This is one in a series of posts live from Finovate Fall 2014. We’re seeing great demos of new technology in mobile, risk/fraud detection, small business lending, and Big Data. We’re in the home stretch with about 20 more companies to to come. ^SR
CR2 Kieran Kilcullen (Director, Sales & Marketing) and Patrick Simons (Principal Consultant) CR2 has an omni-channel platform for self-service banking and have now added mobile. The channels include ATM, mobile, online — all for a fairly seamless experience. It works with the bank’s existing channels. You can also send money, that a friend can retrieve from an ATM. Cool! ^SR
’ve seen these folks before and believe they have a pretty good offering. Now showing a “Dublin Bank” mobile banking app that LOOKS like a Windows Mobile app but I’m pretty sure it’s on IOS. Lots of “tiles”, which I think will be more popular as Windows 8 becomes in wider use. ^WM
SAS Games Siobhan Mullen (CEO) and Stephen Scully (President) It is a game-a-thon for college savings; it helps families to focus on saving for college. Saving is done in the name of the youth. They have a game engine and a number of kids-focused marketing promotions. Game-a-thon is like a walk-a-thon, and the games are educational, kids make progress in the game and get sponsored by friends and family. FIs can partner with SAS Games and the game can be named after the bank that sponsors a particular game. They are looking for a bank to sponsor the money transfers, into the savings accounts. Hmmm, that might be an issue if they are still looking for an official bank. ^SR
“Game-A-Thon” for college savings. Marketing tool for commercial and personal banking. I don’t recall seeing this company before. From BIC: Fully automated, easy-to-use, market-disrupting, patent-pending, activity-based fundraising tool for children’s college savings.
I have the pleasure of serving on Florida State’s College of Communication & Information Leadership Board and every year the total cost of higher education continues to skyrocket. In many cases it’s not the tuition; it’s the housing and other costs.
In Atlanta, the AVERAGE cost for an underclassman to attend Emory University is almost ,000 PER YEAR. I applaud what these folks are doing. It’s a game engine connected to social/mobile networks. “The best indicator whether someone will attend college is the amount of money saved in the student’s name, not the wealth of the student’s family”. Interesting information. It’s kind of like Kickstarter within a family network to help children attend higher education. ^WM
NopSec Michelangelo Sidagni (CTO) They use data science and analytics for vulnerability to internet hacks and attacks. They also have a platform for managing remediation, identifying what you need to fix on the website. Has a built-in collaboration tool to fix problems that cross silos. They also use predictive analytics. ^SR
From BIC: NopSec helps businesses to reduce the risk of cyber-attacks by managing the IT security vulnerabilities that matter most. We holistically manage IT security vulnerabilities for applications and infrastructure, on premises and in the cloud. NopSec’s software-as-a-service, Unified VRM, aggregates the results of vulnerability scanners, proactively prioritizes vulnerabilities based on business risk, and expedites remediation by automating the ticketing process and reports. I’m struggling to ascertain exactly what they do. I’m thinking it’s a platform for machine management to prevent fraud/malware. Perhaps this is something that Home Depot or Target should have used. I will have to learn more about these folks. URL: www.nopsec.com. NopSec: vulnerability risk management, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing solutions.^WM
Kapitall Gaspard De Dreuzy (Co-Founder) and Antonio Reyes (Head of Development) An online platform for an investment-based tournament, sort of like fantasy football meets Wall Street. Investors find and trade stocks in the DJ Index. This is an interesting idea, but not sure I understand the audience. ^SR
More information from their web site: About Kapitall, Inc.
With an intuitive and playful user experience, Kapitall is the next generation investing platform where modern investors can learn about the market, research stocks and funds, share investing ideas, and build virtual and real brokerage portfolios. Interacting with company stocks is as easy as drag, drop and trade?. Founded in 2008 by video game entrepreneur Gaspard de Dreuzy and financial technologist Serge Kreiker, Kapitall uses the gaming experience to break the established online trading mold, as the leading investing platform for emerging investors. Jarrett Lilien, former E*TRADE President and COO, joined the team as CEO in 2012.
This is the “gamefication” of trading/investing. I suspected they are well-capitalized and found out that they have raised more than million in VC. ^WM
Minetta Brook – Deepak Bharadwaj (CEO & Founder) and Viplav Nigam (VP Engineering) “Big data Intelligence” Realtime Computational Linguistics Technology. Today, announcing knewsapp for the first 100 users. Interesting use of news analysis and how to value the coverage to be of value to investors. Now showing the stocks where Soros is an investor and if any are getting more coverage in news, Twitter or blogs. I think this is pretty cool and have asked to be a beta user of their product KnewsApp. Web-based and I think mobile versions are available. ^WM
Geezeo – Shawn Ward (CEO) and Peter Glyman (President) “Engagement Banking” “I was the first presenter at the first Finovate” I was there I think I remember their presentation. That was a LONG time ago. Showing IOS app, I think new, SMB cash flow management. From BIC: Geezeo helps organizations engage their base, reach new markets, and increase wallet share. More than 300 financial institutions leverage Geezeo’s PFM platform. Geezeo’s primary focus is to provide services and technologies that enable clients to engage their target audiences to make sound financial decisions around products your financial institution offers. ^WM
Anchor ID – David Schropfer (CEO) From BIC: Anchor ID, Inc. is a digital identity company that allows consumers to use one universal login, combined with smartphone authentication, to access sites across the web. From social networks to entertainment sites, online banking to ecommerce, using Anchor ID, consumers no longer have to remember multiple logins and passwords to securely transact on the web. Headquartered in New York, Anchor ID raised seed capital in January 2014 and will launch in the fall of 2014
“We have been live for two days.” It is authentification technology and gives at least five different choices for authentification: voice, PIN, AppleTouchID, location, etc. Pretty cool and looks flexible. ^WM
Powerlytics Kevin Sheetz (CEO & Co-Founder) and Pat Brown (Sr. Director, Stategic Sales) They use Big Data for better investment strategy. Allows FIs to use their data, and combine it with the organization’s own. Benchmark and other interactive reports helps you to explore the data. They also have products for consumers. They also are looking for strategic partners. ^SR
“Powerful data, smarter decisions.” From BIC: Powerlytics’ market intelligence platform provides the most comprehensive, accurate and granular consumer and business financial data available. Underpinned by the financial statements of 27 million business and 144 million households, Powerlytics’ platform and products allow for unprecedented insights to understand risk, identify market opportunities and conduct predicative analytics, analysis and research with a degree of precession that turns insights into action. Launching new product that parallels a lending workbench. Small business lending strategy platform. It looks pretty powerful; I’m not sure where they get their data. Kevin was at KPMG for 17 years and was a partner and later had successful stints at Unisys and other tech companies before starting Powerlytics. ^WM
Algomi Stu Taylor (CEO) and Usman Khan (CTO) They use social networks for investment managers and insurance companies. They connect bond buyers and sellers, and many bonds don’t trade very frequently. Which global bank can connect me to the right bond seller, without telegraphing this info to the entire market? Honeycomb platform mines bond trading data to identify likely sellers (or buyers, depending on which end of the deal you’re on). Billions of dollars of transactions on their platform. ^SR
95 FTE’s with offices in London and New York. Social networking “take” for investment trading. JPMC is a client. “We run the Honeycomb Network.” Showing screen of bonds that look to be the shape of a honeycomb. Their interface is nice and it has a different kind of look and feel. It reminds me of the periodic table in Chemistry class at FSU.
“Bonds only trade a few times a year.” One of the things I like about Finovate Fall is that is in New York City, so we see a lot more international and investment-based technologies that I don’t usually find in the Finovate Spring event in California. ^WM