Finovate Fall 2013: Our highlights

Your bloggers for FinovateFall 2013: Steven Ramirez & William Mills III

Steven J. Ramirez is CEO of Beyond the Arc, a customer experience agency that combines CX strategy, digital marketing, and AI/ML analytics to help financial services clients and fintechs identify opportunities to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

 Day 2

Expecting some good presentations today.  If you’d like to see some of the action, the sessions from Finovate will be available online.

DoubleBeam Ted Tekippe (CEO) and Avi Lichtschein (VP Business Development)

Powering mobile payments. 44% of users in U.S. use their phone to pay for something. Takes a picture of a check during enrollment. Payment is processed as an e-check, much less costly from the merchant point of view. One-time user setup and easy for consumer to establish an account. DoubleBeam can support both brick and mortar as well as e-commerce merchants. Can be incorporated into any mobile app. ^SR

“Powers Mobile Payments” 44% of mobile users in US have used their phone to pay for something this year. Most consumers won’t know about DoubleBeam because our SDK powers other providers.  Showing an app for Homeland stores; their first customer, a grocery store. Shopping/rewards/payments.

From DoubleBeam: DoubleBeam provides mobile solutions to help retailers improve their customer experience and save money on their cost of payments in a way that maintains their brand and relationship with their customers. By integrating with retailers’ existing mobile applications and POS systems, we close the loop between retailers offers and promotions, customer purchasing behavior and preferences, and the most personalized, real-time communication method ever: the smartphone in their customers’ hands.

Showing set-up process; it’s looks pretty good, showing setting up account by taking a photo of a blank check, OCR, secure cloud storage, creates virtual image of a check and can settle next day and cuts credit card fees by a huge percent. Showing brick and mortar set-up, now showing car charging app integration.

“SDK can be integrated in any application easily; six lines of code.”   ^WM

Finect Nicolas Oriol (CEO & Founder) and Jennifer Openshaw (President)

Compliant social media for financial advisors. The platform also includes a content management library and the ability to categorize documents. The library makes it easy to share documents via social.  There’s a compliance module as well, with user-level permissions.  Good functionality, but not sure yet how they are unique. Social media management platforms are part of a crowded field. ^SR

Compliance social media simplified.   Showing how a user might use the system.  From the  company: Finect: The Financial Services Industry’s Online Network.

Compliant Social Media for advisors, asset managers & investors, to build brand & community.

Created a financial library for investors, kind of like doing a Google search on financial planning documents.  My best observation is that it’s a social network for the investing community.  ^WM

Market IQ   Fahad Kamr (Founder) and David Middleton (COO)

Market intelligence using social media, including sentiment and velocity. Analyzing posts from industry sources, organized into market sectors. Measures the buzz in the marketplace. Using social media velocity as an indicator of potential price moves. Lots of charts based on sentiment, Beyond the Arc knows first-hand the challenges of working with sentiment. I think too much emphasis on sentiment, given the inherent challenges in measuring sentiment. There is a lot of reporting, but somewhat dubious about the strengths of the underlying data. Social media can be a great source of insights, but it has to be put into the proper context. Appears that they may be overstating the data. ^SR

Terminal for portfolio managers and traders. Looks like a Bloomberg terminal merged with social media and other big data tools. Nice looking screen, browser-based so it looks very desktop-oriented.  Showing velocity of Apple stock after the iPhone announcement yesterday. Velocity is an early indicator of how a stock will do as well as sentiment.

Like I’ve written before, Finovate New York has a lot more securities-oriented organizations. This looks good but I’m not sure how much different Market IQ is from other tools so I’ll have to do more research. Now listening to a 20 second computer-read audio analysis from the data.  “A true intelligence network.” ^WM

Unleash    Insaaf Mohideen (Founder & CEO) and Ahmad Ibrahim (Business Development)

Application for tracking financial performance for small business. Dashboard helps to visualize the financial health of the company with simple graphs and charts. Uses peer data from over 15 million tax returns, transactions, etc. Wonder where they obtain that data?  The application provides guidance in the form of “decision assist”, a what-if scenario tool. Over 100 customers in beta. ^SR

Cloud-based CFO solution for SMB market. Issues: fraud, collections, resource waste.  “One stop shop for a small business.” Showing IOS tablet app. Nice clean graphics. I think it’s a great idea but it is so “out of the box” it might be a tough sell to small business owners. It’s a big bold idea.

Again, it’s slick; very cool looking. I THINK this is first demo that was pure mobile-based; an iPad tablet app. I’m not sure if they have an Android version. “Simple. Intelligent. Affordable.” Used by 100 businesses to date. ^WM

miiCard   James Varga (CEO) and Magnus Bray (Sales Manager)

“Bring your own identity” service, trust online. You establish your identity with your bank, and once authenticated you can use that identity online. Now provides geo-location. ^SR

“miiCard is the first Digital Identity Verification service to prove ‘you are who you say you are’ entirely online.”

“Bring your own identity online.” Not just for FI’s but healthcare, screening, BitCoin customers, etc.

I’ve done a quick check of their web site and it looks like they sell to businesses, consumers and developers.  They said they have five announcements today; I’m not sure if we’ve seen the new stuff yet. Showing the system on a PC using IE.

I believe they are based in Scotland. “Identity as a service.” Launching miiCard “FinApp” to be able to share identities but I’m not sure how it works.  Showing new capabilities; location aware with Toopher who is also here at the show.  Multi-factor mobile-based authentification.

#4 and #5 announcements are related to a certified bank statement feature. ^WM

Think Finance – Ken Rees (President & CEO) and Kathy Boden Holland (EVP Corporate Development) and Elio Mariani (Product Director)

Helping employees facing emergency cash needs, funded through payroll. The product is called “Elastic”, both a loan management platofrm and decisioning system. 25% of the cost of payday loans, employees can repay via payroll. Only available to employees. Simple payment calculator for employees. Helps people see the full impact of the loan.

I really like this idea, it makes emergency cash available without the onerous terms and debt death-spiral of payday loans. Wonder about the regulatory and compliance issues; do employers have reporting requirements? ^SR

“Elastic” a line of credit for employees from their employers. Launching in October. “elastic – stretch your paycheck”. A better credit option that 1/4 the cost of a pay day loan.  Showing payment calculator and how someone might borrow from their employer.

At first glance, I wasn’t sure if I wasn’t going to like this but I’ve changed my mind.  This is not unlike what credit unions have done (and are doing) for their members at a credit union where the charter is employer-based.  If you ever watch an old episode of “Dragnet” sometimes you will hear Joe Friday (Jack Webb) tease Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) about paying off his car from the LAPD’s credit union. ^WM

Interactions  Phil Gray (EVP Business Development) and Dan Fox (Marketing Director)

Natural language processing for customer support applications. Customer authenticates using voice print. Automated agent responds to customer inquiries. The customer experience of talking to a computer, no matter how smart, is going to be an obstacle. The concept is great, but talking to a computer makes me feel like the bank doesn’t want to take the time to talk to me. In the demo, the scenario is a fraudulent charge. From a customer perspective, this can be a very emotional event.

The NLP processing seems very good, responsive. The voice is very “computer sounding.” Hal?  Hal, are you there?  This seems to be like Siri for your bank’s customer contact center.

Interactions emphasizes the accuracy and reliability of their systems.  ^SR

Virtual self service solution. I believe it is an automated platform that integrates IVR with mobile. They are showing how someone can call and report a charge that was a fraud.  From what I can tell it is a super intelligent IVR that is really good with speech recognition.

The demo is going great, when I call an IVR the speech recognition is terrible. In summary, this is a SIRI-type solution for self service. It’s an incredible demo if it works as well in real life.

It looks like FI is one of six markets they target. ^WM

Toopher  Josh Alexander (CEO) and Evan Grim (CTO)

Toopher’s value prop: delivering better security with improved customer experience. Toopher provides the location services for miiCard. New multi-factor authentication functionality for mobile payments.   ^SR

Good fast-paced start to the demo from Josh, their CEO.  Use location-aware authentification.  “Simple, secure and your phone stays in your pocket.”

Using iPhone with Toopher to bind an ID to a device. I like this concept.  The user can choose locations where an app can automatically authenticate, kind of like FourSquare for security. From the company: Accelerate your business growth with invisible authentication. Toopher prevents online fraud and identity theft from ever happening using the location awareness of your phone. Better still, we automate the authentication process, making it go invisible.

Debut of payment authorization process to prevent mobile wallet fraud.  Call to mobile phone to respond/authorize a transaction.  If a credit card was stolen this will allow fraud to be stopped because the card would not be with smart phone. Interesting. Looking for pilot partners. Good use of humor. ^WM

FutureAdvisor Bo Lu (Founder & CEO) and Joe Cianciolo (VP Business Development)

Portfolio management tool for the mass affluent. Enables customers to link their accounts from various providers. Applies various metrics to the portfolios, and makes recommendations to improve performance and lower fees. Scalable recommendations. Over 25,000 households currently using the platform.

This looks to be a very good tool for self-directed investors. Provides automatic rebalancing. Provides email updates.

FutureAdvisor Premium manages the paper required to transfer accounts, allows customers to easily consolidate.

$19 monthly fee, 50% shared with bank or credit union.  Great product, have some questions about the business model.  ^SR

“CU’s and Banks: let’s help you grow your wallet share.” Showing a browser-based trading screen which I’m assuming would be private-labeled with an FI. It LOOKS like they designed they designed their site direct to consumers but are here to partner with FI’s which makes sense. From the company: FutureAdvisor is an online investment advisor that automatically manages your investments to help you do better with your money. FutureAdvisor works with your existing investments including your 401(k).

Showing “activity feed” showing day-by-day of all transactions related to a portfolio – rebalancing, tax loss harvesting, etc. ^WM

Cardlytics  John Brown (EVP Financial Institutions)

A new feature for location-based services and push notifications. Targeted set of offers, based on where you are. Cardlytics has a very strong merchant rewards offering, and these new features make them stronger. Value prop for consumers: help me save money on a daily basis. Real-time alerts and notifications help make offers top-of-mind and offers positive reinforcement.  ^SR

Lighter Capital   BJ Lackland (CEO) and Molly Otter (CIO)

Online commercial lender for small businesses. Using CRM data for lending decisions, visibility into Salesforce.com data for the applicant. Lighter Capital also uses data from Yodlee and other providers.

Lighter Capital is relying heavily on the sales history and future opportunity tracking. Wonder how they address the issue of poor data quality in CRM?  How do they validate the CRM data?  Surely they must have other underwriting criteria?  ^SR

Dynamics    Jeff Mullen (CEO, Dynamics) and Jonathan Beaver (Chief Architect, Dynamics) with their customer Brandon F. Nowac (Team Leader Prepaid Cards, Key Corporate Bank)

Product offerings for prepaid payment solutions. Rewards-based, real-time, platform to incent consumers away from ATM and to payments at point-of-sale where bank can earn interchange fee. You get collect-and-win game pieces every time you use the prepaid card.

Always impressive when you can incorporate a customer into your presentation.  ^SR

LearnVest   Alexa von Tobel (Founder & CEO) and Karim Naraghi (VP Business Development)

Subscription pricing for access to a Certified Financial Planner (CFP).  7 simple steps to financial planning. Dashboards and reports are simple, easy to absorb. “Conflict-free advice.”

They built their own personal financial planning platform. Ongoing evolution of your financial plan, as your needs change. New product: LearnVest at work for 401k plans.  ^SR

Jumio   Mike Orlando (CSO) and Emilio Disanluciano (Sr. Business Development)

Jumio offers scanning technology for mobile. For example, use your smartphone to snap a pic of your credit card, instead of entering all of the data.  Speeds m-commerce and improves the customer experience for mobile apps.

You can also scan your ID, instead of having to re-enter it. Jumio can also authenticate the user in real-time. You take a picture of your face as part of the verification process.

As a consumer, this raises some concerns. Do I want my ID, credit card, and other info on my smartphone?   ^SR

mBank/Accenture Michal Panowicz (Managing Director, New mBank Project) and Maciej Jopyk (Senior Manager, Accenture)

Transform your online banking platform, using mBank’s product currently used by 4.5 million customers. Proactive advice tailored to your account circumstances.  For example, real-time CRM allows bank to offer you a quick cash loan, instead of hitting an overdraft fee.

Full online branch with advice provided online, via video chat.  Relationship has a rewards program as well.

This is an alternative to the traditional bank branch.  Very interesting idea. Again, how do I reconcile the security concerns?  Will consumers place their trust in online chat?  Who’s on the other end of the line?  ^SR

Socure   Sunil Madhu (CEO) and Johnny Ayers (Director, Business Development)

Social biometrics. Verify identity using social media behavior. Moven Bank is a customer of Socure.

Innovation Agency   Christoph Wertz (President) and Sean O’Reilly (CTO)

Innovation cafe, an internal platform for enterprise innovation.  You can pull external Twitter feeds into this internal collaboration platform. Users can rank and rate ideas, as well as various feeds.

Includes online sentiment analysis for idea tracking. Helps to identify themes in the enterprise. How are they refining the sentiment analysis for context?

Social network analysis helps to identify key innovators within the company and highlight cross-pollination. Find “like minds” within your organization.

The platform has executive reporting and dashboards.