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Glean.ai Brings Automated Accruals Technology to its Intelligent AP Platform

Glean.ai Brings Automated Accruals Technology to its Intelligent AP Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Glean AI
  • Glean.ai has launched its Automated Accruals solution to help finance teams more accurately report costs.
  • The new offering is a feature of Glean.ai’s intelligent AP platform.
  • The company made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall in New York.

Spend management solutions company Glean.ai has announced new functionality for its Intelligent AP platform. The company recently unveiled its Automated Accruals technology, which will help companies more accurately report costs.

“Managing accruals manually in spreadsheets and over email is very time-consuming, error-prone, and can lead to an inaccurate reporting of expenses,” Glean.ai Growth Marketing Manager Spencer Campbell noted in a company blog post. Campbell wrote that reconciling accrued expenses is one of the “most time-consuming parts” of any accountant’s close process. “They have to determine which costs have been incurred by their company that have not been invoiced yet,” Campbell explained, “if invoices have been received for prior accruals, and if prior estimates of costs incurred were sufficient.”

To this problem, Glean.ai has introduced Automated Accruals as the latest feature on its spend management platform. The enhancement works by alerting users to potential accruals based on either past billing patterns or budget expectations. This enables finance teams to consult directly with vendors to determine if services were performed and to secure estimates for costs. From here, users can record the expense amount, record date, and reversal date for the accrual. Glean.ai’s technology automatically syncs the entries to the user’s general ledger, and also features real-time reporting to ensure transparency and a comprehensive view of all accrued expenses whether they are booked or reversed.

The addition of automated accruals, according to Glean.ai, is an example of the smart automation that drives the firm’s innovations. The company uses the phrase “Intelligent AP” to describe its approach to leveraging the data that flows AP and accounting to automate processes and empower decision-making.

Howard Katzenberg (CEO), Ankur Patel (Head of Data), and Alexander Jia (Head of Product) co-founded Glean.ai in 2020. The company demoed its technology in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in September of last year. At the conference, Katzenberg talked about how millions of small businesses inadvertently overspend when paying vendors. This occurs, Katzenberg said, due to errors or other costs that could be reduced or eliminated with greater scrutiny. “Fifteen percent of their cash is silently walking out the door,” he said. To this end, Glean.ai analyzes all of the business’ bills at the line item level. This enables the technology to track purchases, prices, and volumes, and deliver “timely, relevant, and actionable ways to save money.”

Katzenberg added, “There are many AP solutions that will help you pay your vendors quicker, but there are none that will help you pay your vendors less – until now.”

Glean.ai is headquartered in New York. The company has raised more than $10 million in funding from investors including Outpost Ventures and B Capital Group.

Photo by Pixabay

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Fintech, Financial Services, and the LGBTQ Community

Fintech, Financial Services, and the LGBTQ Community
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Diversity in Fintech, Report series

What are the biggest challenges, concerns, and factors that impact LGBTQ financial consumers in 2023?

A wide-ranging survey by the Center for American Progress (CAP) from the beginning of the year actually sheds some light on the relationship between financial services themselves and the LGBTQ community. This knowledge can help guide banks, fintechs, and financial services providers better tailor their products, services, and experiences for a more diverse customer base.

Here’s one interesting example. The LGBTQ respondents tended to have higher employment rates compared to the non-LGBTQ respondents. At the same time, members of the LGBTQ community were more likely than members of the non-LGBTQ community to be engaged in part-time, freelance, or gig economy work. In the latter category, LGBTQ respondents outnumbered non-LGBTQ respondents 5% to 1%. With regard to transgender respondents, they were twice as likely as non-transgender respondents to report working part time.

These survey results have significant implications for financial services companies. Among other things, the responses underscore the importance of mobile and remote access to financial services. This includes features like virtual assistants to ensure 24/7/365 service for workers with atypical or irregular working hours. Offerings like Earned Wage Access can help workers smooth out irregular cash flows for part-time workers. Additionally, LGBTQ respondents to the CAP survey reported incomes that were on average lower than those of non-LGBTQ respondents. Providing cash flow services can be a way of helping this community avoid the temptation of more costly and potentially predatory financing options.

These responses also suggest a new approach for financing and lending services companies. In order to compete, they may need to think differently about creditworthy potential borrowers who don’t have traditional employment histories. The trend toward an embrace of alternative data in credit scoring is a good development, and one that is likely to benefit LGBTQ communities. The same is true about initiatives to deal with the challenge of bias in AI.

Both as workers in the financial services industry and consumers of financial services, members of the LGBTQ community suffer from discrimination and harassment. This can range from verbal harassment to the denial of equal access to services. While many companies in the financial services industry have been commended for their LGBTQ-friendly policies and environments, ensuring that the financial services workplace is free from anti-LGBTQ behavior is important for both workers and customers alike.

Photo by Markus Spiske

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Mitigram Raises $11 Million for its Global Trade Financing Platform

Mitigram Raises $11 Million for its Global Trade Financing Platform
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding, Fundings
  • Global trade financing platform Mitigram landed $11 million in funding.
  • The investment will bring Mitigram’s total funding to $38 million.
  • Mitigram will use the funding to scale its operations via software-as-a-service offerings.

Digital global trade financing platform Mitigram announced today it received $11 million in funding, boosting its total raised to $38 million.

The company will use the funds to scale its operations via software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings and add competitive advantage by scaling its network. “The lack of connectivity is trade finance’s biggest cost,” said Mitigram’s Interim CEO Malin Bäcklund. “Around 4 billion paper documents are manually generated, checked and transported in trade each year, which creates the perfect storm for high operating costs and a spiraling lack of control. At Mitigram, we are passionate about closing the gap that is estimated to cost the industry $4 trillion in total each year. This new funding round will allow us to continue doing exactly that.”

Mitigram was founded in 2014, creating a digital exchange in global trade financing. The company offers three main products:

  • MitiSquare, which helps companies assess risks, capacity, and pricing from partner banks in global trade financing.
  • MitiManager, which allows organizations to view, manage, and structure all trade financing data.
  • MitiGateway, which digitizes origination records and manages the end customer experience.

Among the company’s clients are Louis Dreyfus Company, Bridgestone, Vale, Ericsson, ArcelorMittal, Trafigura, Siemens Healthineers, and over 150 banks.

As part of today’s announcement Mitigram CEO Milena Torciano is stepping down, but will remain on the company’s board of directors. Bäcklund, who currently serves as CEO of Moor Holding, will act as interim CEO until a replacement is found.

“We founded Mitigram with the mission to open up a closed market, and to streamline and augment global trade and I am incredibly proud of the tremendous growth that we have achieved since I joined six years ago,” said Torciano. “Today, we are trusted by more than 300 multinational corporations, leading commodity traders and financial institutions, and have facilitated $100+ billion in flows currently across 185 markets. This investment is an excellent opportunity to further build on the strong foundations we have established, and to deliver best practice for digitalized trade finance.”

Photo by Mikhail Nilov

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Payouts-as-a-Service Innovator PayQuicker Unveils Three New Fintech Partnerships

Payouts-as-a-Service Innovator PayQuicker Unveils Three New Fintech Partnerships
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, PayQuicker
  • Global payouts platform PayQuicker announced three new fintech partnerships this week.
  • The company has teamed up with Qolo, Web3 infrastructure company Fortress, and payments platform Citcom.
  • PayQuicker made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall in New York.

International payouts platform PayQuicker announced a trio of new fintech partnerships this week. The company has teamed up with Qolo, Fortress, and Citcon, who will take advantage of and enhance the functionality of PayQuicker’s Payouts OS platform. PayQuicker recently demoed the technology at FinovateFall.

“No single bank or payment provider can solve for cross-border payments alone,” PayQuicker President Charles Rosenblatt said. “We are uniting the power of these notable partners under our first in-market payouts orchestration platform to bring agile, secure, and convenient payout methods to businesses, and bring hard-earned money to gig and alternative workforces around the globe.”

Qolo will serve as an issuing-processing partner for PayQuicker’s Payouts OS. The company will issue an advanced suite of card solutions for corporate as well as SME business clients. This will make it easier for firms who need to make payouts to gig economy workers, for example, or to marketplace sellers. Fortress is a Web3 infrastructure company. Its partnership will enable PayQuicker to offer its clients a stablecoin wallet for payees. This will allow businesses to make disbursements in crypto instead of fiat currency. Lastly, Citcon is a global payment platform that offers solutions for payments in-store, online, and via mobile. PayQuicker customers around the world will gain new outlets via the collaboration.

“By combining Citcon’s robust global payment networks with PayQuicker’s expertise in secure and efficient payouts, we are empowering businesses to streamline their operations and enhance user experiences,” Citcon co-founder, President, and COO Wei Jiang said.

PayQuicker’s Payouts OS platform leverages a single REST API to deliver turnkey integration for multiple banks and global payment rails. The technology intelligently determines and facilitates the fastest and most cost-effective payout method for a given client. This includes saving clients time and money by comparing the processing and interchange fees.

Joined by company Chief Technology Officer James Legan, PayQuicker’s Rosenblatt demoed Payouts OS at the company’s appearance at FinovateFall last year. The team showed how the company has used Payouts OS to enable instant payouts in more than 200 countries and territories. These payouts were in local currencies and disbursed via prepaid debit card, virtual cards, and mobile wallets. “Payouts OS is the first Payouts-as-a-Service product,” Rosenblatt explained from the Finovate stage in September, “a payment orchestration platform for payouts that allows companies to go out and get the best rate, the best speed.” He added, “It will use lowest cost routing in order to be able to determine that for our clients.”

Founded in 2007, PayQuicker is baed in Rochester, New York.

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán

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Coinbase Charged for Operating as an Unregistered Securities Exchange

Coinbase Charged for Operating as an Unregistered Securities Exchange
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Coinbase

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced today it has charged Coinbase for operating as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency; and for failing to register the offer and sale of its crypto asset staking-as-a-service program.

Specifically, the SEC is alleging that Coinbase:

  • Provides a marketplace and brings together the orders for securities of multiple buyers and sellers using established, non-discretionary methods under which such orders interact
  • Engages in the business of effecting securities transactions for the accounts of Coinbase customers
  • Provides facilities for comparison of data respecting the terms of settlement of crypto asset securities transactions, serves as an intermediary in settling transactions in crypto asset securities by Coinbase customers, and acts as a securities depository

“We allege that Coinbase, despite being subject to the securities laws, commingled and unlawfully offered exchange, broker-dealer, and clearinghouse functions,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “In other parts of our securities markets, these functions are separate. Coinbase’s alleged failures deprive investors of critical protections, including rulebooks that prevent fraud and manipulation, proper disclosure, safeguards against conflicts of interest, and routine inspection by the SEC. Further, as we allege, Coinbase never registered its staking-as-a-service program as required by the securities laws, again depriving investors of critical disclosure and other protections.”

Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, who testified yesterday before the House Committee on Agricultural Services on the new Digital Asset Market Structure Discussion Draft, said in a blog post that U.S. crypto firms are lacking clear rules for operating in the crypto space. In fact, Coinbase has been asking regulators for months to work together to help build regulation around crypto. The fintech has been straightforward that it wants to operate within regulation, but the SEC hasn’t been willing to work with Coinbase to define regulations.

Much of the issue between the two parties hinges on a lack of definition. Coinbase insists that it does not list securities on its platform, while the SEC has called out 61 cryptocurrencies that it believes are securities.

All of this back-and-forth has made two things clear. First, as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong explains in a TV commercial, crypto in the U.S. has valuable use cases, and companies need clear rules to operate in the space:

Second, regulators are making it very difficult for U.S. companies to facilitate crypto transfers. Today’s news comes a day after the SEC sued Binance CEO and Founder Changpeng Zhao for operating unregistered exchanges, broker-dealers, and clearing agencies; misrepresenting trading controls and oversight on the Binance.US platform; and for the unregistered offer and sale of securities.

In a tweet earlier today, Armstrong highlighted that the SEC’s suit against Binance is different from its suit against Coinbase. “Btw, in case it’s not obvious, the Coinbase suit is very different from others out there – the complaint filed against us is exclusively focused on what is or is not a security. And we are confident in our facts and the law,” he said.

Regardless of the differences, in my view, the SEC is making examples out of these crypto firms to not only serve as a warning to other companies operating in the crypto space, but to also drive down consumer interest in holding digital assets.

Armstrong also used Twitter to reinforce what his company has been saying for months. “Regarding the SEC complaint against us today, we’re proud to represent the industry in court to finally get some clarity around crypto rules,” he said. “Remember:

  1. The SEC reviewed our business and allowed us to become a public company in 2021.
  2. There is no path to come in and register – we tried, repeatedly – so we don’t list securities. We reject the vast majority of assets we review.
  3. The SEC and CFTC have made conflicting statements, and don’t even agree on what is a security and what is a commodity.
  4. This is why the US congress is introducing new legislation to fix the situation, and the rest of the world is moving to put clear rules in place to support this technology.

Instead of publishing a clear rule book, the SEC has taken a regulation by enforcement approach that is harming America. So if we need to avail ourselves of the courts to get clarity, so be it.”

Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA

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Best of Show: The Finovate Podcast’s Greg Palmer Chats with the Faves of FinovateEurope

Best of Show: The Finovate Podcast’s Greg Palmer Chats with the Faves of FinovateEurope
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: 10x Banking, CEO Interview, FinTech Insights by Scientia, Interview, NayaOne, Podcasting, TAZI AI

Join Finovate VP and host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer (@GregPalmer47) as he catches up with the innovators that earned top honors at FinovateEurope earlier this year!

Greg Palmer talks with Karan Jain of NayaOne on streamlining and de-risking the onboarding process. Episode 168. Demo video.

“NayaOne is a digital transformation platform that helps you leverage the fintech ecosystem. We work with product, innovation, and tech teams in banks and insurance companies to help them get their products to market much, much quicker. We have synthetic data sets and building tools on the platform. Typically, it takes companies nine to twelve months to begin working with a fintech. Our customers can get to that outcome in about six to eight weeks.”

Greg Palmer and Nickolas Belesis of Fintech Insights discuss understanding the competitive landscape in fintech and financial services. Episode 170. Demo video.

“We provide the industry with a digital banking market research platform that’s analyzing the digital offerings of banks, fintechs, credit unions, across the U.S. and worldwide. We analyze – from A to Z – what the banks, fintechs, and credit unions are offering, how they offer it, (and) how well they offer it, all while providing them with the ability to benchmark against the market and organize their product roadmap to implement their digital banking strategies.”

Greg Palmer chats with Nicole Sanders and George Broom of 10x Banking on streamlining product development and getting to market faster. Episode 171. Demo video.

“10x is a cloud-native banking platform that acts like a real-time operating system for banks. It allows you to build and run your bank at record speed at a fraction of the cost. We demonstrated that at Finovate through the use of our Bank Manager UI application. This allows product managers at banks to build products in minutes rather than months. In that seven minutes, we built a current account with a card and also a loan ready for launch to production.”

Greg Palmer interviews Zehra Cataltepe of TAZI AI on using AI where it will impact the bottom line. Episode 172. Demo video.

“We are a scale-up, San Francisco-based, that provides a software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which enables business experts to stay in control of their AI models. We also empower the data science and engineering teams through our technology that consists of the ability to continuously learn from the data as the business world changes. We provide continuous explanations to business users and give them the ability to give feedback to the models so that the models are aligned with the business all the time.”

Stay tuned for more insightful conversations from Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast!

Photo by Magda Ehlers

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Three-Time Finovate Best of Show Winner PayNearMe Raises $45 Million in New Funding

Three-Time Finovate Best of Show Winner PayNearMe Raises $45 Million in New Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, PayNearMe
  • Santa Clara, California-based fintech PayNearMe has raised $45 million in Series D funding.
  • The round was led by Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC). The investment takes PayNearMe’s total equity capital to more than $118 million.
  • PayNearMe has won Finovate Best of Show awards on three different occasions.

PayNearMe, a fintech that has won Best of Show at Finovate conferences on three separate occasions, has secured $45 million in Series D funding.

The round was led by Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC). True Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, August Capital, DNS Capital, Invicta Management, and H. Barton Asset Management also participated.

Fresh valuation data was not immediately available. The company’s latest investment takes the firm’s total equity capital to more than $118 million, according to Crunchbase. The funding will enable the company to accelerate growth and further development of its payments platform.

“Our growth has continued to accelerate as we serve the needs of more and larger clients,” PayNearMe CEO Danny Shader said. “This investment enables us to deploy additional resources to increase the rate of innovation for our clients, allowing us to support the increasing demand for frictionless payments in new and existing vertical markets by developing features that deliver value across the full payment experience.”

Founded in 2009, PayNearMe facilitates cash, debit, credit, ACH, and mobile payments – including both Apple Pay and Google Pay – for thousands of businesses and organizations across the U.S. PayNearMe clients benefit from access to payments data which enables them to increase operational efficiency and produce new revenue streams by building “hyper-personalized” experiences for their customers. QIC Partner Matt Diestel underscored this opportunity, noting in a statement that “payments data is the next emerging opportunity for businesses”. Diestel added that “PayNearMe is enabling its clients to access that data and leverage it as a strategic asset.”

PayNearMe won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2010, and went on to take home top honors twice again within the following three years. Earlier this year, the company announced that U.S.-based iGaming operator Maverick Gaming had chosen PayNearMe’s MoneyLine platform to expand the number of payment types it can offer.

Also this spring, PayNearMe announced a partnership with Allied Business Systems, and a collaboration with Lottery Now – which, like Maverick Gaming, is also deploying PayNearMe’s MoneyLine platform. Note that the technology won “Best Consumer Payments Platform” at the FinTech Breakthrough Awards for a fourth year in a row.

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Finovate Awards Deadline Extended!

Finovate Awards Deadline Extended!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Awards

Due to the number of extension requests we’ve received, Finovate has decided to extend the Finovate Awards nomination deadline to June 16. Our aim is to celebrate the best and brightest the fintech industry has to offer, and we want to make sure everyone is able to get their entries into the mix.

The 2023 Finovate Awards winners will be announced during FinovateFall in New York, and we’ll be crowning winners in fields like alternative investing, payments, UX/CX, DeFi, and more. Here’s a complete list of categories, including two that are brand new for this year, Best Use of Robotic Process Automation, and Best Banking as a Service Provider. 

Once all the nominations are in, we’ll be announcing the finalists in mid-July. Given the increasingly competitive nature of the awards, making it to the final stage is already an strong mark of distinction. 

Don’t miss out on your chance to celebrate your team’s success. Submit your nomination today!

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Finovate Global Estonia: Talking Conversation Intelligence and Automation with Ender Turing

Finovate Global Estonia: Talking Conversation Intelligence and Automation with Ender Turing
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, Ender Turing, Finovate Global, Interview

This week’s edition of Finovate Global takes a look at one of the innovative fintech companies headquartered in Estonia: Ender Turing. The firm, which specializes in voice conversation intelligence and automation, made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope in London.

Headquartered in Tallinn, Ender Turing was founded in 2020. The founding team consisted of two AI researchers with experience in automatic speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP), as well as a third member with experience in enterprise-level call center software. Together, the team formed Ender Turing and have since launched Ender Turing AI Speech Analytics. The new solution automatically analyzes and assesses the communication content between financial institutions and their customers. This helps FIs enhance the customer experience, as well as meet quality guidelines and compliance requirements in areas such as customer service, sales, and debt collection.

We corresponded with Ender Turing CEO Olena Iosifova via email. Below are her responses to our questions.

Read more about fintech in Estonia in this Finovate Global column from earlier this year.

What problem does Ender Turing solve and who does it solve it for?

Olena Iosifova: Eight hundred million voice conversations are recorded daily in Europe and many more worldwide. A tiny 1% of these conversations are checked for quality control, employee training, and business results improvement. Ender Turing is a conversations intelligence and automation platform to close 99% of the conversation gap for business growth.

Our daily business users are customer service, sales, and collection departments. But marketing and product teams also get value from making client’s research right on our platform.

How does Ender Turing solve this problem better than other companies?

Iosifova: Ender Turing created the fastest-to-value platform that performs in 24 languages. We use a proprietary speech-to-text engine to fine-tune models for every client to achieve the highest accuracy. Our machine learning pipelines are very efficient, and we can fine-tune speech recognition for free.

Also, the user interface does all the system setup for reaching business KPIs. There is no need to wait for the time slot at the IT department to help a business unit make it.

Who are Ender Turing’s primary customers? How do you reach them?

Iosifova: Our primary customers come from financial industry. These are banks, debt collection firms, and other financial services companies. But we also have clients in the public sector and in healthcare.

Direct outreach is our main channel of getting noticed by potential customers – as well as our partnership network. We cooperate with system integrators and call center software vendors and offer added value to their customer base.

Participation in conferences serves as a great supporting touch.

Ender Turing CEO Olena Iosifova demoing Ender Turing AI Speech Analytics at FinovateEurope 2023.

Can you tell us about a favorite implementation or deployment of your technology?

Iosifova: We have two great examples of our technology implementation. One is OTP Bank, and another is Creamfinance Group.

In OTP Bank it started with the call center customer service department. One month after we started, the debt collection department joined, seeing great results. OTP Bank saw hundreds of hours of saved time every month for quality management, employee training, and improved conversion rates – results we mutually enjoy.

With Creamfinance Group, the best indicator of great business results is that after implementation in their headquarters in Poland, we now serve also their offices in Spain, Mexico, and the Czech Republic.

What in your background gave you the confidence to respond to this challenge?

Iosifova: Three founders in Ender Turing have positive experience and skills in artificial Iitelligence R&D, business management, and a passion for building highly performing teams. We enjoy analyzing our potential customers’ strategies and market trends to foresee the challenges they might face in the next three to five years. With constant innovations inside our R&D, we build our product to deliver value for today and the future.

What is the fintech industry like in Estonia? How do traditional financial institutions treat Estonian fintechs?

Iosifova: Apart from the big name in fintech, Wise, coming from Estonia, other exciting fintechs are growing here. To name a few – Grunfin, Scrambleup, Tuum, Salv, Montonio.

They partner with traditional financial institutions actively. For example, LHV Bank is the best client of Tuum. And Salv is the AML solution that works exactly in a traditional financial services market.

You recently demoed your technology at FinovateEurope in London. What was that experience like?

Iosifova: This is truly an international event where we met companies from all over the world. This was a pleasant surprise. We will participate again.

What are your goals for Ender Turing?

Iosifova: Our goal is to become a number-one choice platform for banks and financial services companies regarding conversation intelligence and automation, providing the best quality of service, sales conversation rate, and recovery rate.

What can we expect from Ender Turing over the balance of 2023?

Iosifova: Our growth in 2023 gets us to expand to the U.S. and Latin America. But what’s more interesting is that we bring real-time agent assistance to fill the gap between the top-performing agents and the rest of the team and ensure real-time compliance monitoring in every conversation.

Photo by Marlene Leppänen

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Greatest Hits and Favorite Moments from FinovateSpring 2023

Greatest Hits and Favorite Moments from FinovateSpring 2023
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2023

FinovateSpring 2023 is in the books! Congratulations to the winners of Best of Show, and thanks to the hundreds of fintech and financial services professionals whose passion and enthusiasm continue to make our conferences such unique and rewarding experiences.

Do you have a favorite moment from FinovateSpring 2023? Was it Dan Latimore of Celent and his creative deployment of generative AI during the Analyst All-Stars presentations? Maybe it was Peggy Mangot of JP Morgan who led a Power Panel full of diverse insights on where the smart money is investing in fintech. How about the first-ever company to begin its Finovate demo with a song performed live on stage?

Whatever moment of FinovateSpring was your favorite, there were plenty of good times and great networking opportunities to go around. Check out this review from Finovate Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn who compiled her top seven takeaways from the event.

And stay tuned to the Finovate blog where we’ll soon share demo videos from the conference, as well as one-one-one video interviews, testimonials, our event e-magazine, and more!

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Mphasis Forges Strategic Partnership with Conversational AI Platform Kore.ai

Mphasis Forges Strategic Partnership with Conversational AI Platform Kore.ai
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Kore
  • Conversational AI platform company Kore.ai announced a strategic partnership with IT solutions provider Mphasis.
  • The partnership will enable Mphasis to help its enterprise clients transform customer experience management and employee engagement.
  • Kore.ai demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2022 in New York last September.

IT solutions provider Mphasis and enterprise conversational AI platform company Kore.ai have forged a new strategic partnership. The alliance will enable Mphasis to offer new customer experience management and employee engagement solutions to its enterprise clients.

“Conversational AI solutions are leading the way in which enterprise clients are interacting with their end customers,” Mphasis CEO and Managing Director Nitin Rakesh said. He referred to Kore.ai as an “undisputed leader in the space” and said that the company’s generative AI solutions will complement Mphasis’ product engineering capabilities. Rakesh also added that Kore.ai would benefit from cross-selling opportunities “particularly in the contact center transformation space.”

Kore.ai helps enterprises automate their business and voice and digital interactions. The company’s Experience Optimization (XO) platform enables companies to design, build, test, and deploy conversational user interfaces and virtual assistants without requiring technical expertise or support. The technology uses generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to create and deploy intelligent conversational experiences for the benefit of customers, contact center workers, and employees alike. Additionally, the platform supports cloud, on-premises, and hybrid deployments for more than 40 channels in 120+ languages. More than 200 Global 2000 companies leverage Kore.ai’s XO platform and solutions to automate their interactions and processes.

“We automate billions of interactions every year through out conversational AI platform and solutions and have already delivered an estimated $1 billion in cost savings to global enterprise customers,” Kore.ai CEO and founder Raj Koneru said. “Together we will accelerate innovation and drive growth,” Koneru said, “providing exceptional solutions and experiences to our customers.”

Kore.ai’s partnership with Mphasis comes just a few weeks after Kore.ai announced a collaboration with digital solutions company Ciklum. The firm will leverage Kore.ai’s technology to build advanced virtual assistants. These solutions will be deployed in use cases ranging from customer experience to enterprise automation. “This partnership will enable businesses to radically transform their customer and user experiences and provide more human-like interactions,” Ciklum VP and Global Head of Intelligent Automation Gourav Datta said.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Orlando, Florida, Kore.ai has raised more than $73 million in funding. The company’s investors include NVIDIA, Vistara Capital Partners, PNC, and Sterling National Bank. This year, Kore.ai was named a leader in 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms. Kore.ai made its Finovate debut in 2021 and returned the Finovate stage the follow year for FinovateFall 2022.

Photo by M-DESIGNZ

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Bankers Helping Bankers Fund Invests in Digital Customer Engagement Specialist Agent IQ

Bankers Helping Bankers Fund Invests in Digital Customer Engagement Specialist Agent IQ
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Agent IQ, Alumni News, Daily news, Funding
  • Agent IQ secured a strategic investment from the Bankers Helping Bankers Fund (BHB Fund).
  • The digital customer engagement innovator demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2022 in New York.
  • The BHB fund launched in 2022 to give community banks wider exposure to a range of innovative fintechs.

Terms were not disclosed. But the Bankers Helping Bankers Fund (BHB Fund) made a strategic investment in digital customer engagement solutions provider Agent IQ this week. The capital adds to the $18.5 million in equity funding Agent IQ has raised via previous seed and Series A rounds.

“This investment is representative of Agent IQ’s commitment to helping FI’s foster deep and meaningful customer relationships while also meeting the digital demands of today’s customers,” Agent IQ CEO and co-founder Slaven Bilac said in a statement.

Agent IQ offers an AI-enabled solution, Lynq, that improves communication between financial institutions and their customers. The platform enables customers to make basic queries, such as requesting a routing number, as well as more sophisticated requests, such as help in depositing a check. Lynq also allows customers to speak with a human agent at any point in time during the engagement. Via a “banker carousel” with brief bios and profile pictures, Lynq customers can choose and engage with a personal banker to quickly find the human assistance they need.

FIs using Agent IQ’s technology have reported a reduction in call center volume of 29%. Additionally, these customers also have noted that Lynq’s configurable, self-service technology is handling more than 80% of incoming conversations.

Left to right: Soren Bested (COO) and Matt Phipps (CMO) of Agent IQ at FinovateFall 2022.

“Our team looks forward to empowering more community banks with data-driven technology and the ability to allow relationship banking to thrive in the digital world,” Bilac added. “We are excited to be a part of the BHB Fund as the organization is helping more community banks overcome their shared challenges, operate more efficiently, and discover new sources of income.”

The BHB fund launched in 2022. Latitude38 Venture Partners manages the fund in partnership with IBAT Services, Inc. and banking market intelligence and advisory firm, FedFis. IBAT Services is a subsidiary of the Independent Bankers Association of Texas (IBAT). The goal of the fund is two-fold. First, the fund seeks to give community banks exposure to a range of fintech investments capable of boosting growth, improving efficiencies, and enhancing competitiveness. Second, the fund offers the potential for outsized venture capital returns uncorrelated to traditional bank operations.

Latitude38 Venture Partners Managing Partner Richard Leggett praised Agent IQ as an ideal fit for the fund’s investment thesis. In a statement, Leggett noted that it was important for community banks to leverage technology to drive digital engagement. Agent IQ, which most recently demoed its platform at FinovateFall last year, offers technology that does just that.

Agent IQ’s funding news comes in the wake of a major new hire. In April, Agent IQ appointed fintech veteran Ruthann Paulin Glyman as EVP, Head of Partnerships and Strategic Alliances. Glyman brings with her more than 15 years of financial services industry experience to the job. Previous to her move to Agent IQ, Glyman was Director of Sales at Array, another Finovate alum.

Agent IQ is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company was founded in 2015.

Photo by Daria Obymaha

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