Finovate Debuts Archives - Page 2 of 11

nCino Helps FIs Benefit from Cloud Banking

By David Penn Posted on May 17, 2017
Categories: Finovate Debuts, nCino

What makes the nCino Bank Operating System the cloud banking solution of choice for a growing number of financial institutions (including “more than 130 FIs of all asset classes and from multiple countries” in the words of nCino CMO Jonathan Rowe)?

As Rowe said during nCino’s live demonstration at FinovateEurope 2017 earlier this year, “with nCino your customers get a transparent, digitally-optimized process, quick access to capital, and a true valued long-term relationship with your financial institution.” And for financial institutions themselves, he added, nCino brings increased loan growth “while lowering costs and increasing productivity and maintaining the highest levels of safety and soundness.”

Pictured (left to right): Jonathan Rowe (Chief Marketing Officer), Trisha Price (EVP, Product Development & Engineering), and Nathan Snell (Chief Innovation Officer) demonstrating the nCino Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017.

nCino used the example of a bank loan to demonstrate some of the features of the nCino Bank Operating System. Along with Product Development & Engineering EVP Trisha Price and Chief Innovation Officer Nathan Snell, the nCino team showed how a customer could apply for a small business loan using their smartphone, and get an instant real-time decision from the technology’s automated decisioning engine. The demo also showed how the platform provided workarounds like an automated counter offer when an applicant requested a loan amount that was too large. The technology also enables the customer to capture and upload images of documents like financial statements to help customers make the case for a larger loan.

On the bank’s side, the nCino team showed how the platform’s auto decision engine processed online loan applications and can be configured to match the FI’s own credit policies. And by leveraging both the OCR and AI built into the nCino platform, bank professionals are able to quickly do deeper dives into applicant financials to find opportunities for funding that might have otherwise gone unfunded or cost the borrower more. “This is how banking and technology should work, and does work with nCino,” Rowe said, reminding the audience that nCino’s technology supports not just commercial banking, but also treasury management, and retail and consumer banking, as well.

Since nCino’s Finovate debut in February, the company has announced new enhancements to its platform that make it easier to serve small business borrowers. Named to Planet Compliance’s RegTech Top 100 Power List this spring, nCino partnered with North State Bank in April and teamed up with Valley National Bank in March to power commercial loan operations at both institutions.

Company Facts

Founded in 2012
Headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina
Raised more than $79 million in capital
Works with more than 130 clients
Maintains more than 275 employees

We met with the nCino team in London to talk about the company’s debut at FinovateEurope. We followed up with a few questions by e-mail for Nathan Snell, nCino’s Chief Innovation Officer. His responses are below.

Finovate: What problem does your technology solve?

Nathan Snell: nCino is the worldwide leader in cloud banking. Its Bank Operating System, built on the Salesforce platform, enables financial institutions to deliver the speed and digital experience that customers expect, backed by the quality and transparency that bankers need.

nCino’s Bank Operating System acts as a financial institution’s single source of truth, eliminating the need for multiple, disparate software systems by combining customer relationship management (CRM), loan origination, workflow, enterprise content management, business processing and instant reporting all in one secure, cloud-based environment. Sitting alongside the bank’s core, nCino’s Bank Operating System drives increased profitability, productivity gains, regulatory compliance and operating transparency across all business channels and organizational levels. The platform facilitates a seamless and secure interaction between bank employees, customers and other third parties, providing bankers with an efficient and configurable way to digitally operate their institution.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Snell: nCino’s client portfolio consists of more than 130 financial institutions in North America and Europe. Our customers span all asset classes – from $150 million in assets to over $200 billion – and include community and regional banks, credit unions, challenger banks and large enterprise institutions. Because of the flexible and scalable nature of our platform, the Bank Operating System is customizable for any size organization.

Pictured: The nCino Bank Operating System environments displayed on a laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone.

Finovate: How does your technology solve the problem better?

Snell: The nCino Bank Operating System is a comprehensive, end-to-end, cloud-based solution that offers a single platform across all lines of business (commercial, small business, retail), distinguishing us in a market category of our own. nCino was built from day one as an integrated solution on Salesforce’s Force.com platform, the world’s leading cloud computing platform. Because of how we’ve built the nCino Bank Operating System, it’s also one of the first times a financial institution has a platform that can respond, in a configurable way, to their business needs as quickly as they come up as opposed to being constrained by their platform. While there are other companies that may offer point solutions or software systems that provide certain aspects of our technology, none combine our full spectrum of features and functionality into one cohesive offering.

Designed by bankers who understand the nuances of the marketplace, nCino revolutionizes the way financial institutions operate, helping them regain their competitive advantage and beat alternative lenders at their own game, while simultaneously satisfying customers’ demand for superior service in the digital era.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation.

Snell: It’s hard to pick a favorite implementation as they are all important; however, one that stands out is our successful implementation last year at SunTrust, a $205 billion-asset institution and a top 10 bank in the U.S. The implementation at SunTrust was a truly collaborative effort consisting of a multi-layered, multifunctional program team that included not only nCino, but also a system integration team from Accenture, and a large operational and technology team from SunTrust.

In less than 18 months, the nCino Bank Operating System was deployed to thousands of SunTrust teammates across sales, risk and lending operations. When asked about the process, Pam Kilday, head of operations for SunTrust, said, “This has been one of the finest implementations that we have had at SunTrust. We are now being looked at as a model of best practices to implement something of this range at SunTrust.”

Pictured: The automated decision engine of the nCino Bank Operating System.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Snell: Because nCino was designed specifically by bankers who understand both the challenges and opportunities in the marketplace, nCino is uniquely qualified to deliver a solution that best addresses a financial institution’s needs. In today’s environment, bankers are expected to do more with less, manage regulation, ensure data security, digitally engage with customers to foster stronger relationships, and deliver increased profit to shareholders. And, as customer demands and expectations rapidly evolve and non-traditional third parties enter the scene, the financial services industry is more competitive than ever before. nCino’s Bank Operating System enables a financial institution to improve efficiency, productivity and compliance across numerous departments and business lines, all while creating a more transparent and digitally engaging experience for customers.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from nCino that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Snell: This year, we’ll continue to expand the scope of the Bank Operating System. In 2016 alone, we added new functionality such as deposit account opening and automated decisioning that extended the platform to other areas of the bank – and that’s just the beginning. With additional functionality across small business lending and retail already in the pipeline, nCino continues to develop technology to help financial institutions save costs and increase productivity while simultaneously protecting their market share against emerging marketplace lenders.

There’s really so much opportunity in the financial services space today, that even beyond the next few months, we have quite a few exciting things planned that we believe will continue to help shape the landscape of banking.

Finovate: Where do you see nCino a year or two from now?

Snell: Over the past five years, we’ve experienced significant growth in our customer portfolio, technology roadmap and employee base – and we expect that growth to continue into the next year and beyond. We look forward to expanding our international presence in the U.K. and Europe, adding fresh talent to our workforce and introducing new and exciting functionality to our Bank Operating System as it touches additional areas of the financial institution.

Trisha Price (EVP, Product Development & Engineering), Nathan Snell (Chief Innovation Office), and Jonathan Rowe (Chief Marketing Officer) demonstrating the nCino Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017.

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Swaper’s P2P Marketplace Guarantees Returns

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on May 16, 2017
Categories: Finovate Debuts, Swaper

Latvia-based Swaper seeks to make P2P investing as simple as possible. The company offers European investors access to unsecured consumer debt in Poland and Georgia, and has plans to expand its reach across the globe. What’s unique about Swaper is that every loan comes with a buyback guarantee. That means that even if a borrower fails to pay back a loan on time, the investor still receives their principal plus interest on the loan.

Founded in 2016, the company’s CEO, Iveta Brūvele, and COO, Elīna Rasmane, debuted the Swaper mobile app at FinovateEurope 2017. The Portfolio Invest feature of the app lets users invest in a single click. And because they can access their investments from their smartphone, users can control their portfolio anywhere and anytime.

Company facts

Originated 6,430 loans worth €1.3 million and saw investments from 161 active investors in November of 2016
Offers buyback guarantee
Boasts interest rates of 12% to 14%

(above) Iveta Brūvele (CEO) and Elīna Rasmane (COO) debut Swaper on the FinovateEurope stage in London

We interviewed Swaper CEO Iveta Brūvele (pictured) after FinovateEurope for a quick look at Swaper and its future plans.

Finovate: What problem does Swaper solve?

Brūvele: The main difference from other investment opportunities is the high income that we offer our investors. The second is the BuyBack guarantee that is available for all loans on our platform. These two Swaper values are constant, and our aim is to keep them constant so investors can be sure that rules are not going to change, and they will receive the interest rate and the BuyBack guarantee that was promised.

The Swaper mobile app solves availability and easy usability problems too– we are the first of our closest P2P marketplace competitors who have launched a mobile app, and 80% of our customers use it.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Brūvele: Investing on Swaper now is available to private individuals and companies from the European economic area. Our largest markets for now are Germany, Latvia, Spain, Austria, and Great Britain. And we also have plans to widen our customer base to other countries outside the EEA.

Finovate: How does Swaper solve the problem better?

Brūvele: Swaper was launched with the idea to build better financial products and to offer many different financial products. For now our company offers loans and investing options, but we are not going to stop at this. In the near future we are going to present new products. One of our most important advantages is our extensive experience in the financial services area– everyone on our team has gathered huge experience working in a financial sector.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution.

Brūvele: I would say that it is our mobile app. Actually, the application itself is a step forward– according to the number of users we see, it was exactly what investors needed.
And the coolest feature in the app is definitely the slider that allows users to invest in a single click. Because all the loans offered for investments have the same interest rate and BuyBack guarantee, it doesn’t matter which loans the user invests in. That’s where the idea of the slider was born– after investors choose the amount and term, in just one click it’s done!

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Brūvele: It is our team. Our team is very experienced in the fintech field, so we had no doubt we could build awesome financial products. Many of us have worked in different banks across the Europe as well as in the financial services area. The idea of knowing that we can do better is what unites us. And we really want to do better. Our main goal is to make financial services more understandable, available and suitable for the rhythm and technologies of modern life.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from Swaper that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Brūvele: We are going to launch two to three new loan products that will be offered as investments on Swaper. After a few months we will also offer our customers new financial products besides lending and investing options. Furthermore we are already working on new features for the Swaper mobile app.

Finovate: Where do you see Swaper a year or two from now?

Brūvele: Of course we have huge ambitions. And we are going to accomplish them, because our advantage is our experience in the financial area and we launch products and services much faster than our competitors do. We want to keep that rapidity and flexibility. We are going to be an international company that offers a wide range of available and contemporary financial services all around the world.

Iveta Brūvele (CEO) and Elīna Rasmane (COO) debut Swaper on the FinovateEurope stage in London

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Finovate Debuts: Dorsum Puts the AI in DAISY, its Onboarding ChatBot

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on May 14, 2017
Categories: Dorsum, Finovate Debuts

You can’t spell the name Daisy without AI, which is good because it’s the premise behind Dorsum’s new banking chatbot, the Dorsum Artificial Intelligence SYstem.

The Hungary-based company debuted its bank Botboarding platform at FinovateEuorpe earlier this year and took home a Best of Show win. The bot uses AI to interact with users in a friendly, human-like way. The bot’s personalized and targeted questions help with client onboarding. The system also offers a backend dashboard that offers real-time analytics about usage and allows banks to alter how the chatbot presents products and services.

Company facts

20+ years of experience in financial software development
250+ employees
70+ financial institutions use its solutions
Serves more than 8000+ individual users
Has clients in 8+ countries
Has 4 offices in CEE

Above: Imre Rokob (Business Development Director), Reanta Stein (Business Development Director), and Peter Sallai (Head of Mobile Development) on stage at FinovateEurope 2017 in London

We interviewed Róbert Kő (pictured), Dorsum CEO, for a bit more insight into Dorsum and Daisy, it’s Botboarding chatbot.

Finovate: What problem does Dorsum solve?

Róbert Kő: Based on Dorsum’s latest research and many discussions with existing and future clients, currently the greatest challenge is customer acquisition. The Botboarding platform is our answer to this challenge; allowing financial companies to build onboarding chatbots which incorporate a human-like way of communication with traditional customer data gathering and user profiling to help banks acquire new customers in a fast and frictionless way.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Kő: Dorsum would like to help financial organizations which serve clients from mass affluent and high net worth individuals. Therefore, our primary customers are wealth management companies and banks that offer premium or private banking services. Naturally we can help many other financial organizations map their individual needs and provide exclusive contracts with customized offers.

Finovate: How does Dorsum solve the problem better?

Kő: People are fed up with filling endless and boring forms– besides, they like chatting. Facebook Messenger, which has 1.2 billion daily active users, opened up its platform for developers in April 2016 to build outstanding solutions – chatbots – in order to serve people who wish to communicate with businesses. Dorsum’s solution enables financial services providers to utilize the inherent potential in customer acquisition by using a chatbot instead of a form or other customer profiling solutions. With Dorsum’s Botboarding, financial services providers can reach higher conversion rates and can reduce churn ratios.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution.

Kő: Our chatbot is currently in delivery phase for two retail banks. Despite the legal and IT security barriers it is currently under configuration. Both of the banks wanted the chatbot to generate leads for their best performing mortgage products. These leads are distributed for the ‘users’ every day in a detailed Excel spreadsheet which contains the essence of the communication with the chatbot. The development itself of the functions took only two weeks to cover the business process of the banks. All of the above we have started negotiations with one large Dubai-based company but this stage the details are strictly confidential.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Kő: Dorsum, which has recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, has a remarkable track record in offering outstanding software to capital market players. Over the last 20 years the company has grown from a few employees into an organization with a staff of 250, including an experienced project team for delivering integrated investment IT solutions. Today more than 70 financial institutions use our solutions, serving more than 8,000 individual users. We support our clients by offering them unique cooperation throughout the lifecycle of the products, managing expectations in terms of functionality, time and budget. Dorsum has two subsidiaries in order to emphasize its presence in the CEE region and to respond faster to local needs. Dorsum entered the Western European and Middle East markets recently by attending financial events (e.g. FinovateEurope 2017 – presenter; MEFTECH – exhibitor) and conducting initial negotiations with a number of financial institutions.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from Dorsum that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Kő: Our solution is now available on Facebook Messenger. In the near future we are planning to extend our developments to other platforms in order to ensure our clients reach the widest customer range.

Finovate: Where do you see Dorsum a year or two from now?

Kő: I should like to make Dorsum the best in the region in our professional field, or for instance one of the three best wealth management software solutions in Europe. It appears that the stars are aligned in our favor at the moment as two months before the Finovate victory we won a regional tender from the Raiffeisen group extending to 5 countries, for the wealth management products mentioned above. I believe that these two “BOOMS” one after the other signify a very good debut on the European Union market. An earlier dream of ours has become realized: Dorsum is capable of developing a renewable product (chatbot solution), and furthermore, another of our prize-winning solutions was given a new impetus last year. Of course, we are not standing still… In the coming years we will be there at Finovate and other fintech world events – with the standard expected from us.

Check out the FinovateEurope 2017 live demo with Imre Rokob (Business Development Director), Reanta Stein (Business Development Director), and Peter Sallai (Head of Mobile Development):

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Finovate Debuts: unblu Delivers an In-Person Customer Experience Online

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on April 18, 2017
Categories: Finovate Debuts, unblu

Collaboration suite provider unblu understands the value of in-person interactions in banking and the need to deliver a robust experience via digital channels. More importantly, however, the company has figured out how to balance the two by offering the personal touch of an in-person experience through mobile and online channels.

At FinovateEurope 2017, unblu CMO Jens Rabe began the demo saying, “Your customers are already interacting with your online channels everyday. The question is– are you actually taking advantage of those opportunities… driving sales and customer loyalty?” The company’s mobile collaboration solution offers banks an additional channel for live customer consults, using their existing mobile banking apps as the foundation for the interaction.

Company facts:

Privately funded
25+ employees
Over 80 banks currently using software
Headquartered in Sarnen, Switzerland
Founded in 2012

(above) unblu CMO Jens Rabe and CEO Luc Haldimann at FinovateEurope 2017 in London

We spoke with Luc Haldimann (pictured), unblu CEO after the show and followed up with an interview.

Finovate: What problem does unblu solve?

Haldimann: unblu facilitates an in-person experience, online.
Digital transformation is probably the toughest job in banking today. Banks are not just in the financial business anymore, they’re in the business of enhancing consumer lifestyles and the competition is tough. Fintech newcomers are agile and can respond quickly to changed expectations and deliver cutting-edge digital services to empower customers.

In order to differentiate from competition and retain customer loyalty, banks need to support and advise customers through digital channels, in real time and in person. Effectively this means swapping the place of interaction from a high-street branch to a digital branch. We enable our clients to do precisely this, without having to redesign their digital channels or infrastructures.

Above: unblu’s administrative screen shows queue of client requests

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Haldimann: Over the last few years, we have become specialists for live engagement in the financial sector. Our primary customers are banks who we sell to directly and via leading integrators. These banks are distributed worldwide and include UBS, Intesa SanPaolo, PostFinance, Comdirect, Fineco, Bank Millennium, Societé General and Komerční Banka for example. And of course our partners are invaluable to us. We have fantastic relationships with our many strategic partners, which most notably include over 30% of the technology vendors listed in the leaders’ quadrant of Gartner’s magic quadrant for global retail core banking. Our partners have made and continue to make our offering easily accessible to a myriad of customers around the globe.

Finovate: How does unblu solve the problem better?

Haldimann: Put simply we listen carefully to our customers and adapt our solution to fit their requirements. Our focus on banking and its specific challenges enables us to evolve with the industry and adapt to changing needs. This has led to an intricate understanding of the industry’s security, regulatory and technological environment. unblu is uniquely designed to allow banks to rollout a live engagement solution which respects all these constraints.

Of course there are other vendors offering live engagement solutions. Due to our experience we often find
ourselves one step ahead and able to quickly adapt and present a solution regardless of the anomalies relating
to the finance industry. We understand customer centricity in combination with secure environments as the key value proposition in our market segment.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution.

Haldimann: My favourite projects are the ones where we’ve succeeded in working closely together with clients to leverage the maximum impact of unblu. It’s incredibly exciting and fulfilling to collaborate with banks who understand the capabilities of unblu and how to utilise it to make an impact within the market. 50% of swiss cantonal banks are already working together with us and share our vision and enthusiasm enough to actually change the way they do business and start building their customer journeys in ways which will allow them to digitally address clients.

These types of clients are savvy and demanding and push us to develop the suite even further in order to
accommodate their needs. Working with customers and helping find solutions that make them happy is what
drives the collaborative spirit at unblu.

Above: unblu offers co-browsing for an interactive user session

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Haldimann: Before founding unblu I worked a lot with banks to develop a screen based advisory tool for use in high street branches. This experience taught me a great deal about the in person, face to face advisory processes within banks. Previously to unblu I also helped SAP and HP creating online configurators and developed a fascination for the limits of self service tools. Combining the two ideas seemed very compelling. The true value of the proposition has become apparent since the crisis within the financial sector. The necessary change in mindset and the digitization movement are driving forces in our success story.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from unblu that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Haldimann: Truly compelling customer service must be intuitive, emotionally rich and also available when needed. We are about to launch our SDK package that will allow unblu to work seamlessly within native mobile phone apps. This means unblu’s collaboration suite will be extended to mobile devices, which is a huge opportunity for financial institutions to create win-win scenarios with their valued customers.
You can also expect to see us expanding both geographically and into new markets throughout the year. We’ve
recently increased our sales coverage in response to demand from global enterprises seeking a solution as
mature as unblu’s, which they haven’t been able to find within their own market. Additionally, we’re beginning to broaden our solid customer base within the fin serv sector itself and have acquired a number of insurance clients including AOK, SwissLife and AON.

Above: unblu’s interactive chat session

Finovate: Where do you see unblu a year or two from now?

Haldimann: unblu began as a specialized co-browsing solution. In line with market demands we have built out a complete online engagement suite specifically aimed at the financial sector. We are proud of the level of expertise we have achieved and we will continue to develop and maintain our position as market leader for live engagement in the finance sector. There is already a new market segment in the making to enable banks to build effective virtual branches and unblu will be a huge part of that moving forward.

unblu CMO Jens Rabe and CEO Luc Haldimann at FinovateEurope 2017 in London

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Finovate Debuts: Configo Empowers FIs to Build Customized Customer Journeys

By David Penn Posted on April 13, 2017
Categories: Configo, Finovate Debuts

At FinovateEurope earlier this year, Tel Aviv, Israel-based Configo demonstrated its contribution to the cause of greater customer engagement in financial services. The technology, Configo Live Mobile Experience Platform, enables banking marketing professionals and product specialists to design customer experiences that are, in the words of Configo co-founder and CEO Yosi Dahan, “personalized and contextual.”

Dahan warned that nonbanks have done a better job than most banks when it comes to meeting customer expectations of being more innovative and “human-centric.” He said that by leveraging Configo’s ability to bring targeted content to targeted audiences in real time, banks and other traditional financial institutions have the opportunity to regain that lost ground.

Pictured (left to right): Configo co-founders Natan Abramov (CTO) and Yosi Dahan (CEO) demonstrating Configo Live Mobile Experience at FinovateEurope 2017.

For the live demonstration Configo CTO Natan Abramov showed how the Configo platform scanned the screens of the banking app, and enabled the user to make changes that would appear simultaneously in the app when saved. In addition to being able to make cosmetic changes to text, color, and other features, the platform also supports pushing custom content to user-defined segments such as low-income, families, etc. Virtually any data point, from account balance to age to geolocation to app usage – can be used to define a segment for receiving certain app customizations, targeted messages, or special offers.

Configo also provides for in-app campaigns to send promotional messages to customers. Users can upload their own design or use one of Configo’s templates, then simply add text, images, and a call to action. Schedule the ad to pop-up at any one of a number of cues: a specific time or when a button on an app is pushed, and the campaign is ready to go. Configo’s platform provides for A/B testing, and works with iOS, Android, native, and hybrid systems.

Once the app’s screens are scanned into the Configo platform, individual content items can be tagged for management later.

“By providing contextual offers and content in real time, you are actively optimizing your customer interaction, driving better engagement and increasing mobile sales,” Dahan said. Emphasizing the ease of adopting the technology (“up and running with virtually no integration and without messing around with code in just a couple of days”), he said his company’s platform ensures that FIs gain “total control of your customer’s journey in your mobile application.”

Company Facts

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel
Founded in 2015
Running more than 10 pilots with banks and credit card companies in Europe

We met with Dahan (pictured) and Abramov, co-founders of Configo, at FinovateEurope in London and followed up with a few questions for Dahan by e-mail. Here are his responses.

Finovate: What problem does your technology solve?

Yosi Dahan: Product and marketing managers require rapid iterations, prototyping, and optimizations of their mobile banking product to increase conversion and engagement. Working agile has its benefits, but the release and update cycles are still measured in weeks as most of the tasks go through the R&D teams.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Dahan: Financial institutions.

Finovate: How does your solution solve the problem better?

Dahan: Product and marketing leaders get access to a variety of tools in our platform to simply create new customer experiences, optimizing the customer’s journey and interaction. Configo integrates with any existing mobile app using an SDK and provides a dashboard for management. Segmenting users, running A/B test experiments, launching campaigns, and personalizing the app’s user interface, can be achieved without a single line of code. Configo has managed to cut the time-to-market of app changes and business tasks by over 15%.

The Configo platform supports in-app campaigns and provides total control over how the ads look and appear to the user.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Dahan: The team behind Configo has more than nine years of experience of developing mobile apps. Prior to starting Configo, we conducted research involving more than 50 financial institutions around the world in order to understand how their app release cycles look like and how we can reduce the time-to-market to meet customer expectations. Configo has managed to cut the time-to-market of app changes and business tasks by over 15%.

Customers can be segmented based on any datapoint – age, account balance, app usage – on the Configo platform.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from Configo that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Dahan: We’ll be introducing new tools for both marketing and product managers to help them better understand their customers’ journey as well as increase engagement, decrease churn rate, and provide exceptional user experience. We are also working on creating a solution for the online (web) channel.

Finovate: Where do you see Configo a year or two from now?

Dahan: Our goal is to help financial institutions around the world shape their mobile channel. We are planning on delivering a custom experience to 50 million mobile banking users by 2019.

Configo’s Yosi Dahan (CEO & Co-Founder) and Natan Abramov (CTO & Co-Founder) demonstrating Configo Live Mobile Experience at FinovateEurope 2017.

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Finovate Debuts: collectAI Brings Omnichannel Engagement to Debt Collection

By David Penn Posted on April 12, 2017
Categories: collectAI, Finovate Debuts

You won’t hear us refer to collectAI’s innovative approach to outstanding payments as “Debt Tech.” But the Hamburg, Germany-based fintech startup does have a different idea of what matters most when it comes to accounts receivables management, the art of dunning, and debt collection.

During the company’s Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in February, CEO Mirko Krauel pointed out that while other A/R specialists focused solely on boosting collection rates (“which, of course, are very important,” he noted), default rates are only part of the picture. “It’s also about securing a potentially good customer relationship. It’s also about having low cost,” Krauel said, adding “We at collectAI want a perfect balance between those three goals.”

Pictured: collectAI CEO Mirko Krauel demonstrating collectAI Claims Management at FinovateEurope 2017.

The fact that Krauel refers to the debtor as “the consumer” is a tip-off to the way the company believes is the best way to resolve outstanding payments more efficiently. The collectAI platform leverages artificial intelligence, for example, not only to determine the best communication channel to use to reach the debtor, but also to figure out the best time and the best tone to take. This is part of the platform’s “baseline strategy” creation which is followed by content engineering to add what collectAI managing director Michael Backes explained as “the behavioral economics, the psychology to help the debtor resolve the issue more quickly.”

After demonstrating a number of examples of personalized messages from collectAI including text and email, Krauel highlighted a handful of ways he believed collectAI would “reinvent the topic of debt collection and A/R management.”

First of all, we are not doing just debt collection. We do it very early in the process, we do the invoicing and also the dunning part. Number two, we are supporting a large variety of channels, digital and analog. Number three, we have the landing pages and payment pages to increase the payment conversion rate. Number four, we are a fintech startup. Of course, we have an API. And last, but not least, we have the AI and the AI is very important to really optimize every aspect of our product.

Following the company’s Finovate debut, collectAI was featured in Euro Finance Tech and in Digitale Leute, and discussed the “magic of AI” in the context of accounts receivable at the Retail Banking Forum in Vienna. This week, the company bested 47 rivals to win first place at the EXEC Conference pitch contest in Berlin, Germany.

Company facts

Founded in 2016
Headquartered in Hamburg, Germany
Maintains 30 employees

We met with collectAI Chief Commercial Officer Steve Emecz at FinovateEurope and followed up with a few questions by e-mail. Here are his responses.

Finovate: What problem does your technology solve?

Steve Emecz: collectAI helps customers digitize and optimize their receivables. We digitize with new ways to communicate like email, SMS, and messaging apps. We optimize using integrated digital payments – all supported by an artificial intelligence platform that automates and enhances the processes to make the receivables process much more efficient. collectAI provides everything from traditional mass invoicing to personalized and optimized service – i.e. getting your money faster, at lower operations cost and reducing service issues.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Emecz: Any organization that sends bills to their clients (consumers or business) can benefit from enhancing the receivables process. Our main clients are those with lots of bills like utilities, banks, lending companies, e-commerce retail and digital clients, and insurance companies. It’s a white label service so the person receiving the bill simply sees the process improving from their supplier.

Pictured: collectAI’s Virtual Agent algorithms determine the channel, time of day, and other factors to enable greater personalization when building effective messages to debtors.

Finovate: How does your solution solve the problem better?

Emecz: Our platform helps select the best way to communicate to the client by channel (e.g. email, SMS, etc), time and content of message. We then enrich this with fast and efficient digital payment methods to settle the bills quickly and, if there is an issue, we provide a structured dispute resolution process to optimize client feedback. Finally, this is all supported by an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that learns from the behavior of the client and optimizes everything on its own.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your technology.

Emecz: We have a large payments client who has multiple retail brands within their portfolio where their invoices and reminders were all sent by post. For them, we have made three big impacts. First, adding in email and SMS reminders replacing some of the letters has reduced costs in their dunning process. Second, some of the amounts have been paid earlier. Third, we introduced a structured feedback process. Until now, all disputes came in via email or their call centre (and sometimes social media) at random in response to letters. We helped them free up valuable time and effort.

Pictured (left to right): collectAI’s Michael Backes (MD) and Mirko Krauel (CEO) demonstrating the Health Card feature of the outstanding payments portfolio.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Emecz: We have a rather unique setup. Our lead investor the Otto Group (turnover €12 billion) has over 100 businesses in the group with a long history of receivables, combined with an agile fintech company builder (Liquid Labs) with experience in artificial intelligence (AI). This means in our first year, alongside building a market-leading AI platform specifically for receivables, we have gained first-hand experience of the processes we are enhancing, with both internal and external customers.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from collectAI that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Emecz: Although we will continue to add things you can see, like more payment methods or communication channels, the real magic will be in the things you don’t notice: AI, self-learning landing pages, more backend services, and simpler integration.

Finovate: Where do you see your company a year or two from now?

Emecz: We plan to be the leading provider of receivables digitization and optimization services in Europe, expanding through partners into several new territories.

collectAI CEO Mirko Krauel and Managing Director Michael Backes demonstrating collectAI Claims Management platform at FinovateEurope 2017.

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Finovate Debuts: Icon Solutions’ Instant Payments Helps Keep Banks PSD2 Compliant

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on April 10, 2017
Categories: Finovate Debuts, Icon Solutions

IT payment consultancy Icon Solutions is tackling the difficult task of helping banks offer instant payments. With PSD2 regulations looming in the U.K. and the industry’s shift to a more open banking structure, simply saying the phrase instant payments may be enough to make a banker break out in hives.

That’s where Icon Solutions comes in. At FinovateEurope 2017 the company unveiled its Instant Payments Framework (IPF). “We believe that unless banks and PSPs are using the same kind of technology as the market disruptors and internet scale providers out there, how are they able to compete?” Icon’s business development director Richard Dear asked during the demo. He added, “What we’ve done is codify Icon’s many years of experience with instant payments, within a new software product, the Instant Payments Framework, or IPF.”

Company Facts

Founded in 2009
Headquartered in Wimbledon, United Kingdom
Processes 20 million payments an hour via IPF

Tom Hay (Head of Payments) and Richard Dear (Business Development Director) debut Icon Solutions’ Instant Payments Framework

We interviewed Icon Solutions’ Business Development Director, Richard Dear (pictured), in the weeks following FinovateEurope earlier this year.

Finovate: What problem does Icon Solutions solve?

Dear: Icon believes that real-time or instant payments will underpin the API economy and drive innovation. Yet, current market solutions cannot easily transition to instant payments, are heavy-weight, inflexible and don’t address the significant organizational, technical and business risks.

Icon’s Instant Payments Framework (IPF) is a light-weight software product that enables organizations to process instant payments. IPF comes with a reference implementation for each scheme, for example Faster Payments, SCT inst and TCH. We then enable our clients to graphically fine-tune these predefined message flows to quickly meet their needs. IPF has a small footprint and uses open source technology to ensure speed of deployment, high performance, low latency, and 24×7 availability whilst reducing the cost of ownership.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Dear: Our primary customers are members of instant payments schemes, ranging from tier 1 banks to fintechs.

Finovate: How does Icon Solutions solve the problem better?

Dear: We’ll highlight three key areas:

IPF complements the existing IT infrastructure. IPF is specifically focussed on instant payments and enables banks to rapidly get to market without a “rip and replace” of their existing systems

IPF comes with a reference implementation for each scheme. Effectively we have codified our many years of expertise in instant payments within the product to smooth implementation. We then empower clients to graphically fine-tune predefined message flows to quickly meet the needs of the bank, putting the power to make changes back in the hands of the bank rather than the vendor.

IPF has a small footprint and uses open source technology to ensure speed of deployment, high performance, low latency and 24×7 availability whilst reducing the cost of ownership. It uses similar technology to the GAFA’s and internet-scale providers, allowing banks to compete in the new world.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution.

Dear: One of the key challenges facing banks when connecting to an instant payments network is how to detect payment fraud during transaction processing. With the increased volume in transaction processing accompanying a move to instant payments, fraud control and automation of manual tasks are key factors in the success of instant payments systems.

Icon has therefore been partnering with Featurespace, the world’s leading supplier of adaptive behavioral analytics technology. Their advanced machine learning platform detects anomalies in individual behaviour to spot new fraudulent activity in real time. Featurespace’s platform will allow Icon’s Instant Payment Framework (IPF) customers to monitor their data in real time and can reduce genuine transactions declined by over 70% and manual processing by over 50%. Featurespace’s ARIC platform complements IPF’s software as both are specifically designed for real-time processing.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Dear: Firstly, IPF is brought to you by a team of accomplished professionals with hands-on delivery experience of local and international instant payments solutions. Icon has one of the best resource pools of instant payments knowledge globally.

Secondly, with recent advances in technology and the increasing competition from fintechs, Icon’s clients have become increasingly frustrated with traditional vendor solutions based on technologies that are now ten to twenty years old. As a result Icon performed a comprehensive review of leading edge open-source products and methodologies and their suitability to the types of projects we could see happening over the next few years.

The result has meant we are able to work with our clients to help them take advantage of these changes in several practical ways, for example moving to a DevOps approach, as well as building IPF.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from Icon Solutions that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Dear: Our focus over the next few months is on expanding the client base in Europe and the U.S., across a number of use cases, including instant payments and PSD2.

Finovate: Where do you see Icon Solutions a year or two from now?

Dear: In a year or two we would expect to see Icon acknowledged as the only organisation providing banks with similar technology to the GAFA’s and internet-scale providers, allowing them to compete in the new world of instant payments and API banking. We also look forward to being back at Finovate and showing how we have delivered other use cases based on the same transactional framework as IPF!

Tom Hay (Head of Payments) and Richard Dear (Business Development Director) debut Icon Solutions’ Instant Payments Framework:

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Finovate Debuts: Worldcore Turns Your Face into a Key

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on April 3, 2017
Categories: Finovate Debuts, Worldcore

Financial services provider Worldcore offers a wide variety of payment solutions, including bank payments, prepaid debit cards, mass payments, payouts to credit and/or debit cards, and international payment processing for individuals and businesses. Additionally, Worldcore offers account top-up using bitcoin, a method that amounts to 15% of the company’s inflow.

Worldcore launched its voice biometrics solution in 2016. The company expanded its biometrics approach at FinovateEurope 2017 where marketing and PR director, Sean Patterson began his demo by showing Worldcore’s voice authentication. “Customers love this– they’re using VoiceKey all over the place. But we got to thinking that there are situations where it’s not so useful to have VoiceKey. For example, if we need a second method of authentication, or if we are in a noisy or echoing room,” Patterson said. He continued by launching FaceKey, the company’s facial recognition authentication solution.

Company facts:

Headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic
Founded in 2014
50 employees
Owned and operated by EUPSProvider s.r.o., a licensed payment service provider regulated by Czech National Bank

Above: Sean Patterson, Worldcore’s Marketing & PR Director, debuting authentication technology at FinovateEurope 2017 in London

We followed up with Worldcore’s CEO, Alex Nasonov (pictured), for an interview after FinovateEurope.

Finovate: What problem does Worldcore solve?

Nasonov: Worldcore is the only player on the market that offers same-day and fully electronic client onboarding. This is very important for people in the digital age who place a high value on their time. I can tell you from personal experience that most companies with similar services work much slower. Because of this, I decided to establish a turnkey payment solution that’s suitable for almost everyone and allows users to onboard in a matter of minutes versus weeks.

Think of it as a hybrid between Uber and Amazon in the payment services industry– we combine speed with a high number of services. Worldcore carefully controls the number of employees in customer service and compliance departments and continues to hold one of the leading positions in client onboarding speed and average support team response time.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Nasonov: Our target audience is very wide and includes many industries related to online and offline business activities including marketplaces, digital shops, small businesses, digital marketing companies, freelancers, transport and gaming companies, and many others. Corporate clients may enjoy our cost-effective payroll solution which can be easily launched with our prepaid debit cards and saves a lot of money for companies on cross-border transfers. Our goal is to cover the maximum number of payment products and the maximum number of industries to expand globally.

Finovate: How does Worldcore solve the problem better?

Nasonov: Worldcore provides access to unique and market-leading payment solutions, including money transfers to almost any Visa, MasterCard and UnionPay payment cards across the globe. We also offer virtual and plastic debit cards with one of the highest transaction and withdrawal limits in the prepaid market. In addition, we facilitate international bank transfers. All of these capabilities make us a smarter and more functional alternative to traditional banking services.

Moreover, the Worldcore API offers quick and simple integration to let corporate clients automate their payouts and easily start accepting payments online with a variety of options available through Worldcore. Payouts to Visa, MasterCard and UnionPay cards offered by Worldcore are much cheaper than bank transfers and do not require the sender to order a Worldcore debit card to pay the recipient’s salary or make a personal payment to a friend or family member.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution.

Nasonov: Well, the most interesting implementation for me are two solutions that we implemented – voice authentication and facial recognition access. These two options were the most difficult of all the solutions our team has developed over the last two years because they required much more effort, attention and testing to assure a truly secure biometric access option for our clients. Current statistics indicate that most people still prefer using traditional passwords over innovative security solutions, but I expect that the next five to seven years will demonstrate further user adoption.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Nasonov: I spent a long time as a founder and co-founder of various digital and non-digital assets and almost always experienced difficulties with financial institutions related to key areas– speed, quality, pricing and security. My 10 years of business experience led me to start building a perfect payments institution where the clients are completely satisfied with every point of interaction.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from Worldcore that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Nasonov: Worldcore has many new products in the development stage at this moment, starting with new mobile apps for iOS and Android. The apps will mirror functionality of the web version of the Worldcore platform. We expect to finalize our PCI DSS audit before the end of March 2017, thus enabling us to enter the payment card acquiring market with our competitive solution for the e-commerce industry. This will include more than 20 modules that allow for instant integration of Worldcore into the most popular e-shop platforms and offer extremely low pricing for new clients.

In the summer of 2017, we will also present a groundbreaking invoice management tool for corporate clients that will completely automate our clients’ invoice management process. Lastly, we are hard at work on a QR code-based payment solution. All these products will be available by the end of 2017, and most will launch within the next few months.

Finovate: Where do you see Worldcore a year or two from now?

Nasonov: Worldcore’s growth rate indicates that we selected the right strategy for building one of the leading companies in the European payment services industry and our initial business model of “one-stop-shop for payments” works perfectly. While extending Worldcore’s product portfolio month-by-month, we will expand physically beginning in the first half of 2018 by opening branches in other European countries. This will allow us to improve our marketing strategy by focusing on the local audience of each country to better suit the needs of the local market and provide native-speaking customer service. Our management strategy and growth rate will lead Worldcore to a yearly transaction volume exceeding one billion euros in 2019.

Sean Patterson, Worldcore’s Marketing & PR Director, debuting the company’s authentication technology at FinovateEurope 2017 in London:

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Finovate Debuts: W.UP Offers a Library of Customer Insight Tools for Cross-Selling

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on March 16, 2017
Categories: Finovate Debuts, W.UP

W.UP (pronounced whup) provides digital banking software to offer a “happy banking experience” to customers who expect fast and simple online and mobile banking. At FinovateEurope in London last month, the company launched Sales.UP. In the demo, W.UP’s Tamás Braun, Head of International Sales and Business Development, explained how, with Sales.UP, banks, “don’t need to deal with the challenge of defining complex behavioral insights in [their] data.”

Sales.UP is a library of customizable, pre-packaged customer insights, along with a built-in marketing automation tool, which empowers marketers to build their own marketing campaign. The insights are derived from customer data and designed to help banks cross-sell and up-sell products using relevant, tailored messaging. Braun continued, “some insights will forecast life events such as expecting a baby or moving house. Other insights are about digital behavior, like connecting your online customers with call center agents when assistance is required.”

Company facts:

Headquartered in Budapest, Hungary
100+ employees
4 offices across Europe

W.UP’s Tamás Braun (Head of International Sales & Bus. Dev.) and Balázs Zotter (Head of Product Line)

After FinovateEurope, we interviewed Tamás Braun (pictured), Head of International Sales and Business Development at W.UP.

Finovate: What problem does W.UP solve?

Braun: Banking customers today are used to always-on, real-time sales and services, which are personal, predictive, and contextual. This trend is mainly driven by other industries and companies such as Google/Amazon. Banks are lagging behind in the area of predicting customers’ financial needs and making actionable recommendations that are integrated seamlessly into an end-to-end everyday experience. W.UP’s new SALES.UP product, which has been launched at FinovateEurope 2017, is a digital sales and engagement tool which uses pre-defined customer insights to enable banks to understand behavioural patterns of customers and to use these insights to predict opportunities for relevant and timely interactions.

Sales.UP’s Customer Insights Library

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Braun: Banks and other financial institutions who would like to improve their digital sales capability without expensive and lengthy big data projects.

Finovate: How does W.UP solve the problem better?

Braun: Many financial institutions use a marketing automation system that lacks focus on customer insights, making it difficult or impossible to provide real-time, personal and relevant messages to their clients. W.UP’s solution comes with its own Data Universe with all the necessary, real-time data gathered from internal and external (3rd party) sources. The SALES.UP Insight Store provides pre-defined customer insight templates that enable banks without a deep understanding of data modeling and predictive data analytics to use actionable insights within their marketing campaigns. The solution is designed specifically for financial institutions, using behavioral analytics and providing out-of-the-box, configurable insights for marketing campaigns.

Above: Customer insight tool for frequent travelers

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution.

Braun: SALES.UP has recently been launched and there is currently one early adopter bank in Hungary who will be announced publicly following the first phase of the implementation.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Braun: W.UP was established in 2014 by private individuals who worked in digital banking for the past 15 years. We have worked with many financial institutions throughout our careers and believe that still too many of them fail to understand customer behavior and provide relevant, timely, predictive and context-aware service to their customers. We help bridge the gap between what banks can do and what customers wish they could.

Above: Marketers can build their own campaigns with W.UP’s automation tool

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from W.UP that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Braun: There are several other financial institutions currently evaluating SALES.UP so we are expecting a number of implementation projects in the following months. We are also keeping our MOBILE.UP product in the loop, a pre-built mobile banking product, which is also a development framework, shrinking the implementation process down to only three months. With the upcoming PSD2 directive there is a lot of interest from clients to help them move towards open banking.

Finovate: Where do you see W.UP a year or two from now?

Braun: We aim to become a leader in digital sales and mobile banking software development in the financial industry to brighten up the world of traditional banking with happy digital banking experiences.

Check out the video of W.UP’s Tamás Braun (Head of International Sales & Bus. Dev.) and Balázs Zotter (Head of Product Line) at FinovateEurope 2017:

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Finovate Debuts: Signicat Delivers On Demand Digital ID Verification

By David Penn Posted on March 14, 2017
Categories: Finovate Debuts, Signicat

Signicat provides a cloud- and web-based identity verification service to more than 200 institutions mostly in the Nordics. The company’s platform leverages live video and identity document verification, as well as authentication by bank account and the GOV.UK Verify system, to enable digital signing, speed customer on-boarding, and remove friction from the online experience for financial services consumers.

“At Signicat our business is providing digital identity on demand in the cloud,” company Business Development Director Robert Kotlarz explained from the Finovate stage in February. “The concept is that you can call a web service to validate the identity of the individual,” he said. “(And) by identifying your digital customer, you can actually provide them with the products and services they want very immediately.” In addition to improving the experience for the consumer, the company’s solutions also help FIs and fintechs grow while remaining compliant with privacy and data protection regulations.

Pictured (left to right): Business Development Director Robert Kotlarz and Product Expert Kåre Indrøy demonstrating Signicat Assure and Signicat Sign at FinovateEurope 2013.

Signicat’s innovations are driven in part by what the company called “the battle to on-board.” A survey of 2,000 financial service professionals commissioned by Signicat revealed online application abandonment rates of 40%, with “length of process” and “too much personal information required” among major hurdles. As such, clients have used Signicat’s solutions, which also include Signicat Preserve for document archiving and Signicat Connect to enable safe and secure access to business applications, for everything from accelerating the credit card application process (EnterCard/Barclays) to helping launch new banks (Bank Norwegian). “We work with over 200 financial institutions,” Kotlarz said, “calling into our cloud 100 million transactions every year.”

During their FinovateEurope demonstration, Kotlarz and Product Expert Kåre Indrøy presented two of the company’s products: Signicat Assure and Signicat Sign. Signicat Assure is a verification technology that uses a combination of government-issued identification such as ID cards or passports, digitally-verified documents such as utility bills, social media, and other resources to establish identity. Signicat Sign is the company’s digital signature technology which helps ensure the integrity, origin, and non-repudiation of digital documents. Kotlarz and Indrøy walked the audience through a new customer loan application scenario using bank account verification, a minimum of personal information, and esignature technology, noting that the customer would also be able to access their account via a mobile app secured with a biometric footprint. “A frictionless process for on-boarding new customers,” Kotlarz said, “by using identity at the heart to know who your new customer is.”

Company Facts

Headquartered in Trondheim, Norway
Founded in January 2007
Maintains 62 employees in eight different offices in seven countries
Anticipates 2016 revenues of 10 million euros
Serves 252 customers on its cloud solution (IDaaS)
Won the Norwegian Fintech Achievement Award in 2017
Gunnar Nordseth is CEO

We met with Robert Kotlarz (pictured) and Kåre Indrøy during FinovateEurope and followed up with a few questions by email. Below are our questions and their responses.

Finovate: What problem does your technology solve?

Robert Kotlarz: Signicat is the first and largest Identity Assurance Provider in the world providing regulated markets with the technology to create mutual trust between organizations and their publics. Our products are divided in 4 parts:

Signicat Assure: To help ensure that the user is who he or she claims to be during an onboarding process. The user typically claims the identity, and then provides evidence for the claim.

Signicat Connect: To verify existing user’s identity during an authentication process. Used when user wants to access services, and has to prove identity.

Signicat Sign: To digitally sign contracts or other legal documents, or seal similar documents.

Signicat Preserve: To ensure long term validity of signed documents.

Pictured: Signicat provides multiple, configurable identity verification options including live video and identity paper verification.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Kotlarz: Our primary customers are in the banking, financial, and insurance areas.

Finovate: How does your technology solve the problem better?

Kotlarz: With Signicat, service providers can build and leverage existing customer credentials to connect users, devices, and even “things” across channels, services, and markets, transforming identity into an asset rather than an obstacle. By ditching manual, paper-based processes and replacing them with digital identity assurance, customer onboarding is accelerated and access to services is made simple and secure. Service providers can rapidly grow market share, easily acquire new customers, and ensure compliance with financial, privacy, and data protection regulations, including AML and KYC.

Signicat delivers an online electronic signing service that is fast and easy to use. It allows users to sign multiple documents, upload own documents, and write personal information which gets integrated in the signed documents. For organizations, this means saving time and money by automating previously manual processes and increasing self-service capabilities. Signicat has the technology to connect the market, the expertise to scale the systems, and the experience to build the trust.

Pictured: Bank account verification is one of a number of verification options for customers.

Finovate: Tell us about a favorite implementation of your technology.

Kotlarz: In 2009, Bank Norwegian set a new standard when they introduced the concept “Switch banks in 90 seconds.” Using eID, customers could easily switch banks without the time-consuming processes involving meetings, phone calls, and application forms. As the first bank in Norway, and among the first in the Nordic region, Bank Norwegian set the standard for self-service banking.

Customers of the bank were introduced to a concept that was simple, straightforward, and practical. Bank Norwegian has also benefited from the solution, because they don’t have to spend unnecessary time and resources on phone calls and form processing. This is a good solution for the bank’s customers, who have previously had to deal with complicated processes to switch banks. Now, the customers simply fill out an application form online and submit it by identifying themselves and signing using BankID.

By using eID as a key function in Signicat’s product base, the bank has been able to streamline the structure and organization of the company, both in terms of cost-effectiveness and workability.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Kotlarz: Signicat already has a history of 10 years connecting banks and financial institutions into services required to securely onboard, identify clients, and sign and preserve documents. The solution is already available all over Scandinavia, where Signicat is a market leader in the area.

Picture: Signicat’s technology enables a variety of ways to provide esignatures.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from Signicat that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Kotlarz: Preparing the solution for the British market, connecting several ID verification methods into the solution. For example, address lookup, ID paper verification, bank account verification, and video assurance.

Finovate: Where do you see your company a year or two from now?

Kotlarz: Since its beginning in 2007, Signicat has established itself as a market leader in the Nordic region. The company has been a pioneer in establishing cloud-based Identity-as-a-Service as a real alternative to on-premise installations. The most demanding customers in the bank and finance sector have now accepted that cloud-based Identity-as-a-Service and Identity-Assurance-as-a-Service is just as secure and with a much lower cost of use than on-premise installations.

Since 2015, Signicat has been extending the coverage of its services to European markets outside of the Nordic region. There is a window of opportunity that is opened by the combined forces of banks looking for more cost-effective and user-friendly means of onboarding and authenticating users, and the new European legislation in the areas of payment (PSD2), privacy (GDPR) and electronic trust (eIDAS).

Signicat aims to use this opportunity and its head-start from the Nordic market to become the preferred provider of identity services to regulated industries in Europe.

Robert Kotlarz (Business Development Director) and Kåre Indrøy (Product Expert) demonstrating Signicat Assure and Signicat Sign at FinovateEurope 2017.

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Finovate Debuts: ICAR Builds a Digital Identify Profile for Client ID Verification

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on March 13, 2017
Categories: Finovate Debuts, ICAR

Based in Barcelona, Spain, ICAR launched in 2002 as a spin-off of the Computer Vision Center at the University of Barcelona. Since then, the company has matured; it now offers five solutions across mobile, web, and desktop to help large financial institutions combat onboarding fraud.

At FinovateEurope last month, the company showed off its mobile onboarding solution, ID_Mobile, that leverages biometric technology combined with the social network and geolocation of the user. These additional factors verify that the user matches their identity document and builds their digital identity profile in the background.

At FinovateEurope last month, The company’s CEO Xavier Codó began his demo saying, “We provide a fully automatic solution which validates identity, but also helps you build your customer digital identity profile.” Codó continued, “We focus on three main market needs: user experience, fraud prevention and how to connect digital identity to physical identity.”

Company facts

30 employees
Over 20 million online ID validations every year
Turnover increase of 20% every year
Blog with 5,000 readers per month

Above: Xavier Codó (CEO) and Mariona Campmany (CMO) debut ICAR’s ID_Mobile at FinovateEurope 2017 in London

We chatted with ICAR’s Chief Marketing Officer, Mariona Campmany (pictured), at FinovateEurope last month about the history of the company and its path to launching ID_Mobile. We followed up with the below interview questions via email.

Finovate: What problem does ICAR solve?

Campmany: ICAR offers online and e-business solutions for the correct customer identification in order to prevent identity fraud and reduce operating costs, while providing a good user experience. We aim to bring the new generation of identity verification systems to the market, introducing a cloud system to automatically verify the authenticity of identity documents and customer identity in less than 20 seconds.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Campmany: ICAR has been positioning in the market as the leading company in identity validation. Our entrance into the financial and telecommunication sectors allowed us to land top clients such as BBVA, GSMA, CaixaBank, and Telefonica.

Finovate: How does ICAR solve the problem better?

Campmany: Our solution takes a vital technological lead in prevention of identity fraud, ending the bottleneck of limited numbers of desktop scanning devices, avoiding negative customer experiences waiting for ID validation and opening new models of on-the-spot customer capture. We found that other processes depend on a manual double-check, and one “click away” is not possible. Our solution is based on our own fully-automatic technology which validates customer identity and incorporates the necessary features to be the best, easiest-to-use, online ID-verification tool.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution.

Campmany: We offer a solution for customer onboarding validation that also helps build the digital identity profile of the user. We make sure that it is a real user at the time of onboarding by validating the identity document, doing a biometric comparison of the photo in ID against the customer’s selfie, doing a liveness test (biometric), analyzing the geolocalization and mobile security, and checking dynamic information like the customer’s email, phone number, and social networks.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Campmany: Services for validating customer identity have been available for several years; we have carried out several projects. Among them include working with IKEA to introduce a mobile solution for agents at the kitchen section so the customers can finance the purchase at the time they choose the product, saving time waiting at the financing stand, and integrating with Nationale Nederlanden to read and authenticate the ID document from a tablet or mobile into an application that undertakes the whole process of selling insurance.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from ICAR that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Campmany: We will keep focus in three main market needs:

User experience, because we never get a second chance to make a good first impression, and if it is not easy to use, they’ll go somewhere else.

Fraud prevention, critical for the bank.

And the third one was a question we asked ourselves: “How do we connect the digital identity to the physical identity?”

Finovate: Where do you see ICAR a year or two from now?

Campmany: It’s not a secret that we live in a digital world. And with this reality comes the increasingly complex task of matching a person’s digital identity to their physical world. Moreover, nowadays, every agreement, every process, every new product or service acquisition has a digital record that must be identified and validated.

Offering an omnichannel identity verification platform is critical for the users and the entities. We want to improve the customer user experience and at the same time work with entities in order to offer a secure process, and increase customer acquisition. Digital identities are a fundamental requirement of our new world. But it is not a simple process; we need innovation to make it happen. We are part of this innovation.

Xavier Codó (CEO) and Mariona Campmany (CMO) debuting ICAR’s IDMobile at FinovateEurope 2017 in London:

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Finovate Debuts: Gradatim’s MFInsure Offers Turn-Key Insurance

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 27, 2017
Categories: Finovate Debuts, Gradatim IT Ventures India

Gradatim’s MFInsure is an out-of-the-box insurance solution that makes it easy to set up, deploy, and manage insurance products. To further enhance the offering, the company leverages AI to predict life events, identify up-sell opportunities, and provide tailored recommendations for clients.

In his FinovateAsia 2016 demo, the company’s CEO and founder, Prakash Viswanathan showed how the system quickly launches an omni-channel insurance product without the need for IT support. Viswanathan concluded the demo by offering social proof when he said, “We have earned the right to be here because in the last 18 months, this system has on-boarded a whopping 50+ million policies across commercial lines of business, retail lines of business, and small ticket insurance products.”

Company facts

$ 2.5 million in funding
40 employees
Monthly revenue: $100,000 and monthly revenue growth: 3%

Prakash Viswanathan (CEO & Founder) and Siva Kumar (Head of Technology) demo Gradatim MFInsure OnDemand Insurance System at FinovateAsia 2016 in Hong Kong

We chatted with Prakash Viswanathan, Gradatim CEO and founder, to get a closer look at the insurtech solution, Gradatim MFInsure OnDemand Insurance, he launched at FinovateAsia last year.

Finovate: What problem does Gradatim solve?

Viswanathan: Insurance company CXO’s are facing the challenge of delivering new age digital products to consumers. CXO’s also face the challenge of product innovation required to meet the aspirational needs of business consumers and growing middle income consumers.

Gradatim helps insurance company CXO’s focus on optimization of customer service, helps business teams with product and service innovation and improve internal processing efficiencies – specially in this digital age and with emerging products aligned to the growing middle income consumers.

Small to mid-size insurance carriers have many of the same business goals as their larger industry peers—market growth, accelerated speed to market for new products and the ability to tailor services to their consumer’s needs—but not the same budget allocations or access to resources. That means when it comes to choosing and implementing a policy administration system, cost is a big driver. Achieving the balance between affordability and breadth of functionality is often not possible for small to mid-size insurance carriers.

Gradatim implements cloud based, flexible standard systems for the core processes of life and non-life insurance. Gradatim’s on-demand insurance system, Gradatim MFInsure, is a new age policy administration system that helps insurance companies solve these problems.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Viswanathan:: Gradatim primarily works with insurance companies, brokerage firms, insurance intermediaries and fintech companies.

Finovate: How does Gradatim solve the problem better?

Viswanathan: Gradatim MFInsure is an integrated, end-to-end system that supports all primary processes: from quotation to policy issuance; claims to settlement. It is a complete policy administration system.

Gradatim MFInsure is highly configurable and thus provides the benefit of configuration over coding. Products, processes and channels can be setup by configuration without having to code.

Gradatim MFInsure helps build a engagement model with consumers in the digital age. Not just digital products, but also traditional products across life, P&C, and health. The open, unified digital framework makes it possible to deliver products and services, and create a multi-dimensional customer experience across all devices and channels. They enable the insurance companies to develop and deliver services for use by both insurance staff and customers, via any device or channel.

Gradatim MFInsure helps reduce time-to-market up to 300%. The solution also helps achieve cost savings in underwriting and administer policies by up to 50%. This makes it feasible to launch new products across new markets and achieve faster break-even.

Gradatim MFInsure benefits from the use of cloud services. Cloud-based deployment reduces administrative costs associated with managing a dedicated data center. It is also available on transaction pricing model – an innovative approach to reduce capital investment.

Above: Gradatim’s on-demand administration system portal

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution.

Viswanathan: If I may, I would like to provide two implementation examples:

1- Customer: Asia’s Second Largest General Insurer:

Opportunity: Providing a shopping cart to identified and categorized groups – Providing Multiple Insurance Products to the identified group.

How it started: Public Accountants in India are members of The Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAI). There are 0.5 Million Public Accountants who are members of the Institute. The Insurer wanted to leverage the relationship with the Institute and provide multiple Insurance products to the Public Accountants. A total of 7 Products were identified and it was decided to create an online portal that can be accessed by the Public Accountants. Once the Public Accountant is validated as a member of the Institute, he / she can benefit from the special discount and special plans and coverages being extended to them by the Insurer.

Implementation: All Seven Products setup in Gradatim MFInsure with defined rules for Underwriting. “Online” Channel was configured. Payment Gateway integrated to enable Public Accountants to “BUY” Policy Online.

Timeline to implement: The complete setup was completed in 6 weeks.

Current Status: More than 3,40,000 health Policies, 72,000 Motor Policies, 2000 Professional Indemnity Policies and 800 Office Protection Policies are Live in the System.

Benefits to Insurer: Business Users can maintain the system without need to involve IT. Changes to Coverages, Pricing, Process, Underwriting Rules etc. can be managed by business users.

MFInsure is currently live with this customer across 12 such Groups delivering more than US $30 million in premium per year. The Insurer has created a separate web portal branch to expand this model and manage such relationships in the future.
2- Customer: fast-growing life insurer

Opportunity: launch new life insurance products, including term, endowment and annuity products.

Channel: post of sale (POS) defined as POS sales persons, individual agents, intermediaries and direct consumer.

How it started: approval for products by insurance regulator.

Implementation: Gradatim MFInsure for life insurance system was deployed by the insurer to write, underwrite, manage the POS products and issue electronic certificates as a stand-alone policy system. Provision to register and setup agents with a well-defined approval process. It gives the ability to manage agent business, process new business opportunities generated by agents, process payment from agents account and issue policies to customers directly. The system also was enabled to be operated on field using any standard smartphone.

Timeline to implement: The complete setup was completed in 12 weeks.

Benefits to Insurer: Rapid deployment and be the first to market the POS products. It required an arrangement with Telco to distribute products through the Telco’s agents. It was set up independent from legacy core but having the functionality to update business information and regulatory reporting from legacy core.

Above: template for quick insurance policy creation

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Viswanathan: I have an entrepreneurial background, having started and scaled multiple businesses in the past and a team that is more than ready to walk-the-talk. “The proof is in the pudding” and it is no wonder that we have been able to help insurers create new markets, build new products and deploy them faster than anyone else can. Over 52 million insurance policies are currently live and active in Gradatim MFInsure.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from Gradatim that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Viswanathan: We are excited about the algorithmic engine that has the ability to understand what consumers are interested in — it has more than 13 top-level interest clusters and 450+ detailed clusters!

The algorithmic engine also drives sales to an insurer: imagine if an insurance company can reach out to a consumer when he or she is about to create a travel plan that best suits their upcoming travel.

The introduction of algorithmic engine would be a game-changer for Gradatim and for our insurance customers.

Finovate: Where do you see Gradatim a year or two from now?

Viswanathan: We believe Gradatim is poised to be a category leader – in the on-demand, cloud-based policy systems, managing tens of millions of insurance policies – for a cost far lesser than what insurers currently spend and addressing emerging market needs of consumers who can be categorized as the aspirational class.

Prakash Viswanathan (CEO & Founder) and Siva Kumar (Head of Technology) demo Gradatim MFInsure OnDemand Insurance System at FinovateAsia 2016 in Hong Kong

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