment to driving financial inclusivity and innovation across the board.”

As regulations like PSD2 continue to evolve across Europe, businesses are increasingly adopting open finance solutions to gain better control over their financial operations. By automating tasks such as VAT planning and cash flow optimization, fintechs like Money Squirrel can help businesses reduce administrative burdens, improve liquidity management, and make more data-driven financial decisions.

Moneyhub has demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2015 and FinovateEurope 2017. This year’s FinovateEurope event is just a few weeks away. Learn more about this year’s demoing companies and register to attend to take part in the action.

KYC Portal Forges Strategic Collaboration with PwC

KYC Portal Forges Strategic Collaboration with PwC

In a newly announced strategic collaboration, KYC Portal has teamed up with PwC UK and PwC Channel Islands. PwC UK and PwC Channel Islands will deploy KYC Portal CLM, the company’s client lifecycle management platform that features AML technology, including risk assessment tools and advanced due diligence (CDD) capabilities. For its part, PwC — with its international expertise in financial crime prevention, process management, and regulatory landscapes — will offer its services to KYC Portal customers.

“KYC Portal CLM is revolutionizing the way organizations manage compliance, risk, and client lifecycle processes,” KYC Portal Founder and CEO Kristoff Zammit Ciantar said. “Through this collaboration with PwC, we are empowering companies with an unparalleled combination of technical excellence and strategic insight. We are extremely proud to have been selected by PwC for such a collaboration and are very excited to start presenting our combined service playbook to both existing and new customers.”

An advanced collation CLM platform for CDD and AML data collection, KYC Portal CLM centralizes and simplifies the customer due diligence process. KYC Portal CLM lowers costs, customer touch points, and overall duration, boosting efficiencies by over 60% across the board. The no-code, real-time solution features dynamic configuration capabilities enabling users to change processes, requirements, outreach, risk, workflow, and more with a click of a button. KYC Portal CLM also features real-time counterparty risk assessment (CRA) via an automated risk engine with user-defined parameters, weights, combined risks, categories, and more.

“With KYC Portal CLM, we are well-positioned to help organizations navigate the complexities of compliance with confidence,” said Mark Loring, Partner, Financial Crime Managed Services Lead, London PwC UK. “Our collaboration allows us to offer a seamless blend of strategic consulting and technical capability to support organizations in achieving their compliance and operational goals.”

Founded in 2008, KYC Portal made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2019 in London. At the event, the company demoed its KYCP — Know Your Customer Portal — solution, which allows organizations to quickly collate all data relating to all kinds of subjects being assessed in a single, centralized, secure repository. This repository features fully customizable parameters, fields, rules, user permissions, and collaborative practices.

KYC Portal is headquartered in Malta, with offices in Spain. The company includes RBS International, Loomis, and Arie Finance among its customers. Last fall, KYC Portal launched a SaaS model of its on-premises CLM solution.


Photo by Polina from Pexels

LeapXpert Secures $20 Million in Round Led by Portage

LeapXpert Secures $20 Million in Round Led by Portage

Business communications innovator LeapXpert has raised $20 million in new funding this week. The Series B round was led by Portage, and featured participation from existing investors, including Rockefeller Asset Management, Uncorrelated Ventures, and the Partnership Fund for New York City.

“At LeapXpert, we’re seeing greater and greater demand for our platform, driven in part by the three-year crackdown by global regulators on off-channel communications,” LeapXpert Founder and CEO Dima Gutzeit said. “This is now expanding beyond regulated enterprises into non-regulated sectors, as the DOJ in the U.S. enforces stringent requirements for preserving and governing business-related communications taking place on digital channels.”

The funding will enable the company to scale its footprint to address essential governance needs in the financial sector as well as in other industries. The proliferation and popularity of modern communications technology has put a new strain on companies that need to balance engagement and relationship-building on the one hand, and governance, compliance, and security on the other. LeapXpert’s cloud-based solution supports seamless and governed communications across modern communications channels, maintaining enterprise control while meeting the organization’s data retention, security, and regulatory needs. LeapXpert integrates with popular messaging solutions including iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, Telegram, and WeChat on the customer side, and with enterprise platforms including Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Salesforce.

“Looking ahead, customers are also excited about the unfolding potential of communication intelligence and its contribution to workforce productivity,” Gutzeit added. “By unlocking actionable insights from governed conversations, our platform is set to drive new levels of efficiency and innovation in the way teams collaborate and operate.”

LeapXpert’s funding news comes in the wake of its recognition as a Visionary in Gartner’s new Magic Quadrant for Digital Communications Governance and Archiving (DCGA). A member of Deloitte Fast 500 list of America’s fastest-growing tech companies for 2024, LeapXpert recently announced partnerships with financial markets compliant communications solutions provider IPC and with Hong Kong-based media and telecommunications firm HKT. Last fall, the company unveiled its messaging security suite which is equipped with AI-powered impersonation detection — an industry first. Part of LeapXpert’s new Messaging Security Package, the additional functionality leverages AI to spot impersonation attempts over channels such as WhatsApp, WeChat, iMessage, and SMS in real-time.

“As organizations increasingly rely on platforms like WhatsApp, iMessage, and other messaging applications to conduct critical business communications, safeguarding these channels from threats becomes essential,” Gutzeit said. “With our AI-driven Messaging Impersonation Detection, antivirus, anti-malware, and CDR solutions, enterprises now have a comprehensive toolkit to ensure data governance and security across these channels.”

Founded in 2017, LeapXpert most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2022 in New York. At the conference, the company demonstrated its new app for Microsoft Teams that provides a comprehensive digital record of company conversations.


Photo by Temo Berishvili

Alkami Technology Brings Push Provisioning to NASA Federal Credit Union

Alkami Technology Brings Push Provisioning to NASA Federal Credit Union

Texas-based digital banking solutions provider Alkami Technology is bringing Push Provisioning to NASA Federal Credit Union (NASA FCU).

“I truly believe that our card management suite is one of the best,” NASA FCU digital banking manager Liam Petraska said. “Alkami has delivered one of the most cohesive card experiences we’ve seen in the industry. They continue to push the envelope with innovative features, allowing members to start using their cards digitally while the physical card is still in the mail. These cutting-edge features are setting a new standard for what card management can be in the digital banking space.”

The collaboration — Alkami’s latest — has enabled NASA FCU to modernize its digital banking experience for its 200,000+ members with features like push provisioning. Push provisioning enables payment card data to be securely sent or “pushed” from the card issuer or financial institution directly to a digital wallet. Push provisioning facilitates contactless payments and boosts convenience and security by removing the need for the user to manually enter payment card details. This, according to NASA FCU, has led to quantifiable gains in member satisfaction and digital engagement. Additionally, since going live with Alkami’s platform, NASA FCU also has reported faster and more efficient integrations courtesy of Alkami’s API framework.

Alkami’s partnership news comes a month after the fintech announced an enhancement to its Data & Marketing Solutions platform. The enhancement expanded Alkami’s behavioral data tag capabilities to provide financial institutions with deeper account holder intelligence that can be used to provide personalization across marketing and digital banking channels.

Targeted behavioral data tags empower financial institutions to efficiently analyze large datasets and establish accurate categories for accountholder actions and activities. Alkami’s latest behavioral data tags include SavvyMoney data tags to enable banks and credit unions to use data insights from the SavvyMoney offers engine, aggregated account data tags that provide a comprehensive view of account holders’ external accounts, anniversary data tags that track account holders’ anniversaries, and outbound transfer data tags to facilitate tracking of transfers made to other institutions.

“Behavioral data tags allow financial institutions of all sizes to find meaningful insights from large data sets and utilize that information to understand account holder behaviors, make informed business decisions and even find competitive advantages,” Alkami director of product management Mark Leher said. “These insights can be leveraged across digital, mobile, and in-person channels to support a more personalized banking experience.”

As iThryv, Alkami Technology made its Finovate debut in 2009. Today, the fintech reports that customers that have been on its platform for more than five years have outperformed their peers on major financial metrics, based on FI Navigator Data from 2024. This includes 25% higher loan growth, 11% higher core deposit growth, 19% higher revenue growth, and 13% higher average revenue per FTE.

Alkami went public in 2021. The company trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker ALKT and has a market capitalization of $3.5 billion. Alex Shootman is CEO.

Founded in 1949, NASA FCU is headquartered in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. The institution has more than $5 billion in assets.


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