Lendio Shines at ABA’s Financial Technology Showcase

Lendio made the most of fintech’s brief moment in the sun Monday at the ABA annual convention in New Orleans.

Steve Kinneally of the ABA introduced the speakers at the session, dubbed the Innovation Station. Presenters gave Finovate-style presentations, down to the seven-minute time limit (and buzzer for those who break that limit. Surprisingly, it was a Finovate veteran that got the sole buzzer at the ABA. Most presenters used considerably less than their allotted time) Time was reserved at the end for attendees to mingle with the presenters, but most attendees left the room as soon as the presentations ended — as did some presenters.

The setting was casual and intimate. Tables and chairs with food and drinks for attendees filled the small room. The crowd topped out at about 60 attendees. PowerPoint presentations, a Finovate no-no, were near-universal, but technical challenges and time constraints prevented this year’s presentations from operating live.

Computer Services, Inc., better known as CSI, is an established player servicing credit unions on up to super-regional banks. Bill Evers of CSI presented the company’s Secure Connect product, a tablet-based system for sharing documents between team members and, in particular, bank board members. These members may be older and more tech-averse, Evers said, but emphasized how digital is safer by telling a story where confidential board materials were mistakenly delivered to a member’s neighbor — oops! Think of this highly compliant solution as an “online gated community” for your teams, Evers said.

Fiserv‘s Andrew Barnett and Kathleen Mikula presented Popmoney Instant, a realtime person-to-person payments solution, as he did at Finovate in New York last month. Barnett also presented Fiserv’s receipt-tagging feature for mobile at Finovate Spring in San Francisco. Popmoney Instant moves money in realtime from deposit account to deposit account using EFT instead of what Barnett described as “front-loading an ACH transaction.” A slideshow demonstrated a transaction from a Wells Fargo account to a PNC account, but if ever a presentation cried out for a live demo, this was it. (To be clear, the Fiserv team was prepared to do a live demo, but the venue wasn’t set up for it. A live demo requires, for example, an overhead camera to shoot a mobile phone screen.)  The service works, Barnett told Bank Innovation, on First Data’s STAR Network and Fiserv’s own Accel network. Both bank accounts must be linked to Popmoney, but the banks need not be Fiserv banks. Popmoney Instant for mobile is in the works.

Hearsay Social addressed banks’ growing social media needs. How does a highly regulated institution deal with a space that is set up to be free-wheeling and dynamic? Social is both a challenge and opportunity for FIs, said Hearsay Social’s Jesse Turcotte. Importantly, it is also a sales opportunity. “Customers on social media are broadcasting life events every day,” Turcotte said. Hearsay Social will monitor your customers on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ to filter the noise (i.e. cat pictures) and identify major life events and goals for your marketing team. Social media is a crucial ingredient in a relationship business like banking. City National Bank, based in Los Angeles, just signed up with Hearsay Social for its private bankers and wealth management team. The case was well made — and the mention of the City National win a nice touch — but it was not easy to get a sense of the management capabilities of the tool in this setting.

Linkable Networks is a merchant-funded card-linked offer program. Using both offline and online advertising, Linkable promises to help banks move toward top-of-wallet status or protect it if already there. It works this way: 1) A customer sees an offer and links it to his or her card with a click, text or QR code scan. 2) The customer redeems the offer with that card. 3) The savings are sent through to the user’s account. At every point along the way, if desired, text alerts to the user’s mobile phone update the user of the offer redemption process. Linkable is an opt-in network with the ability to link many cards, though 90% of users choose to link just one, said presenter Doug Spear, Linkable’s founder and EVP.

LoanLogics was formed in May 2013 by the merger of NYLX and Aklero Risk Analytics. The combined company provides life-of-loan tracking and helps loan officers manage compliance challenges, said SVP of channel partner sales Douglas Sheridan. From decisioning through closing through servicing, LoanLogics helps monitor and analyze the health of the loan and evaluate and act on that intelligence.

NCR showed off its Interactive Teller video banking solution, partially built on the uGenius platform, acquired in 2012. Aren’t tellers in the flesh interactive, too? Not as much as video tellers, said John Morgan, director of branch transformation for North America, since customers are often “staring at the top of tellers’ heads as they count cash in the till.” Half of the bank branches in the US are unsustainable, Morgan said. Visits are down but costs are not. Assisted services like video banking need to split the difference between self-service and full-service live tellers. Video tellers can handle 85% to 90% of transactions and cut transaction costs in half, Morgan said, adding that new form factors will be arriving in Q1 2014 beyond the drive-up and walk-in models of today. Could this mean online or mobile? Plans for online video tellers were in the works at uGenius before the company was acquired.

Wontok is a cybersecurity firm that did an excellent job presenting the problem — the 26% rise in cybercrime last year and ever-growing malware — to which its product is ostensibly the solution. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) recommends layered security, and that is what Wontok offers, according to Paul Murray, SVP of product management. Wontok’s method is smart: Banks have strong security at the center of the transaction, but since it is difficult to determine the status of the endpoint or user’s computer, Wontok’s SafeCentral assumes all users to be affected with malware and operates the bank site security accordingly. This solution protects the bank and the user’s account, and is looked on favorably by the regulators, Murray said.

Lendio, not to be confused with social media lender Lenddo, is a small business lender and Finovate veteran that avoided the PowerPoint trap and moved through its site in a live demo — kudos! Lendio helps banks acquire customers and fund more loans, said CEO Brock Blake. The solution looks and acts like a CRM for loans, with a page for those in the Lead stage, those in the Closing stage, and so on. Each borrower has a profile where emails and calls can be originated and tracked, and every contact point recorded to be shared by a team. It includes a management tool to track loans across the entire team, which was also demonstrated, and is mobile-friendly. Lendio was the only presenter to receive the buzzer for exceeding the time limit.

Winner (despite hitting the buzzer): Lendio