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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
U.K.-based Ramp raised $5 million in Seed funding for its business forecasting tools.
This marks the company’s first round of funding.
The round was led by AlbionVC and Eurazeo with participation from Triple Point Ventures and a group of Angel Investors.
Business forecasting company Ramp (not to be confused with business finance automation startup Ramp) raised $5 million in Seed funding this week. The round was led by AlbionVC and Eurazeo with participation from Triple Point Ventures and a handful of Angel Investors.
Ramp, which plans to use the funds to streamline and scale client onboarding, offers businesses forecasting tools to help finance teams enhance revenue predictions. The company aims to replace the Excel spreadsheets many businesses use for revenue forecasting with a more sophisticated tool. Ramp’s technology enables businesses to run scenarios and forecast in a matter of minutes and predict customer behavior, future revenue, and annual growth.
“Our platform dramatically increases the accuracy of revenue forecasting in a fraction of time it would take in spreadsheets,” said Ramp Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder Angus Lovitt. “What took us all a day in terms of number crunching we can now do in minutes. Yet what really excites me about the platform are the strategic decisions we empower businesses to make.”
Lovitt brings his experience from the computer gaming world to Ramp. He helped scale the popular Candy Crush game during his tenure at King Digital Entertainment. Lovitt also carries over his connections to the gaming community. He has brought on a handful of gaming clients– including Space Ape Games, FRVR, Pixel United, and Netspeak Games– to Ramp.
U.K.-based Ramp was founded in 2018 and specializes in cohort-based forecasting. With an ambition to become a tech unicorn, today was Ramp’s first round of funding. “Our long term goal is to position Ramp as a single source of truth for the future of businesses, from which prescriptive and proactive analytics services can stem,” said company CEO Dan Marcus. “We’re at the forefront of this new product category and it’s great to have such renowned investors believe in this vision and join us on this journey.” Marcus described the VC funding process in a recent blog post.
This is a sponsored blog post by Saurav Gupta, Sales Engineer, InterSystems
Financial services organizations are awash with data, and there’s a clear appetite in the sector to make use of it for a wide variety of initiatives, including analytics on real-time transactional data and reducing customer churn. But doing so requires putting the right data management architecture in place. That is rarely easy. Over the years, organizations have tried different ways to deliver consistent views of enterprise data to support their business needs but rapid changes in the demands of what their IT infrastructure and data environments need to deliver, like the implementation of data lakes and data warehouses, mean that challenges still remain.
While data within financial services organizations is often siloed and difficult to access and consume, we are now seeing the emergence of new approaches to data management that can overcome these challenges. Two of the most promising: data fabric and data mesh, are designed to help organisations leverage maximum business value from their data and existing data infrastructure.
There are many similarities between the two approaches. Both allow the data to remain stored in place at the source – a key differentiator over legacy systems that require data to be copied and moved using batch processes.
In addition, both a data fabric and a data mesh connect disparate data and applications, including on-premises, from partners, and in the public cloud, to discover, connect, integrate, transform, analyze, manage, and utilize them. By leveraging these capabilities, both approaches enable the business to meet business goals quickly and efficiently.
Points of differentiation
Despite the parallels between the two, there are also some important differences to consider here, which highlight why they are complementary rather than interchangeable. With a data fabric, the metadata, governance, and semantics are managed centrally. This structure is more frequently encountered in financial services companies that employ a Chief Data Officer that takes a top-down approach to data management.
The latest iteration, smart data fabrics, build on the data fabric foundation and incorporate a wide range of analytics capabilities, including data exploration, business intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning directly within the fabric itself. For financial services, this means there is an ability to perform analytics on real-time event and transactional data, without impacting the performance of the transactional system. Organizations can move away from querying on offline or intraday numbers, to making decisions in the moment with real-time insights.
A data mesh, on the other hand, enables local domain teams to own the delivery of data products based on the premise that they are closer to their data and understand it better. It’s supported by an architecture that leverages a domain-oriented, self-serve design, enabling local teams to discover, understand, trust, and use data to inform decisions and initiatives and develop and deploy data products and applications.
One key difference between the two is that a data mesh allows data governance to be defined and managed at the source systems (endpoints), while a data fabric provides an overarching fabric that includes governance, lineage, security, etc., applied and managed centrally, for example, by the CDO. Looking at this in practical terms, a data mesh may be appropriate for situations where there are data sovereignty concerns, whereas a data fabric may be the right approach where the office of the CDO is defining an organizational taxonomy with access privileges.
Complementary approaches
These points of differentiation highlight the fact that the two approaches are not mutually exclusive – far from it. In fact, when it comes to determining which type of architecture to use, the selection is dependent upon the business use case. If the senior team wants to have an enterprise view of their data assets with enterprise level governance, for example, they will likely choose to implement an enterprise data fabric. If the organization wants to empower certain trusted parts of the enterprise with the flexibility to create and manage their own applications to speed innovation and digital transformation initiatives, or if data sovereignty issues are of concern, a data mesh may be an appropriate component of their overall architecture.
However, it’s equally true that, in the right circumstances, the two approaches can, and often do, work together positively to achieve positive outcomes. As one of our major financial services customers puts it: “Fabric and mesh share the same goal of easy access to data, and under the right circumstances can in fact be complementary approaches.”
Working together in perfect harmony
The reality is that data fabric architectures can co-exist with data mesh initiatives where it makes sense, such as in large organizations that must manage campaign data locally within regions.
One example where a data fabric and a data mesh work simultaneously can be seen in the demands of a large multinational wealth management firm with customer 360 initiatives.
In this use case, the company’s overall data strategy is managed centrally (data fabric), but sovereignty issues over data retention and processing are present in certain countries where local marketing campaigns are being executed. Allied to this, there is specific local knowledge of the customers in the regions, which informs variations in local campaign management. These variations are dealt with by the regional, country, or local IT teams (data mesh).
Finding a way forward
These kinds of practical examples of how data mesh and data fabric can work together to deliver tangible business benefits are ultimately far more illuminating than the debate about the respective merits of each approach.
It’s all about how the approaches can help in streamlining and simplifying business architectures so that organizations can focus on leveraging their data in meaningful ways that deliver tangible business value. Over time, we would expect to see further evolution of the two approaches with data mesh innovations in areas like domain-oriented data ownership coming together with the increasingly mature data fabric architecture. All the time though, the pragmatic focus must remain on what this combination of capabilities delivers to the bottom line. For too many organizations, data infrastructure is still seen as a cost center, but these new paradigms are paving the way for a new understanding of its value, allowing it to be appreciated in a new light as a profit center that contributes its own substantial value to the business.
This week starts the official commemoration of Women’s History Month. And with FinovateEurope less than two weeks away, we thought the two occasions provided a great opportunity to showcase some of the women who will take center stage on March 14 at the Intercontinental O2 in London to demo their company’s latest fintech innovation.
Gerlinde Berghofer, COO and Co-Founder, BehaviorQuant
FinovateEurope starts on March 14 and continues through March 15. Tickets are still available – and early-bird savings end this week. So visit our FinovateEurope hub today and save your spot!
Modern Payments and Silicon Valley Bank partnered to launch a cross-border money movement tool called Global ACH.
Global ACH leverages local payment rails to enable mutual clients to send cross-border payments.
Global ACH differs from SWIFT in that it is less expensive and works better for fast, one-off transactions.
Payment operations platform Modern Treasury has teamed up with Silicon Valley Bank to create a new cross-border payments solution. Global ACH, the new tool, will allow mutual clients to send cross-border payments via local payment rails.
The goal of Global ACH is to provide users an option other than the SWIFT network to send payments internationally. Global ACH enables customers to automate international payments using the local payment rails– equivalent to ACH and RTP– in each country. Leveraging local rails promotes efficiency and helps to lower the costs associated with cross-border payments.
“Payments are in the midst of a massive transformation, and it’s critical that we support our customers with an international footprint in the same way we support them domestically,” said Modern Treasury CEO and Co-founder Dimitri Dadiomov. “Global ACH means providing customers with more choice, greater efficiency, and lower costs. We’re happy to work with Silicon Valley Bank to bring this capability to our mutual clients to help them scale.”
Potential use cases for Global ACH include:
Marketplaces that pay out users and suppliers in international markets
Shipping and logistics firms that disburse funds to vendors and suppliers abroad
Financial services such as payroll and lenders sending funds to international recipients
Companies that need to pay large numbers of international suppliers and contractors
Software providers offering accounts payable services for clients paying out globally or facilitating remittances
Today’s partnership builds on an existing relationship between Modern Treasury and Silicon Valley Bank. The two currently offer international payment capabilities using the SWIFT network. SWIFT differs from Global ACH in that it works well for fast, one-off international payments. SWIFT is also more expensive than Global ACH. This is why the two anticipate Global ACH to be more popular for companies with recurring international payments and smaller value payouts.
“We are always looking to enhance the payments experience for our fast-growing and innovative clients, many of whom have, or plan to have, an international presence,” said Silicon Valley Bank Head of Payments Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore. “By bringing together the power of SVB’s Global ACH capabilities and the strength of Modern Treasury’s platform, we will enable more of our mutual clients to move money faster, with real-time data visibility and more efficient workflows.”
Founded in 2018, Modern Payments offers APIs to automate money movement while providing control over fund flows with approval workflows, notifications, reporting, and more. The company has raised $183 million and is headquartered in California.
Paris-based natural language analytics data provider SESAMm raised $37 million (€35 million) in Series B2 funding this week.
The company will use the investment to grow its workforce and fuel global expansion.
A Best of Show winner at FinovateEurope 2022, SESAMm culls billions of web articles and other content to provide organizations and businesses with sentiment and ESG data on public and private companies.
Natural language analytics data provider SESAMm has raised $37 million (€35 million) in Series B2 funding. The investment will help accelerate the Paris, France-based company’s growth and plans for global expansion. SESAMm also will use the capital to add to its workforce in sustainability, technology, sales, and marketing.
“We are happy and grateful to close this €35 million Series B2 round to continue our growth journey and expand to new international markets such as Singapore,” SESAMm CEO and co-founder Sylvain Forté said. “Raising a significant amount during challenging market conditions highlights the relevancy of SESAMm’s focus on two key trends: AI and sustainability. In turn, these tools enable organizations to make better decisions and fill the data gaps, particularly in ESG, on both public and private companies.”
SESAMm’s funding comes almost a year after it won Best of Show at FinovateEurope in London for the live demo its TextReveal solution. Powered by SESAMm’s natural language processing engine, the platform analyzes over 20 billion web articles and messages to deliver daily sentiment and ESG data. The company serves top private equity firms, hedge funds, and other asset management companies, as well as both small and large corporations, with services ranging from controversy detection and private equity due diligence to ESG and SDG sentiment scores and suppliers monitoring.
This week’s round was co-led by deep tech VC firm Elaia and BNP Paribas’ venture capital arm, Opera Tech Ventures. The funding takes SESAMm’s total equity funding to $53 million (€50 million). Also participating were asset manager Unigestion, Raiffeisen Bank International’s venture capital arm Elevator Ventures, AFG Partners, and CEGEE Capital. Investors in SESAMm’s previous Series B1 round, including Carlyle and New Alpha Asset Management, also participated.
Founded in 2014, SESAMm finished last year as the recipient of the Real Deals ESG Tech Award, which recognizes both demonstrated customer and revenue growth, as well as the impact of the recipient’s work on businesses and clients. In November, SESAMm announced a partnership with EthiFinance to help the European risk analysis and ESG rating specialist launch its EthiMonitor solution. The technology provides ESG controversy analysis “for any SME universe.” Also late last year, SESAMm teamed up with South Korea-based Kyobo AXA Investment Managers to develop machine learning models based on SESAMm’s NLP alternative data.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope in London on March 14. Register today and save your spot.
Numeral’s banking aggregation platform enables fintechs and financial institutions to connect to EU/U.K. payment schemes by integrating with their preferred sponsor bank.
Features
Includes easy, fast, and comprehensive access to EU/U.K. payment schemes
Delivers reduced time-to-market
Provides future-proof infrastructure with no ongoing maintenance
Why it’s great
Building robust, multi-scheme, pan-European payment workflows with Tier 1 banks is easy, fast and cost-effective with the Numeral banking-aggregation platform.
Presenters
Edouard Mandon, Co-Founder & CEO Prior to working at Numeral, Mandon worked at iBanFirst and Qonto. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope in London on March 14. Register today and save your spot.
JJCFinTech’s regulator-grade solution, Cerebro, accelerates compliance with AML obligations using a ready-to-go rules repository to define a company’s regulatory obligations and how to meet them.
Features
Reduces overall cost of compliance
Offers ready-to-go regulatory guard rails in a single digital solution
Delivers traceability from regulations and firm policies into workflow and rules systems
Why it’s great
Cost-accessible compliance for clients at all stages of their growth cycle.
Presenter
Yas Jaffer, Co-Founder Jaffer has a wealth of experience developing world-class regtech solutions for the financial services industry. Jaffer was previously an MD at IHS Markit (S&P Global), running a $50M business line. LinkedIn
Execute POCs 10x faster with results in 4-6 weeks instead of 12-24 months
Includes secure sandbox environment with 2.5 billion data points to support evaluation
Reduces cost by 80%
Why it’s great
NayaOne provides the fastest way to execute on digital transformation projects using fintech solutions to innovate, remain competitive, increase revenue, and stay ahead of customer expectations.
Presenters
Karan Jain, CEO& Founder Jain is the former CIO of a multinational bank and a highly regarded technologist and practitioner, now solving a problem in the market he experienced firsthand. LinkedIn
Oli Platt, Product & Marketplace Manager Platt is a data-led product manager with a data science background leading NayaOne’s tech marketplace, working with the best vendors in financial services. LinkedIn
It’s the first day of March, which means FinovateEurope is officially taking place this month on March 14 through 15 at the Intercontinental O2 in London (there’s still time to register). As you preview the agenda and prepare your notes on must-see company demos, you’re probably also filling your schedule with meetings and after parties. Because, let’s face it– sometimes the networking is just as good as the on-stage content.
After 12 years of attending Finovate events, I’ve seen some unique attendees on the networking floor– including a dog and a baby. But who can you expect to see this year? Our audience is generally comprised of financial institution executives, startup representatives, industry analysts, and venture capitalists. However, everyone has a unique “conference personality.” Below, I’ve broken down these personalities into five categories.
The Front Row Fiend
This is the person that arrives extra early to secure their seat in the front row. They’re usually analysts or journalists in search of taking quality, up-close pictures of the on-stage discussions. As an added bonus, because they have their choice of auditorium seat, they usually secure a spot next to a much-coveted power outlet.
The Standing Room Only
Opposite in personality to the Front Row Fiend, the Standing Room Only person prefers the back row. They like being in the back so much that they forgo the luxury of sitting, even during the longest sessions. Whether they stand in the back because they are hoping to run into a colleague or because they enjoy watching the people in the audience, it is possible that the handful of people that stand in the back of the auditorium know something that the rest of us don’t.
The Demo Obsessed
Finovate was a pioneer of the tech demo model back in 2007, and many veteran attendees return each year just to watch the demos. This is where the Demo Obsessed personality comes from. These are the people that pay attention to every detail of every demo. They are both quick to applaud and quick to critique. This brings me to the next personality…
The Tweeter
This person is the perfect combination of someone who thinks quickly on their feet and who knows how to work a social platform. During every session, the Tweeter always has their two thumbs ready to type a comment, reply, critique, or a recently stated statistic into Twitter– and they always do so using the correct hashtags while tagging the proper username.
The Hallway Conference Caller
If you go to enough conferences, there’s no doubt you’ve been the Hallway Conference Caller at some point. This is the person huddled in a corner wearing ear pods and holding their computer so they can jump on a weekly scheduled call and quickly have their input before returning to the auditorium or networking floor.
Massachusetts-based BankProv has inked a partnership with cash management platform MaxMyInterest to offer BankProv Max Savings, a new high-interest savings account.
No minimum balance is required to open the account, which is available exclusively on the MaxMyInterest platform.
MaxMyInterest users can earn up to 4.55% APY on their cash deposits compared to the national savings average of 0.35%.
Future-ready commercial bank BankProv has teamed up with intelligent cash management platform MaxMyInterest. The partnership will give customers and clients of both companies access to a new, high-interest savings account, BankProv Max Savings. The new account will be offered exclusively on the MaxMyInterest platform. No minimum balance will be required to open the account.
“From quickly opening an account to maximizing returns on deposit balances, the BankProv Max Savings account on the MaxMyInterest platform will further enhance the banking experience for our clients,” BankProv co-CEO Joe Reilly said. “We believe our partnership with Max will provide benefits as more consumers continue to seek digital banking options and keep a closer eye on interest rates.”
Additionally, courtesy of the BankProv partnership, the deposits to the new account will be 100% insured. The FDIC covers the first $250,000, and remaining funds will be covered under a special private, industry-sponsored insurance fund called DIF.
Headquartered in New York and founded in 2013, the company has nearly 1,500 wealth management firms registered to use the MaxMyInterest platform with their clients. Max’s platform enables clients to allocate their cash holdings to the highest yielding accounts without having to change their existing bank relationship. The technology determines the optimal allocation of the client’s cash balances on a monthly basis, enabling customers to earn up to 4.55% APY on FDIC-insured deposits versus the national savings average of 0.35%. Max also offers embedded finance solutions that empower financial services companies to offer Max’s intelligent cash management technology from their own websites.
“We are proud to partner with BankProv, an innovative bank that has a long history of serving clients in Massachusetts and across the country,” MaxMyInterest founder and CEO Gary Zimmerman said. “Together with BankProv, we can help clients ensure that all of their funds remain fully-insured, while earning market-leading rates.”
Massachusetts-based BankProv is a commercial bank that provides Banking-as-a-Service and technology-based solutions for corporate clients. The 10th oldest bank in the U.S., BankProv is a subsidiary of Provident Bancorp, which trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker PVBC. In December, BankProv announced that Carol Houle, who had been serving as CFO, and Reilly, who had been serving as Board Chair, had been named co-CEOs and co-Presidents.
MaxMyInterest made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2014. More recently, the company has announced integrations with modern CRM platforms Wealthbox and Redtail Technology, as well as with Morningstar and fellow Finovate alum Envestnet. Last fall, the company appointed Ateet Adhikari as Chief Operating Officer. Adhikari was previously the COO of ShopRunner, which was acquired by FedEx in 2020. In a statement Adhikari praised MaxMyInterest as having created “the most innovative solution in the market in a way that helps depositors, wealth managers, and banks.”
Wise is unveiling a new look and feel, as well as two new products.
The company anticipates its “visual makeover” will create a more consistent user experience.
The two new products include the Wise Business Card and a money transfer link.
It can be tough for a legacy fintech to make noise among the onslaught of new competing digital tools released on a weekly basis. Despite the challenge, cross-border money transfer product Wise is finding a way.
The U.K.-based company has swapped its color scheme from blue to green. But that’s not all that has changed. As Wise described in a press announcement, “The complete visual makeover features a fresh green palette and a bold new font, and draws from global currencies, languages, alphabets and places around the world.”
Interestingly, Wise changed its name from Transferwise two years ago in an effort to broaden its image from a money transfer company to a more holistic global banking services provider. Today’s change could be seen as a next step in that process. Wise explained that the new look and feel will make its customer experience consistent regardless of the customer’s geographical location or language. This new experience reinforces Wise’s mission to “build money without borders.”
Describing the visual change, Wise Co-founder and CEO Kristo Käärmann said, “Our new look is inspired by the millions of people and businesses worldwide that use Wise today. It draws from where they come from, but also represents the excitement of the world open for them to conquer.”
Today’s announcement also highlighted two new products for the global money firm. The first is the Wise Business Card, which is an extension of the company’s Wise Account. The card is currently available to U.S. customers. The second new product– also for U.S. users– enables users to transfer money to recipients via a link. Instead of requiring the sender to know the recipient’s bank details, the recipient can securely enters their bank credentials after clicking on the link.
Despite today’s progress, Käärmann says the company still has a long road ahead. “People and businesses are still being duped by hidden fees, and losing over £180 billion each year to their banks,” he explained. “This is money they could have otherwise used to pay bills, expand their businesses or even save for a rainy day. We don’t accept it and we’re committed to solving this for everyone, everywhere.”
Wise also celebrated a new milestone in today’s announcement. The company has reached 16 million customers since launching in 2011. Wise’s technology enables people and businesses to hold funds in more than 50 currencies, as well as move money between countries and spend money across international borders. The company went public in mid-2021 and now trades on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker WISE with a current market capitalization of $5.94 billion.
Klarna reported a $1 billion operating loss in 2022, up from a $680 million operating loss in 2021.
Despite the loss, Klarna plans to return to profitability by this summer.
Klarna last reported a full year profitability in 2018.
Consumer payment services company Klarna is inching toward profitability, but is still in the red.
The Swedish company released its operating figures this week, reporting an operating loss of $1 billion for 2022 (10.5 billion crowns). The negative side of the news is that Klarna’s operating loss increased– the company reported a loss of $680 million in 2021. But the positive spin is that Klarna plans to return to profitability by summer.
Last week, the buy now, pay later (BNPL) player reported it has seen a large amount of growth in its U.S. market. The region generated a 71% year-over-year increase in gross merchandise volume, while improving credit loss rates by 37%. As of December 2022, the U.S– with its 34 million consumers– has become Klarna’s largest market by revenue.
Klarna, which last posted a full-year profit in 2018, may be able to reach its 2023 profitability goal. The company has seen increased growth in the U.S. and the U.K. “The U.S. and the U.K. [are] growing at a very high pace, pushing up the average growth number for the whole company,” said company Chief Executive Sebastian Siemiatkowski in a statement to Reuters. Additionally, the company restructured in 2022. Klarna let go of 10% of its staff in May of last year in an effort to rein in costs.
With 150 million customers across the globe, Klarna is one of the pioneers in the BNPL arena and currently offers its BNPL payment tools in 45 markets. More than 400,000 retailers, including H&M, Macy’s, and IKEA, offer Klarna within their checkout flow. The company has raised $4.5 billion since it was founded in 2005.
