Alumni profile

Nymbus Partners with Bud Financial on AI-Powered PFM

Nymbus Partners with Bud Financial on AI-Powered PFM
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Bud, NYMBUS

A partnership between Nymbus and Bud Financial will make AI-powered personal financial management (PFM) solutions available to customers of community banks and members of credit unions.

A full-stack banking platform for banks and credit unions in the US, Nymbus will embed Bud Financial’s suite of personal financial management (PFM) widgets directly into its banking platform. This will give customers and members greater visibility into their finances and equip them with relevant content and financial tools to help them better manage their money. Bud Financial’s transaction data enrichment and AI-driven insights provides categorized, contextual data that enables banks and credit unions to offer more tailored, personalized experiences.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Nymbus as they continue to transform banking for community institutions across the US,” Bud Financial CEO Edward Maslaveckas said. “Together, we’re enabling their clients to move beyond legacy data into a new era of intelligent, insight-driven banking. This collaboration reflects our shared belief that better data leads to better outcomes—for financial institutions and their customers alike.”

Nymbus’ partnership with Bud comes in the wake of the firm’s launch of Nymbus Engage. Engage is a new customer engagement solution designed to help community banks and credit unions use data to build better long-term relationships with their customers and members. Integrating Bud’s PFM tools extends Nymbus’ strategy by empowering financial institutions to offer more personalized initiatives to build customer loyalty. In their partnership announcement, the companies noted that the first Nymbus client deployment powered by Bud Financial is already underway. A wider rollout is expected over the weeks and months to come.

“This integration supports our mission of providing banks and credit unions with the tools they need to grow, differentiate, and deliver modern, personalized banking experiences,” Nymbus CEO and Chairman Jeffrey Kendall said. “Bud’s AI-driven enrichment unlocks a new level of insight from transaction data, and we’re excited to bring this to our clients.”

Founded in 2015, Nymbus is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. The company has presented its technology at both Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr, as well as Finovate’s flagship series, most recently demoing at FinovateFall 2023 in New York. Nymbus offers financial institutions a single, scalable platform that delivers core banking, digital services, lending, onboarding, and analytics.

Bud Financial is the second Finovate alum Nymbus has partnered with this year. The company began 2025 announcing a strategic agreement with Digital Onboarding (FinovateFall 2018) to provide community banks and credit unions with better marketing and analytics capabilities to enhance customer and member engagement.

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023 in New York and returning a year later for FinovateFall 2024, Bud Financial enriches transactional data to provide actionable insights and readable inputs for large-language models (LLMs) in banking and financial services. The company, headquartered in London, has processed tens of billions of transactions since its launch in 2015.

In addition to its partnership with Nymbus, Bud Financial has also forged partnerships in recent weeks with financial empowerment platform Fruition and adaptive financial infrastructure (AFI) platform XYB. In February, the company introduced its Intelligent Search capability that enables retail banking customers to search their transaction data for insights on spending and proactive suggestions on better money management.

Photo by Wade Austin Ellis on Unsplash

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Zafin Unveils Transaction Enrichment to Transform Data into Actionable Insights

Zafin Unveils Transaction Enrichment to Transform Data into Actionable Insights
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Zafin

Enterprise banking software company Zafin has launched Transaction Enrichment. The new capability transforms raw transaction data into rich, contextual insights that will enable banks and other financial institutions to deliver more personalized experiences to their customers.

“Transaction Enrichment is foundational to delivering true personalization in banking and is an integral part of a long-term strategy to improve customer relationships and personalized service,” Zafin CEO Charbel Safadi said. “Our approach is more than just data enrichment. It enables banks to move beyond generic offers and engage and reward customers in ways that reflect their daily behaviors, financial goals, and full relationship with the bank.”

Transaction Enrichment is a key component in Zafin’s effort to provide financial institutions with the tools they need to boost customer loyalty and build a foundation for relationship banking. The capability transforms raw transaction records into contextualized information using 70 expense and income categories, merchant logos, clean merchant names, merchant website links, and more. The technology includes an adaptive accuracy engine that helps build confidence via machine learning models that adapt continuously to new inputs and patterns, as well as feedback loops that leverage human insight to ensure accuracy.

Zafin’s technology is currently deployed with UAE-based Commercial Bank International (CBI). The financial institution has used Transaction Enrichment as part of its strategy to provide a more intuitive and personalized digital banking experience for its customers. Transaction Enrichment facilitates online transaction categorization and provides spending insights to help the institution’s customers gain a more comprehensive understanding of their spending and greater control over their financial lives.

“Enhancing our transaction data has helped us deliver a clearer, more intuitive digital experience for our customers,” CBI Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer and Head of Ventures Giovanni Gavino Everduin said. “It goes beyond transparency—it’s about laying the foundation for deeper personalization and fostering a new kind of loyalty built on everyday behavior.”

Zafin made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2017 in New York. In the years since then, the Vancouver, Canada-based fintech has partnered with many of the world’s top banks including ING, CIBC, HSBC, Wells Fargo, PNC, and ANZ. Zafin also works with regional and mid-market banks to help them increase speed to market, reduce operational complexities, become and remain compliant with relevant regulations, and strengthen customer engagement.

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

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Plaid Partners with Experian; Launches Fraud Prevention Solution Plaid Protect

Plaid Partners with Experian; Launches Fraud Prevention Solution Plaid Protect
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Experian, Plaid

Financial data network Plaid has been in the fintech headlines of late for its new partnership with data and technology company Experian, and for the launch of its Plaid Protect fraud prevention solution.

“Today we’re launching Plaid Protect: a real-time fraud intelligence system that helps detect and prevent fraud from the moment a user first interacts with your app or service,” Plaid Head of Fraud Alain Meier wrote on the company blog. “By drawing on fraud signals across a billion devices in the Plaid network, Protect goes beyond what any single company can see—surfacing fraud patterns that exist between linked bank accounts, connections to financial apps and services, and more.”

Plaid Protect is built on an adaptive, machine learning-powered risk engine that provides real-time risk scores and attributes that evolve as the user context changes—from initial contact during onboarding through account linking to ongoing user activity. Calling their fraud model Trust Index (Ti), Plaid’s first production model can access 10,000 high-signal attributes including cross-app patterns, device history, bank account risk signals, and more. The Trust Index leverages network intelligence, bank account risk, consortium feedback, and advanced identity intelligence, keying in on fraud signals that are difficult for criminals to manipulate or fake. Plaid reported that one of the solution’s early adopters found in testing that enhancing verification for just 5% of its users would have intercepted nearly 40% of first-party fraud.

Currently available in beta, Plaid Protect provides an intuitive dashboard that uses semantic search powered by natural language. This means that users can ask questions about the data in plain English (i.e., “all users who opened new accounts in the last 30 days”) instead of needing to use SQL or custom queries.

“With this new lens on fraud, companies can reduce fraud losses, dramatically improve conversion, and make smarter decisions from the very first user interaction and every step thereafter,” Meier wrote.

Plaid’s new product announcement comes days after the company reported that it had partnered with fellow Finovate alum, Experian. The two firms have entered into a strategic collaboration designed to help businesses access cashflow solutions and expand financial inclusion.

“This is just the beginning of what we believe will be a very powerful relationship with Plaid,” Group President Financial Services of Experian North America Scott Brown said. “Together, we’re helping to accelerate the adoption of cashflow insights to drive faster decisions, stronger portfolios, and new financial opportunities for consumers. We’re achieving this while delivering an experience that is transparent and provides consumers with control every step of the way.”

Courtesy of the collaboration, financial institutions can access Plaid’s secure connectivity capabilities—used by 50% of all US bank account holders—and Experian’s expertise in advanced credit analytics and decisioning from a single solution. Once a borrower agrees to share cashflow data from their bank account as part of the loan application process, Plaid’s consumer reporting agency generates a Consumer Report on their behalf. The report is delivered securely to Experian which analyzes the applicant’s data, produces a predictive Cashflow Score or set of Cashflow Attributes, and delivers it to the lender in near real time.

The report features up to two years of historical data and cashflow information from 12,000+ financial institutions. Experian reports that its Cashflow Score provides an increase of as much as 25% in predictive performance compared to scores that rely on more conventional credit data. The new offering will empower banks, credit unions, and consumer lenders to accelerate decision-making, make more accurate risk assessments, and improve borrower outcomes.

“Our work with Experian is about removing long-standing barriers, making it easier for lenders to access consumer-permissioned data and make better decisions,” Plaid Chief Operating Officer Eric Sager said. “Together, we’re building a more inclusive, intelligent, and competitive financial system.”

Founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey and headquartered in San Francisco, Plaid introduced itself to Finovate audiences at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. In the years since, the company has grown into a major financial data network covering more than 12,000 financial institutions in the US, Canada, UK, and Europe. With partners including Venmo and fellow Finovate alums SoFi and Betterment, Plaid works with fintechs, Fortune 500 companies, and leading banks to enable their customers to connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they count on every day.

Photo by Marek Ruczaj on Unsplash

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Worldpay Partners with BVNK to Enable Stablecoin Payouts

Worldpay Partners with BVNK to Enable Stablecoin Payouts
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, WorldPay
  • Worldpay is partnering with BVNK to enable stablecoin payouts for businesses across 180+ markets.
  • The integration simplifies stablecoin adoption for traditional companies by embedding BVNK’s wallet infrastructure into Worldpay’s existing payouts platform.
  • The move reflects broader momentum in stablecoin adoption, following similar initiatives from R3, Solana, Circle, Mastercard, and MoonPay, as demand for faster, borderless, and more efficient payment solutions increases.

Payments and banking services company Worldpay and multi-rail payments infrastructure platform BVNK are teaming up this week to help businesses across the globe use stablecoins for payouts.

Worldpay is leveraging BVNK’s embedded wallet infrastructure to allow its commercial clients across more than 180 markets to pay customers, contractors, creators, sellers, and other third parties using stablecoins in near-real-time.

By integrating with BVNK, Worldpay is making stablecoin payments accessible to organizations that lack expertise in decentralized finance. Under the new partnership, businesses will not need to hold or handle any digital assets themselves in order to pay with them.

Worldpay business clients can access the new stablecoin payout service through their existing integration with Worldpay’s payouts platform. The company plans to pilot stablecoins on the platform in the second half of this year.

With 135 fiat currencies currently available on its platform, Worldpay began offering stablecoin settlement in 2022, allowing merchants in a limited number of geographical regions to receive payments in USDC. In 2023, the company piloted a project with Visa to receive funds more quickly from the network. 

“We’re delighted to work with BVNK to bring this enterprise-grade stablecoin payout solution to market,” said Worldpay SVP, Head of Payouts John McNaught. “With a history of delivering innovative payout solutions, we are excited to meet the rising interest from clients seeking faster, more efficient global payment methods.”

The partnership, which BVNK calls “an important milestone,” will help BVNK bridge traditional and digital payment systems, ultimately creating a more accessible, efficient financial ecosystem.

The move reflects growing demand for faster, borderless payments, especially for global payout platforms paying gig workers, creators, or remote teams. Stablecoins offer the speed of crypto with the stability of fiat, reducing delays and costs in cross-border transactions.

As demand for stable DeFi increases, so have the solutions facilitating mainstream adoption. Recently, we’ve seen a partnership between R3 and Solana, Circle’s launch of the Circle Payments Network, and a collaboration between Mastercard and Moonpay, all of which exemplify the trend of traditional finance converging with blockchain-based solutions to make stablecoin payments more accessible, secure, and scalable for everyday business use.

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Temenos: New Partnership, New CTO, and Helping Banks Launch New Products Faster with Gen AI

Temenos: New Partnership, New CTO, and Helping Banks Launch New Products Faster with Gen AI
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Temenos

Temenos has been all over the fintech headlines in recent days. Here’s a look at what’s put them—and kept them—above the fold.

First up, the company announced that UK-based international payments provider Moneycorp has chosen Temenos SaaS to boost operational efficiency and launch new offerings faster—a theme in this roundup of news from the Swiss fintech. Moneycorp will leverage Temenos SaaS for core banking and payments and is specifically looking to take advantage of the technology’s advanced wallet and payments capabilities as it focuses on expanding its products and services globally. Moneycorp currently operates in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia.

“Best-in-class technology is key to delivering the seamless client experience and personalized service that Moneycorp is known for, so we’re delighted to partner with Temenos, an established global leader in banking technology,” Moneycorp Group Chief Technology Officer Srini Kasturi said. Kasturi praised the company’s multi-geographic support and localization, as well as the SaaS nature of the platform, which he said would help Moneycorp quickly go to market globally and better serve its international customers.

Moneycorp handled £71 billion in trading volume in 2023, serving 11,000 B2B clients, 250 financial institutions, and 23,000+ individual customers. The firm processes more than one million payments a year, reaching 190 countries.

In addition to the new partnership, Temenos also announced new personnel in its C-suite. The company introduced Rohit Chauhan as its new Chief Technology Officer earlier this month. Chauhan will lead development of the company’s overall technology strategy, innovation, research, and development. In this role, he will be tasked with boosting the flexibility of the Temenos platform to advance the company’s core banking and modular solutions for financial institutions large and small. Chauhan was most recently Managing Director and Global Head of Digital Channels Technology at JPMorgan, where he held various leadership positions for more than 12 years.

Accompanying Chauhan’s announcement was the appointment of Eugene Khmelevsky in the newly created role of Temenos Global Head of Architecture and Data. Formerly Chief Mobile Architect at JCPenney, Khmelevsky in his new role will ensure Temenos’ architecture and data foundation support a product strategy that is modular and flexible.

Both Chauhan and Khmelevsky will be based out of the US and report to Temenos’ Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) Barb Morgan.

Lastly, Temenos launched its Temenos Product Manager Copilot this week. The new offering empowers banks to use Generative AI to design, launch, test, and optimize financial products faster. The solution is a Gen AI assistant that is integrated into Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and embedded within the Temenos retail core banking solution. The Copilot provides a straightforward, conversational interface for product, IT, and customer service managers, who can use the technology to review the range of Temenos’ core banking capabilities and insights.

The new offering announcement was accompanied by a report from a recent Temenos study that indicated that 75% of banks are investigating Gen AI deployment. Of those surveyed, 36% had already deployed the technology or were in the process of deploying it. The study also revealed that 73% of those surveyed believed that Agentic AI will be “transformative for the banking industry.”

“Temenos Product Manager Copilot unlocks the full innovation potential of Temenos core banking using Generative AI to help banks deliver better products faster to their customers,” Temenos CPTO Barb Morgan said. “We are excited to bring this game-changing technology to financial institutions globally. In an area where fintechs and neobanks can launch new offerings within weeks, it is critical for banks to accelerate innovation or risk losing relevance in an increasingly competitive landscape.”

Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, Temenos has been a Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateEurope 2013. The company is also an alum of Finovate’s developer conference, participating in FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2015. Temenos offers core banking, digital banking, payments, and wealth management services, as well as financial crime mitigation solutions. Temenos has more than 950 core banking and 600 digital banking clients around the world, and is among the largest software companies in Europe. Jean-Pierre Brulard is CEO.

Photo by Anokhi De Silva on Unsplash

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Entersekt Inks Payments Partnership with Stanchion

Entersekt Inks Payments Partnership with Stanchion
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Entersekt

Atlanta, Georgia-based Entersekt announced a new strategic partnership with paytech solutions provider Stanchion. The partnership will combine Entersekt’s 3-D Secure payment authentication solution with Stanchion’s Payment Fabric Technology. Stanchion’s technology provides advanced integration capabilities that enable issuers to offer new functionalities to help them modernize, transform, and accelerate innovation and improve operational efficiency.

“We are excited to partner with innovative fintech leaders like Stanchion,” Entersekt Chief Revenue Officer Marty Overman said. “This collaboration aligns perfectly with Entersekt’s commitment to delivering secure, seamless payment solutions that empower financial institutions and protect consumers globally.”

Entersekt’s 3-D Secure payment authentication solution provides end-to-end transaction authentication across the merchant acquirer domain, the card issuer domain, and the interoperability domain. The company reports that its access control server (ACS) has delivered a 70% reduction in card-not-present (CNP) fraud within one month, and a 54% increase in conversion rates over six months. Additionally, Entersekt’s ACS provided a 149% growth in transaction value within the first year. The technology leverages out-of-band, biometric, and silent authentication to enhance the customer experience with reliable authentication and adaptive risk intelligence. Entersekt acquired the 3-D Secure software technology business from Modirum, a Finland-based security technology firm, in 2023. The move was designed to position Entersekt as an international leader in authentication solutions for financial services companies.

“We are delighted to partner with Entersekt, one of the world’s foremost 3-D Secure providers,” Stanchion Chief Commercial Officer Chris Pappas said. “This collaboration will enable us to offer enhanced capabilities and deliver even greater value to our clients, reinforcing our position as a leader in payment integration solutions.”

Headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, Stanchion offers a range of solutions and services to help firms integrate, manage, optimize, and secure their payment systems. Founded in 2001 and maintaining offices in Australia, the UK, the UAE, and the US, as well as in South Africa, Stanchion’s solutions include Verto, a next-generation integration and orchestration platform for banks and payment providers; and SwitchCare, a proactive monitoring and observability solution. Stanchion also offers Professional Services in the form of platform-agnostic advice and support during the development and integration of new payment environments. Steven Kirrage is CEO.

Entersekt made its Finovate debut at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. In the decade-plus since then, Entersekt has grown into a leading fraud prevention and payment security solution provider for banks and other financial institutions. Founded in 2010, the company processes more than 2.5 billion transactions for 250+ million cardholders and 450,000+ merchants from nearly 900 banks in more than 70 countries. Entersekt’s flagship solution, its cross-channel Context Aware Authentication platform, secures digital transactions and helps optimize the user experience.

Earlier this year, Entersekt announced that Clare Conway had joined the company as Chief Integration Officer. Conway comes to Entersekt after serving as Chief Operating Officer for partnership automation platform, Partnerize. Also this year, Entersekt announced a new collaboration with Africa-based payment services provider enza. The paytech will leverage Entersekt’s 3-D Secure authentication to bring stronger security, fewer false declines, and seamless payment experiences to banking customers in Africa. Banks in the region will benefit from greater competitiveness, and the ability to expand to new markets and pursue new revenue sources. Schalk Nolte is Entersekt CEO.

Photo by Joey Kyber on Unsplash

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Zopa Raises $106 Million Before Launching Flagship Bank Account

Zopa Raises $106 Million Before Launching Flagship Bank Account
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Zopa
  • Zopa raised $106 million in AT1 capital to bolster its balance sheet ahead of launching its flagship bank account.
  • The UK digital bank has raised $1.2 billion, and has doubled its profits to $45 million in 2024.
  • Zopa’s bank account is currently in a beta phase with a limited number of customers.

UK-based digital bank Zopa has raised $106 million (£80 million) in Additional Tier 1 (AT1) capital from existing and new investors. The new funds come five months after the company brought in $87 million in funding, boosting Zopa’s funding to $1.2 billion.

Zopa plans to use today’s funds to prepare for the launch of its flagship bank account. The AT1 capital will offer a regulatory buffer, helping Zopa meet regulatory capital requirements that ensure it has enough capital to absorb losses and continue operating during periods of financial stress. Because the funds come in the form of perpetual bonds or hybrid securities, they do not dilute existing shareholders’ equity stakes, and they can also be written down or converted to equity if the bank’s capital falls below a certain threshold.

Zopa has been working toward launching its full bank account since receiving its banking license from the Financial Conduct Authority in 2020. The company currently offers a range of lending, savings, and pension products, with $7.29 billion (£5.5 billion) in deposits and over $4 billion (£3 billion) in loans on its balance sheet. Zopa has yet to launch any payment tools, but it is currently in a beta phase with a limited number of customers.

With 850 employees, Zopa has doubled its profits, reaching $45 million (£34 million) last year. That same year, the company also partnered with Britain electricity supplier Octopus Energy and with retailer John Lewis to offer personal loans to its 23 million customers.

While Zopa hinted at plans for a public debut in 2021, the company announced last year that it has no current plans to pursue an IPO, saying it wants to wait for the markets “to revive and be more positive.” This is currently a common sentiment among fintechs, including Klarna, which delayed its IPO because of economic uncertainty. However, we may be seeing early signs of positivity, as investing platform eToro hit the public markets today, popping as high as 34% at the open before settling back to a 28% gain in recent trading. Additionally, US challenger bank Chime filed its S-1 yesterday afternoon in preparation for its own IPO.

Photo by Public Domain Pictures

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Celebrating Earth Day: Finovate Alums Champion Sustainability

Celebrating Earth Day: Finovate Alums Champion Sustainability
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, ClimateTrade, Cloverly, Connect Earth, ecolytiq, Energy Shares, Green Portfolio, Little Blocks

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

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Tuition.io Lands Debt Funding from ORIX Corporation

Tuition.io Lands Debt Funding from ORIX Corporation
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Funding, Tuition.io

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.

Photo by Pixabay

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Showcasing Finovate Alums in Celebration of Financial Literacy Month

Showcasing Finovate Alums in Celebration of Financial Literacy Month
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Cashy, Debbie, Doshi App, HappyNest, Horizn, Plinqit, Zeed

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!

Photo by Pixabay

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Rocket Companies Acquires Mr. Cooper for $9.4 Billion

Rocket Companies Acquires Mr. Cooper for $9.4 Billion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Mr. Cooper

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.

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

Truework Intelligence Brings New Data Methods and Predictive Modeling to Mortgage Lenders
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Truework

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

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