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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and live in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
FISPAN’s contextual business banking platform makes it simple for banks to offer commercial banking services embedded within ERP and business applications.
Features
Integrates banking applications within the standard menus of the user’s ERP
Embeds transaction data in the ERP domain to automate the bank reconciliation process
ACH, Wire, IR, Positive Pay, Check
Why it’s great
FISPAN embeds banking capabilities into ERP and accounting software, successfully enabling bi-directional connectivity between the bank and ERP for a streamlined treasury management experience.
Presenters
Robert Fillmore, VP, Europe Fillmore’s career spans over 25 years in the telecoms and fintech arenas, where he has led the adoption of innovative technologies by diverse companies such as BT, Vodafone, NatWest, HSBC, and BBVA. LinkedIn
Nigel Bateman, Pre-Sales & Account Manager Bateman’s current focus is expanding FISPAN’s footprint to include European tier 1 banks having relocated to Ireland from Vancouver during the pandemic to support this EU growth. LinkedIn
The partnership is the first of its kind, according to both Samsung and Moneyhub, and is designed to provide new payment options for merchants such as quick-service restaurants, retail stores, stadium events, as well as other hospitality-related venues. Customers using the technology will be able to send funds directly from their bank account to the merchant’s account via bank transfer, leveraging a fast and secure payment method that does not require the customer to share credit or debit card information. Using the kiosks is similarly straightforward. Customers simply use their mobile device to scan the QR code on the kiosk’s screen to make their order and manage their payment.
“We are delighted to achieve a world-first with Samsung by bringing the speed, security and cost effectiveness of Open Banking payments to our increasingly fast-paced world,” Moneyhub CEO Samantha Seaton said. “Payments is the new frontier for Open Banking and it is thrilling to see another necessary and impactful business case that brings together the quality of the Samsung kiosk, with the benefits of this new and exciting way to pay.”
The new payment option also will save merchants money by enabling them to avoid the costs associated with credit and debit cards, fees that can consume as much as 5% of their revenue. Open banking payment fees, by contrast, are typically less than 1% of the transaction value. The combination of open banking payments and self-service POS kiosks also helps support businesses’ digital transformation efforts.
Samsung Head of Display Damon Crowhurst highlighted this benefit of the new offering. “Though our partnership with Moneyhub, we are continuing to bring innovative solutions that help our customers navigate the complex landscape of a fast changing business environment,” Crowhurst said. “Implementing the open banking solution on our kiosk platform helps customers drive increased profitability, through efficient, scalable, and cost-effective solutions that are applicable for retail businesses of all sizes.”
A Finovate alum since 2015, U.K.-based Moneyhub began 2022 with the launch of its open banking and open finance front line support service. The new integrated support service, available on both a standalone basis as well as integrated into the clients’ own customer service platforms, provides expert support directly to end-users to help them manage all aspects of open banking and open finance. The company also announced early this year that it was broadening its platform beyond open banking and open finance to embrace open data. The move, which Seaton called “a natural next step in Moneyhub’s journey,” will give clients consensual access to a wide range of cross-industry data including employment, tax, and flexible benefit data, as well as property valuations, identity documents, carbon footprint information, and more.
“We want to put trust, through control of their data, back into the hands of the consumers,” Seaton said, “and in doing so support them in making better financial decisions.”
Samsung made its Finovate debut in 2017 at FinovateFall. At the event, the company demonstrated its Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone; its biometric authentication solution, Samsung SDS Nexsign; and Samsung DeX which enables users to connect their Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone to a monitor and keyboard for a desktop experience that supports contextual menus, drag-and-drop functionality, and resizable windows.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
InvestGlass is introducing the most powerful automation suite built for banking and insurance.
Features
Increase private banking productivity under MIFID and LSFIn regulations
Reduces KYC remediation overhead
Swiss Digital Sovereign and proprietary CRM and PMS. No surrender to Cloud Act.
Why it’s great
InvestGlass offers an all-in-one CRM-PMS-Automation solution to create a uniquely creative experience.
Presenter
Alexandre Gaillard, CEO Gaillard is InvestGlass CEO, and President of the Swiss-Chinese Chamber of Commerce. He co-founded Swiss Fintech Association, and has participated in +10 Finovates which he considers the #1 fintech show. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and live in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
MoEngage is an insights-led customer engagement platform that enables brands to personalize experiences across relevant channels and helps marketers build strong relationships throughout the customer experience.
Features
Unified Customer View
Enhanced customer profile and real-time insight into preferences and behavior
Predictions and RFM – Customer Segmentation with the RFM Model and Predictive AI
Why it’s great
Enterprise-grade platform with scalability, security, and compliance. It processes 1 trillion data points per month, sends 80 billion messages, 1 billion emails, and engages 900 million MAUs.
Presenters
Saket Toshniwal, Senior Director Growth, Europe Toshniwal is a MarTech leader who has worked across CRM, Growth, and Product Management in consumer tech companies in Europe. LinkedIn
Ed Balcomb, Senior Solutions Manager, Europe Balcomb is dedicated to providing enterprise SaaS solutions that make sense to both business and technical teams. LinkedIn
This is a sponsored post by Paul Higgins, EMEA Banking Lead, Mendix, Silver Sponsors of FinovateEurope, March 22 – 23 in London.
Innovation in the banking sector has proven its value to society during the COVID-19 crisis. For example, during times of physical distancing, enabling contactless banking and offering bank employees the possibility to work remotely were particularly relevant. Looking to the future at a post-COVID, post-Brexit world, it’s time to reflect on how the sector has adjusted, the sweeping changes ahead and the challenges those changes present.
The burden of legacy tech
The number of regulators and ever-changing regulations can make the financial services industry a daunting place. Changes must be implemented quickly to ensure compliance and avoid significant fines. This means that IT delivery in a financial institution is often more complex and nuanced than in less regulated industries. Many organizations, particularly the more traditional banks, run on legacy monoliths that aren’t easy to make changes to. Such changes carry the risk of causing outages that can damage the reputation of the bank and can also incur fines. Just last month, Nationwide received negative press because of a payments outage around the time that many get paid and pay their bills.
Can a financial institution risk being left behind by not migrating off legacy systems?
Many banks try to reduce the risk of such outages at critical times of year, usually end of month, quarter, and year, by establishing “frozen-zones” that limit changes to IT systems to only those deemed as essential to the stability of the systems. Additionally, the appetite to replace legacy systems is very low due to the huge complexity and inherent risk involved – often the famous adage applies “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”. But you have to ask, can a financial institution risk being left behind by not migrating off legacy systems?
Seeing off nimble fintechs
The pandemic showed how vital digital transformation is for every industry – people needed remote access to services, products, and their jobs. In the financial industry, the consumer-facing part is generally quite far in the digitalization journey, with most customers able to access online and mobile banking. Not so with corporate banking and internal employee access to systems. But according to McKinsey, in the case of remote working, companies moved 40 times more quickly than they thought possible before the pandemic. And the expectation is that the digital transformation journey will continue this acceleration.
In the past, accelerating digital transformation has required large teams of developers working non-stop on a single project for months. The pandemic highlighted that this was simply not sustainable. Tech teams need to be able to juggle between projects, adjusting their priorities as and when required. To do so, they require a different approach to their delivery.
Nine out of 10 IT leaders in financial services believe their firm will need to invest in digital projects over the next two years just to survive in a rapidly changing market.
Low-code provides a compelling answer to this new problem. Low-code platforms enable even the most traditional banks and financial services companies to compete with nimbleness of their fintech rivals. The time to act is now: recent Mendix research found that nine out of 10 IT leaders in financial services believe their firm will need to invest in digital projects over the next two years, just to survive in a rapidly changing market.
The value of low-code
Many banks in Europe have turned to cross-functional, agile teams to provide the collaboration needed to develop the solutions that answer customer needs and drive revenue growth. This requires providing both developers and non-developers with tools that enable them to operate together. And financial institutions that haven’t implemented such agile methods still recognize the value of close collaboration between business and IT.
The Mendix low-code platform is a recognized market leader because it fosters this collaboration by providing two integrated development environments: one for non-technical people, often from the business side, and another for pro developers. This enables non-technical staff to work hand in hand with the development team in creating applications.
Both the technical and non-technical teams use the same visual development language to develop apps, bringing together those that understand the business problems with those that understand the IT landscape, core systems, and services to contribute to the vision of a product. And IT stays in control through built-in governance and guardrails that ensure compliance with the established standards of the organization.
It seems set that low-code will play a vital role in the financial services industry in accelerating digital transformation and increasing the speed of innovation.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and live in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
Meniga is a global leader in helping banks create value from digital channels such as customer engagement, loyalty, new customers, and revenue.
Features
Create a trusted, lasting relationship with customers
Drive revenue growth by positioning the right products for them
Achieve return on spent investments in banking services
Why it’s great
Meniga augments the everyday personal banking experience by giving the right information to the right customers, at the right time.
Presenters
Hamza Behzad, Senior Manager of Product Strategy Behzad leads Meniga’s Product Strategy and advises clients on how to bring the best product ecosystem to bear for maximum business impact. LinkedIn
Isabel Moratiel, Director of Sales Operations Moratiel leads Sales Operations at Meniga where she focuses on the overall productivity and effectiveness of the sales organization. LinkedIn
Both an appetizer for the in-person, two-day FinovateEurope conference in London, March 22 and 23, as well as a satisfying main course in its own right, our FinovateEurope Digital Day Kick Off will feature a little bit of everything that makes our Finovate events special.
A specialist in delivering financial services to immigrant communities, Stilt, has closed a $14 million Series A round.
The company also secured a $100 million debt facility and launched a new credit-as-a-service offering, Onbo.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Stilt was founded in 2015.
Stilt, a fintech that specializes in providing financial services to immigrant communities, has raised $14 million in new funding. The Series A round was led by Link Ventures, and featured participation from Petrushka Investments, Hillsven Capital, and investor Gokul Rajaram. A number of C-level technology executives were also involved in the funding, including Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson, Checkout.com CTO Ott Kaukver, and Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra.
Along with the funding announcement, the San Francisco, California-based company reported that it also has closed a new $100 million debt facility and launched its new credit-as-a-service offering, Onbo. The new solution enables any business to create and market its own credit product without requiring a bank sponsor. Onbo relies on Stilt’s state lending licenses and compliance framework, managing origination, payments, and credit reporting to free up companies to focus on developing their credit solution. Among the kinds of credit products that Onbo enables are credit building tools, revolving lines of credit, and personal loans. Onbo is powered by a single API to facilitate integration, and also offers companies up to $1 million in debt capital to help them get started.
Additionally, Onbo funds user accounts, deducts payments, and updates reimbursements in real time. The solution features a loan management system that can use both its own built-in accounting tools or accounting tools from third-party solution providers.
“Onbo represents a new path forward for neobanks looking to launch a credit product,”Stilt co-founder and CEO Rohit Mittal said. “We’ve spent five years at Stilt getting state lending licenses, building our credit stack, and refining our risk models. Now we’re opening the entire stack for others to build innovative credit products in just a few weeks. This is the quickest way we can think of to democratize loans and credit building across the board.”
Founded in 2015, Stilt has provided financing to people from more than 150 countries around the world. Specializing in lending to immigrants and other underserved individuals, Stilt does not require cosigners and does not charge prepayment fees. Instead, the company focuses on a “holistic profile” that references a range of indications of financial responsibility such as employment or employability, education, and financial behavior. Loans from $1,000 to $35,000 are available, with repayment terms ranging from 12 months to 36 months.
A Finovate alum since 2014, CuneXus specializes in enabling lenders to deliver personalized, mobile customer experiences while helping financial institutions grow loan volume and revenue. The company has reached more than $60 million in loans funded daily, $500 billion in client combined assets, and represented 28 million consumers in the U.S.
Last fall, the company announced the launch of its new credit and identity protection monitoring solution. The technology enables credit union members to both optimize their financial picture as well as monitor their accounts for any fraudulent activity from within the credit union’s dashboard.
We caught up with Barry Kirby, CuneXus SVP to talk about the company’s new offering and the CuneXus’ broader commitment to financial wellness.
Can you tell us a little about the decision to launch this new credit monitoring solution. Why this and why now?
The reality is that the entire banking system is backwards. Meaning this is the only industry where consumers do the heavy lifting, like applying for credit, only to be told 70% of the time that they can’t buy the product. This results in a dissatisfied customer who will most likely look elsewhere.
Moving forward, it is crucial that financial institutions strategize a new method of engaging with their customers and members through personalized offers that match their needs, especially as spending continues to return to normal. To remain a central role in their communities and the main line of financial support for their customers, financial institutions must implement a business model that promotes the importance of financial awareness and delivers customers next level services and products best suited for their lifestyle.
At CuneXus, we are dedicated to helping banks and credit unions achieve this through our first-to-market digital storefront for account holders, addressing the need for a personalized, on-demand banking experience. This storefront is empowering banks and credit unions to provide a new level of support to their customers and members, by eliminating the loan application process and offering the convenience and immediacy that they expect.
Our new real time credit monitoring solution, which is embedded within the CuneXus storefront, allows us to enter the financial wellness market and elevate the customer experience. We have traditionally provided unparalleled transparency into consumers’ borrowing power through a perpetual pre-approval process. This new product, which provides a transparent view into credit health, is a natural addition to the CuneXus storefront.
What are some of the unique aspects of CuneXus’ new tool?
Our credit monitoring solution has the ability to pull credit information from all the three credit bureaus. Our tool gives financial institutions the option to display information from any of the three bureaus (their bureau of choice), or they can opt to provide their account holders with scores from all three bureaus. This gives the consumer the ability to monitor and compare, and gives the financial institution the flexibility to provide consumers with the best loan options and highest approval odds.
Unlike other credit monitoring solutions on the market that encourage more debt, this new solution helps consumers make informed financial decisions for their futures. The CuneXus storefront is not on a mission to solicit more debt, but rather to offer an array of viable options that the consumer can choose from in their moment of need. Now, with the help of simulators, this new tool can offer account holders suggestions and advice based on their real time credit scores, empowering them to better understand their financial standings. This education component is crucial. Our well-rounded tool balances between education and offering account holders access to credit, to ensure they make the best next move for their future.
How does the new tool give users more control over and visibility into their financial health?
Imagine logging onto online banking and a loan offer with a personalized note pops up explaining how to improve your credit; or it offers details on how boosting your score by 50 points may lead to an even better rate. Financial institutions have a timely and unique opportunity here to step in and help their communities by providing alternative credit options or displaying suggestions for future financial decisions based on each individual’s real time, credit rating. This is exactly what our new tool does – displaying tailored advice and personalized suggestions based on internal data paired with real time credit scores. Account holders can view these relevant offers and advice as soon as they log onto their account and decide their next step on their own. This allows lenders to give end-users more control and visibility over their financial health and elevate consumer confidence, transparency, and awareness to new levels.
What is the advantage of providing multi-bureau information and credit scores as this solution does?
Financial institutions have the ability to either display credit scores from all or one credit bureau. However, those who choose to display more than one, give consumers the ability to monitor and compare their credit ratings and enables financial institutions to offer them the best loan options and highest approval odds. The ability to view all of this information right inside the digital storefront provides financial institutions’ account holders with a more consistent and seamless digital experience, eliminates the need to monitor them elsewhere, and empowers them to track their financial wellbeing over a period of time with ongoing transparency – all which ultimately helps them optimize their financial picture.
It’s been reported that the new solution serves as an identity theft alert system, as well. How is this so?
This credit monitoring tool has the ability to automatically identify any adjustments or changes that have been made to an account holder’s credit score, alerts the user, and automatically suggests steps to correct issues. This capability can also act as a fraud examiner by monitoring any fraudulent activity and alerting both the financial institution and customer.
The credit monitoring tool was introduced last fall. What has the response been since the launch?
We announced that we were building this tool last fall. However, it just hit the market this spring. We have financial institutions on the waitlist to launch and would be happy to offer a follow up story with any measurable benefits/results after they have gone live.
Will we see more from CuneXus on the financial wellness front going forward?
Absolutely. CuneXus makes banking simple, enabling consumers to more easily interact and transact with their institutions through digital channels. As part of our ongoing commitment to helping banks and credit unions navigate an increasingly complex and changing landscape, we recently made a few additional strategic investments in partnerships that will help these financial institutions also understand where and how financial wellness can and should fit into their digital strategy.
Recently we teamed up with Equifax to offer CuneXus credit union customers a better view of their members’ financial wellness and help ensure they are receiving the most relevant offers in a timely and effective manner. The CuneXus platform will leverage insights and predictive analytics that ‘Only Equifax’ can provide in the pre-screen and segmentation phases of the loan process, empowering credit unions to understand more intimately their account holders’ financial standing and create a new level of consumer transparency and awareness.
Another example of this is our new partnership we just announced with Zest AI, the leader in software for more inclusive underwriting. By leveraging Zest AI’s fair credit scoring model within the CuneXus platform, credit unions and banks will be able to extend firm offers of credit to more members than ever before, especially those who are often overlooked by legacy credit scoring. This enables a more inclusive underwriting process, improves consumer access to affordable lines of credit, and helps consumers on the lower credit spectrum build healthier credit scores, improving their long-term financial wellness.
MeridianLink will leverage StreetShares’ Atlas Platform, an embeddable digital lending environment for banks.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Cloud-based software solutions firm MeridanLinkacquired small business lending technology provider StreetShares this week. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
StreetShares was founded in 2014 to serve as an alternative lending option for military veteran-owned small businesses. In 2019, the Virginia-based company pivoted, launching digital small business lending technology for banks and credit unions after piloting the offering with USAA in 2018.
The new tool, the Atlas Platform, enables banks to embed a digital business lending environment in 45 days or less. The platform enables community lenders to leverage their data to deliver a digital banking product experience to their small business customers. StreetShares built the platform specifically to serve the unique needs of small businesses and assist lenders with challenges such as underwriting.
“StreetShares’ commitment to providing lenders across the U.S. with state-of-the-art business lending capabilities, including business loans, automated decisioning, and business lines of credit, aligns with our focus on empowering more banks and credit unions to better serve consumers and communities,” said MeridianLink CEO Nicolaas Vlok. “Adding the StreetShares team, technology, and strong partnerships with organizations like Fiserv to the MeridianLink family will accelerate our small business lending capabilities and further strengthen our MeridianLink One platform.”
MeridianLink, which is owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, was founded in 1998 and offers cloud-based technology to its 1,900 financial institution clients. Nicolaas Vlock is CEO of the firm, which is listed publicly on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker MLNK and has a market capitalization of $1.47 billion.
Sales engagement platform Vymo has raised $22 million in Series C funding.
The investment round was led by Bertelsmann India Investments, and featured participation from existing investors Emergence Capital and Sequoia Capital.
The funding comes after a year in which the San Francisco, California-based company recorded quarterly growth of more than 20% and 142% net revenue retention.
In a round led by Bertelsmann India Investments, and featuring participation from existing investors Emergence Capital and Sequoia Capital, intelligent sales engagement platform Vymo has secured $22 million in Series C funding. The investment takes the company’s total capital to $45 million, according to Crunchbase.
Calling 2021 “a momentous year,” Vymo CEO and co-founder Yamini Bhat pointed to quarterly growth of more than 20% and 142% net revenue retention, as well as new partnerships with Berkshire Hathaway and Max Life Insurance, as examples of the company’s recent success. Bhat added that the Series C funding will help Vymo accelerate its growth plans in markets like the U.S. and Japan. “Sales tech is a $10B+ opportunity in just these two countries,” she said.
A Finovate alum since 2018, Vymo enables frontline sales representatives to report data and learn how to best engage their customers. The company’s app serves as a personal assistant, predicting what the representative should do at key stages of the customer engagement process, detecting whether the recommended action has taken place, and recording outcomes in order to drive better predictions in the future. With more than 200,000 users around the world, Vymo’s activity capture, intelligent nudges, and ability to construct industry playbooks help improve sales outcomes and provide business leaders with insights that help them plan and execute sales and business strategies.
Vymo finished 2021 with the appointment of Deepak Keni as Chief Customer Officer for Asia. The company said that the addition of Keni was “a commitment to deliver real business outcomes from digital transformation projects” in the region. The company also was recognized by Gartner in December as a Representative Vendor in its 2021 market guide for Sales Engagement Applications.
“We started Vymo with a mission to unleash the full potential of each salesperson – to help them become a trusted advisor to their customers and partners,” Bhat said when the company’s inclusion in Gartner’s guide was announced. “After 60+ deployments around the globe, we have demonstrated how bottom-up behavioral changes are integral to driving business outcomes.”
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Vymo was founded in 2013. The company most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage last year at FinovateFall.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
SmartStream’sSmartStream Air is cloud native, behaves like a consumer app, requires no training or IT skillset to use, and is the fastest AI and machine learning data quality application available today.
Features
Web based, ready to go, no installation
AI delivers immediate results
Cloud native, fully SaaS compliant
Why it’s great
The first and fastest AI data quality application that outperforms matching rates of anything available on the market today.
Presenter
Jethro MacDonald, Product Manager MacDonald brings over 10 years of experience in the financial services industry and has worked across multiple trading platforms and regulatory reporting systems, with a focus on credit/equity derivatives. LinkedIn
