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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
The stage is not the only place where Finovate celebrates the accomplishments of Black and African-American fintech and financial services professionals.
Since inception, Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast have showcased Black and African-American innovators, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders in the fintech and financial services space.
As part of our continued commemoration of Black and African-American History Month, today we highlight those conversations. Click the image to access the interview.
Nneka Ukpai – Better
Nate Gibbons – QuickFi
Jacqueline Baker – Author, The Unexpected Leader
Joseph Akintolayo – Deposits
Ariam Sium – FinGoal
William Crowder – Aperture Venture Capital
Sesie Bonsi – Bleu
Sharon Kimathi – Fintech Futures
Adrienne Harris – Superintendent NYS Department of Financial Services
To kick off Finovate’s commemoration of Black/African-American History Month this year, we’re highlighting some of the Black and African-American fintech professionals who represented their companies and their fintech innovations at our Finovate conferences in 2023.
Andre Llewellyn – Marketing Consultant/Advisory Board Member with AI Squared
Along with company CTO Michelle Bonat, Andre Llewellyn helped demonstrated the new Generative AI-based features on AI Squared’s platform at FinovateFall last year.
The company’s technology enables financial services companies to leverage Generative AI – and their own data – to maximize their enterprise assets.
A marketing consultant and AI Squared Advisory Board member, Llewellyn is a marketing veteran whose insights helped fuel new product and brand launches for Procter & Gamble, Instagram, Hashflow, and Candy Digital. He is a graduate of the NYU Stern School of Business.
Michael Duncan’s Bankjoy made its first Finovate appearance in 2016.
The company, which returned to the Finovate stage in 2022 and 2023 for FinovateFall, helps community banks and credit unions access modern banking technology. Bankjoy’s solutions help FIs better target specific market niches and deliver superior digital banking experiences.
Duncan (CEO) co-founded Bankjoy in 2015. Headquartered in Royal Oak, Michigan, Bankjoy has more than 60 clients, more than 120 integrations, and serves more than 1 million customers and members of banks and credit unions. This week, the company announced a new partner – Oregon State Credit Union – that will deploy Bankjoy’s online account opening and loan application.
Mountain View, California-based DataVisor made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2023.
Solutions Engineer Ryan Nichols (shown) joined company CRO Kevin McWey on stage as they demoed DataVisor’s Fraud & Risk Platform. The company’s solution supports the entire fraud workflow in a self-service solution that is single and flexible.
A software developer and solutions architect with experience at firms like CenturyLink and Internet publisher Giant Oak, Nichols joined DataVisor in 2021. As of the spring of 2023, he is both a Cryptocurrency Tracing Certified Examiner (CTCE) and a Certified Cryptocurrency Risk Specialist (CCRS).
Nate Gibbons – Chief Experience Officer with QuickFi
Nate Gibbons, QuickFi’s Chief Experience Officer, is no stranger to Finovate audience – nor to the Finovate Best of Show awards.
The company, an innovator in embedded financing for business equipment, has won Best of Show on two occasions: FinovateSpring 2022 and 2023. And Gibbons was part of the winning team both times (along with colleague Jillian Munson, VP of Process & Automation with QuickFi).
An alum of the University of Rochester Simon Business School, Gibbons is also a Certified Lease and Finance Professional (CLFP). Previous to his tenure at QuickFi, he was Project Manager and subsequently Vice President at First American Equipment Finance.
The company is an Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion firm that consists of The Urban Labs (services) and Lexicon (products). The Lazu Group made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring, demoing its CULTURL Heritage Calendar that offers “content, ideas, and resources for creating timely communication to promote empathy and curiosity and encourage cross-cultural dialogue.”
Lazu is a speaker, a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an author. Her book, From Intention to Impact: A Practical Guide to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, was published this year. Lazu is also a former banking professional, having worked as EVP and Chief Experience and Culture Officer for Berkshire Bank in Boston.
ModernTax founder and CEO Matthew Parker introduced his company to Finovate audiences last year at FinovateSpring. ModernTax is a data company that makes tax and financial data on non-public entities more accessible. The company has created a verification platform that includes more than seven million businesses, and ModernTax has validated tax records for “hundreds of thousands” of them.
Before launching ModernTax, Parker was co-founder and CEO of Rapidly.co, a SaaS platform that connects accountants, enrolled agents, and tax professionals to their clients online. We caught up with him last fall to talk about the founding of ModernTax and what it means to have a more transparent financial ecosystem.
FinGoal first introduced itself to Finovate audiences at FinovateFall in 2021. But it was the company’s return to the Finovate stage the following spring that earned the Colorado-based fintech its first Best of Show award.
Led by Ariam Sium, VP of Product (shown) and Jenn Underwood, Product Analyst, FinGoal’s demo of its Aggregator Switch Kit showed how developers can readily transition from their current data aggregator to access the most enriched and reliable data available.
Finovate VP and host of the Finovate podcast Greg Palmer sat down with Sium in the wake of FinGoal’s Best of Show win last year. Check out their conversation from last summer.
AI Squared made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2023. The company, founded in 2019 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., specializes in helping companies integrate AI and machine learning functionality into any web-based application. Leading the company’s demo was founder and CEO Benjamin Harvey.
With a Master’s degree and a Doctor of Science in Computer Science – as well as years spent as both a Research and Assistant Professor – Harvey brings a wealth of academic experience to the challenge of entrepreneurship and innovation in the fintech space.
We discussed this, and other aspects of his background and goals, in a Finovate blog interview back in August of last year.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 23 and 24. Register today and save your spot.
FinGoal’s new user tags enable financial institutions to understand their customers better and create more targeted offers resulting in higher cross-sells.
Features
Includes user tags based on transaction data
Applies user tags in any CRM to create targeted marketing campaigns
Results in higher cross-sells and more loyal customers
Why it’s great
FinGoal helps firms go beyond marketing based solely on demographics. They can use the information business’ already have – transaction data – to drive personalized marketing campaigns that will result in higher conversions.
Presenters
Ariam Sium, VP of Product Sium uses the tenets of focus and value to govern each product decision made in the rapidly adapting world of fintech. LinkedIn
Jenn Underwood, Product Analyst Underwood brings expertise in personal finance to FinGoal’s product development. Her passion for equitable financial services and value-based savings greatly enriches the UX. LinkedIn
Banking and insights platform FinGoal announced a new investment this week. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
The funding round was led by existing investor Naples Technology Ventures (NTV).
FinGoal won Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2022 for its Aggregator Switch Kit, developed in partnership with fellow Finovate alum Envestnet | Yodlee.
Digital banking and personal finance insights platform FinGoalsecured new funding this week. The Boulder, Colorado-based fintech announced that it has closed an investment round led by existing investor Naples Technology Ventures (NTV). The amount of the funding was not immediately disclosed.
“We believe FinGoal’s offering is a game changer in the banking and finance space,” NTV Managing Partner Mike Abbaei said. “Their platform will be a thriving success in the new digital world.”
This week’s funding marks the second time NTV has backed FinGoal. The company first invested in FinGoal in early 2022.
A specialist in enabling greater personalization in banking, FinGoal helps financial institutions understand where their customers are spending their money. These insights not only help FIs learn which banking products and services to offer their customers. This analysis also informs banks and other financial institutions on how best to market new offerings to their customers, as well.
“A business owner isn’t shopping for a business payments product – they want a way to better serve their customers and reduce costs,” FinGoal CEO David Nohe said. “Knowing what is really happening in the lives of customers allows FIs to do more with the account holders they already have.”
Making its Finovate debut in 2021, FinGoal returned to the Finovate stage less than a year later, securing a Best of Show award for its Aggregator Switch Kit that makes it easier for developers to quickly and easily transition away from their current data aggregator. The solution was developed in partnership with fellow Finovate alum Envestnet | Yodlee and provides a translation layer API that enables engineering teams to switch to Envestnet | Yodlee’s enrichment and make their first API call soon afterwards.
“Before today, switching aggregator was a pain in the butt,” FinGoal’s VP of Product Ariam Sium said from the FinovateSpring stage last May. “It took a lot of time and put a lot of product road maps at risk. At FinGoal, we believe that the best data made available through reliable and safe infrastructure is key to the future of financial services. That’s why we’re going to show you how to switch aggregators in minutes.”
Learn more about FinGoal in our podcast interview with Finovate VP Greg Palmer and FinGoal’s Sium.
For a second year in a row, Finovate is commemorating Black History Month by showcasing those Black and African-American founders and executives who demoed their company’s fintech innovations on the Finovate stage in 2022.
Ariam Sium – VP of Product with FinGoal
Sium not only leads Product at FinGoal, the self-described “Listener. Thinker. Doer” also led FinGoal to a Best of Show award at FinovateSpring last year. In her role at FinGoal, Sium said that she uses the tenets of focus and value to govern each product decision made in the rapidly changing world of fintech.
FinGoal most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall in September. The Boulder, Colorado-based company offers an insights platform that helps financial institutions better understand their customers.
Joseph Akintolayo – CEO and Founder of Deposits
Akintolayo is a “builder of ethical products that solve complex problems in fintech, insurtech, and social enterprise.” As CEO and founder of Deposits, Akintolayo heads a startup that offers banks, brands, and communities a plug and play solution to deliver financial services such as payments and lending, without requiring coding experience.
Deposits made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in September. The Dallas, Texas-based company was founded in 2021.
Left to right: Joseph Akintolayo and Samuel Ailemen of Deposits
Samuel Ailemen – Director of Mobile and Identity at Deposits
As Director of Mobile and Identity at Deposits, Ailemen helped lead the company’s demo at FinovateFall 2022. A fraud prevention expert who is “building cool stuff everywhere”, Ailemen leverages his talent as “a software engineer who loves research” to solve real-world problems using new technologies.
Nathan Gibbons – Chief Experience Officer at QuickFi
Gibbons oversees the customer experience at QuickFi, a company that provides “nearly instant,” self-service 24/7 term financing to business equipment buyers. Demoing the company’s technology at FinovateFall last year, Gibbons and colleague Jillian Munson earned QuickFi its first Finovate Best of Show award.
A C-suite executive with QuickFi since 2018, Gibbons previously spent more than 11 years as Project Manager and later Vice President with First American Equipment Finance. QuickFi was launched by founders of First American Equipment Finance in 2018.
Michael Duncan – CEO and Founder of Bankjoy
Founder and CEO of Bankjoy, Duncan demoed his company’s Business Banking Platform at FinovateFall 2022. The company he launched in 2015 offers a range of modern banking technology solutions, including mobile and online banking, as well as a banking API.
Before founding Bankjoy, Duncan spent more than four years as a Programmer/Analyst and later Software Development Manager at Michigan First Credit Union.
Michael Broughton – CEO and Co-founder of Altro
Broughton co-founded and is CEO of Altro, a solution that helps consumers build credit through non-traditional recurring payment processes such as rent and even monthly subscriptions to services like Netflix. Altro’s app is free-to-use, and helps increase financial literacy while boosting existing credit and helping stabilize credit histories. The company made its Finovate debut last May at FinovateSpring.
Broughton is also Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for the USC Credit Union (since 2017), and was both a Scout at Sequoia Capital and a Thiel Fellow at The Thiel Foundation.
Christen Wright – Head of Product at Spave
As Head of Product at Spave, Wright was part of the three-person demo team that won Best of Show at the company’s Finovate debut last May at FinovateSpring. Spave is a financial wholeness solution that enables users to easily save and donate as they purchase products and services. The Spave app provides purchase tracking and analysis, goal setting, group giving, and more.
Wright has a diverse background, having served in senior management roles at AT&T and Delta Air Lines. A member of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, a mentoring and empowerment organization for African American youth, Wright is a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, where he earned an MBA.
Anthony Heckman – as Director of Sales at unitQ
Heckman was part of the founding team at unitQ, a company that turns customer insights into data-driven decisions for firms ranging from Chime to fellow Finovate alum Klarna. At FinovateSpring 2022, Heckman led the company’s live demo of its unitQ monitor, which serves as a centralized, searchable, repository for customer feedback.
Heckman founded TWC Advisors in October of last year. The firm specializes in providing go-to-market and sales support to early-stage, high-growth, VC-backed startups.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 12 and 13. Register today and save your spot.
FinGoal’s insights platform sits atop digital banking and personal financial data. Their new Aggregator Switch Kit allows fintech developers to switch data aggregators in minutes.
Features
Coverage: The best, most enriched and open data in the industry.
Access: Data is shared easily across a company’s ecosystem.
Cost: Better cost structures for aggregation, enrichment and account verification.
Why it’s great
Fintech developers should not be hostage to their aggregation provider.
Presenters
Ariam Sium, VP of Product Sium leads Product at FinGoal and uses the tenets of focus and value to govern each product decision made in the rapidly adapting world of fintech. LinkedIn
Jenn Underwood, Product Analyst Underwood brings an expertise in personal finance to FinGoal’s product development. Her passion for equitable financial services and value-based savings greatly enriches the UX. LinkedIn
Join Finovate VP and Host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer as he shares his video conversations with companies that earned Best of Show honors at FinovateSpring in May.
“What Keep does is it enables employers to implement what we call ‘investing cash plans’ which is a new compensation technique that enables an employer to issue what’s essentially a retention bonus, but that cash is provided on the front end of some period of time … There’s an ongoing obligation of the employee to stick around the company for whatever the vesting period is and, once they hit that vesting period or vesting periods along the way, that portion, or all of the debt that they owe for getting that retention bonus up front, disappears.”
“Spave is all about helping realize financial wholeness and more balance in their life. You can think of Spave as a number of apps altogether. It’s Mint. It’s Acorns. It’s Digit. It’s United Way. It’s Venmo. All in one. We want people to be able to use their spending, so Spave is all based on people’s spending … (That) spending ignites micro amounts that we call “spavings”. So you can either round up spare change, you can apply a percent, you can spave now and do a one-time donation or one-time savings (set-aside) … We’re helping people decide how they’re going to save for their future, give to the causes that they care about and live a more balanced whole life.”
“QuickFi is a business financing platform that really is meant to serve banks and manufacturers. It enables them to offer their business customers a secure, completely digital way of applying for an consummating lower rate term loans in a matter of minutes instead of days or weeks. (This is) because the platform is 100% digital and self-service. It really allows banks and manufacturers to close more loans and more sales faster and much more cost-effectively.”
“We’re an innovation platform that helps banks, credit unions, and other fintechs offer cutting-edge financial tools to their customers. For example, we offer credit and identity protection solutions, personal privacy components that we allow our partners to easily embed within their experience so they can offer these services directly to their customers.”
“We build insights and data infrastructure for financial institutions. The fintech space has a lot left to be desired when it comes to serving actual human beings. And that’s really where (Fingoal) shines. When it comes to our insights, it’s the personalization that actually makes them worth anything. And when it comes to our technical solutions for our clients … at the end of the day we’re improving the overall user experience. It’s also nice that it happens to save the financial institutions money and time.”
“We solve quite a few business problems (for financial institutions). But the three that Steve probably will talk about a little later is reduce the cost to serve digital customers, increase the number of fully-digital customers, drive mass adoption of new products and features. We do this by educating both customers and employees across the full bank ecosystem: retail banking, business banking, wealth management, insurance, just to name a few.”
Stay tuned for more videos from Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast’s Conversations with Best of Show winners.
The votes have been cast and counted! Meet the winners of Best of Show for FinovateSpring 2022:
Array for its financial enablement platform, specializing in embeddable tools and white label solutions, used by leading financial institutions. Demo.
FinGoal for its insights platform that cleans, enriches, and analyzes personal financial data to better understand users and provide actionable insights. Demo.
Horizn for its platform that helps banks globally accelerate digital banking knowledge, fluency, and adoption with both customers and employees. Demo.
Keep Financial Technology for its innovation that solves the hiring and retention challenges of companies by introducing a new form of employee compensation called Cash Vesting Plans. Demo.
QuickFi for its 100% digital, self-service, mobile equipment financing platform that enables business equipment financing in minutes. Demo.
Spave for its all-in-one financial wholeness app that allows users to effortlessly save and give as they spend. Demo.
Our thanks to all of our demoing companies, our sponsors, our partners, and – of course – our attendees – for continuing to make FinovateSpring such a success. Thank you for being a part of our annual spring fintech conference. We’ll see you again next year!
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2022 conferences are below:
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.
FinGoal’s insights platform sits atop digital banking and personal financial data. Premiering at Finovate, their Aggregator Switch Kit allows fintech developers to switch data aggregators in minutes.
Features
Coverage: The best, most enriched and open data in the industry
Access: Data is shared easily across ecosystems
Cost: Better cost structures for aggregation, enrichment and account verification
Why it’s great
Fintech developers should not be hostage to their aggregation provider.
Presenters
Ariam Sium, VP Product Sium leads Product at FinGoal and uses the tenets of focus and value to govern each product decision made in the rapidly adapting world of fintech. LinkedIn
Jenn Underwood, Product Analyst Underwood brings an expertise in personal finance to our product development. Her passion for equitable financial services and value-based savings greatly enriches the UX. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.
FinGoal‘s Link Money connects and uniformly formats your users’ off bank data to the digital banking core enabling secure, universal access for developers to the data at a fraction of legacy costs.
Features
Simplifies and elevates the user experience
More 360 data available for more developers
3x to 5x better economics
Why it’s great Platform banking meets data aggregation the right way.
Presenter
David Nohe, CEO Nohe is CEO at FinGoal. He is ex-Wellfit founder (acquired), ex-Apple, a recovering lawyer, and is based in Colorado. LinkedIn
