Finovate Debuts Archives - Page 11 of 11

Finovate Debuts: Ayasdi’s Topological Analysis Makes Sense of Complex Data

By David Penn Posted on November 28, 2014
Categories: Ayasdi, Finovate Debuts

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. At FinovateFall 2014, Ayasdi demonstrated its Ayasdi Finance technology that helps financial institutions detect fraud, better manage risk, analyze market conditions, and understand their customers.

Ayasdi

Develops technologies based on topological data analysis that helps institutions in fields ranging from finance to healthcare to energy better understand and benefit from complex data sets.

The Stats

Founded in June 2008
Headquartered in Menlo Park, CA
Raised more than $50 million
Customers include Citigroup, General Electric, and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF)
Co-Founders Gurjeet Singh, CEO, and Gunnar Carlsson, President

The Story

Some great technologies are born in basements and garages. Others have a far more – sophisticated – pedigree.

“We were called ‘one of the 10 most important advancements to come out of DARPA'” Michael Woods, Principal Data Strategiest for Ayasdi, told me in a conversation about how the company was born out of a research project at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The research itself, which involved finding better and more efficient ways to analyze and understand complex data, began in various forms in 2000.

A large part of the problem is that technology was allowing greater numbers of people to generate data. But these same people were often ill-equipped to actually read and understand it. As Woods pointed out from the Finovate stage, this problem is only likely to get worse as more advanced technologies generate ever more advanced (read: complex) data to be deciphered.

Of the various projects underway at DARPA to help solve this problem, one involved a field of analysis called topological analysis. Topological analysis, put simply, is the study of ways to make structure out of unstructured data. This then makes the data machine-readable and able to drive algorithms and other processes.

Those in the topological group, including Ayasdi’s eventual co-founders Gunnar Carlsson and Gurjeet Singh, were able to show through a variety of published papers, that their technology worked and that topological analysis could generate meaningful insights from unstructured data. The point made, the researchers felt like the best option was to commercialize the technology.

The fledgling Ayasdi started out on its own in 2008, with the help of a DARPA small business research grant. By 2010 the company had developed a prototype and after securing seed funding. Ayasdi began selling the technology in 2012.

(Above: Michael Woods, Principal Data Scientist, Ayasdi)

And while reactions to the technology varied initially from resistance to “where have you been all my life?”, the company has seen a growing acceptance and with a customer base that includes three of the five largest energy companies, seven of the ten largest pharmaceutical companies, a number of major hospital systems, and a number of the largest and most sophisticated financial institutions.

“Businesses face a profound challenge today. Data generation is rapidly outpacing data interpretation, which is to say that your businesses are capturing more data than they can effectively understand and act upon,” explained Woods. “Ayasdi is well positioned to solve this challenge.”

The Technology

Ayasdi reveals patterns in data, which then allows observers to look for not only key trends, but critical outliers, as well. These outliers or subpopulations often contain precisely the kind of information that other data analysis methods miss. During its FinovateFall 2014 demonstration, for example, Woods and his colleague Max Song showed how the technology uncovered potential fraud among a sub-population of consumers with otherwise sterling credit ratings.

Fraud detection is clearly one of the major reasons why financial institutions are deploying the technology. Ayasdi reports of one “leading transaction processing firm” that used the company’s technology to increase its ability to detect fraud from less than 30% to 99% within a given set of transactions.

Ayasdi’s technology has also proven helpful for companies looking to meet risk-oriented regulatory requirements. For financial institutions, the “stress tests” required of many banks by the Federal Reserve fit into this category. Solutions from Ayasdi have been used, for example, by banking holding companies to review and improve the way they measure the impact of various macroeconomic factors on revenues.

Another goal of FIs is figuring out how to best serve customers based on their different individual needs and preferences. Here, Ayasdi’s technology can be used to generate customer profiles that are both exacting and dynamic, and then conduct analysis based on factors such as purchasing behavior and income.

What makes the software particularly compelling is the way these functions are integrated in actual use. Segmenting customers by transaction type, asset manager, risk profile, and so on and then comparing the behavior of those subpopulations in different market conditions can provide managers and advisors with major insights into client behavior. This makes it easier to tailor specific products or services to specific clients.

“Whether you are private bank, a major credit card issuer, or an insurance company, you are capturing massive volumes of disparate, heterogenous, disparate data on the ways that your customers behave,” explained Woods. “Ayasdi has enabled our clients to unify their understanding of their clients, to combine these data, and better understand how to serve their clients.”

The Future

Ayasdi has had a busy fall. In addition to its Finovate debut in September, the company announced a strategic alliance with Teradata in October, integrating its data analytics technology with Teradata Unified Data Archit
ecture. Also in October, Ayasdi announced that it was partnering with SumAll.org, a nonprofit data analysis company, to help international aid organizations analyze complex data in their own environments.

And it feels as if the future for its approach to data analysis is bright. Compared to other approaches such as business intelligence, traditional databases and math software, there are a number of areas where Ayasdi believes topological data analysis is superior. Not only is TDA faster and better able to analyze sizable datasets, but topological data analysis does not require coding experience in order to maximize the technology and tends to provide a far more intuitive user experience.

What’s ahead for Ayasdi? It is looking at deploying an app that suppresses the software in the background, making the solution even more user-friendly (Woods said the technology currently “can be used by data scientists relatively easily with a modest amount of training). For financial institutions, the most exciting potential development is what Woods called “truly predictive analytics.” This solution, which Ayasdi expects to have ready by next quarter, will build on the company’s advanced analytics to provide users with even better capacity to develop models that accurately anticipate everything from the impact of economic events on market conditions to bacterial outbreaks and gene mutations.

“You’ve got a lot of data,” Woods said. “You can’t understand it. Ayasdi can help you more rapidly understand it, and better make data-driven business decisions.”

Watch Ayasdi’s demo of Ayasdi Finance from FinovateFall 2014.

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Finovate Debuts: Blooom Presents a Whole New Way to 401(k)

By David Penn Posted on November 24, 2014
Categories: blooom, Finovate Debuts

Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. This fall, blooom introduced its “new way to 401(k)” which provides online investment management for owners of 401(k)s and other employer-sponsored, defined contribution pension plans.

blooom

Blooom is a revolutionary way to benefit 401(k) investors by outsourcing the management of their 401(k) accounts regardless of where they are held.

The Stats

Founded in February 2013
Headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas
Raised $250,000 from founders
35 clients
Chris Costello and Randy AufDerHeide are co-founders
Won Best of Show FinovateFall 2014

The Story

The funny thing about 401(k) plans is that many who have these employer-sponsored retirement plans never asked for them. “Many investment companies cater to DIY (Do it Yourself) types,” Chris Costello, co-founder and CEO of blooom explained ahead of his recent Finovate demo. “We market to the ‘Don’t Want to Do it Myself’ Crowd.”

According to blooom, more than 50 million people have employer-sponsored retirement plans such as 401(k)s. And blooom is convinced that most plans are managed poorly – if at all. From poor asset allocation to underfunded accounts, too many 401(k) plans are little more than tax-deferred savings accounts rather than investment vehicles to support retirement.

It is bloom’s goal to fix as many 401(k)s as possible, which means more than just advising people on how to invest their money. Blooom’s technology actually invests on behalf the client. It considered that a “massive differentiator” from the competition. “We’re the dietician that cooks the meals, as well,” Costello explained.

The Technology

The blooom platform is designed be easy to use. The team scoffs at investment services that rely on lots of pie charts and colorful graphs to impress investors. But that hasn’t kept blooom from putting together an eye-pleasing interface: the branded, potted daisy and a variety of pop-up plates that display text information ranging from portfolio composition details (i.e., percentage weightings) to brief explanations on why an aspect of a portfolio might not be appropriate for a given client (i.e., too many bonds for a younger investor).

Getting started with blooom is a straightforward. First, provide your name, birthdate, and retirement date. Then link your 401(k) account. After that, the platform extracts data from your account, analyzes your 401(k), and makes allocation recommendations. Clients have some flexibility with the suggestions and can take a more aggressive or conservative approach.

The final step is the portfolio-building process, in which a human blooom advisor builds the client a new portfolio based on the recommended allocations. New client portfolios are adjusted in about 30 days, and as long as the investor remains a client, the advisor will automatically rebalance the portfolio every 90 days going forward (if rebalancing is necessary). For accounts under $20,000, blooom charges $1 a month. For all accounts above $20,000 the fee for the service is $15/month.

“If (the customer) chooses,” Costello said, “(they) don’t even have to look at their 401(k) for the next 20 years. Blooom will monitor the account. Rebalance it every 90 days for them And adjust the stock to bond allocation as they draw nearer to retirement.”

In many ways, “the basics” are bloom’s secret sauce. In serving a market of reluctant investors, much of what blooom’s technology does is help investors avoid common mistakes. These include errors like overweighting a single stock (especially an employer’s stock) or niche fund such as technology or energy. Blooom also steers investors towards index funds, which have traditionally outperformed actively managed funds over the long term.

The Future

Blooom has an active B2B marketing effort. The company is looking to partner with credit unions and benefits exchanges. Blooom has already partnered with ConnectedBenefits, an online benefits exchange, in a deal that will put Blooom in front of an exchange membership of more than 100,000. The company also sees a major opportunity with human resources specialists, 401(k) advisors, and professional service organizations – all of which play a role in helping employees deal with their employee sponsored retirement plans.

Looking ahead, a mobile app is on blooom’s agenda, and they hope to have one ready to by early 2015. That said, given the nature of the platform, there isn’t a lot of fussing over their 401(k)s for clients to do.

“People are confused. they are intimidated, and they are overwhelmed,” Costello said from the Finovate stage in September. “Blooom has figured out a way to provide simple, scalable advice to fix millions of 401(k)s and keep them fixed.”

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Finovate Debuts: SelfScore

By David Penn Posted on November 20, 2014
Categories: Finovate Debuts, SelfScore

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. SelfScore demonstrated its consumer analytics service designed to supplement FICO scores with its “scoring as a service” approach.

SelfScore

SelfScore.com is a consumer analytics service that uses a proprietary algorithm to combine online profiles, phone and sensor data, psychometric questions, and 360-degree feedback from one’s network to provide insights. The resulting SelfScore can be used in a variety of consumer and business contexts, such as credit scoring, to yield a broader picture of a potential applicant, consumer, or business partner.

The Stats

Founded in January 2013
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California
Kalpesh Kapadia is CEO and Co-Founder
10 employees
Partnerships include: AT&T, Fenway Summer, GradGuard, International Student Insurance

The Story

Consider the case of international students who come to the United States for graduate school. Many of these students were the smartest and hardest workers from their home countries and, further, have been vetted in many ways en route to being admitted to American universities and securing visas. International graduate students disproportionately pursue degrees in science, technology, and business fields that tend to yield high starting salaries.

But despite all these indicators of future success, international students who are new to the U.S. experience many difficulties and have a hard time finding fair deals on the services that are essential to life in modern America: things like credit cards, affordable health insurance, and smartphone contracts.

And while international graduate students are only a small portion of the underbanked in America, SelfScore’s research suggests that college students from the US face many of the same challenges. They have many predictors of financial success, but they face the same chicken and egg problem – you need credit to get credit.

“We believe that with new advances in social web and smartphones, it is now possible to attain a complete, timely, and accurate picture of consumer behavior that benefits both consumers and businesses,” said SelfScore CEO and Co-Founder Kalpesh Kapadia. In the long term, Kapadia thinks that tools such as SelfScore can be used to augment FICO and other traditional scoring methods. As more and more institutions begin to see what their current scoring strategies are missing, the demand for dynamic, comprehensive scores that incorporate social data could grow.

The Solution

To get a free SelfScore, users answer 24 questions at SelfScore.com. The questions range from the financial (“Does your credit card limit affect your spending habits?”) to general attitudes about life (“Do you believe that most people are more or less trustworthy?”) to the more personal (“What do you do when you are stressed?”).

After you’ve answered the questions, SelfScore reveals your score and presents a set of offers you qualify for. My SelfScore of 457 merited an offer for a credit card and another to save $500 on a smartphone.

Each offer is designed to be relevant to the needs of the current target demographic for foreign graduate students. SelfScore also provides a peer ranking as well, in which I learned that my financial score of 73 is above the average of 50, but my 250 Facebook friends is below the average of 340.

“In a sense, we are giving the user a comprehensive measure of their life and various dimensions of their life, and relative strengths,” Kapadia said. He notes that some attributes may be more valuable than others, and suggests this reflects the great flexibility of the platform.

The Future

SelfScore is working to establish mutually beneficial partnerships.The company is especially interested in meeting with lenders, insurers, and companies in the post-paid billing space that might be interested in “supplementing” their current financial metrics. “We want to serve tomorrow’s prime customers today,” Kapadia said.

Another objective is to expand their portfolio of offers. The company currently features an AT&T subsidized smartphone offer and a credit card program, and affordable health insurance will be added soon.

“There are 75 million underbanked customers in the U.S. right now,” Kapadia explained. “A third or 25 million of which would otherwise be categorized as ‘good apples’ who are generally being ignored because of a lack of credit history. At SelfScore, it is our mission to serve this deserving but underserved population.”

Watch a video of SelfScore’s live demo from FinovateFall 2014

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Finovate Debuts: WorkFusion

By David Penn Posted on November 18, 2014
Categories: Finovate Debuts, WorkFusion

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. At FinovateFall 2014, WorkFusion launched its active learning automation solution.

WorkFusion

WorkFusion combines machine learning with crowdsourcing to automate data handling. The company’s technology is used by leading financial data vendors and financial services firms for a wide variety of applications including compliance, corporate actions, customer onboarding, loans, and private equity. WorkFusion is a product of CrowdComputing Systems.

The Stats

Founded in June 2010
Headquartered in New York, NY
Raised $23 million in total funding
Builds and refreshes data products for seven out of the top 10 financial data providers
Has 68 employees
Max Yankelevich is CEO and Co-Founder
Launched WorkFusion’s Active-Learning Automation in September 2014

The Story

WorkFusion began as part of a research project at MIT. The original goal was to combine crowdsourcing and machine learning to detect fraud in online transactions. But as the research progressed, they realized that there was a much bigger opportunity in applying the same combination of automation, crowdsourcing, and “employee experts” to meet broader challenges of enterprise data work.

“We solve a problem around massive data collection and maintenance for financial institutions,” explained WorkFusion CEO Max Yankelevich from the Finovate stage in September. “And we do it for 50% less cost and on a much larger scale.”

The initial edition of WorkFusion launched in 2012 and put the company’s thesis to work automating the process of procuring, training and quality-controlling online workers handling “core enterprise knowledge processes” such as reporting corporate actions and tax accounting information. The solution worked, being both more accurate and less costly compared to a traditional, in-house workforce.

“Giddy disbelief” is how WorkFusion characterized the initial response to their proof of concept, a reaction that encouraged them to scale the project.

The second stage in development was to build algorithms to replicate patterns that were identified as workers completed tasks. One example is pulling stock dividend payout information from a variety of data sources. The first iteration of the platform helped a company marshal human resources from Elance, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and oDesk. The second version uses an algorithm watching for patterns in a given data extraction task, learning which patterns could be automated, and then automating those patterns in the algorithm.

“Each worker is not just getting work done,” Adam Devine, VP Product Marketing said in a Finovate briefing. “They are training our software on how to automate that work.”

WorkFusion refers to this as the “virtual loop.” Human workers perform data-intensive tasks. Algorithms learn how to do the tasks. Human workers are then are available to retrain the algorithms when there are significant changes to the data. This “loop” helps overcome one of the major challenges of automation: adapting to changes in data sets, formats, or flow.

In another example shared with attendees at FinovateFall last September, a WorkForce customer was able to automate the work that had burdened six FTEs. The cost? Just $54. More importantly, the automation reduced the turnaround time involved from 5 minutes per task to less than 5 seconds.

The technology is workforce-agnostic. That means that the human data analysts involved can be traditional, in-house employees, an outsourced workforce or a crowdsourced one. And the company’s technology makes it the only platform that provides “learning automation” as a service (LAaaS anyone?). There are a platforms that help companies source and/or manage “distributed workforces”, but WorkFusion’s “virtuous loop” keeps human intelligence as a key part of the process, helping set it apart.

The Future

WorkFusion is robust enough to require IT teams to deploy and configure. But the technology is designed to be used by business people rather than technical staff. Typically, clients tend to be larger enterprises. But the solution is “totally scalable”, they say. In one case, a customer is using the technology to start a data science group by himself.

The company’s work has traction: seven out of the top 10 financial information providers currently use it. This spring, WorkFusion announced both a partnership with uSamp integrating 12 million mobile workers, and a successful, $15 million Series B round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures.

And the company’s work is being noticed. American Banker listed CrowdComputing Systems, provider of WorkFusion, among its top 10 fintech companies to watch. Barclays ranked WorkFusion in the top 5 of the 36 seven companies invited to participate in its Open Innovation Challenge, and in October, WorkFusion was featured in an article at Inside Market Data touting the platform’s automation recommendation feature.

Discussing his participation in the spring investment in WorkFusion, former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer said earlier this year that the company “very well could be a billion-dollar plus IPO company.” Rather than just being the kind of company that develops a technology and then sells it only to become “a small cog” in some other company’s engine, WorkFusion in Glocer’s opinion is a peek into the future of work: “Ultimately, it will optimize the tasks being done by human beings all around the world,” Glocer said.

WorkFusio
n concurs. Going forward, the company plans to expand the size of its business process template library to make it even easier for businesses to find the processes they need without having to create them. The goal is to allow large businesses to elevate the application of human intelligence to higher order work, and automate the work that human’s shouldn’t be doing. And to deliver all this via one-click custom automation.

WorkFusion is the kind of technology that does a great job of showing us what lies right at the edge of the horizon, an example of just how symbiotic the nexus of human intelligence and machine learning can be. And for all the fears of “robot overlords” and AIs run amok, building on that symbiosis seems like the better bet compared to betting against.

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Finovate Debuts: EverSafe

By David Penn Posted on October 30, 2014
Categories: EverSafe, Finovate Debuts

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. At FinovateFall 2014, Howard L. Tischler and Elizabeth Loewy demonstrated EverSafe, technology that helps seniors and their caretakers fight financial elder abuse.

EverSafe

EverSafe’s technology is a proactive defense network that helps older Americans defend themselves against financial fraud. The software reviews financial transactions and credit report activity on a daily basis. Alerts are sent in the event of suspicious activity, such as unexpected patterns in spending, deposits, or withdrawals.

The Stats

Founded in January 2012
Headquartered in Columbia, Maryland
Funding raised: $1.5 million
Total employees: 7
Product launched: Spring 2014 (soft launch)
Howard L. Tischler is Founder and CEO

The Story

10,000 Americans turn 65 every day
20% of Americans over 65 are financially exploited
Seniors lose more than $2.9 billion a year to financial exploitation
At least $18 trillion at risk (the net worth of Americans 65 and over)

These are the numbers that drive the EverSafe story. Older Americans are particularly vulnerable to criminals who take advantage of new technologies to steal and commit fraud. Whether it is due to declining cognitive facilities, relative ignorance of technology, or both, seniors and their families can face a number of challenges when it comes to making sure financial accounts remain fraud-free.

Howard Tischler, founder and CEO of EverSafe knows these challenges first hand. In helping his mother, who was a victim of what is called “elder financial abuse,” he learned about the scope of the problem. He also realized that his background as a technology entrepreneur might go a long way toward helping solve it.

“I saw the devastating effect it had on my mother and my family and resolved to apply technology to help prevent this tragedy from happening to others,” Tischler said.

The idea of providing a solution directly to seniors and their caretakers was key for Elizabeth Loewy, who worked as the former chief of the Elder Abuse unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, and is now SVP for Industry Relations with EverSafe. She noted that as a prosector, she was only able to try and help after the fact. “Finally we have a service that addresses the problem at the source,” she said.

Addressing the Finovate audience, Loewy told attendees that over the 20 years she spent battling this phenomenon, she realized that the victims varied. Some had cognitive difficulties, like dementia, and some were certainly wealthier than others. “But these seniors all had one thing in common,” she pointed out. “These seniors had worked hard investing and saving in an effort to ensure that the fruits of their labor would be put away safe and sound for their golden years, protected from exploiters.”

Equally painful were the conversations she had with adult children, caregivers, powers of attorney who were devastated that they hadn’t detected elder financial abuse that had occurred “under their watch.”

In this, the founding of EverSafe represents a coming together of law enforcement and technology in order to not just defend seniors against financial exploitation, but to empower older Americans and those caring for them, as well. “(EverSafe) allows seniors to live independently, which is what seniors want,” Tischler said.

The Solution

EverSafe can be thought of as a suspicious activity report (SAR) for consumers. Getting started on the platform is simple and straightforward. Set up an account by linking credit cards, savings, checking, money market, investing accounts and more. EverSafe links to more than 20,000 different types of account. Once the account is registered, the platform downloads the last 90 days worth of activity, and begins daily monitoring.

The technology scans linked accounts, using pattern recognition to ferret out instances of atypical and potentially suspicious behavior. “We’re analyzing whether someone is taking their money,” Tischler explained. “And notifying them immediately rather than waiting until the end of the month.”

When suspicious activity is detected, the platform sends out an alert to the designated contact person. Alerts can be modified and customized, for example to set spending limits or transactions at certain locations and merchants. Similarly, alerts and transactions can be customized and annotated for further reference.

The point is to bring activity to the attention of someone in a position to make a call. Some of the alerts will undoubtedly turn out to be unusual, but benign, transactions. But because most financial fraud “starts small and then escalates,” as Loewy explained, “early detection and monitoring is key.”

Basic service provides daily monitoring of up to five financial accounts and one credit bureau for $9.99 a month. EverSafe will soon offer a “Full Alert plan” that will provide monitoring of an unlimited number of financial accounts and all major credit bureaus. The Full Alert plan will be $24.99 a month. There is also a “limited time only” $4.99/month “introductory offer” that consists of account monitoring.

The Future

For now the task is obtaining broader adoption of the platform, which includes helping people understand the breadth of the problem and recognize that there is now a technology that is easy to use and dedicated specifically to stopping it. “Financial institutions and credit card companies have definitely gotten better at detecting suspicious activity,” Loewy said. “But they can’t catch it all.”

Asked what’s next for EverSafe, Tischler mentions wearables. He sees a compatib
ility between his platform and wearable technology, especially watches, which may be a better way to deliver alerts to some seniors or caregivers. He hinted at a prototype, although provided no specifics at this point.

And while today’s octogenarians may not be big smartphone users, those of tomorrow are likely to be. “Aging (baby) boomers are among the fastest growing users of technology,” Tischler said. While it is true that in many instances those actually using EverSafe on a daily basis are the grown children, seniors of the future may be better equipped to take the fight against financial elder abuse into their own hands.

Check out a video of EverSafe’s FinovateFall 2014 demo.

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Finovate Debuts: iQuantifi

By David Penn Posted on October 23, 2014
Categories: Finovate Debuts, iQuantifi

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. iQuantifi demonstrated the “Cashfinder” and “What if” features of its virtual financial advisor platform at FinovateFall in September.

iQuantifi

iQuantifi is a virtual financial advisor platform geared toward millennials and young families. The technology relies on proprietary algorithms to provide comprehensive, personalized financial advice, and a step-by-step guide to allocating resources in order to achieve financial goals.

The Stats:

Founded in June 2011
Headquarters: Nashville, Tennessee
Raised more than $1M in funding
Seven employees
Tom White is CEO and Founder; Karen White is CPO and Co-Founder
Product launched in September 2014

The Story

Tom and Karen White, founders of iQuantifi, don’t run from the “robo-advisor” label. They embrace it.

“There is a huge market of underserved (consumers), and the only way to really reach them is through technology,” Karen explained. “If you can reach more people, what’s wrong with that?”

As far as iQuantifi is concerned, the founders are proud of the fact that they have developed a fully-automated financial planning and investment platform after fifteen years in the financial advisory business. “I can only reach so many people,” Tom said. “We can reach millions now.”

A major boost in that direction came a few weeks after iQuantifi’s FinovateFall debut in late September when the company announced that its platform was available to financial institutions. By opening the technology to banks and credit unions, the company hopes to make inroads with their target market: technology-friendly millennials just beginning their adult financial lives. “If you’re 28, making $80,000 a year, and net worth is negative,” Tom asks, “plus married and expecting a kid, where do you get financial advice?”

The Solution

Getting started with iQuantifi is straightforward. The first step is providing personal information. Name, family profile, investment experience, annual income and monthly expenses are the primary categories. Then aggregate your accounts (at least one checking account needs to be linked), and you are ready to begin.

The robo-advisory starts with the Timeline. The Timeline begins with the present and extends all the way through your projected retirement date. Above the Timeline are a set of icons that represent a variety of financial goals, all geared toward millennials and their families. For example, in addition to a “Buy House” goal icon, there is also simply “Relocate” and “Rent” goals icons.

Click on a goal icon and a pop-up allows you to enter information about the goal. With that, the platform goes to work, determining just how feasible reaching your goal is given your current financial profile. If your goal is attainable in the time you’ve set, the goal icon will appear in your Timeline. If your goal is not attainable, a warning appears telling you “You have a shortage.”

Here is where one of the key features demoed at FinovateFall comes in. Rather than forcing you to change your goals, the iQuantifi platform’s “Cashfinder” takes a look at the shortage amount and then goes to your financial profile to see what adjustments can be made to cover the shortage amount. You can take the platform’s recommended changes or keep your current levels.

Even more detailed advice is available by clicking on the green action bar at the bottom below the timeline. Here users of the platform get more specific direction such as “Deposit $458 this month for retirement: Roth account” and “Apply for a Disability Insurance Policy with a $2,437 Monthly Benefit.” The investment section even provides the names of mutual funds, index funds, etc., as well as the percentage allocations required for a diversified portfolio based on the user’s goals.

IQuantifi provides a Summary feature that lets users get a bird’s eye view of any specific financial goal and the progress being made toward reaching it. For example, a Car Summary Screen might show purchase date, total purchase price, percent savings already reached and amount still left to save in pursuit of a new car – all in a colorful, easy to read graphic. The Summary screen also previews the next action to be taken after the current one.

Another compelling feature of iQuantifi is its “What If” feature. This tool allows users to make adjustments to goals and then run scenarios to see how a change in a given goal (a more expensive car, putting off retirement for a few years) affects the overall financial picture, as well as other goals. “iQuantifi lets users update their plan as changes happen in their lives,” Tom said, “and automatically shows the impact of those changes in real-time.”

The Future

In some ways, the future for iQuantifi is already here. The company has opened up its platform to financial institutions, pointing out that the platform can help banks serve the “record numbers of college graduates
(who) are starting their professional life with a tremendous amount of debt.” This is all the more so, in Tom’s opinion, to the extent that millennials have been among the demographics least interested in traditional, brick and mortar banking.

The fact that iQuantifi has signed on with MX, the fintech innovator formerly known as MoneyDesktop, to provide account aggregation services is another positive for the company going forward. A multiple Best of Show award winner at Finovate, MX was a “natural fit” in the words of iQuantifi CTO Jim Siegienski. Calling MX “best in breed for categorization,” Siegienski praised the Utah-based company for the cleanliness of its technology and its ease of use.

As for security, iQuantifi relies on the same 128-bit secure socket layer technology and SHA-256 encryption that banks use when transmitting sensitive financial data. Data is protected on its end with biometric checkpoints, multiple keylock entries, and “constant video surveillance, and the software is “read only” which prevents anyone for accessing your accounts through iQuantifi’s system.

iQuantifi currently offers 30 days free use of the service. After that it’s $9.95 per month or $89 annually. Multiply that number by the 79 million consumers Tom says make up the “millennial market” and it is easy to see why he and the rest of his team are so excited about the future of iQuantifi.

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Finovate Debuts: BioCatch

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 21, 2014
Categories: BioCatch, Finovate Debuts

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate. alums. Today’s feature is BioCatch, which demonstrated its invisible authentication methods at FinovateFall 2014.

BioCatch

By tracking the way users interact with web and mobile banking platforms, BioCatch uses invisible tests to authenticate users and prevent fraud.

The cloud-based solution gets ahead of malicious behavior by intervening before fraudsters enter the system.

Stats

Recently moved headquarters to Tel Aviv from Lod, Israel
Founded April 2011, launched BioCatch in 2013
$10 million raised
25 employees

The experience

BioCatch helps banks and ecommerce enterprises catch fraudsters while authenticating the actual users. It uses 400 different parameters, such as how fast the user types and their usage preferences.

BioCatch starts by building a profile of each user to capture their typical behavior during an online banking session. Once complete, BioCatch is able to flag uncharacteristic usage patterns as fraud.

>> Catching the fraudsters

To determine fraudulent activity, BioCatch considers factors such as:

Does the user move between fields using a mouse or using the Tab key?
Do they click the submit button or use the Enter key?
When entering an amount, do they use the keypad or the number pad?

For each online banking session, the bank views a dashboard that shows geographical location, an analysis of each user’s session, the session flow, the behavioral patterns of the account, an analysis of the threat, as well as device and network risk scores.

The authentication analysis scores how the user performs compared to their regular behavior. The information is presented in a dashboard, similar to the one below, which indicates unusual login rythmics and mouse dynamics.

>> Proving the good user

Aside from just detecting and stopping fraud, BioCatch can reduce false positives, as well.

For example, if a New York-based customer is accessing their account while on a trip to Des Moines, the different geographical location may raise some red flags. The out-of-character activity may cause the bank to identify the actual user as a criminal.

The consequence (getting locked out of their account or having to call the bank to authenticate themselves) creates friction in the user experience and can harm the relationship.

What’s new?
BioCatch recently launched The Art of Fraud Catalogue showcasing patterns generated by malware. After analyzing user behavior, BioCatch realized that usage patterns created great art.

The piece below was captured from fraud discovered in North America. It is titled, The Matrix Fraud.

The idea is that fraud patterns are all unique, just like art itself.

Bottom line
BioCatch provides a low-friction way to catch fraud. When users don’t have to jump through hoops and are not wrongfully pegged as fraudsters, they have a faster and more pleasant experience.

Check out BioCatch’s demo its authentication methodology at FinovateFall 2014.

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Finovate Debuts: Malauzai Software

By David Penn Posted on October 13, 2014
Categories: Finovate Debuts, Malauzai Software

Finovate Debuts is a blog series to introduce new Finovate alums.

Malauzai Software

Develops easy to manage and measure mobile banking SmartApps for community financial institutions. SmartApps are full-service, native mobile banking apps designed for iOS, Android, and the browser. Features include debit card management, billpay (including picturepay options), and P2P payments.

The Stats

Founded in January 2009
Headquartered in Austin, Texas
Tom Shen is Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board
More than 60 employees
More than 305 bank and credit unions clients with more than 260,000 end users
More than 500,000 downloads
Launched SmartwebApps in September 2014

The Story

There is a sense of “You do what?!” that comes from learning about what Malauzai Software has been building and deploying at community banks and credit unions across the country. Pick a mobile banking innovation, any innovation: Want to take a picture of your bill and pay with your smartphone? Want to turn your debit card off or on from time to time?

What’s impressive about Malauzai Software isn’t just that their apps do these things. It’s that their apps have been doing these things and more for community bank customers in places like the Air Academy Federal Credit Union in Colorado Springs and the First Financial Bank in Abilene, Texas for longer than you might think.

Malauzai Software is helps smaller financial institutions innovate faster than the big banks. Many things are helping this happen: from more nimble decision-making to the rise of mobile, which Malauzai calls an “equalizer” in the competition over bank customers. And here, Malauzai is simply looking to play its role, or as they put it “we’re on that wave” helping community FIs embrace truly omni-channel banking.

The Solutions: Meet MOX

The company has developed solutions that help not just consumers, but also business and enterprise-level use cases, as well. Malauzai offers Business Mobile solutions that target high value customers and support business customers requirements with multiple business entities. Their Enterprise solution gives professionals working in FIs tablet-optimized front and back office apps that boost customer on boarding, mobile teller capability, and other options to enhance the in-branch experience.

There are three concepts that underpin Malauzai’s approach to development. The primary one is MOX which stands for “Mobile Only Experience.” This combines a recognition that mobile is increasingly the channel of preference and simply porting a mobile experience to the desktop (or even to the tablet) is often a poor option.

The second concept is “convergence,” a banking customer accessing a SmartApp by smartphone will expect and should receive the same functionality when she switches to her desktop or tablet.

And the third concept is “superior economics.” On the platform management side, Malauzai believes it is important that banks and financial institutions be able to manage all their different SmartApps using a single application management system. Malauzai’s omnichannel approach via SmartApps liberates community banks from having to manage separate “Internet” or “online” banking services and mobile banking. The result is cost savings for banks and their customers.

“Internet banking is marginalizing,” said Malauzai Chief Product Officer, Robb Gaynor. “So why pay for it? With SmartwebApps, banks and credit unions are paying one low price per user for mobile and online banking. It’s like getting online banking for free.”

Among the features available on Malauzai Software’s SmartApps are:

Debit card management
Billpay including the Picture Pay option
Person-to-person (P2P) payments
Remote Deposit Capture deposits
Branch/ATM finder
Account balances

The apps can be personalized and feature a time-saving SmarTex login that gives customer quick access to basic information like account balances and transaction histories without requiring full login. And speaking of security, SmartwebApps give users the option to add a PIN for additional safeguarding of accounts, as well as customizable mobile banking security alerts. The apps are currently available in English, Spanish and Korean languages.

The Analytics

What’s in it for banks, other than providing all these great services for their customers? We’ve touched on the “easy to manage” aspect of the technology. Now let’s take a look at the “easy to measure” part.

“Easy to measure” refers specifically to the way that FIs can glean valuable information on user preferences. These preferences can range from which features are most popular on a given SmartwebApp to the kind of user metrics that can power intelligent and relevant In-SmartApp marketing and messaging.

Malauzai Software relies on a pair of tools to help pull this off. Its Real-Time Metrics and Reporting functionality (REBA) ensures that the bank or credit union maintains “constant, real-time contact” with their mobile channel. Administrators can access this data either by way of an online-based portal or with an iPad SmartApp.

The other resource is Malauzai’s Application Management System (AMS). Centrally managed by way of an administration portal (SAMI), the system enables central management of the SmartApps, and includes the ability to make changes to the SmartApp in real-time and across platforms, without having to update the App in app stores.

The Future

Malauzai has made headlines several times this year. The company announced a partnership with Finovate alum and IBM acquisition, Trusteer, this summer that will bring even greater security to consumers using SmartwebApps at Customers Bancorp in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. And in May, Malauzai reported a successful $6.5 million Series C funding round led by Wellington Management Company, LLP.

2014 has also seen deployments of SmartApps at Vons Credit Union in El Monte, California; Poca Valley Bank in Charleston, West Virginia; and Atlantic Capital Bank in Atlanta, Georgia, among others.

What can we expect to see from Malauzai in the months to come? The fact that the company is innovating against the grain with its current emphasis on bringing a mobile-quality experience to the desktop is worth watching. And for more on the debate, check out Malauzai’s Chief Technology Officer, Danny Piangerelli, post-FinovateFall blog post at Malauzai’s Monkey Chatter blog.

Malauzai also expects to take advantage of innovation in other areas, such as the new iOS8 operating system, with biometric authentication via TouchID, and the birth of ApplePay.

At the same time, focusing on how the web and mobile products work together, ensuring the sort of omni-channel experience their community bank and credit union clients want to deliver, remains key. And the best part, according to Malauzai, is that innovation at this end of the market is not zero sum. “We allow community banks and credit unions to out-innovate money center banks,” Gaynor said. “But anything we can do to enable the success of a CU is a positive for the whole industry.”

Check out a video of Malauzai Software’s live demo here.

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Finovate Debuts: mCASH

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 9, 2014
Categories: Finovate Debuts, mCASH

Finovate Debuts is a blog series to introduce companies who demonstrated for the first time on the Finovate stage.

mCASH

mCASH seeks to make payments easier by enabling consumers to pay and get paid directly from their mobile device. By scanning a QR code on a screen or printed on paper, consumers can pay for goods or services at a physical point-of-sale (POS), in-app, or online. Additionally, they can make peer-to-peer payments by sending the funds to the recipient’s mobile phone number.

Stats

Founded in 2010
25 employees
$9.5 million in funding
360,000 merchants have POS terminals that support mCASH
Uses two-factor authentication

The experience

Consumers first need to set up their funding source(s), which can include credit and debit cards, direct bank transfer, or prepaid cards. For multiple funding sources, they can set a default option.

Consumers can use mCASH at a physical point of sale or online, by scanning a QR code.

>> At physical POS
mCASH recently partnered with payment terminal provider Point, which is owned by Verifone, to enable merchants to accept payment through mCASH at the physical POS. To pay, users simply open the mCASH app, scan the QR code that appears on the payment terminal, and accept the payment.

When a merchant does not have a POS terminal that supports QR codes, they use a printed QR code affixed near their register.

>> Peer-to-peer payments
To make peer-to-peer payments, users simply:

Select the amount they want to send
Pick the account to fund the transaction
Choose a recipient from their address book
Swipe to confirm the payment

The money is both debited and credited in real time.

>> Mobile merchants

mCASH recently debuted a web app specifically for mobile merchants. Unlike Square and iSettle, this solution does not require additional hardware. Instead, the customer uses their smartphone to scan the QR code on the screen of the merchant’s smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

After scanning the QR code, the consumer receives a payment request on their smartphone and swipes to pay and complete the transaction.

>> Printed ads
mCASH can also be used directly on printed advertisements, billboards, or TV ads to entice consumers to buy. When merchants include a QR code next to a product for sale, customers can scan it using the mCASH app to begin the checkout process. The app requests payment from the customer, who selects their preferred payment method, confirms the amount, and provides their pre-loaded shipping details.

Merchant benefits

Aside from being a platform that merchants can use to accept payments, mCASH also makes it easy for businesses to build loyalty, offers and rewards into the payment experience.

mCASH provides consumers a low friction way to pay while offering merchants an easy and inexpensive method of collecting payment. The two-factor authentication creates a secure payment environment that reduces the risk of fraud for both parties.

Businesses who wish to on-board with mCASH face few hurdles since there is no need to purchase additional hardware and the web-based payment platform works on every device with a browser. Additionally, mCASH chargers a lower transaction fee than solutions such as Square and iZettle.

Check out a video of mCASH’s live demo here.

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