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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Looking for some entertaining and insightful listening this holiday week? Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast have you covered!
This week the Finovate blog is sharing Greg’s conversations with seven of the eight Best of Show winning companies from FinovateFall 2024. From discussions about the growing importance of innovation in helping banks and other FIs meet ever-changing compliance requirements to the challenge of call-center security and defending against AI fraud, this latest round of interviews from the Finovate Podcast share insights and accomplishments from some of fintech’s finest.
“FinovateFall’s Best of Show winners come from different backgrounds and contain a wide range of solutions, but they all have one thing in common: they were able to capture the attention of our audience in a very competitive landscape,” podcast host Greg Palmer said. “Hear more of their stories and find out why they’re worthy of your attention too.”
Greg Palmer and Neepa Patel of Themis talk about compliance administration and how fintechs and financial services companies can avoid becoming a target for regulators. EP 238.
Greg Palmer interviews Rithwik Pattikonda of CardLift on payments via browser extensions. EP 237.
Podcast host Greg Palmer talks with Daniel and Joseph Ahn of Delfi on the dangers of balance sheet risk and its macroeconomic impact. EP 236.
Greg Palmer and Bancography’s Steven Reider discuss the importance of physical branches and making sure they are in the right places. EP 235.
Greg Palmer talks about call-center security and AI-based fraud with Illuma’s Milind Borkar. EP 234.
Credit Mountain’s Nathan Pinto talks about the “warm decline” and relationship-building with podcast host Greg Palmer. EP 233.
Greg Palmer and Eko’s Mart Vos discuss a new approach to bringing investing capabilities inside FIs. EP 232.
One of the most popular use cases for AI in financial services is to leverage the technology to help companies deal with the challenge and opportunity of unstructured data.
In our latest Streamly interview from FinovateFall last month, Finovate VP and host Greg Palmer sits down with Perry Rotella, Managing Director of Financial Services at Box, to discuss the growth of unstructured data within financial institutions, the challenges these firms face in managing this data, and the role AI can play in helping them analyze unstructured data to enhance everything from personalization to compliance.
“Unstructured data really represents the vast majority of data in organizations. IDC did a study last year that found that 90% of an organization’s data is unstructured. And it’s been really challenging to extract insights out of that data at scale. What we’ve been finding working with customers is we can supercharge pulling insights out of that content, driving workflows for downstream processing, and really look across many documents to summarize and personalize communications with clients.”
The “Intelligent Content Cloud” company, Box offers a single platform that enables organizations to drive collaboration, manage the content lifecycle, secure critical content, and transform business workflows using enterprise AI. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Redwood City, California, Box includes AstraZeneca, Morgan Stanley, and Nationwide among its customers.
In his role as Managing Director, Financial Services, Rotella provides leadership across product, marketing, business development, sales, and customer success teams. He is responsible for driving engagement with key strategic accounts, as well as customer satisfaction and retention.
This edition of the Finovate eMagazine brings you insights from FinovateFall 2024. We spoke to dozens of experts, innovators, and strategists from banks, credit unions, wealth management firms, and insurance companies about the hottest topics in fintech. Learn how they:
Elevate customer experiences From approaching Gen Z and addressing the painpoints of change to empowering employees and enhancing customers’ digital journeys.
Build partnerships As financial institutions share their approaches and how they bring cultures together.
How can companies take advantage of the opportunity of AI to grow revenues, help develop new products, and better engage customers? Our latest Streamly interview features Chris Brown, President of Intelygenz, who shares strategies for businesses to effectively implement AI.
In this interview, conducted by Finovate Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn, Brown talks about Intelygenz’s engagement models that quickly deliver measurable ROI. Brown also discusses Intelygenz’s “Day Zero” promise, successful use cases in financial services, and explains what the metrics for success are when it comes to AI projects.
“There are a few things actually that I think organizations can do: I think the first thing is try and get yourself out of the AI buzzword, out of that AI hype, and really try to understand where you can apply AI within your business. Try and cross match your strategy, your challenges to the art of the possible of AI.”
“Don’t get hung up and leave that technical jargon. Leave all those hype words to the machine learning engineers and data scientists. Really focus on ‘What are the challenges I’m facing in my industry?’ ‘What will make a difference to my business?’ And if you do that, I can promise people from our vantage point that over many years you will put yourself in a really good position.”
Headquartered in San Francisco, California and founded in 2002, Intelygenz provides expert AI consultancy and implementation services. Specializing in AI, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, and other enabling technologies, Intelygenz guides businesses and organizations through their AI journeys – from conceptualization to implementation.
Whether you attended FinovateFall last month and missed a few demos, watched all of the demos but want to watch them again, or missed out on FinovateFall entirely, we have great news for you. The videos from the 66 FinovateFall demos are now live (and free to watch!) on Finovate’s website.
To get you started on watching over seven and a half hours of pure fintech demos, we’ve highlighted the eight Best of Show winning demos below to get you started.
Want to re-live the entire show? Check out the highlights reel below.
If you don’t want to miss out on the live action next time around, be sure to register for FinovateEurope, taking place February 25 and 26 in London. We’ll see you there!
If you skipped FinovateFall last week, you missed out! Fortunately, I’ve compiled a written highlight reel to bring you up to speed.
Demos
With 66 demos on stage, the audience took in a variety of fintech solutions. There was one underlying, enabling technology that fueled the majority of the products and services. That enabling technology, AI, pulsed throughout not just the demos, but the entire event.
There were a wide variety of thought leaders on the Finovate stage last week. Among my favorites were Akeem Shannon, Founder and CEO of Flipstik, who not only brought a massive amount of energy to the stage, but also brought the story of how he launched his product. Perhaps not surprisingly, Akeem’s message centered around the importance of your brand or company’s story. During his presentation, Akeem shared both why crafting a story around your brand is so important, as well as how to build your own compelling story.
As always, I also loved the coverage from the Analyst All Star session, which featured seven-minute presentations from Tiffani Montez, Principal Analyst at EMARKETER; Philip Benton, Senior Analyst- Financial Services at Omdia; and Suraya Randawa, Head of Omnichannel Experience at Curinos.
Tiffani covered the growth of retail media networks in financial services. In addition to Chase Media Services and PayPal’s media arm, Tiffani covered others in the space and explained that financial media networks such as these are superior to retail media networks in that they have cross-merchant data. For his presentation, Philip highlighted the increase in SaaS adoption for banks and explained the implications of leveraging third party technologies. Suraya offered her presentation on how banks can deliver a better customer experience. Notably, she explained that there is no singular, happy path for customers. This variability is perhaps the factor that makes achieving a perfect user experience so difficult.
The conversations
My favorite part of every conference is the networking. This event was no different. I saw plenty of familiar faces and met multiple new ones. Many of my conversations centered around AI–specifically the regulation of AI in financial services.
I spoke with Katie Quilligan, Investor at BankTech Ventures, who sat on a panel discussion I led on creating value in leveraging AI. During our conversation, Katie remarked that all banks need to have a strategy around AI, even if they are not planning on using it directly. She added that banks don’t have the option to ignore the AI revolution, because not only are they falling behind by not leveraging the new technology, but also because their employees are using the technology, regardless of whether or not there is a formal policy around using it.
In a separate conversation with Jim Perry, Senior Strategist at Market Insights, Jim commented that he spoke with a bank recently that said that even though they put up a firewall blocking ChatGPT, one of their bank marketing employees felt they needed to leverage GenAI and was able to get around the firewall by walking across the street to Starbucks on their lunch break so that they could use Starbuck’s wifi to access ChatGPT and generate marketing copy.
The point of both of these conversations makes one thing clear– GenAI has arrived, and at this point ignoring it is not an option.
After two days of live demos from more than 65 fintech companies, the attendees of FinovateFall 2024 have made their decisions as to which of these innovators will take home Finovate’s coveted Best of Show awards. Featuring both Finovate newcomers and Finovate veterans alike, the winners of Best of Show for FinovateFall 2024 are listed below.
Bancography for its software tool that lets bankers predicate branch investments on sound market data, not intuition, preventing costly missteps and ensuring optimized investments.
CardLift for its solution that enables companies to build a co-branded browser extension for their partners that automatically finds and switches users’ card-on-file to their partners’ card.
Credit Mountain for its technology that helps organizations grow their businesses by retaining, nurturing, and cross-selling declined borrowers.
Delfi Labs for its technology that creates efficient risk management and hedging strategies in minutes, enabling clients to defend margins, enhance performance, and raise valuation.
Eko Investments for its platform that offers investments via a financial advisor to all clients–and not just the top 1%–starting from $10.
Illuma for its innovations in deepfake detection that enable community financial institutions to keep their members and customers connected with their funds in a convenient and secure manner.
Nest Bank & Efigence for their collaboration, N! Assistant, a virtual AI-powered assistant that revolutionizes finance.
Themis for its solution that enhances compliance efficiency, minimizes regulatory risk, and fosters seamless collaboration, empowering banks and fintechs to focus on growth and innovation in financial services.
Please join us in congratulating our eight, Best of Show-winning companies. Let’s also raise a glass to all of our demoing companies for their innovations in fields ranging from regtech and payments to lending, wealth management, and beyond. We are especially grateful for our attendees and sponsors, whose support continues make our Finovate conferences among the most anticipated events in our industry. We look forward to seeing you again next year!
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2024 conferences are below:
LoanReady by Cyphr is a tool that complements Loan Origination Systems and helps community banks and credit unions get more small businesses approved for loans with readiness screening or empathetic declines.
Community lenders, credit unions, and small-to-medium-sized businesses.
Dimply
Dimply is a data driven customer experiences solution for community banks and credit unions that delivers cutting edge, engaging, and embedded personalized customer journeys.
Features
Delivers digital customer centricity
Individualization is the next frontier of customer experience
Provides customer journey orchestration with tailored value proposition
Who’s it for?
Banks, community banks, credit unions, and wealth managers.
Homegrown
Homegrown partners with credit unions, banks, and investors to power growth with energy efficiency data.
Features
Offers white-labeled digital engagement – helps customers and members save money on utility bills
Delivers personalization – custom results for any U.S. home address
Provides impact reporting – track and report user impact
Who’s it for?
Credit unions and banks – particularly those with current mortgage, HELOC, personal loan product offerings, and those with merchant lending networks for solar, HVAC, or home improvement.
Odin
Odin AI enhances enterprise efficiency with intelligent automation, real-time insights, and comprehensive solutions, delivering proven results across diverse industries.
Features
Automates complex financial reporting processes
Analyzes and categorizes vast amounts of transaction data
Scales across departments for enterprise-wide efficiency
Who’s it for?
Large enterprises, financial institutions, and payment providers seeking to optimize operations and enhance data-driven decision-making.
Starlight
Starlight provides proactive, personalized guidance to help households navigate government benefits seamlessly.
Features
Provides personalized, proactive assistance navigating benefit systems
Offers seamless integration with credit union products for ongoing financial support
Delivers quick deployment, enhancing services and member engagement
Who’s it for?
Credit unions.
Stride
Stride stands at the forefront of technology and innovation, using multi-agent GenAI to eradicate tech debt and prevent it from creeping up again.
Features
Stride Conductor exists for one purpose: to eradicate tech debt and prevent it from creeping up again. It acts as an additional team member that’s always looking out for the user behind the scenes.
Who’s it for?
Financial companies struggling with escalating tech debt.
Themis
Themis is a compliance platform that simplifies compliance and collaboration for banks and fintechs, reducing regulatory risk, cutting down on manual work, and boosting partnership efficiency.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 9 and 10. Register today using this link and save 20%.
Accelera Payments
Accelera Payments is a comprehensive payments stack. The flagship product Comply is a plug-n-play utility that integrates with existing payment infrastructures, ensuring ISO compliance with minimal disruption.
Features
Achieves ISO 20022 compliance at lightning speed
Provides multiple financial message formats
Offers ISO message validator
Who’s it for?
Small-and-medium size banks, credit unions, and financial institutions.
CardLift
CardLift keeps banks’ credit cards top-of-wallet by enabling customers to effortlessly switch payments to CardLift’s partner cards while showcasing card benefits at every online checkout.
Features
Transfers spending to the partner card seamlessly through CardLift’s auto card switching
Boosts online card usage through one-tap checkout
Drives consumer loyalty through enhanced cash back rewards
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, and card issuers looking to increase card usage and transaction volumes.
CD Valet
CD Valet empowers financial institutions to compete online in the CD market with proven, targeted digital marketing solutions and online account opening.
Features
Provides CD digital account opening services
Delivers new digital account opening for IRA CDs
Offers featured CD listings, lead generation services, and lead qualification based on the user’s criteria
Who’s it for?
Financial institutions offering competitively priced CDs and IRA CDs.
Credit Mountain
The Warm Decline by Credit Mountain reinvents the decline experience for rejected borrowers and saves lenders money at the same time.
Features
Automates adverse action notices
Provides a personalized path to “yes”
Monitors, tracks, and re-engages declined borrowers
Who’s it for?
Credit unions.
illuminote
DARCi by illuminote digitally controls assent by securely registering, authenticating, and protecting legal records to guard companies from fraud, litigation, human error, and liability.
Features
Offers workflow optimization and protection
Improves client retention and business development
Delivers digital transformation and regulatory compliance
Who’s it for?
Financial institutions (banks and credit unions) and financial advisory firms.
NayaOne
Compass by NayaOne, the default industry utility, quickly and simply connects banks with vendors, reducing cost and complexity associated with discovering and sourcing partners and customers.
Features
Showcases tech to 100+ banks ready to buy
Investigates what peers are using
Accelerates vendor selection process
Improves third-party risk management
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, and tech vendors.
Sei
Sei builds AI agents for risk and compliance teams to automate complex tasks. Sei’s customers include banks, publicly listed companies, and fintechs across the U.S., U.K., Europe, and APAC.
Features
Sei automates work for compliance and risk teams including marketing review, customer support QA, TPRM, etc., allowing for:
Faster growth
Real time compliance at scale
Reduced cost by 60%
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, fintechs, and payment providers.
2024 marks the 90th anniversary of the Federal Credit Union Act. Signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the summer of 1934, the Federal Credit Union Act authorized the formation of federally chartered credit unions in every state.
How are credit unions faring 90 years later? Today, total assets in federally insured credit unions sit at more than $2.3 trillion as of the first quarter of this year. That figure represents a year-over-year increase of 4.4%. Membership in federally insured credit unions has also picked up year-over-year, with membership topping the 140 million mark in Q1 of 2024.
But credit unions face significant challenges. Digital transformation is neither cheap nor easy. Competition with larger financial institutions–as well as Big Tech and Big Retail–has forced credit unions to seek new ways to better serve and engage their members.
FinovateFall 2024’sCredit Union Spotlight, presented by Curql, is designed to help credit unions overcome these challenges, offer new innovative solutions, and grow their membership ranks. The session, Wednesday afternoon, on September 11, will enable credit union executives to connect and speak intimately with a small, curated group of fintechs who are specifically focused on serving credit unions. The session will feature a series of rotating roundtables to give participants an ideal opportunity to interact, ask questions, and share best practices.
“It’s an exciting time to be a credit union looking at fintech,” said Greg Palmer, host of Finovate. “More and more innovators are creating solutions with credit unions in mind, and we’re delighted to be able to showcase some of those solutions to a room full of people who can start using them right away.”
Curious? Here are three reasons why you should attend our Credit Union Spotlight if you care about the future of credit unions in America.
Transformation
Digital transformation is reshaping businesses across industries. Credit unions are no exception. Moreover, many of the forces that are driving digital transformation in other industries are especially relevant to credit unions. Digital technology enables credit unions to offer more personalized services and better engage members. It also enhances processes to ensure that members’ data is secure, making the organization more efficient and capable of serving their current members more comprehensively.
And while every credit union is unique, there are commonalities when it comes to the digital transformation journey. Here, the lessons of those institutions that have already undergone this process can be invaluable for those institutions that have just begun–let alone those credit unions encountering challenges on their path to greater digitalization.
Competition
The opportunity to grow, accelerated by digital transformation, also means that credit unions are facing and will continue to face greater competition than ever before. Personalization makes it easy for larger financial institutions to customize their offerings and compete with credit unions when it comes to deeply engaging with individual needs and preferences. Larger financial institutions also often have resources to take advantage of technologies faster and more thoroughly than most credit unions. This can make it easier for these bigger rivals to offer innovations to their customers before credit unions can provide similar solutions for their members.
This is to say nothing of the non-financial entities in Big Tech and Big Retail, for example, who, through innovations such as embedded finance, have begun to offer a variety of financial and banking services to their customers.
Learning more about ever-evolving member preferences is an important initial step. But following up with new initiatives, new services, and new solutions can be a key hurdle early in the process. To this end, credit union professionals owe it to themselves to learn and share strategies that have helped credit unions of all sizes better understand their members, deploy new products that are eagerly adopted, and boost engagement.
Collaboration
One of the ways that credit unions are dealing with the challenge of competition–with Big Banks, Big Tech, Big Retail–is by embracing opportunities to collaborate with innovative fintechs, many of whom specialize in serving the credit union industry. This is important. For credit unions looking for partners to help them improve back-office operations, offer a new rewards program, or fortify their defenses against fraud, teaming up with fintechs that have demonstrated interest and experience in partnerships with credit unions can make the difference between achieving digital transformation goals that may have seemed unreachable–and falling short.
To facilitate these kinds of partnerships, credit union professionals need a forum that focuses exclusively on credit unions and the fintechs that serve them. Our Credit Union Spotlight, taking place next month at FinovateFall in New York, is that forum. To learn more about joining us and participating in the session, email our registration coordinator at ella.burton@informa.com.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 9 and 10. Register today using this link and save 20%.
Ascent
Ascent streamlines and simplifies any and all product applications and forms across an FI without disrupting existing systems and processes, while learning from every customer interaction.
Features
Eliminates buying a different solution to solve each product application experience or problem
Reduces abandonment
Improves cross-sell
Grows loyalty
Who’s it for?
Community banks, regional banks, credit unions, CUSOs, non-bank lenders, and insurance carriers looking to reduce the cost and complexity of delivering great experiences across the enterprise.
Finli
Finli, a certified B Corp, offers SMBs trusted and easy-to-use financial tools. The company helps FIs compete through expanded digital services that drive deposits and strengthen customer relationships.
Features
FI’s can view Finli as their SMB obsessed innovation team that offers
Real-time business health insights
Complete back office suite of digital services for SMBs
Secure digital payments
Who’s it for?
Banks and credit unions looking to drive business deposits and offer innovative digital tools to business clients.
Flextract
Flextract uses AI to extract structured data from complex financial documents, eliminating manual copy-paste and enhancing accuracy.
Features
Supports a wide variety of complex document types and layouts
Automates complex operational processes that need large teams of human analysts
Delivers structured data without workflow changes
Who’s it for?
Commercial lenders, mortgage lenders, wealth managers, and asset managers.
getAIreports.com (by Stock Unlock)
getAIreports.com (by Stock Unlock) automates report generation using AI, transforming complex data into clear insights. The company streamlines reporting processes, saving time and improving decision-making for businesses, allowing companies to focus on their core competencies.
Features
Saves time generating comprehensive reports
Closes more deals with clear, data-driven insights
Drives actionable insights with accurate AI summaries on financial data
Who’s it for?
Any businesses that generate reports.
Illuma
IllumaShield™ by Illuma streamlines caller verification with a frictionless voice biometrics authentication solution that protects against account takeovers.
Features
Improves account security and customer satisfaction
Reduces caller verification time by 85% or more
Deploys quickly with low lift from internal IT resources
Who’s it for?
Community banks, regional banks, and credit unions that need a state-of-the-art solution to prevent fraud in contact centers.
Vectari
Vectari’s software can be thought of as “compliance expertise as a service.” Their cloud-hosted subscription software services find hidden trends in customer interactions.
Features
Reduces operational costs of servicing customers due to avoidable errors
Reduces regulatory risk caused by compliance errors
Provides better oversight of third-party partners and servicers
Who’s it for?
Financial institutions of all flavors, particularly mid-size banks, BaaS and embedded finance banks, and non-bank FIs involved in loan servicing.
ZayZoon
ZayZoon’s Embedded EWA, trusted by 180+ HR and payroll companies since 2014, delivers custom end-to-end solutions that enhance offerings, attract clients, and drive new revenue.
In a recent post about the themes of FinovateFall 2024 (New York City, September 9 – 11), we recognized just how much our demoing companies were leveraging AI to help build innovative financial solutions in everything from payments and lending to cybersecurity and regulatory compliance. Financial services and fintech have truly entered the AI era.
And while our demoing companies showcase ready-to-go AI-powered tools and platforms, our keynote speakers are doing their part to help fintechs, banks, credit unions, lenders, and other financial services organizations figure out how to make AI work for their businesses and their customers.
Below is just a sample of the AI-in-financial-services content we have in store for you in less than two weeks time. If you haven’t picked up your ticket yet, you’re in luck: registration is still open and spaces are still available. Visit our registration hub today and we’ll see you in New York in September!
Conversational Banking: Get Value from Generative AI
Wulfraat is a seasoned industry leader bringing more than 20 years experience in solutioning and selling automated customer and employee experience solutions to many of the world’s most prestigious brands. At Kore.ai, he leads global direct sales, and is responsible for revenue performance across product offerings and regions. LinkedIn.
Unifying and Personalizing the Customer Journey through a Digital and AI-First Strategy
Kumar is focused on driving thought leadership and industry specific innovation to position Talkdesk as a leader in the market. He advises all components of digital transformation within the financial services industry on business strategy and adoption of new business models to support growth plans. In his 15 years in financial services, Kumar has helped multiple credit unions and community banks ideate and execute large scale digital transformation program. LinkedIn.
AI as a Co-pilot in Financial Services – How Every Function is Being Reimagined by Automation, AI Data Mining & AI-Generated data
Dan Latimore – Chief Research Officer, The Financial Revolutionist
Latimore is Chief Research Officer at The Most Impactful, a leading research-based recognition program created by The Financial Revolutionist to identify companies in financial services making the greatest difference. Latimore’s focus is on innovation in financial services and fintech, with a keen interest in consumer behavior and technology-enabled strategy. Most recently, he was the Chief Research Officer at Celent, a leading research firm focused on technology for financial services. LinkedIn.
Beyond the Hype: Delivering Real Business Value with AI in Financial Services
Brown is a seasoned leader in the AI and tech industry, specializing in transformative solutions for banking and fintech. Leading a team dedicated to innovation, Brown drives the development of tailored Deep Tech solutions to meet evolving client needs. At Intelygenz, he focuses on pushing AI technology boundaries, specializing in data-driven architecture, streaming AI, and human-centric solutions. LinkedIn.
What Does the Era of Generative AI Mean for Financial Institutions? What are the Real Use Cases for GenAI in Financial Institutions and Banks?
Subbarao leads Financial Services and Strategic Parnterships at Instabase. She is responsible for setting and implementing Instabase’s Financial Services product and market roadmap, enabling organizations across the world to drive bottomline efficiencies and transform customer journeys through the automation of critical processes underpinned by unstructured data. LinkedIn.
Alwell leads the Financial Services Solutions engineering team at GitHub and has worked in AI for the last decade. He has spoken at Microsoft events such as Build and Innovate as well as every GitHub Galaxy event including the keynote of 2022. His developer tools journey started in communications, digital media, then consulting, and now his focus is on serving GitHub’s financial services customers. LinkedIn.
Leveraging Advanced AI to Deliver Accurate and Adaptive Customer Service
Misra is Senior machine Learning Engineer at Truckstop and an AI Consultant at Sentick, where she focuses on assisting startups with their AI strategy and building solutions. She leverages her extensive experience in machine learning and a Master’s degree from the University of Waterloo, where her research bridged driving and machine learning to offer valuable insights. LinkedIn.
