10 Fintech Companies Revolutionizing Financial Services, 2021 November2021

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Vol 02 | Issue 04 #TechSupport Finance Made Easy with Ar ficial Intelligence and Machine Learning Epic Crossover The Fascina ng Intersec on of E-commerce and FinTech

Stephen H. Watkin CEO

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enture a guess – What percentage of the world's population had mobile phones before 1990? The answer is less than 1%. So, we can say that only a few in thousand people owned cellular devices. Of course, those were bulky, very basic devices, not anything like the smartphones we have today. So, if a technology can rise from a nearto-zero percent adoption to near-to-hundred percent adoption in less than three decades, that is a remarkable example of rapid adoption of a technology.

But even this rapid transformation pales in comparison to the rate at which Fintech, or Financial Technology, is being adopted in the financial services sector of the world. We are currently going through one of the biggest transformations in financial history and it's going to transform banking as we know it – The Fintech Revolution.

But why is this Fintech Revolution happening right now?

Marking Your Presence in the Digital World

Historically, as technology evolved, the banking industry always kept pace in integrating those new technologies in order to better serve their customers.

But all of that changed during the financial crisis of 2008. During the crisis, banks were busy dealing with

new rules, regulatory requirements and fines imposed on them. Innovation became a distant priority.

But in the same duration, some of the most game-changing technological innovations that have transformed the way we live, have become part of our everyday life. Things like iPhone, Airbnb, Uber, WhatsApp, and WeChat were all platforms that we all grew used to and integrated into our day-to-day experience. So, what happened was that a gap was created between what your banks offer you and what you as a customer came to expect, from a user experience and convenience perspective.

That 'gap' is what the FinTech industry is focused on capturing right now. However, the gap was so large that even non-traditional banking players decided to join in and take advantage of it; primarily, technology firms. And the rest is history.

In this exciting edition of Insights Success magazine – '10 Fintech Companies Revolutionizing Financial Services – 2021,' we are honoured to feature some of the gamechangers who are making the most of this contemporary gap and transforming the age-old financial services sector by making use of innovative technologies and disruptive visions.

For the cover story, we present you Entrex Art Market The regulatory-compliant marketplace for non-fungible and other tokenized creations in the visual arts, music and more.

Then, we are featuring Asignio, an inspiring company that is leading the next generation of authentication, with a more secure, easier-to-remember way to replace passwords.

Additiv – a firm that envisions redesigning and driving the future of financial services – partners with the world's leading financial institutions to help them capitalise on digitalisation.

Finlocker, a white-label financial fitness platform that equips consumers with tools to attain mortgage readiness and much more, is the next generation in customer relationship management. Atidot is transforming the life insurance industry by monetizing in-force data and creating new opportunities across the value chain.

In 2014, we entered a new world. For the first time in history, cashless or card transactions had exceeded the volume of cash transactions. Each day we are inching closer to a completely digital financial market. Read through the pages of this enthralling edition and get inspired by the success stories of the game-changing companies leading the charge of this FinTech Revolution.

Happy Reading!

Aditya Umale

CONTENTS

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ENTREX ART MARKET, LLC A Revolutionary Blockchain-Enabled Platform Democratizing Art Ownership

Articles 34

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#TechSupport Finance Made Easy with Ar ficial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Epic Crossover The Fascina ng Intersec on of Ecommerce and FinTech

Addi v The Right Technology Partner for your Digital Wealth and Investment Management

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Asignio Empowering Financial Ins tu ons with Secure Authen ca on Soltuions

A dot A Leading Cloud-based Pla orm for the Life Insurance Industry

FinLocker Keeping Customers and Businesses Financially Fit

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Editor-in-Chief Sumita Sarkar Senior Editor Anish Miller Managing Editor Trishika Rokade Assisting Editors Aditya, Gaurav Visualiser David King Art & Pictuer Editor Rohil Shinganapurkar Co-designer Paul Belin Art & Design Assistant Mrunalinee Deshmukh Business Development Manager Sherin Rodricks Marketing Manager Joseph D'souza Business Development Executives Kelly, David Sales Executives Mark, Alice Technical Head Jacob Smile Assistant Technical Head Amar Sawant Technical Consultants Pratiksha, Aditya, David Digital Marketing Manager Alina Sege Assistant Digital Marketing Manager Amol Wadekar SME-SMO Executives Gemson, Renuka Research Analyst Eric Smith Circulation Manager Tanaji sales@insightssuccess.com

February, 2021 Corporate Ofce Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-859-2600 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

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Company Name

Featuring

Brief

additiv additiv.com

Emma Wadey Head of Strategy

additiv partners with leading companies across the world to help them capitalize on the possibilities of digital wealth and investment management.

Appzen appzen.com

Anant Kale CEO

AppZen is the leader in Finance AI software built to deliver autonomous processing for modern finance teams.

Asignio asignio.com

Lamar Rutherford CEO

Asignio is leading the next generation of authentication, with a more secure, easier-to-remember way to replace passwords.

Atidot atidot.com

Dror Katzav CEO and Co-founder

Atidot is an AI cloud-based platform, tailored specifically to the needs of the life insurance industry, enabling insurers to grow their customer's Life Time Value and create new revenues.

Cloud9 Technologies c9tec.com

Steve Kammerer Founder and CEO

Cloud9 Technologies, now part of Symphony, is the leading voice collaboration and analytics firm for the financial markets that is reinventing the way traders communicate.

Creditsesame creditsesame.com

Adrian Nazari Founder and CEO

Credit Sesame is the only service that helps consumers achieve financial wellness by helping them manage and grow their credit and cash in one place for free.

Entrex Art Market entrexartmarket.com

Stephen H. Watkins CEO

Entrex Art Market -- The regulatory-compliant marketplace for non-fungible and other tokenized creations in the visual arts, music and more.

Finlocker finlocker.com

Brian Vieaux President and COO

FinLocker is a white label (B2B2C) financial fitness platform that empowers consumers with the tools and resources to leverage their data to financially prepare to apply for a mortgage loan and achieve other important financial milestones.

Hibob hibob.com

Ronni Zehavi Co-founder and CEO

The PR Department Inc partners with its clients to become part of their team-their internal "PR department"-and work together to achieve their communications and marketing objectives.

Yulu Public Relations yulupr.com

Melissa Orozco CEO and Chief Impact Strategist

Yulu is an award-winning PR & impact relations agency with a mission to champion social innovation by sharing stories that matter.

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ENTREX ART MARKET, LLC

A Revolutionary Blockchain-Enabled Platform Democratizing Art Ownership

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The intent of the Entrex Capital Market System is to support the 28,000,000 private entrepreneurs across the United States – versus the limitations sanctioned today by the regulatory agencies.

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Stephen H. Watkin CEO Entrex Art Market, LLC

10 Fintech Companies Revolu onizing Financial Services-2021

Then was born the idea of fusing art trading with blockchain, an idea born from the mind of Stephen H. Watkins who envisioned that anyone could own a part of world-acclaimed works of art through a regulatorycompliant marketplace. Thus, Entrex Art Market, LLC was conceived.

The art industry is buzzing with the stories of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the various works being sold and securitized. But there’s not much focus on what happens to the display of such pieces if you’ve sold the asset.

The Entrex patented technology creates a unique way to allow the blockchain to authorize the display of art.

Imagine, whether at the yacht club, on your iPhone, or on special digital displays within your home, you can display beautiful works of art while showing that you are the authorized owner of the art.

Entrex was founded in 2001 as a capital market system for entrepreneurial companies. It established regulatorycompliant, niche capital market systems that supported regulated market constituents to originate, structure, place, trade, settle, and service securities of entrepreneurial companies. Working together with industry leaders, the Entrex platforms allow investors to find, research, track, manage and trade entrepreneurial securities whether by geography, sector, or commodity.

Democratizing Art Ownership The Entrex Art Market is democratizing ownership of world-acclaimed art by putting the 'pieces' in masterpieces. The Entrex Art Market’s technology platform is an award-nominated, regulatory-reviewed capital market system that provides an end-to-end trading solution for securitized products, commodities, debt and equity in niche marketplaces.

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The Entrex Art Market is built upon a Blockchainenabled technology platform that is the rst regulatorycompliant marketplace bringing together qualied fractional buyers and sellers of major works of art.

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ntil now, artists and their curators have typically sold creations to a singular buyer. Companies, on the other hand, have been able to sell their equity and asset-backed securities to multiple buyers through regulated markets, in the process creating increased value and liquidity.

The platform, which was featured by IBM® in a bestpractice showcase and case study for their Hyperledger and Domino® technologies, is the foundation of the alternative investment marketplaces the company creates.

Collectively, the Entrex Art Market is a masterstroke for museums as well as owners and collectors of masterworks.

Entrex Art Market now allows owners the ability to recapture a significant portion of their capital by selling Securitized Art Interests in masterworks while maintaining full control and possession of the works themselves. Owners can continue to control, and display works while regaining up to 49% of their current appraised value.

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“The Entrex Art Market is built upon a Blockchain-enabled technology platform that is the first regulatory-compliant marketplace bringing together qualified fractional buyers and sellers of major works of art,” remarked Mr. Stephen Watkins.

Entrex’s Securitized Art Interests are offered in increments of US $10,000, and for the first time allow a larger proportion of the investing public to participate in the global, world-class art market.

There is only one regulatory-compliant marketplace for Securitized Art Interests – and that is the Entrex Art Market.

The Entrex Art Market is a majority-owned subsidiary of Entrex, Inc., a publicly traded company under the ticker symbol UNSS. Owners of Entrex’s Securitized Art Interests own a fractional piece of the real-world masterwork and benefit from any potential increase in the value of the work over the long term. The company believes that unlike an NFT, pursuant to Entrex’s ‘No-Action Letter’ request filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it is important to provide legitimate masterpiece assets traded via regulated market constituents across a regulatory-compliant marketplace to provide comfort, ease, and efficiency to the alternative investment community.

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A Leader with a Vision

Entrex began as part of serial entrepreneur Stephen H. Watkins' desire to improve access to capital for other entrepreneurs.

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Entrex began as part of serial entrepreneur Stephen H. Watkins’ desire to improve access to capital for other entrepreneurs. Having established while scaling his own ventures that entrepreneurial businesses were largely underserved by existing capital markets, Watkins designed a successful capital market solution focused exclusively on entrepreneurs and their growing businesses.

As part of this endeavor, Entrex designed and built a technology platform to provide an end-to-end trading solution for securitized products, commodities, debt, and equity created by entrepreneurs. The platform managed the first equity offering on the blockchain – the Overstock.com

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Analyzing Change and Capitalizing on the Future

There's only one regulatorycompliant marketplace for Securitized Art Interests – and that's the Entrex Art Market.

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offering – and is the foundation on which the alternative investment marketplaces that Entrex manages today are built.

The Ever-Evolving Game

Technology and institutional investors manage approximately 80% of the 3,400 activily-traded companies on the NYSE and NASDAQ directly and through over 28,000 funds. Algorithms affect prices in milliseconds – faster than any retail investor can think – placing price discovery and ‘investment’ out of reach of the majority of investors today.

“The pandemic has allowed all of us to see the fragility of smaller companies across the world – while allowing entrepreneurs to recognize, create and scale innovative solutions for the ‘new norm’,” says Stephen.

He further elaborates that Wall Street needs little to affect further efficiency of the 3,400 actively-traded stocks and focus should be on democratizing capital access to worthy entrepreneurs across the United States. Regulators need to maintain investor safety while creating a path, through regulated market constituents, to viable and worthy investment opportunities.

Art Museums and collection owners are finding their significant book value of worldwide acclaimed masterpieces can be liquified while maintaining control and possession through Entrex Art Market “Securitized Art Interest” offerings.

The Entrex team believes this year will see nearly one billion dollars of Securitized Art Interests offered through the Entrex Art Market while they separately anticipate formalizing their prominent leadership position with a significant worldwide auction house.

“The intent of the Entrex Capital Market System is to support the 28,000,000 private entrepreneurs across the United States – versus the limitations sanctioned today by the regulatory agencies,” Stephen added.

Words of the Wise When asked about what advice he would like to endow onto budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the financial services space, Stephen replied, “The financial services sector is vibrant and exciting – while maintained by surprisingly few well-capitalized constituents. This is helpful to entrepreneurs exiting – while challenging the norm in formative years means one should be wellcapitalized for a long battle.”

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Chris ne Schmid Head of Strategy addi v

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10 Fintech Companies Revolu onizing Financial Services-2021

Additiv

The Right Technology Partner for your Digital Wealth and Investment Management

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n the last decade, digitalization has infiltrated every aspect of our lives. From how we create to how we consume, this new paradigm is transforming industries and shaping the future.

The ripples of this digitalization have washed ashore new possibilities for the financial sector as well. The evolution from brick-and-mortar financial institutions to online wealth management platforms reflects these changes and the ways in which financial operations are conducted today.

The emergence of digital wealth management will have a significant impact on consumer behaviour and the future of finance. Wealth management firms are eager to embrace this shift because they know that catering to an increasingly mobile workforce with diverse needs requires a different type of service delivery model than the traditional offerings.

Headquartered in Switzerland, with regional offices in Singapore, UAE, Germany, and Kenya, additiv is supported by a global ecosystem of partners.

What makes us different is that our products sit upon our cloud-native, wealth platform; Digital Financial Suite (DFS). This is an orchestration layer that sits between client interaction channels and systems of record.

As a result, DFS enables FIs to simultaneously deliver multiple highly engaging experiences, while data is seamlessly run on one platform.

Although, systems of intelligence are increasingly adopted elsewhere within other financial industries, we believe DFS is the first and only to adopt this approach as a wealth platform.

Fortunately, there a few companies who are rising to the challenge pertaining to this emerging need, and one prominent name among such companies is additiv.

Our solutions have been designed by keeping agility and efficiency in mind, enabling our customers to realise the value of digitalization quickly.

In the following interview, Christine Schmid, the Head of Strategy, shares a few insights into the company’s position in FinTech space. She also talks about the aspects that make additiv stand out from the crowd, and what more the company has in store for its clients.

On average, we are able to ensure that we can roll out a new IT platform to our customers within 6 months (from scratch). A digital wealth management platform is fundamental to realise the benefits of digitalization and the speed of delivery is the key to it.

Please brief our audience about additiv, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a leading player in the financial services space.

However, once the platform is available, the ability to continually launch and enhance wealth management solutions is essential. At additiv, our clients are able to launch new solutions within three months (subject to the given environment).

Established in 1998, additiv partners with leading financial institutions (FIs) across the world to help them capitalize on the possibilities of digital wealth and investment management.

Our clients realise benefits including, on average an NPS registered 26-point improvement in disparity between promoters and distractors, a 25% new customer acquisition

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element of their system including configuration, avoiding the lengthy and costly process of building the foundational elements of a system.

additiv supports a large number of the leading financial institutions for wealth management and non-financial brands.

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rate and 75% of total customer AUM in e-asset management.

What other products do you offer, and how are these making an impact on the industry and your clients?

We offer a range of products including three established solutions: Hybrid Wealth Manager, Wealth Robo Advisor, and more recently our Wealth Solution Builder.

Our Hybrid Wealth Manager is a set of digital applications for managing investments and client relationships – Workbench, Mobile Advisor, and an advanced Client Cockpit with all the interaction possibilities with advisors.

It allows financial institutions to offer the best solution for their needs, only automating the menial elements previously undertaken by a relationship manager.

Our (assisted) Wealth Robo Advisor is a set of digital applications that offer self-service, remote chat with an advisor or via call-centre, screen sharing, and phone-in from anywhere, at any time (24/7). It allows financial institutions to offer the same superior quality service as traditional advice with efficiency of a completely automated approach.

Our Wealth Solution Builder is an established IT foundation platform and extensive range of API tools and functionality for FIs to build their own, end-to-end digital wealth offerings and client journeys. With the support of additiv technical staff, IT developers can create and control every

Building upon DFS’s value, we’ve recently launched our Embedded Wealth and Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) models. Like DFS, these utilise our extensive ecosystem of partners to support the growing need of wealth management solutions to be embedded into platforms as part of context relevant user journeys.

Our Embedded Wealth model offers a range of wealth management products that makes it easy for financial and non-financial institutions to embed investment services into their customer proposition. We offer end-to-end wealth services that a brand can easily include, either tightly integrated into an existing journey, or as a standalone service. additiv provides the orchestration platform and works with regulated finance partners to fulfil the complete customer journey.

Our Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) model also utilises DFS. It links regulated wealth management services with the brands that wishes to embed the services into their offering.

In practice, this means providing APIs for interaction and the intelligence to integrate services in context-relevant user-journeys.

Our conversations with FIs and consumer platforms or large employers indicates that no other vendor is supporting embedded wealth fully. In fact, a Geneva-based consultancy called Aperture recently published a methodology, assessing wealth management software vendors.

Their report (Digital Age Wealth Management) rated additiv as a top ‘Transformer’ stating, “In terms of business model enablement, we see additiv as best-in-class. The solution can be deployed with out-of-the-box user agents or headless, using existing or third-party customer interaction channels. This makes the solution ideally suited for wealth management-as-a-service models.”

Christine, please brief us about your journey in the financial services industry, and how they have contributed towards the company’s success.

I joined additiv in 2020 as a Member of the Executive Board and Head of Strategy. Prior to joining additiv, I was Investment Solution Head, and Head Global Equity and Credit Research at Credit Suisse.

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Exhibiting Excellence additiv supports a large number of the leading financial institutions for wealth management and non-financial brands.

The company’s clients realize benefits including on average an NPS registered 26-point improvement in disparity between promoters and distractors, a 25% new customer acquisition rate, and 75% of total customer AUM in e-asset management.

Following is a specific example of a client’s success as a result of leveraging additiv’s technology.

In 2019, the Commonwealth Bank deployed a 3-stage MVP, making it the first to launch a wealth management mobile app in Indonesia. With CommBank, SmartWealth, Indonesian customers now have: A 360° view of their investment portfolio at fingertips Personalized advice (smart advisory) to keep investment decisions on track Timely news on the financial market through push notifications The ability to purchase government bonds in primary market The ability to purchase government and retail bonds directly from the app Commonwealth Bank saved countless hours and helped customers get more value from their relationship managers, who previously spent efforts to combine a single customer’s holdings for a 360° update on their portfolio.

The bank increased their scalability potential, no longer being limited by the finite human capacity of their relationship managers, who can focus on giving value-added advisory rather than spending their time in doing administrative tasks.

As a result of this launch, Commonwealth Bank have won 3 major awards: The First Digital Banking Application that Integrates Comprehensive Wealth Management Product Information – the Indonesian World Record Museum (MURI) The First Digital Banking Application with Robo Advisory Service – the Indonesian World Record Museum (MURI) The 2019 Best Frictionless Customer Experience App – The Asian Banker.

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many of our clients with our Hybrid Wealth Manager product to avoid this challenge.

A hybrid approach allows financial institutions to offer services that best suits their client’s individual needs, letting them choose how they want to be serviced. Depending on these needs, the advice and guidance available can be human or self-service.

I am a thought leader and strategic thinker on long term trends, which are relevant to the society. I also have experience in research and investment. I also bring in extensive investment knowhow to the table along with ESG, pension, and private market knowledge.

Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring safety of your employees at the same time?

As an agile IT company, we were already set up for working from home. The impact has therefore, been minimal to us internally. In terms of the impact on our customers and market needs, we were also very well prepared. Even before the covid-crisis, wealth services were expected to be quick and easy, with availability from multiple access points.

The pandemic created an even greater reliance on digital but receiving personal and tailored advice was no less important. In fact, initially the crisis triggered a requirement for more wealth advice particularly for high net-worth individuals (HNWIs).

Supported by intelligent analytics, clients can be serviced personally. Rather than impeding the client relationship, it actually encourages collaboration through in-person and remote advisor/client conversations on a multitude of channels. It allows relationship managers to remain productive and focus on clients, when it matters most, improving scalability for banks.

Using this model, our customers who serve other clients are thriving, but the benefit isn’t just limited to this segment.

For example, during the initial covid confinement period, our customer PostFinance launched their digital investment platform. As one of the largest retail banks in Switzerland, they wanted to expand their range to include wealth products to clients wishing to diversify away from low yielding saving products.

The platform offers a seamless and engaging advisory and discretionary end-to-end experience. It’s seen a massive take-up, adding around 6,000 clients and over CHF300m in assets-under-management within the first nine months, currently growing around CHF30m a month.

Reaching clients directly was a problem for many wealth advisors, however, at additiv we were already supporting

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The Fascinating Intersection of

E-commerce and FinTech T

hanks to technology, the traditional linear journey of a consumer has been completely changed.

Earlier the journey had a clear beginning, a middle, and an end. And most of the customers used to go through that journey following similar pathways.

Today, in a consumer-centric and consumer-led business model, the ride is impulsive, unpredictable, non-linear, stimulus (external and internal) driven and shared (with friends, family, peers, or fellow consumers). The swing was brought by eCommerce, of which fintech has always been the most important part.

The new business model understands this emerging shift by focusing on the consumer's lifecycle through various touchpoints. Ecommerce companies follow consumers through the crisscrossing network of physical and digital worlds experiences. It then uses technology to find out a deeper and keener understanding of people. Then it deploys fintech and uses those insights to create touchpoints of such signature moments. And by using those touchpoints, they drive personalization, loyalty, relevance, word-of-mouth, and referrals. Thus, they create their own consumer network, which keeps casting its net widely, improving business growth and consumer experience.

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Epic Crossover

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The Combo Offer: Ecommerce Value Chain A digital online shop needs a digital payment solution.

Some eCommerce platforms (B2C) developed their own inhouse, integrated payment solution, and others (B2B) outsourced the process to their fintech partners, who in turn provided the payment solutions to the merchants. Whatever their approach is, these are all B2B companies (except those that are purely B2C and those that are a combination of B2B and B2C). Thus, they typically do not have a direct holding of the end consumer.

Earlier, there used to be a clear demarcation between B2B (half visible), B2C (visible), and Backend Enterprises (completely invisible to the end consumer). This demarcation is weakening due to the novel developments happening at the intersection of eCommerce and fintech.

The crisscross in between eCommerce infrastructure and fintech services is pointing towards that shift emerging out of the integration of the eCommerce value chain. It is allowing eCommerce focused B2B companies to create products/services directly for the consumers.

This exciting integration is further transforming online browsing, purchase, payment, and checkout as key consumer touchpoints, many a time influencing consumer behavior on the way. The companies are leveraging fintech so that they can be attractive to both merchants' and consumers' demands and give them a more user-friendly online experience.

Extending the Fascination: Integrating the solutions The FinTech industry is continuously evolving to help both consumers and businesses in aligning their processes and streamlining their finances. In the last decade, FinTech solutions have enabled eCommerce companies to invest in advance sales, growth, manage business banking, and more.

There are many other fintech solutions extending their support to businesses in the eCommerce sector. #Consumer POS Finance: Point-of-Sale (POS) financing is a recent solution offered by various companies by embedding these facilities directly into the listed products/services, which can be paid at the time of checkout. There is another 'Buy Now Pay Later' (BNPL) option available to the consumers, which can be utilized in Easy Monthly Installments (EMI) benefits, with minimal or zero interest rates. Though credit cards offer the same option, they charge heavily, and many a time, the consumer

gets trapped in the debt cycle. Consumer financing companies, on the other hand, give more flexibility, including no penalty or discounted transaction fees, realtime decisions, instant approvals, and checkouts. #Instant Funding: Availability of hard cash to invest in growth is the most common issue faced by online eCommerce sellers. Through Instant Funding, the issue is being resolved by some fintech solution providers. Their services are designed to help such seller overcome their cash crunch situations, with discounted purchase of the seller's future receivables, without any credit check or compound interest. These Instant Funding companies just consider the seller's multichannel sales history and, if approved, provide the fund immediately, in a working day. #Digital Banking Solutions: Nowadays, all traditional, physical banks offer digital solutions to their customers, like online banking, online and instant money transfer, online deposits, etc., charging a lot of fees because of their infrastructural investment and operating expenses.

Online-only Business Banks are solving these issues, for eCommerce players, by offering all the above-mentioned services, with minimal or no fees or earnings for them, in the form of high interest on their deposits and balances. #Channel-Member Financing: Many of the eCommerce giants are offering their top-performing long-term sellers, Membership Financing. The offers are made directly and processed immediately. #Blockchain Solutions: It helps eCommerce sellers to track their entire supply chain (from manufacturing plant to the warehouse, to a customer), manage stocks and inventory, minimize costs, and much more.

Epic Crossover: United, we gain This fascinating intersection between eCommerce and fintech is a win-win situation for all the parties involved.

Instead of only competing for the market share, the different players are collaborating with each other to form a healthy and progressive ecosystem.

The reason is, all these eCommerce and fintech entities understand that at the end of the day, unity gains more value and is more profitable in the long run.

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- Gaurav Wankhade

Kyle Rutherford CEO Asignio

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Our unique technology, synchronous dual biometrics, combines passive facial recognition and handwriting recognition to provide fast and extremely secure authentication.

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10 Fintech Companies Revolu onizing Financial Services-2021

Empowering Financial Ins tu ons with Secure Authen ca on Soltuions

About the Leader Kyle Rutherford, Founder, and CEO is a serial entrepreneur who has over 30 years of experience in a variety of industries, all technology-focused, but his current passion is improving the authentication experience and secure access to your data so you can transact safely.

This is especially relevant in financial services where an account takeover can cost FIs large sums of money and, even more importantly, their customer’s trust. Kyle has a degree in software and an MBA from Harvard. He is an expert on product technology and has helped the team develop something that is incredibly secure without sacrificing user experience. He has also built a great team around him to deliver on his vision.

n today’s world, where everything from your groceries to your dinner reservations can be done online, it is only apparent that financial services ride this wave of digital transformation.

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Based in Seattle, Washington, Asignio provides a quick, innovative, and reliable sign-in technique – synchronous dual biometrics, which combines passive facial recognition and handwriting.

The finance industry is changing rapidly with the introduction of new technologies, and legacy institutions are struggling to keep up. Financial Institutions (FIs) across the world are all required to comply with KYC regulations for customer identification and verification purposes. However, there are limitations on how much information can be collected from customers and what kind of data can be collected to not violate privacy rights.

In the following interview, Kyle Rutherford, the CEO, shares his insights on the company’s journey in the FinTech industry and his vision for future innovations under Asignio’s label.

Moreover, where there is data, there is the threat of cyberattacks, and FIs are the most lucrative targets for ransomware, phishing, and other data security threats. This is where companies like Asignio play a significant role in protecting FIs against such vulnerabilities.

Following are the interview highlights Please brief our audience about Asignio, its USPs, and its position as a leading player in the financial services space?

Asignio was founded to make sign-ins easier and more secure.

In the market, we saw that passwords were becoming a more cumbersome and a less secure solution, complex biometrics have limitations (i.e., selfies are vulnerable to deep fakes, and, if there is a data breach, your thumbprint, eyeball, etc. data is compromised, and there is no way to change them.), and fraud

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interest across the financial services industry, and we are currently testing with DocuSign to ensure that the system runs smoothly before a wider launch later this year.

We’re also offering an SMS Biometric replacement for SMS OTPs (text verification one-time passcodes). SMS OTPs have become ubiquitous as a second layer of security, but they are also particularly vulnerable to phishing, Sim swap, and SS#7 attacks.

Asignio’s SMS biometric uses the same system customers are already familiar with, they simply receive a link instead of a code. They can sign-in more securely using with their Asignio’s sign-in instead of simply transposing a passcode.

If customers are not already signed up with Asignio, the system can default to an SMS OTP. But for customers needing a higher level of security, FI’s can have them on-board with Asignio, and then use our SMS Biometric for an easy, more secure way to access their accounts and transact.

Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on the impact of the adoption of modern technologies such as AI, big data, and machine learning on the finance niche, and what more could be expected in the future?

AI, big data, and machine learning have all had a major impact on the financial services industry, but, unfortunately, with our focus on security, we’ve also seen some of the negative impacts of AI and machine learning.

is rising dramatically.

Our unique technology, synchronous dual biometrics, combines passive facial verification and handwriting recognition to provide fast and extremely secure authentication. The system is built as a platform that enables cross-device and cross-account authentication, meaning users only need to create their signature once and then can use it anywhere. Asignio is working with multiple large Financial Institutions (FI’s) to provide their customers and employees a better sign-in experience.

What other services/solutions does Asignio offer, and how are these impacting the industry and its clients?

Asignio has partnered with DocuSign, a leader in e-signature, to provide a solution called TCA (Transaction Confirmation and Approval), which combines the compliance capabilities of DocuSign with powerful authentication capabilities of Asignio.

This solution is targeted at stopping money movement fraud, especially wire transfer fraud.

Wire transfer fraud is a massive issue (over $42B lost) and has grown exponentially in the last year. The solution has garnered

Fraudsters are using machine learning and AI to constantly attack FIs. FIs are trying to combat this fraud with passive authentication solutions leveraging machine learning and AI, such as behavioral biometrics (i.e., movement tracking like your walking gate or typing style, VPN or WiFi use, locations, etc.) There are a few problems with these: 1) Consumers often feel they are invasive and annoying if they don’t work (i.e., if your transaction depends on your gate, so do you have to walk around the block a couple of times to get it to work?), 2) A large percentage of fraud is ‘friendly,’ done by someone you know.

Metrics tied to your device could potentially not prevent these, i.e., if your phone knows it’s you because it tracks where you typically login, then if your family member picks up your phone, they could be granted access.

3) With machine learning, fraudsters are often able to replicate these results and break into the systems With Asignio, the user must be actively signing in themselves.

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The handwriting symbol is extremely difficult for someone else to copy, but combined with the live selfie (our Synchronous Dual Biometrics), it is almost impossible spoof. While AI, big data, and machine learning can all have positive impacts in the finance niche, companies also need to be cognizant of the risks of using these technologies and be careful they don’t open the door to more fraud.

Considering the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face, and how did you drive Asignio to sustain operations while ensuring the safety of its employees at the same time?

We had the typical challenges of an overnight shift to remote work and delays as our customers scrambled to find solutions to new problems. We immediately shut down the office and moved to remote work. Our team worked a hybrid schedule before, so it was only a matter of a couple of weeks before we were back to full capabilities.

Modern technology made the move to remote much easier, and we will continue to remain a mostly remote workforce moving forward. Our biggest challenge was a slowed sales cycle. We had more difficulties reaching clients as they adjusted to working remotely.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the financial services space?

Build a good team and be willing to be flexible. Timelines will elongate, your product will need to change, and the space is constantly shifting. If you have a great team and remain flexible in your thinking, you can find a lot of success in the financial services space.

Also, try to get traction outside of financial services while you pursue this industry. The FI industry is so regulated there are extra hurdles to getting adoption that can extend timelines.

How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2021?

We’re in trials now with a couple of financial institutions. Once we roll those services out, we will need to scale rapidly.

We’re also working on NIST approval which should open up another partnership that, once we get through testing, will again require rapid scaling in new industries. We are constantly continuing to build out our company and grow the team to better service our customers.

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10 Fintech Companies Revolutionizing Financial Services

Atidot

A Leading Cloud-based Platform for the Life Insurance Industry

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ith the emergence of modern technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), many industries got disrupted. Exceptional transformations took place in the way industry processes were run, making them more streamlined, efficient, and cost-effective. As industries gradually started adopting these modern technologies, more accurate and precise outcomes resulted in organizations understanding their client’s needs better and delivering them more personalized solutions.

One name among the companies that are leveraging technology to provide customized solutions to their clients is Atidot. Spearheaded by Dror Katzav, the CEO and Co-founder of Atidot, the company is a leading AI cloudbased platform tailored specifically to suit the needs of the life insurance industry, enabling insurers to grow their customer's Lifetime Value and create new revenues.

In the following interview, Dror talks about the exemplary personalized solutions that the company has been delivering since its inception.

Please brief our audience about your company, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a leading player in the financial services space.

One size’ doesn't really fit all in today's world, and there are many variations and greys when insuring people.

Atidot is an Insurtech company providing AI and ML solutions for Life Insurance companies. Atidot offers a cloud-based platform that provides data-driven insights to decisionmakers, drives new business strategies, and creates new revenue streams using AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics technology resulting in optimization and monetization of insurers’ books of business. We are currently one of the few companies ‘Insurtech100’ most innovative with a tailored solution Dr. designed bySchafer a Mark Insurtech companies by FinTech team of actuaries and data scientists CEO Global. that match the life insurance industry's needs.

What other services/solutions does your company offer, and how are Atidot works with leading life insurers, these impacting the industry and such as Guardian Life and Pacific Life, your clients? mainly in North America and Europe.

Because of our unique positioning as an AI solution provider that works with Because we view AI solutions as such that have a ripple effect throughout the carriers to disrupt their organization, value chain, we offer many AI-based Gartner selected us to be ‘Cool Vendor solutions for life insurers. Today, we 2019’, in Insurance. The company also focus on providing insurers with received ‘Top 10 Insurtech’ Company insights and analytics about

by CIO Magazine and is included in

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policyholders to help them understand their needs and unlock the potential these customers hold. But we also offer to operationalize these insights with a complete marketing and operation package to drive new business.

In essence, we can manage the whole digital communication with an existing book of business and help customers make the transition from offline to online, generating upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

We also focus on solutions that enable accelerated and automated underwriting, detect inefficiencies in the underwriting process, produce insights on distribution channels and other solutions that will help an insurance company become more nimble, efficient, and most importantly, more profitable.

Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on the impact of the adoption of modern technologies such as AI, big data, and machine learning on the finance niche, and what more could be expected in the future?

Life Insurance used to be simpler a decade ago. Insurance was bought, not sold, and insurers became very wealthy. But the world changed during the last few years and specifically postCOVID. Interest rates are lower; people expect a different level of service today, which they are struggling to get from their insurance provider, and companies don't really know how to provide the expected level of service where everything is friendly, self-explanatory, and delivered at the speed of light.

AI and Machine Learning technologies are the power behind product and marketing strategies that can provide

Dror Katzav CEO and Co-founder

About the Leader Dror Katzav is Atidot CEO and Co-Founder. Prior to co-founding, Atidot Dror completed an 11-year career as a Team Leader and Project Manager with an elite IDF (Israeli Defense Force) Unit, leading state-of-the-art technology development in Intelligence. Dror led teams in Artificial Intelligence (AI), data solutions, and information sciences in that unit. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and Mathematics and a Master of Science degree in Management Sciences and Information Technology.

When Dror came out of the Army, he partnered with Barak Bercowitz. Also, a veteran and a computer science wizard and together realized that the Life Insurance Industry could benefit immensely from data-driven solutions that would accelerate their transfer into the new digital era. The life insurance industry was not speaking the language of data the same way other industries were at the time. They both saw it as their life mission to transform the industry to become data-driven, focused and help insurers understand the policyholder's needs.

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better life insurance to customers.

These technologies can ensure that people are provided with the right product or service at the right time and the right price. Advanced technologies can ensure that more people can be eligible for life insurance, and those who get it are provided with much better service.

‘One size’ doesn't really fit all in today’s world, and there are many variations and greys when insuring people. What if you could tailor a bespoke suit to people instead of providing one quote? What if they could be insured at the exact amount that fits their needs? Right now, there is a huge uninsured or underinsured population. If you could provide a more personalized solution to each of them, you could potentially serve better as a company.

If you think like Amazon, the policyholders can choose from a pool of products and services. They can pick and choose according to their needs and situation in life. It is a shift in paradigm in the way insurers view their customers. The customer is placed in the middle, and the data govern the interaction insurers have with them. That data is being managed and extracted with technologies such as AI and ML. Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face, and how did you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring the safety of your employees at the same time?

Atidot, as a nimble start-up, maintained its ability to respond to the impact the pandemic had on insurance companies. For a while, we stopped recruiting and shifted into a hybrid model of work where we met at the office twice a week and worked from

home the rest of the time. That helped our employees stay safe and cope with that difficult time where the whole family stayed at home, and the children had no school.

Luckily, the Life Insurance Industry didn't really suffer from the pandemic, and most insurers experienced a record year. In fact, COVID accelerated many of the processes that started before the pandemic, such as digitization and moving to a cloud infrastructure. So, once we realized that the market was opening to us, we started growing significantly in terms of adding resources and expanding our product offering.

Insurers provide us with access to their data (anonymized), and we tailor the right product and marketing strategy that translates into new revenues.

This is often provided in a rev share model where we contribute our resources and infrastructure, and the carrier provides access to the data. It’s a win-win strategic model where all parties benefit from growing their business with minimal risk.

Exhibiting Brilliance Ÿ

“Given the current state and rapidly shifting buying trends, we were seeking a predictive analytics solution to help us drive future product performance in the marketplace with a high level of confidence,” comments Mary Bahna-Nolan, SVP, Head of Product Innovation and Strategy Life Insurance Division, Pacific Life.

Ÿ

“The iPipeline/Atidot, predictive analytics models, cover multiple dimensions of our business, and we expect this to provide valuable guidance immediately after implementation. We are excited about enriching our analytics with new, actionable insights to guide our decisions, minimize risk, and optimize efforts to grow our business while better serving the needs of our customers.” (Insurance Innovation Report, June 2020) Mary Bahna – Nolan, Head of Product Innovation and Strategy, Life Insurance Division, Pacific Life

That said, during COVID, there were many things that insurers could do to help their customer, like providing cash value loans and other financial products that could provide relief. But it needed an immediate response from the insurers that usually rely on their channels and have a long response time due to culture and complicated internal processes.

What if you could send the right offer to the right customer with a personalized message that will give them the kind of financial security they were looking for with just the push of a button? That would surely do wonders not just in terms of loyalty to the company but also in terms of creating new revenue streams that would benefit the top line of companies. This is where Atidot fits in, and Insurers understand that.

How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2021?

Right now, we see a huge interest in the market for our end-to-end packaged solution that provides analytics and operations combined.

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Finance made Easy with Arti cial Intelligence and

Machine Learning F

inance deals in facts and numbers. Both generate a huge amount of data, information, and records. This humongous amount, along with complicated calculations, complex decision making, and timebound result expectations, increases the difficulty in dealing with different processes in finance.

Though computerization and digitalization have taken this responsibility and become a fundamental support base for the modern finance market, the real transformation is now being brought by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).

This is the era of rapid technological progress, with new disruptive breakthroughs coming in daily. Every time companies cannot quickly absorb the sudden changes brought in by such technologies. That is where AI and ML are coming in handy. They were, until recently, being mostly used by hedge fund managers. But last few years are witnessing their spread across banking, insurance, security, equity, trade, regulatory, and fintech sectors.

All these sectors have been positively impacted by AI and ML where not only processes of underwriting, composition, optimization, model validation, market impact analysis, and autoboot-advising are speeding up but also such cases of

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#TechSupport

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mundane, time-consuming, and repetitive processes like alternative credit and risk reporting, account maintaining, and book-keeping are being performed easily, quickly, and accurately. With improved hardware, software, and automated machine algorithms, AI and ML are personalizing, standardizing, and streamlining the different business processes.

Fintech: A. I. M. Loaded ML is an application of AI, which is an extension of computer science. AI makes systems automated so that they can learn from data automatically, and experience without being explicitly programmed can improve their processes.

While ML generates, stores, manages, and analyses the data to draw meaningful insights. An AI and ML-loaded fintech service has many features which make it easy for financial service providers to enrich their consumer's experience. #Easy and Quick Solutions: AI and ML are faster, less time-consuming processes than manual operations because they can update and upgrade the process modules remotely and in real-time. And if an automated decision-making system is integrated, then it can make a prediction on millions of users' behavior in seconds. #Cost-Effective: Thus, it is a cost-saver, as the manual, people-based predictive models are too expensive to manage. AI and ML-based predictive models are replacing or complementing human capabilities. Also, the initial investment and even long-term maintenance costs are minimal compared to recruiting and training experts. #Less Biased: As compared to humans, AI and ML are less biased. But to improve objectiveness and fairness, businesses must stay up to date with the challenges of combining AI, ML, and human intelligence to reduce systematic bias. #Scalability: In Finance, micro-segmentation is a necessity.

It improves customer-specific targeting, thus enhancing the probability of conversion rates. This leads to personalized customer interaction and customization of processes accordingly. And this is where AI and ML show their usefulness. As compared to manual systems, they can handle large sets of micro-segments easily and effectively, increasing the reach and scope of the service. #More Customer Engagement: A better-interacted customer can be engaged in the business process more

effectively, lessening customer dissatisfaction and customer loss. Further, by integrating predictive analysis and realtime decision-making tools into the CRM, the Product/Service recommendation engine can be applied to provide behavior-based suggestions, helping the user to make the right choice and fully utilize the service/product. #Fraud Detection and Prevention: Business and Customer security and financial safety are the most vulnerable areas to the increasing threats of global frauds, which are occurring faster, hardly giving any time to the institutions to respond to.

AI and ML algorithms can dramatically reduce the volume of fraudulent cases, number of false alarms and categorize the cases into a pattern of most, medium, and less severe ones so that experts can review the most severe cases properly. #Optimum Credit Risk Evaluation: An AI and ML-based predictive algorithm can do an immediate credit risk assessment of large numbers of customers. This allows CRM representatives to offer customized and relevant products/services. Thus, by expediting the overall credit risk evaluation process, the provider can better service their targeted customers.

Tech Support: A. I. M. Long-term A survey of 400 plus businesses, by the Economist Intelligence Unit, in key global markets reveals that artificial intelligence has been adopted by 27% of the responding companies, while 46% of them are piloting at least one AI project. And as many as 70% of the respondents are leveraging ML for fraud detection, prevention, and prediction of cash flow events.

AI and ML in banking have positively influenced individual customer experiences around the globe, with a dramatic drop in physical visits to bank offices in the last two years.

And according to Business Insider Intelligence's 'Mobile Banking Competitive Edge Study,' as many as 89% of the customers instead prefer to use mobile banking apps.

The Mordor Intelligence report 2019 has evaluated the AI and ML-driven finance market at $6.67 billion; and predicted that by 2025, it would reach to $22.6 billion level.

Business Insider further reports that $447 billion (in just two years) will be the potential savings for Banks because of AI and ML applications.

- Gaurav Wankhade

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10 Fintech Companies Revolu onizing Financial Services-2021

FinLocker

Keeping Customers and Businesses Financially Fit

As a result, to remain competitive, these institutions are turning to technology. And personalization is the holy grail that they need to stay on top of their competition. But to get there, they'll need a fresh approach to using technology and data to change their culture and workflows.

FinLocker is one such organization that is helping financial institutions to deliver financially personalized services. The company is changing the face of personalized financing solutions through an app that gives clear, concise, and engaging financial fitness information in a mobile-friendly format.

In the following interview, Brian Vieaux, President and COO, talks about the company's USP, the need for going mobile in making sound financial decisions, traversing the pandemic, and how the organization is ushering into the student loan area in the forthcoming years.

Please brief our audience about your company, its Unique Selling Proposition (USPs), and how it is currently positioned as a leading player in the financial services space.

,

W

e are in an era where technology has democratized financial services, giving customers unprecedented access to information, tools, and advice. However, for many financial institutions, it's an uphill struggle to make their products competitive in this new age.

We provide nancial institutions with a custom, white-labeled instance of FinLocker with their own brand, so their consumers can stay within the platform for their entire homeownership journey.

,

first-time homebuyers on their journey to achieve homeownership. FinLocker is Day 1 Certainty approved by Fannie Mae for direct source asset verification.

We provide financial institutions with a custom, whitelabeled instance of FinLocker with their own brand, so their consumers can stay within the platform for their entire homeownership journey. The consumer doesn't need to use any of the other disparate apps on the market to build and monitor their credit, manage their finances, budget, and save for their down payment, pay down debt, and begin their online property search.

FinLocker provides a unique USP for each business category. For example, the platform enables mortgage lenders and originators to connect with homebuyers at the top of the sales funnel and provides a high-tech, high-touch solution to manage a larger pipeline of homebuyers and recover homebuyers initially turned down for a mortgage.

FinLocker offers the next generation in customer relationship-based performance marketing to empower mortgage originators, lenders, servicers, banks, credit unions, credit counselors, and housing advocacy non-profits to provide personalized financial solutions and experiences for their customers through the FinLocker financial fitness app.

The tools in the FinLocker platform prepare homebuyers for a mortgage and homeownership and enable the homebuyer to initiate a mortgage application directly from the app with their lender once they have achieved mortgage readiness. This service contributes to an increased lead to loan pull-through rate for mortgage lenders and originators.

FinLocker has partnered with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Microsoft, and consumer housing advocacy groups to help

Once homebuyers become homeowners, they continue to use their sponsoring mortgage lenders or mortgage

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About the Leader Brian Vieaux, President & COO of FinLocker, joined the company in July 2019 following 28 years in mortgage lending. His knowledge and experience in originating purchase mortgage loans for homebuyers, and renance or repeat purchase loan for homeowners, has helped FinLocker develop a product that meets the needs of our app users (consumers) while satisfying the various use cases of our business clients. Holding senior leadership positions in banking and mortgage companies has enabled FinLocker to grow with a business development and sales strategy that has driven FinLocker's client acquisition and revenue growth.

Brian Vieaux President and COO

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servicer's white-labeled FinLocker to monitor their credit, manage their finances, monitor their home equity, and net worth. FinLocker provides a valuable engagement platform that enables financial institutions to create customers for life and cross-sell additional financial products via the app.

What other solutions does your company offer, and how are these making an impact on the industry and your clients?

Improving the credit eligibility of our clients' consumers can help them improve their eligibility to achieve multiple financial milestones. Financial institutions who use the FinLocker platform to stay connected with their consumers can have the opportunity to serve and profit from 15 financial transactions within a 10-year period from the typical consumer: home purchase, home insurance (annual), home warranty, auto loan, auto warranty (annual), credit cards, refinance, home equity line of credit (HELOC), debt consolidation, and another home purchase.

Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion on what impact has the adoption of modern technologies such as AI, big data and machine learning had on the finance niche and what more could be expected in the future?

The advent of these features and functions with tools like AI and the analysis of big data and machine learning has created a much more intuitive, streamlined mortgage process for consumers going through the financial services process, regardless of the loan product. I come from a mortgage background, and I've watched large mortgage companies and mortgage tech providers focus on helping streamline the mortgage application process, which requires a lot of data gathering from their consumers.

One specific area for FinLocker is how consumer permissioned direct source data has aided asset data collection and verification. By enabling consumers to link their bank accounts inside their FinLocker account, the transactional data from those bank accounts can be used to make credit and lending decisions, as opposed to the traditional way of providing a stack of bank statements to their lender.

Another example where we're continuing to see expansion is going beyond transactional asset data by enabling consumers to link their own payroll data, similar to how a consumer using a personal financial management app would connect their bank accounts to see a holistic view of

their financial life. FinLocker is preparing to empower consumers also to link their payroll data.

Imagine a world where consumers are walking around with an app on their phone that's digitally linked in real-time, not only to their financial transactional data but also their income and employment data. We see a world where consumers, from a push of a button, can not only apply for a loan; it could be an auto loan, a student loan, a credit card, or a mortgage loan, and be approved instantly based on this directly sourced data.

Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring safety of your employees at the same time?

The Covid-19 pandemic impacted FinLocker in many ways and continues to do so. FinLocker is a digital native, as in a fully digital business. At the start of the pandemic, FinLocker refocused the company's priorities to provide safety for our team by implementing a remote working environment, which also added agility to our hiring and staffing process. Knowing that we could sustain operations and product development in a remote working environment, over the past 12 months, we have cast a wider net to attract top talent to fill various positions in all company departments.

As a fintech company serving the mortgage industry, digital transformation is a business imperative. The pandemic impacted product development on the FinLocker app and our go-to-market approaches. FinLocker adjusted its product roadmap on when and how we launch new features to calibrate with our client's priorities, especially in light of the extraordinary refinance and origination volumes experienced by our mortgage banker and originator clients.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the financial services space?

Budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the financial services space have two opportunities. They can truly innovate by creating a new category for their new Fintech venture by developing the next generation financial services solution. They should start by identifying the various problems consumers have that relate to their finances and how technology can help solve those problems, or at a minimum, alleviate or lessen those problems.

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The other area where most new businesses tend to excel is taking a current solution for a problem and making that solution better or faster, or some combination thereof.

That's one of the things that we've done at FinLocker.

Initially, we didn't really create a new category per se.

However, we understood the friction that consumers face in the traditional mortgage application process, and the FinLocker platform has moved forward from there. This concept of leveraging consumer permissioned data and letting consumers leverage their own data in a way that they haven't been able to before by using it to initiate financial transactions.

How do you envision scaling your company's operations and offerings in 2022?

FinLocker is a B2B2C platform, so scaling happens in two ways. The first way to scale is to add more customers by adding more businesses that will distribute the FinLocker platform to their consumers. We have a robust pipeline within the mortgage vertical, specifically large mortgage lenders who are in the implementation stage with our product and will begin distributing their white-labeled FinLockers to their customers and prospects over the next 90 days. That's going to significantly ramp up our user base in terms of consumers using the FinLocker platform.

Secondly, we continue to look at the FinLocker app as a holistic consumer financial experience, so we're continually reviewing how to add tools and features into the app to solve consumer problems, which also adds value to a lender providing the app to their consumers. So, while we focus today on mortgages, we're looking at other areas to help solve problems.

There's a massive population of consumers who are either credit invisible or credit light that need help either creating a credit profile or expanding their credit profile to improve their credit score. That's not just a mortgage use case.

That broadly applies to consumers to benefit them for related financial services like buying auto and home insurance that are somewhat priced based on a consumer's credit score. We've got another focus in the student loan area to help consumers with student loan debts who may be eligible to reduce their payments through a digital experience that we can provide.

Exhibiting Excellence "The Goal feature is very powerful and will help the homebuyer stay the course!"

– Steve Ely, CEO, eCredable "PRMG partnered with FinLocker to address two specic customer segments and challenges: 1) increase engagement with servicing clients and 2) nurture prospects towards mortgage readiness.

"To engage prospects "up the sales funnel," we invite any client who is a prospect but is not yet ready for a mortgage to enroll in the PRMG Data Vault. The PRMG Data Vault then guides that consumer towards their goals and objectives to become mortgage-ready. The tools include credit monitoring and improvement, expense budgeting and nancial goal setting, nancial literacy, and much more."

"Consumer Empowerment in a frictionless experience is not a trend but how consumers demand to conduct business. FinLocker provides PRMG with a technology tool that allows us to compete with Fintech Lenders in the marketplace yet maintain the differentiator of having local Originators.”

– Kevin Peranio, Chief Lending Ofcer, PRMG "The VettedVA GoBag, and the Debt Does Deals Debt Locker allow our rural businesses to bring big-city nancial planning power to the pockets of Veterans, homebuyers, and homeowners no matter where they live.

FinLocker helps us begin helping people where they are in the journey to homeownership without requiring them to get to some ambiguous standard before assisting them with measurable purposes.

Not leaving anyone behind is important to us. I think it is important to y'all also. Thanks for all the hard work; it matters.”

– Chris Grifth, Broker/Owner, Debt Does Deals & Vetted VA Home Loan Network

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& & 20 The

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BUSINESSWOMEN to Watch, 2020

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