Day 2: Live Blog, FinovateFall 2013 by William Mills III & Steven Ramirez

William MillsWilliam Mills III, Chief Executive Officer of William Mills Agency is live blogging today at Finovate Fall 2013 in New York City. William has more than 30 years of experience in financial technology and is a recognized leader in financial and technology marketing. William has personally advised more than 300 chief executives on marketing strategy, business development, mergers and acquisitions, company branding and public relations. You can contact him via email at william@williammills.com or by twitter @williamemills.

Want Brand Awareness for your new FinTech Innovation? Click Below.

Steven J. RamirezSteven J. Ramirez is CEO of Beyond the Arc, Inc., a management consulting firm that combines strategy consulting with advanced analytics to help financial services clients identify opportunities to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. The company’s social media data mining helps clients improve their customer experience across products, channels, and touch points. For more information about Beyond the Arc and its solutions visit http://beyondthearc.com.

Twitter: @beyondthearc


11:58 am

Well, Steven and I are pretty much wrapping it up today; Steven may post other news late in the day.

I think it was a great show.  Steven said “I was pleasantly surprised at the number of companies using text analysis, sentiment analysis and data analytics as core parts of their product.”

Please feel free to share/forward/Tweet some or all of this live blog from Finovate Fall 2013 New York and I look forward to the Finovate Spring event in California next year.

I will be at Money2020 next month in Las Vegas, NV and if you would like to reach me please contact me at william@williammills.com or 678-694-7213.

 

All the best,

 

William Mills, CEO
William Mills Agency

 


11:49 am

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.

SR @beyondthearc @wmagency #Finovate


11:42 am

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.

SR @beyondthearc @wmagency #Finovate


11:35 am

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 @beyondthearc @wmagency #Finovate


11:26 am

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 @beyondthearc @wmagency #Finovate


11:18 am

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 @beyondthearc @wmagency #Finovate


11:11 am

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

Follow us on Twitter:  @beyondthearc   @wmagency  #Finovate


11:03 am

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 @beyondthearc @wmagency #Finovate


10:55 am

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 @beyondthearc @wmagency #Finovate


10:24 am

Great morning on Day 2 of Finovate. I think the conference is really delivering on the promise of showcasing innovation in financial services. Offerings for payday loans, mass affluent investing, and consumer financial education are all some of the most interesting to me. SR


10:15 am

SHORT BREAK. I’m on the front row if anyone wants to meet. William Mills, CEO

678-694-7213

WM @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


10:14 am

FutureAdvisor – Bo Lu (Founder & CEO) Joe Cianciolo (VP Business Development) https://www.futureadvisor.com

“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 @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


10:07 am

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

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 @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


10:00 am

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

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 @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


09:53 am

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

“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 @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


09:46 am

miiCard -James Varga (CEO) and Magnus Bray (Sales Manager) “ 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 @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


09:36 am

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

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 @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


09:29 am

Market IQ – Fahad Kamr (Founder) and David Middleton (COO) – “We merge social sentiment with fundamental analytics to give you an investing edge.”

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 @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


09:21 am

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

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

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 @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


09:13 am

DoubleBeam – Ted Tekippe (CEO) and Avi Lichtschein (VP Business Development)
  Full disclosure: WMA represents DoubleBeam for public relations.

“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 @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


09:06 am

The hall in NYC.

IMG_7623

08:59 am

Steven and I have to leave at noon EST today so we’ll be covering the presentations up to that time. I’m sure there will be a lot of great stuff in the afternoon so be sure to check Finovate’s live blog while we are out.

WM @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


08:44 am

Good morning, it’s a beautiful day in New York, Finovate Day One went great.

WM @williamemills @wmagency @Finovate


08:46 am

Presentation start in 15 minutes…


08:39 am

Another sold out event.

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