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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
Fyle’s no-code expense management platform offers a modern fintech-like experience on bank-issued card programs.
Features
Real-time card integration with instant transaction data & notifications
Direct card enrollment (independent of banks, aggregators)
No code platform with no dependency on bank tech stacks
Why it’s great
Real-time card integration with transaction data and instant notifications via SMS.
Presenters
Yashwanth Madhusudan, Co-Founder & CEO With an extensive background in customer experience, Madhusudan has a passion for product development and solving problems that have a large scale business impact. LinkedIn
Sivaramakrishnan Narayanan, Co-Founder & CTO Narayanan has been part of two acquired startups and has authored 15 publications and 9 patents. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
Union Credit is the first marketplace for credit unions to deliver firm credit approval and one-click loan activation to new members embedded within their daily activities.
Features
Helping credit unions promote their products to millions of credit-worthy consumers
Providing publishers/merchants with a new revenue source
Why it’s great
Union Credit will change the game for credit unions, helping them serve locally while also reaching into new markets with easy, one-click consumer lending.
Presenters
Barry Kirby, Co-Founder & CRO Prior to Union Credit, Kirby was the SVP and Managing Director of CuneXus. He has an extensive background in fintech and the credit union space. LinkedIn
Stefan Ionescu, Engineering Lead Ionescu is the engineering lead at Union Credit, driving the development of the company’s flagship product. Before that, he led the development of the innovative DecisionLender4 loan origination system at TCI.
Loan origination, risk management, and analytics company Baker Hill forged a new partnership with Oakworth Capital Bank.
The bank will leverage Baker Hill NextGen to enhance its loan origination and portfolio monitoring for commercial and private client lending.
Baker Hill most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall in 2021.
Carmel, Indiana-based Baker Hillannounced a new partnership with Oakworth Capital Bank this week. The partnership is the first new alliance from the mortgagetech since private equity firm Flexpoint Ford acquired the company in June. Oakworth Capital Bank will deploy Baker Hill NextGen, a unified solution for loan origination and portfolio monitoring for both commercial and private client lending.
“Our bank’s mission is focused on delivering a personalized experience for our clients, which often means challenging the status quo and reimagining how financial services are delivered,” Oakworth Capital Bank chairman and CEO Scott B. Reed said. “The team is always looking for new, better ways to help our clients achieve their financial aspirations and Baker Hill NextGen will help us continue to do that.”
The new technology will enable Oakworth Capital Bank to enhance its commercial relationships, as well as automate the entire consumer loan origination process. The bank will also leverage Baker Hill NextGen Client Portal. This solution enables clients to submit loan documents online. Applicants also can track the status of their loan all the way to closing, bringing more transparency to the origination process. Additionally, the bank will integrate TruStage (formerly Compliance Solutions) with Baker Hill NextGen in order to automate loan document preparation and ensure compliance.
“With Baker Hill NextGen, Oakworth Capital Bank can optimize their entire loan origination process and continue surpassing their clients’ expectations with a world-class borrowing experience,” Baker Hill chairman and CEO John Deignan said.
Founded in 1983, Baker Hill most recently demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall in 2021. In the time since, the company has forged partnerships with a sizable number of banks and fintechs. These alliances include partnerships with financial institutions like Arvest Bank, Salem Five Bank, and TowneBank. Also among the company’s recent partners are tax workflow automation software company FlashSpread, and regional financial services company BOK Financial.
Digital ID verification company IDVerse will help embedded finance platform FutureBank enhance its onboarding processes with fast and secure digital identity verification (IDV). The new partnership will let FutureBank customers to use IDVerse software and also allow IDVerse customers looking for a middleware platform to connect their API credentials take advantage of FutureBank’s technology.
An integration platform for core banking providers that features embedded financial services, FutureBank operates as a middle layer between banks and third-party providers. As such, the company helps banks and fintechs launch new solutions faster, more efficiently, and more securely. IDVerse brings not only its Identity Service Provider status to FutureBank – status that comes with 20 certifications from the U.K.’s Digital Identity & Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF). The identity verification specialist also offers technology to help businesses combat the problem of deepfake accounts, a problem made all the more challenging by the way fraudsters are exploiting tools like generativeAI.
“Generative AI is breeding many different fraud types,” FutureBank CEO Sergio Barbosa said. “With ChatGPT, fraudsters can create very authentic documents and profiles for people at a low cost.” Barbosa called cybercrime “the third biggest economy in the world.”
Adding to Barbosa’s sentiments, IDVerse General Manager EMEA Russ Cohn underscored the challenge of deepfakes. Cohn agreed that “synthetic media is becoming the new tool of choice for fraudsters looking to make money” and added: “Our fully automated identity verification system can offer FutureBank customers a reliable solution to spot deepfake accounts that fraudsters are increasingly trying to create.” Cohn explained that IDVerse’s technology can detect subtle shifts and patterns in a person’s face that the unaided human eye cannot see, such as the way a person’s heartbeat slightly changes the color of their skin. These “natural yet invisible patterns,” Cohn said, enable IDVerse’s technology to distinguish real human images from deepfakes.
IDVerse’s platform also features Zero Bias AI-tested technology that leverages generative AI to train deep neutral networks to resist race, age, and gender-based discrimination.
Introducing itself to Finovate audiences in 2016 as OCR Labs Global, the company rebranded as IDVerse earlier this year. Founded in Australia in 2018, IDVerse is headquartered in London, and maintains offices in North America, Asia, and Europe. The company provides identity verification services in more than 220 countries and territories.
IDVerse has raised $45 million in funding from investors including Equable Capital and OYAK. This year, the company has forged partnerships with fellow Finovate alum Experian, bank verified digital identity service provider OneID, and cryptocurrency platform Coinmetro. John Myers is CEO.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
NayaOne provides the fastest way for banks to work with tech providers.
Features
Find the right partner with 350+ vetted fintechs
De-risk integration upfront in 6 weeks
Build product propositions for customers with fintechs fast
Why it’s great
NayaOne is the fastest way to go to market with any tech provider.
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 Manager Platt is a data led product manager with a data science background driving NayaOne’s product development and adoption with some of the largest banks and the best vendors in financial services. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
Agtools is a dynamic data science firm that delivers key, curated market data on thousands of commodities used by financial firms to mitigate risk in the lending process.
Features
Accuracy and speed of commodity analysis to optimize lending in the $178B agriculture and food market and the 23 aligned industries
APEX phenological weather patterns ASKS visibility on ESG metrics
Why it’s great
Agtools, winner of ML and AI awards, gives users visibility of major commodity trends, opening an opportunity in the $178B agriculture lending market.
Presenters
Martha Montoya, CEO With over a 30-year career, Montoya has held multiple C-level positions in the Supply Chain, Telecom, and Ag industries. LinkedIn
Charles Harrison, CFO Harrison leads compliance and financial growth, the key source of commodity market data. He’s a former North American GM for an international leader in the financial industry linked to hospitality. LinkedIn
OneID raised $1.3 million (£1 million) in funding.
The funds come from ACF Investors.
OneID has a unique approach on digital identity verification. It uses consumers’ existing banking relationship to authenticate their identity.
U.K.-based OneID announced it raised $1.3 million (£1 million) in funding. The Seed round, which marks the company’s second investment round, comes from ACF Investors. OneID also counts 170 angel investors among its backers.
“The investment from ACF Investors is a coming together of similar interests and visions,” said OneID CEO Paula Sussex. “As the world increasingly becomes digital-first, we aim to minimize fraud, enhance online experiences, and make the world a safer place.”
OneID, which will use today’s investment for product development, was founded in 2020 with a unique take on digital verification. The company leverages consumers’ existing bank accounts to authenticate them. After receiving consent from the consumer, OneID contacts the bank to verify their identity.
By leveraging consumers’ existing bank relationship, OneID eliminates the need for consumers to undergo a registration process, take a selfie, provide paper documents, or travel to a physical location. It also means that OneID does not need to store any sensitive data.
Sussex sees the round as a “vote of confidence” in the company’s efforts to make digital identification accessible and available to more U.K. citizens.
“We’re constantly monitoring businesses that have the potential to enhance the lives of the British people and redefine the future of the U.K., said ACF Managing Partner Tim Mills. “OneID, with its simple, trustworthy, and effective solution to a pressing problem, could touch some 50 million U.K. citizens and make bank-verified digital identification the norm in the UK.”
FinovateFall is right around the corner (September 11 through September 13). If you still haven’t registered for our annual autumn fintech conference in New York this month, there’s no better time than the present. Visit our FinovateFall 2023 hub today and save your spot.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global highlights companies headquartered outside of the U.S. that will be demoing their latest innovations on the Finovate stage in just a few days. Get to know them here, then join them in New York live and in person for FinovateFall!
Connect Earth
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in the United Kingdom, Connect Earth enables financial institutions to offer their retail and SME customers insights into the environmental impact of their spending. LinkedIn.
Engage People
Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Engage People is a loyalty network that enables program members to pay with points directly at checkout. The company was founded in 2015. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).
eSelf
eSelf is building the next generation of client-financial institution interaction, enabling human-like conversations and efficient personalization. Founded in 2022, eSelf is headquartered in Israel.
FinTech Insights
Fintech Insights offers a comprehensive digital banking research platform. The company’s technology helps FIs build strategies and launch new features faster. Headquartered in London, the company was founded in 2010. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).
Flybits
Founded in 2013, Flybits enables FIs to deliver personalized digital banking experiences across mobile, web, and the Metaverse. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).
Fundica
Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Fundica is a government funding platform used by some of the largest FIs in North America to acquire and retain clients at scale. Fundica was founded in 2017. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).
Jaid
Jaid is an AI-powered platform build to enable the intelligent automation of business communications. Founded in 2018, Jaid is based in London, U.K. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).
LemonadeLXP
Headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, LemonadeLXP is a digital growth platform that helps FIs and fintechs create effective training and support tools to maximize their investment in their technology. The company was founded in 2019. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).
MacroMicro
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, MacroMicro empowers over three million investors worldwide to make personalized investment decisions through dynamic and insightful charts. X (Twitter).
NayaOne
NayaOne gives banks a single point of access to hundreds of fintechs, digital sandboxes, fintech-as-a-service offerings, and datasets. Headquartered in London, U.K., NayaOne was founded in 2019. LinkedIn.
SESAMm
Headquartered in Metz, France, and founded in 2014, SESAMm is an AI insight and ESG risk detection specialist serving the financial services industry. LinkedIn. X (Twitter).
Zero Bank Design Factory
Zero Bank Design Factory is developing and operating a banking system for Japan’s first digital bank, Minna Bank. Founded in 2019, the company is headquartered in Fukuoka, Japan. X (Twitter).
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Central and Southern Asia
India-based PhonePe Wealth Broking, a subsidiary of mobile payments app PhonePe, launched a stock broking app, Share.Market.
A new report from Elevation Capital and McKinsey India indicated that India’s fintech ecosystem could reach $70 billion in annual revenue by fiscal year 2030.
Credit assessment platform Uplinq Financial Technologies announced a collaboration with Visa.
Visa has agreed to introduce Uplinq to key financial institutions to help them mitigate risk and expand access to credit for SMEs.
Uplinq made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall in New York.
Credit assessment platform for SME lenders, Uplinq Financial Technologies, has announced a collaboration with Visa. Via the partnership, Visa will introduce Uplinq’s API-based technology to key financial institutions to help them mitigate risk and expand access to credit to small businesses in the U.S. and Canada.
“This engagement is a testament to the promise of our technology in bridging the vast and persistent gaps that small businesses still grapple with when trying to access fair credit, especially as related to minority and all protected class segments,” Uplinq founder and CEO Ron Benegbi said. Visa Commercial Solutions Head of Small Business Matt Baker added that “fast access to working capital” was “especially vital to small businesses” which he referred to as the “backbone” of the world economy.
Uplinq leverages billions of alternative data sets from more than 150 countries, examining a wide range of factors to provide credit assessment and loan adjudication. The company’s platform features more than 10,000 direct connections into SME data sources. Designed to complement a lender’s existing credit assessment process, Uplinq’s technology has supported more than $1.4 trillion in underwritten loans globally.
Founded in 2020, Uplinq is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The company made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall, demoing its Credit-Assessment-as-a-Service solution. At the conference, Benegbi used the example of his immigrant father’s struggle to secure a bank loan to add color to the challenges small businesses face when it comes to financing.
“At Uplinq we don’t lend money to small businesses,” he said. “We work with small business lenders to help them say ‘yes’ a lot more often. In fact, five to fifteen times more often, while significantly increasing net income.”
In the year since its appearance on the Finovate stage, Uplinq has raised $1.25 million in funding in October in a round led by ATX Venture Partners. The company secured another $600,000 in February in the form of a strategic investment from Cambrian Ventures.
This spring, Uplinq announced a partnership with SME Finance Forum to make it easier for SMEs around the world access financing. In June, the company was awarded “Fintech Startup of the Year” in the “Lending” category of the Banking Tech Awards. Uplinq also has bolstered its advisory board ranks over the past year, adding former Scotiabank Chief Risk Officer Daniel Moore and former M&T Bank Chief Data Officer Allison Sagraves.
The company is making the auto loans available to a wide range of consumers, even those with FICO scores as low as 580.
The move comes as others are pulling out of auto lending or tightening lending restrictions.
Digital bank Upgrade announced this week it now offers auto loans. The California-based company plans to originate the loans via car dealers and re-sell the debt to its network of banks.
According to Bloomberg, which broke the news, the company will target a range of consumers– even those with sub-prime credit– and plans to extend loans to consumers with FICO scores as low as 580.
This announcement comes at a time when many consumers are underwater on their auto loans, triggering higher delinquencies. According to Edmunds.com, the average U.S. consumer’s monthly payment reached $733 in July, marking a record high.
Because of this, multiple lenders have either exited auto lending in some capacity, or have tightened their lending standards. This has left a “void in the market,” according to Upgrade Co-founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche. “It’s great to be in that position to lower the cost of auto lending at the time it’s really needed,” he said.
Where others are backing out, however, Upgrade is doubling down. The company claims to have a competitive advantage over other lenders because it taps multiple sources of funding– from banks, to credit unions, to asset managers– which purchase the loans after Upgrade has originated them.
While Upgrade already offers auto loan refinancing as part of its banking product suite, this is the company’s first foray into auto loan origination. The company refinances auto loans at 5.24% to 17.94% APR on cars less than 10 years old with mileages under 130,000.
A group of 30 car dealers in California and Oregon are piloting Upgrade’s auto loans, which went live with the loans earlier this week.
As new trends emerge, such as the growth of P2P push payments, businesses need to implement verification processes to better protect their customers. Additionally, cross-border transactions require meticulous compliance with international AML regulations which can be challenging to navigate.
In this webinar, we’ll explore the role of identity in global payments and moving money across borders. Join our experts as they discuss strategies to ensure seamless customer experiences while staying fully compliant, incorporating essential concepts like KYB and KYC.
Key points of discussion will include:
Best trust and safety and compliance practices for moving money cross border and instantly
How account creation fraud spurs push payment fraud and ways to mitigate these joint abuses
This is a sponsored article by Irene Galperin, InterSystems
Innovation is at the forefront of every financial institution’s agenda. The days when a household name was enough for a bank, investment manager or lender to win and retain business are fading in the rear-view mirror. Today’s customers are digitally savvy and are more demanding of their financial service providers.
To compete in a world where digitally-native innovators are proving successful at meeting changed customer expectations, financial service firms are expanding their analytical and automation capabilities.
The sophisticated analytics and processes required to provide customer personalization, accelerate the credit approval process, manage risk, and prevent fraud before it happens, are fueled by vast volumes of data with varying degrees of complexity. Robust, high performance data management infrastructure is crucial to advancing such innovation and remaining competitive.
To meet these many demands, a huge investment in technology is underway. Analysts at Gartner forecast global IT spending in banking and investment services will reach $652 billion in 2023 – a staggering amount. Spending on software is shifting from building in-house to buying solutions that provide quicker time-to-value.
Intelligent data management as non-negotiable
Gaining insight from data has become the new battleground in financial services, as organizations know they must make better use of their data to improve business decision-making.
Predictive and prescriptive analytics offer huge gains in responsiveness and efficiency, but before organizations have access to such insights, they must be capable of managing the vast amount of data they have – not all of it their own.
We can see how firms are tackling this in the real world, using a new approach to data architecture, which is the smart data fabric. A smart data fabric prepares data for analysis by connecting to existing sources without the necessity of moving data or creating new silos. InterSystems, for example, enables businesses to use this approach so they can gain a complete 360-degree view of each customer and their business, enabling one reality powered by unified, trusted data.
A smart data fabric pulls disparate types of data together from many sources in real-time, creating a useable, dependable, and trustworthy single source of the truth. This is no mean feat when data is growing exponentially, flowing into different, highly distinct silos, and in very different formats. A smart data fabric enables financial services firms to transform, validate, and prepare data for use by advanced applications using sophisticated analytics.
Superior customer personalization to alleviate difficulties
This kind of revolutionary approach to data is having major impact on one of the largest credit unions in the US, Financial Center First Credit Union (FCFCU). FCFCU has worked with InterSystems to build a powerful Customer 360 application that uses predictive analytics to indicate signs of financial distress. This enables FCFCU to intervene much earlier and more effectively, fulfilling its mandate to support people while building stronger relationships with members. Frontline employees are able to make more decisions themselves, and are spared the need to move between different applications. Following implementation of the new application, the organization had its best lending year, helping members defer payments and refinance loans.
Asset management transformation
Another InterSystems customer, Harris Associates, is an independent asset management firm in the U.S. with more than $100 billion in assets under management as of March, 2023. It has always looked to improve its ability to better manage risk and gain visibility into performance data on demand, using data to serve multiple consumers and use cases. Speed of access to reliable insights is critical. Harris implemented InterSystems TotalView For Asset Management to build a smart data fabric, aggregating data from third-party providers along with the full gamut of internal sources and applications.
The smart data fabric has met the all-important requirements for timeliness and consistency, serving the entire business and its clients. Business users across the firm are now able to make decisions using timely, trustworthy data, with the ability to drill down and get to the answers that matter to them. The whole project has radically improved enterprise and client reporting.
Leading fintech unlocks the value of data
Broadridge Financial Solutions, a $5 billion global fintech leader handling $7 trillion of fixed income and equities securities trades per day, undertook a significant data management transformation to build a wealth management solution and unlock the value of their data. Broadridge embraced the smart data fabric architecture using InterSystems IRIS.
The architecture seamlessly unifies data sources, creating golden source data that is distributed horizontally with a caching layer, all in one high-performance solution, helping Broadridge to gain real-time insights, agility, and operational efficiency.
The new architecture met Broadridge’s need for speed and enabled them to scale to five times current volume, handle two million transactions daily, and store seven years of data. InterSystems IRIS provided a 900% improvement in performance using only 30% of the infrastructure, compared with an alternative approach.
Broadridge’s success story highlights the importance of innovative data solutions in reshaping business strategies. In the digital era, the smart data fabric emerges as pivotal, unlocking data’s full potential for Broadridge and its clients.
InterSystems’ long record of achievement in financial services data excellence
These real-world use cases are just three examples of how better access to trusted data is revolutionizing the effectiveness of financial service firms at competing and operating in the digital age. InterSystems has a long track record of innovation and achievement in this field, and has gained Gartner Magic Quadrant recognition as a visionary for cloud database management systems. This validates the company’s next-generation data platform and innovative smart data services. Composable services remove the need to build custom applications when organizations want to become more competitive.
The ability to gain a complete, accurate view of the enterprise and of individual customers is critical in today’s highly competitive banking sector where new players often have leaner technology and greater agility. But what they do not have is valuable customer data, acquired over many years. For banks to compete, a smart data fabric provides the ability to leverage predictive and prescriptive analytics to ramp up innovation and efficiency. Organizations can gain a 360-degree view of enterprise data across many silos, enabling them to capitalize on their data assets and deliver innovative services in the face of increasing competition.
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