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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
One of my favorite sayings popularized by the current Democratic Party candidate for president is “don’t tell me your values. Show me your budget.” The implication is that, at the end of the day, talk is cheap. Show me how you actually spend your money, and I’ll learn all I need to know about what matters to you and what does not.
By that metric, the news that Dutch fintech and Finovate alum Ohpen has acquired Saas-based, crossborder mortgagetech Davinci tells us quite a bit about what what the Amsterdam-based cloud core banking engine maker thinks about the importance of expanding beyond its competencies in savings, investments, loans, and current account products.
“We are a growing company with huge ambitions,” Ohpen CEO Matthijs Aler said. “Together, we intend to lead the charge in directly challenging incumbent providers with outdated technology. Our mission is – and always has been – to set financial institutions free from legacy software. Now we can help a broader range of financial institutions deliver tangible change to meet the needs of tomorrow’s customers.”
Ohpen put the acquisition announcement in the context of its global growth strategy. This includes scaling operations in the Netherlands – where the company is a market leader – the United Kingdom, and Belgium initially, as well as expansion to other areas. Ohpen also plans to scale up its development centers in Spain and Slovakia.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but the combined entity will have 350 employees and $35 million in revenue. Davinci is Ohpen’s second acquisition. The company purchased core banking system implementation consultancy FYNN Advice in the fall of 2017.
Davinci leverages machine learning and AI to enhance and accelerate digital onboarding and acceptance during the mortgage lending process. Delivering cost savings of as much as 80%, the company’s signature solution is Close, a cloud-native platform for mortgage loan origination and servicing.
Calling the acquisition, “the natural next step” for both companies, Davinci Director Alwin van Dijk said, “We are the only two players with a real focus on back and middle office innovation for new and existing propositions.” van Dijk added that the ability to offer a broader range of products will be a “market game changer.”
With $47 million (€40 million) in funding from investors including NPM Capital and Amerborgh, Ohpen began the year teaming up with pensions administrator TKP Pensioen. The partnership with the Groningen, Netherlands-based digital pension platform enabled Ohpen to enter the pension market for the first time. Aler pointed out that the integration would enable the “originally conservative industry” of pension management to have a “fully digital and futureproof pension solution at its disposal.” This spring, Ohpen partnered with another pension management firm, Ortec Finance, integrating the company’s forecasting engine with the Ohpen platform.
It is hard to imagine having a better start to your week than Plaid had seven days ago when the innovative fintech (and Finovate alum) announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Visa for $5.3 billion.
But the €90 million ($100 million) raised by Swedish open banking platform Tink on Monday is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, the funding, which is the company’s largest to date, is a reminder that investment interest in (and funding for) companies dedicated to developing the infrastructure that connects consumers, banks, and the financial technologies is very much in abundance.
“Our aim is to become the preferred pan-European provider of digital banking services and to offer the technology needed for banks, fintechs, and startups to leverage the opportunities of open banking and enable them to successfully develop financial services in the future,” Tink co-founder and CEO Daniel Kjellén said in a statement.
Tink demonstrated its platform most recently at FinovateEurope 2019. For more on this year’s Finovate event in Europe kicking off next month, visit our FinovateEurope 2020 page.
Azimo, one of our earliest FinovateEurope alums, announced a pair of big changes at the top to begin the new week.
The London-based money transfer firm, founded in 2012, promoted its COO Richard Ambrose to CEO back in August, as Azimo founder Michael Kent took what TechCrunch referred to as a lateral move to become executive chairman. Today, Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication, reports that the company has appointed Dora Ziambra to the post of Chief Operating Officer. Azimo also promoted its head of finance Tatiana Okhotina to the post of Chief Financial Officer.
“We’re fortunate to have the depth of talent to fill these top roles internally,” Ambrose said in a statement. “We’re lucky too that Azimo will continue to benefit from the experience and leadership of these two outstanding women.”
Here’s our weekly roundup of the latest news from our Finovate alumni:
Union Bank to leverage technology from FIS for core banking.
Italy-based CREDEM leveragingWorldline’s Payment and Liquidity Hub software CRISTAL to process Target2 payments
POS software Vend partners with Klarna to offer retailers more flexible payment options.
U.K. food retailer The Co-operative to deployACI Worldwide’s fraud management solution, ReD Shield.
A partnership between TransferGo and Currencycloud will enable the money transfer company to enter 14 new markets.
YellowDogforges reseller agreement with Annex Pro.
Bankable cozies up with Plaid to allow its bank customers to connect with their users’ bank accounts.
Ohpenappoints former Tesla marketing leader Corinne Aaron as new head of marketing.
Segmint to acquire WAND’s Product and Service Taxonomy division.
CuneXuscelebrates 2019 success with a 40% year-over-year increase in consumer reach.
Three Key Lessons We Learned from Plaid – Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard that Visa is acquiring Plaid for a deal that’s worth $5.3 billion. The fact that they were so widely used at such an early stage is a testament to the quality of their code, but there are also a few key lessons to take away from their success.
ITSCREDIT’s Joao Pinto on the Digital Lending Opportunity – ITSCREDIT is a spinoff from ITSECTOR and is a fairly new player in the digital lending space. In this interview, Pinto talks to us about the digital lending opportunity, how his company fits into the current state of this fintech subsector, and what we can expect to see next.
Kasasa Enhances its Take-Back Loan – Community bank marketing expert Kasasaannounced a partnership with Carleton today in which Kasasa will integrate Carleton’s insurance and debt protection calculations into its Kasasa Loan.
Plinqit Brings Rewards-Powered Financial Literacy to First Community Bank – One day in the distant future, children will be educated in basic financial literacy as readily as they are taught algebra. Until then, solutions like Plinqit from HT Mobile Apps will be valuable tools for credit unions and community banks looking for novel ways to engage and educate their members and customers.
Credit, Data, and Cryptocurrencies: Graychain Rebrands as Credmark – The company that is bringing credit data clarity to the cryptocurrency industry is entering 2020 with a new name.
Tradeshift Lands $240 Million as it Inches Toward Profitability – The San Francisco-based company will use the investment to boost expansion efforts and gear toward a “direct path to profitability in the near future.”
Fintech, Financial Services, and the Case for 5G – Calling 5G “something banks aren’t even thinking about,” Celent SVP Dan Latimore said, “we believe the effects of 5G are going to be subtle and profound over time.”
Backbase-as-a-Service Helps Banks Leverage the Cloud to Innovate and Scale – The solution makes the company’s broad portfolio of digital banking offerings available to FIs looking to accelerate their ability to develop and offer new technologies to customers.
Also on Finovate.com
Visa to Acquire Plaid in $5.3 Billion Deal – “Today marks an important milestone for our company and for fintech,” company co-founder and CEO Zach Perret wrote on the Plaid blog earlier today. “What started with two founders building in a cramped conference room has become an incredible network that enables millions of consumers to interact with over 2,500 digital finance products.”
Not Another 2020 Trends Prediction Post (Seriously, It’s Not!) – We’re taking a look at the trends you can expect to see on stage next month at FinovateEurope. To keep things simple this year, we assessed the themes at a very high level and broke them down into three categories: the big, the little, and the trends in-between.
Singapore’s Digital Banking License Space Race Accelerates – Is there anyone out there who is NOT trying to secure a digital banking license in Singapore? The Monetary Authority of Singapore announced last week that has received 21 applications for digital bank licenses.
MogoSpend Offers Credit, Cashback, and Help Reducing Your Carbon Footprint – The new digital spending account from Canadian fintech Mogo does more than help Canadians get control of their finances. The solution also offers cardholders generous cashback rewards and a way to make a positive impact on the environment by reducing their carbon footprint.
Getsafe Expands its Insurtech to the U.K. – If your insurance company is offering you drone insurance, you know it’s not your grandmother’s insurance agency. Germany-based insurtech Getsafe does just that– and the company announced today it is expanding its home contents insurance offering (though, sadly, not its drone insurance offering) to users in the U.K.
Raisin’s New Acquisition Gives Company Access to the U.S. Market – European deposit marketplace Raisin announced today it acquired New York-based Choice Financial Solutions.
French Fintech Lydia Locks in $45 Million – TechCrunch reported this morning that French mobile payment app Lydia has raised $45 million (€40 million) in a round led by Tencent.
Visa’s Tap to Phone Brings Contactless Payments to mPOS – With Visa’sTap to Phone app arriving pre-installed on the new, enterprise grade smartphone from Samsung, a broad range of merchants will have access to yet another way to accept payments from customers.
INTL FCStone Acquires International Bank Transfer Firm – Headquartered in Germany, GIROXX offers international bank transfers and currency hedging. INTL FCStone plans to leverage this technology to expand its current client base to small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Cloud banking provider Ohpen has migrated close to one million Dutch and German savings accounts of LeasePlan Bank to its core banking engine in the bank’s major technology overhaul, reports Sharon Kimathi of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The project was completed by migrating the aforementioned accounts and more than 17 million historical records. The smooth transition was the result of a close collaboration between LeasePlan Bank and Ohpen, the vendor said.
“We set out to reduce our IT complexity and improve the flexibility, reliability and efficiency of our services, whilst wanting to avoid any negative customer impact as much as possible during the transition phase,” said Sander Frons, director at LeasePlan Bank.
Frons believes that the migration and implementation to the purely cloud-native Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution from Ohpen was a textbook example of how such an operation should be run.
Angelique Schouten, board member at Ohpen, observed that “more and more financial organizations want to increase the digitization of their technology stack, and at the same time want to decrease their IT complexity”.
In the case of LeasePlan Bank, the Ohpen Platform replaced a number of legacy solutions, including Flexcube from Oracle FSS, which were installed on-premise. The new platform is hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
Ohpen demonstrated its core banking platform at FinovateFall 2012. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the Ohpen announced earlier this year that NPM Capital had acquired a 35% stake in the company. Ohpen began 2019 with a big change at the top, appointing its Chief Operational Officer Matthijs Aler as CEO. Aler replaced Ohpen founder Chris Zadeh, who will continue to serve as chairman of the company’s board of directors.
PNC now usingRipple’s XRP for cross-border payments.
Mortgage Media interviews Steve Butler, founder and GM of AI Foundry.
Flywirepartners with Vietnam Prosperity Bank to simplify international tuition payments for Vietnamese students.
InSpirAVE is being issued its first patent for the technology underlying its savings social network system. The patent is part of the company’s portfolio of patents published internationally.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
Core banking platform provider Ohpenannounced this week that NPM Capital has acquired a 35% stake in the company.
This news comes after Ohpen’s first investor, Amerborgh, sold its stake in the company to NPM Capital in order to free up capital to finance future projects.
Rutger Ruigrok, Managing Director at NPM Capital, described Ohpen as “one of the most promising technology companies that we have seen in the past few years.” He continued, “We are impressed with their achievements over the past ten years: a cloud native core banking engine, an impressive customer base, and a wonderful foundation for further growth. We are very enthusiastic about now being part of their future.”
Having a new shareholder on board, Ohpen CEO Matthijs Aler explained, broadens the company’s options to finance future growth. “With Amerborgh and now also with NPM, we have a well-balanced long-term shareholder structure that enables Ohpen to realize all of its future growth ambitions. I am really looking forward to working with the NPM team,” he said.
Founded in 2009, Ohpen offers a cloud-based core banking API that gives banks a different option from legacy systems. At FinovateFall 2012, the company explained its multilingual cloud banking platform. In December of last year, Ohpen launched its new API portal.
With 120 employees across the Netherlands and Spain, Ohpen has raised $45 million. Matthijs Aler joined the company earlier this year as CEO.
defi SOLUTIONSdelivers loan origination system to First Investors Financial Services.
Trusha Patel joinsCrediVia as Chief Business Development Officer.
Onfidowelcomes Kevin Goldsmith as Chief Technology Officer and Thomas Ammirati as Chief Revenue Officer .
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
PaySendlaunches new money transfer service, PaySendLink.
QNB Group to deploy digital cash management solution from iGTB.
Klarnateams up with Stripe and Poq to enhance Missguided’s U.K. app.
Oliver Weber takes the helm as the new VP of Digital Banking, Switzerland, for Crealogix.
Infosys Finacleannounces partnership with Qatar National Bank.
Benedigo and Adelaide Bankdeploys regtech reporting solution from Wolters Kluwer.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
Ohpen is making tech progress as it has migrated over 400,000 Dutch savings and investment accounts from Aegon to its core banking engine, reports Antony Peyton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
As reported in April last year, financial services provider Aegon was partnering with Ohpen to develop a new platform for its Dutch services.
The firms said they are merging their domain knowledge within pensions and technology. Aegon will plug into Ohpen’s singular platform via a 100% API-based interface.
In the latest phase, Ohpen said this migration is in line with their previously communicated ambition to “build the infrastructure and architecture of the future”.
Chris Zadeh, founder and CEO of Ohpen, said it developed its cloud-based core banking engine “from scratch to ensure that the technology and processes actually work, all the time.”
After the completion of this migration, all accounts of clients with investment and (fiscal) savings products of Aegon Bank will be administered by Ohpen.
In other Ohpen news, last month it unveiled its Ohpen API Portal (OAP) in beta mode. In its view, IT and re-platforming projects in financial services have a “reputation of running over time and budget”.
The firm stays true to its name because when asked about wealthtech woes in the U.K. it was very transparent. In that exclusive report in November, it responded quickly and said it had made 19 staff redundant at its U.K. office due to the lack of action in the asset management space.
Ohpen’s Dutch operations appear to be unaffected by these U.K. job losses. As reported in an exclusive in July, LeasePlan Bank, the online savings bank based in the Netherlands, chose it to upgrade its whole core cloud banking engine.
Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Ohpen demonstrated its core banking platform at FinovateFall 2012. The firm has raised €40 million in funding and includes Amerborgh among its investors.
PYMNTS talks with Entersekt SVP of Product Niel Bester about consumer trust.
Konyteams with PSECU to deliver digital banking technology.
Hudson River Financial FCU selectsDigital Onboarding to enhance new member experience with updated onboarding
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
LeasePlan Bank, the online savings bank based in the Netherlands, has chosenOhpen to upgrade its whole core cloud banking engine, Pieter Aartsen and Angelique Schouten, global board members at Ohpen, told Henry Villar of FinTech Futures.
The bank will do a full-stack upgrade of its core engine and all other tech, which moves away from Oracle FSS’s Flexcube, an on-premises system onto Ohpen’s cloud-native engine.
This move will cover both the Dutch and German operations of the bank. Although the bank is headquartered in the Netherlands, a part of its client base is based in Germany.
The partnership was effective as of the 27th of June, but the team will officially start the implementation on the 4th of July. During the implementation, the bank’s whole system, bar the website, will be provided by Ohpen’s tech. For the bank it is the retail savings and deposits IT infrastructure, which is what LeasePlan Bank specialises in.
“Migrating LeasePlan Bank’s customers to the Ohpen core banking platform will reduce the complexity of their savings and deposits IT architecture and make LeasePlan Bank more agile,” said Aartsen.
Ohpen has been gaining traction over the last few years. Knab, a challenger bank subsidiary of Aegon, moved to Ohpen’s core from Sopra Banking Software’s system. Aegon is also a customer of Ohpen.
Former Delta Lloyd Bank, which was taken over by Nationale Nederlanden (NN) Group last year, also made the jump onto Ohpen’s tech, alongside NN Bank. On the way out are Temenos with its T24 system and Able (a local banking software provider).
When asked about the reason for this momentum, Schouten cited Ohpen’s “power of one” motto.
“We have one core banking engine running in the cloud, one code base, one version of our platform for all countries. The fact that it’s one solution and cloud-based means that it is faster, more reliable and we can release our new software to all clients at the same time, which happens every month,” she told us.
Aartsen added: “We were the first ones going all-in cloud, fully cloud natives and programmed a whole new bank from scratch and have been running it in the cloud and offering it as a SaaS for nine years now. This means that our tech is now future-proof, and we can adapt it in the future without the deployment demands of on-premise architecture.”
Ohpen demonstrated its core banking platform at FinovateFall 2012. Earlier this year, Ohpen raised $31 million in a Series C round led by PE firm Amerborgh, which took the company’s total equity capital to $50 million. Chris Zadeh is founder and CEO.
MapDdebutsMapD 4.0 for interactive location intelligence at scale.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
Best of Show winner ClinclaunchesSpotlight, the first self-service training program for conversational AI.
Cloud Lending Solutionsrecognized as a Top 10 Best Performing Salesforce Solution Provider for 2017 by Insight Success Magazine.
Ohpen Angelique Schouten named Chief Commercial Officer; Lydia van de Voort appointed to U.K. CEO post.
Auto financing offers from Santander Consumer USA now available on the AutoGravity app.
Pushforwins public vote at inaugural Dublin Innovation Jam.
Members Heritage Credit Union launches member-owned insurance agency in partnership with Insuritas.
Lendiointroduces new franchise in Gainesville-Ocala Florida region.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
