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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Cornèr and NDGITpartner to provide direct access to third-party service providers under PSD2 regulation.
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.
Financial services startup SoFi is building out its insurance offerings with the help of two insurtech startups.
The San Francisco-based company teamed up with Lemonade and Root, adding three types of insurance to the company’s existing portfolio. An integration with New York-based Lemonade will provide home and renters insurance, while Ohio-based Root will offer an auto insurance option.
Until this month, SoFi’s insurance offering was limited to life insurance, a product made possible through a partnership the company initiated in 2018 with California-based Ladder.
“Protecting yourself and your assets is a critical and often overlooked piece of your overall financial well-being,” said Anthony Noto, SoFi CEO. “People come to SoFi to get their money right, and we’re pleased to now provide them with more tools to be able to do so by partnering with companies that share our values in ease of use, transparency, and efficiency.”
The new insurance offerings aim to be simple to understand and transparent about pricing and benefits, without agents, middlemen, or phone calls. SoFi said that its client base requested more affordable insurance offerings. Over the past year, the company counted 8,000 conversations between financial planners and under-insured or uninsured clients.
Lemonade uses AI to craft an insurance policy tailored to each customer. With the company’s chatbot interface, users can select and start their coverage in 90 seconds. The charge is structured as a flat fee– homeowners insurance starts at $25 per month and renters insurance starts at $5 per month– and claims are paid in three minutes.
With Root’s auto insurance, drivers can potentially save up to 52% over their current coverage. The company uses data from clients’ smartphones to measure driving behavior and habits, offering better rates to better drivers. “Our priority at Root is to put the power back into consumers’ hands by making auto insurance clear and understandable,” said Alex Timm, Root Insurance co-founder and CEO. “We’re excited to partner with the SoFi team as a means for members to have access to more affordable, accurate and fair auto insurance.”
To boost interest in its existing life insurance product, SoFi announced it is offering $25 for life insurance applicants to invest in stocks, ETFs, or SoFi’s roboadvising. This comes as a response to research findings that indicate that millennials are misinformed about the costs and benefits of life insurance.
Founded in 2011, SoFi offers a range of millennial-focused financial products and resources. SoFi’s addition of the new insurance offerings “fulfills its ability to offer members every financial product they may need at any stage of life.”
At FinDEVr New York 2017, the company gave a presentation in combination with Quovo titled How Quovo and SoFi Perfected Bank Authentication. SoFi has raised $2 billion from 29 investors across 11 rounds of funding.
Ixarisadds new Chief Legal and Compliance Officer Georg von Breven and Commercial Director Sean Ashton.
FICOunveils the latest version of its Decision Management Platform, FICO DMP.
Visalaunches a suite of beta APIs and tools to help developers design and test payment solutions.
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.
Gusto’s New Deal to Deliver Automated Accounting to Small Businesses.
Quadient’s New Launch Accelerates the Insurance Claims Process.
AlphaPointto Power Asset Management Tools for Laureate Digital Securities.
Around the web
Pendo Systemsappoints Bill Woodley as President and COO.
eMoney Advisorlaunches voice assistant for financial advisors.
Ledger to integrate IOTA tokens with its secure hardware cryptocurrency wallets.
KPMG namesKlarna, Revolut, and SoFi among 25 most innovative Fintech startups in the world.
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.
Baker HillupdatesNextGen Omni-Channel Marketing to include P2P normative analysis to identify the most profitable cross-sell opportunities.
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.
TechCrunch talks withHackerOne CEO Marten Mickos on bug bounties and the value of white hat hackers.
Cardlyticsbolsters executive ranks with pair of new group presidents: Randall Beard and Shannon Johnson.
American Banker interviews new SoFi CEO Anthony Neto.
First Datagoes live with Clover Mini and Clover Flex smart terminals in Germany and Austria.
Chetuearns Best Custom Business Software Developer Award from US Business News.
Ivan Nabalon, CEO and founder of Best of Show winning Electronic IDentificationdiscusses the mainstream potential for cryptocurrencies.
ChartIQteams up with Trading Central to provide technical insights and tool to traders.
Blockchain healthcare platform HealthCombix partners with NuCypher.
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.
Anthony Noto, Chief Operating Officer for Twitter, has stepped down from his post at the popular social networking platform. His destination? A job as Chief Executive Officer for lending and wealth management firm, SoFi.
“We are simply thrilled to have found someone of Anthony’s expertise and knowledge to lead SoFi,” interim CEO Tom Hutton said. “The SoFi board unanimously agrees that Anthony’s deep understanding of technology, consumer, and financial businesses make him the perfect fit to be SoFi’s CEO. We could not be more excited to have someone of his caliber on board.”
Starting at Twitter as Chief Financial Officer in 2014, Noto became COO in November 2016. He came to Twitter after serving as co-head of global TMT investment banking at Goldman Sachs, a firm he first joined in 1999, and where he was named partner in 2004. From 2008 to 2010, Noto was CFO for the National Football League. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and has an MBA from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
“SoFi has a significant opportunity to build on its leadership position in student and personal loans to revolutionize consumer finance and build a next-generation financial services company,” Noto said. “I’m excited to work with Tom and the rest of the SoFi team.”
Noto arrives at a time of significant growth for the company. SoFi announced surpassing $25 billion in funded loans last year, and reported that its student loan refinancing products helped borrowers save more than $2 billion. The company said that in the fourth quarter of 2017 it completed its largest securitizations to date for refinanced student loans ($776 million) and personal loans ($727 million). For the full year, SoFi’s total issuance was $6.9 billion.
A financing innovator, SoFi provides student loan refinancing, as well as mortgages and personal loans. The company looks beyond credit scores and debt-to-income ratios to consider factors such as cashflow, career, and education to offer lower rates to borrowers it refers to as “members.” This underscores another unique aspect of SoFi, which stands for Social Finance. The company proactively supports timely repayment of loans through a variety of tools, resources, and strategies including temporarily suspending payments in the event of job loss.
SoFi also provides wealth management and insurance services. The company’s investment management solution combines both live advisors and automated rebalancing to give investors comprehensive and low-cost advice and support for their long-term financial planning. The company has also partnered with Protective Life to offer life insurance coverage up to $1 million for online applicants and up to $5 million for applicants with a medical exam.
SoFi partnered with Quovo to presentHow Quovo and SoFi Perfected Bank Authentication at FinDEVr New York 2017, winning the Favorite FinDEVr Alum award. The company has raised more than $2 billion in funding, and has an estimated valuation of $4 billion based on its most recent $500 million fundraising in February 2017.
JuvoReceives Investment from Samsung to Boost Smartphone Usage Among Underbanked.
Around the web
Atomico usesQuid for the 2017 State of European Tech report.
Bobsguide interviews Lisa Shields, CEO of FI.SPAN.
Thomson ReutersunveilsWizcorp, a digital gateway that will provide customers with data on more than 1.8 million Indian private companies.
FICOpartners with European regulatory risk analytics consultancy, 4most.
Finastraannounces new partners to its FusionFabric.cloud open architecture.
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.
It’s that time of the year once again: KPMG and H2 Ventures have teamed up to introduce their Leading Global Fintech Innovators roster, the Fintech 100 for 2017. The judges for this year’s Fintech 100 included more than 20 professionals from KPMG and other organizations with expertise in IT, data analytics, capital markets, financial services, and more.
This year 11 Finovate/FinDEVr alums made the Leading 50, with another 12 alums making the Emerging 50. New entrants to the KPMG/H2 Ventures roster include SoFi and Revolut among the Leading 50. All 12 the alums on the Emerging 50 are making their first appearance. See the full list.
Some of the highlights from the 2017 Fintech 100 include the observation that five of the roster’s top 10 companies are from China, as are the top three companies on the list: Ant Financial, ZhongAn, and Qudian (Qufenqi). The U.S. has a pair of companies in the top five: Oscar and Avant, and Europe and the U.K. each have one company in the top ten: Kreditech and Atom Bank, respectively.
Speaking of Asia, the Asia-Pacific region has 30 fintech companies in the top 100. The United States has 19 companies – the most from any single country – and the U.K. and EMEA areas have 41 companies in the list. The U.K. and EMEA region are also responsible for the highest number of companies on KPMG/H2 Ventures’ Emerging 50 list with 26.
With regard to sectors within fintech, the Fintech 100 breaks down as follows:
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.
As former Vice President Joe Biden might put it, today’s news that Klarna has been granted a full banking license is truly a BFD.
“Big Fintech Deal,” that is.
“We are now one of Europe’s largest banks with 60 million customers, 70,000 merchants, and working seamlessly across borders,” Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said (pictured). He called the banking license an “exciting milestone” for the Stockholm, Sweden-based company, in specific, and for the European banking sector, in general. The full banking license was granted by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, Finansinspektionen, and will enable Klarna to provide a range of new services – from payment cards to digital wallets – to consumers throughout the continent. Indeed, TechCruch reported today that as part of the licensing, Klarna will legally change its name to “Klarna Bank” – though it will continue to operate in the market as “Klarna.”
Highlighting the company’s history as a e-commerce innovator and its future as a “consumer-oriented, product driven, and technology intensive bank,” Siemiatkowski trained his sights on retail banking itself. “We will … (provide) solutions that ensure a smooth customer experience, help people streamline their financial lives and continue to support businesses by solving the complexity in handling payments,” he said, adding, “the opportunities are tremendous, it is a thrilling prospect.”
Coverage of the news in The Financial Times notes that Siemiatkowski had planned on making this kind of move for some time. Blaming regulations for helping limit banks’ exposure to the competition that is commonplace in the technology world, Siemiatkowski criticized the way too many banks provide customer service that is both poor and overpriced. Ironically, he suggested that new, disruptor-friendly, regulations might be just the fix that’s needed, saying new rules might “set the right prerequisites for the destruction of that industry.”
Founded in 2005, Klarna demonstrated its after-delivery payment solution at FinovateSpring 2012. Earlier this month the company announced a major new strategic investor, Brightfolk, which acquired shares valued at more than $225 million from existing Klarna shareholders. Brightfolk is held by Anders Holch Povlsen, owner of European fashion company, BESTSELLER, which is a long-time partner of Klarna. In February, the Klarna integrated with Radial’s Payment platform, expanding e-commerce payment options for the company – the same month Klarna announced that it was acquiring German online payment provider, BillPay, from Wonga. Klarna began the year with news that it was teaming up with ASOS Partners, bringing its “pay after delivery” option to consumers in the Nordic region.
With more than $376 million in funding. Klarna is believed to have a valuation of $2.25 billion. The company is among a number of fintech companies in Europe and the U.S. that are pursuing banking licenses to diversify their businesses of late. Online lender SoFiapplied for federal deposit insurance earlier this month, one significant step toward launching an digital-only SoFi Bank. And London’s TransferWiseunveiled a new “Borderless” foreign exchange account in May that observers believe is part of the company’s goal to more directly challenge banks.
Our first developers conference in the U.K. is just over a month away. Join us for two days of developer-focused presentations, demonstrations, and conversations at FinDEVr 2017 London, June 12 and 13. Stop by our registration page today and save your spot.