11 Startups Show Their Latest and Greatest at DEMOvation

Eleven startups participated in the DEMOvation challenge at the Bank Innovation Ignite conference in Seattle earlier this month. These startups, diverse in focus, comprised a wide range of the fintech ecosystem,  including payments, security and blockchain.

The winner of the competition, an identity proofing and verification startup Diro Labs, received admission to the INV Fintech Accelerator, this publication’s sister company, and an advertising package on Bank Innovation‘s website.

The competition was sponsored by INV Fintech, and its partner Fiserv, a multinational financial technology provider.

The judges of this competition were Susan French, Head of Product at BBVA Open Platform; Rob Guilfoyle, CEO at Abe AI and Theo Moumtzidis, Managing Director at Delos Advisors.

Read on to see the entire list of participants and what they do:

Avocado Payments: Founder and CEO Chris Sturm demonstrated Avocado’s QR code-based payment system, which would allow users to pay for a range of transactions, from medical bills to in-store purchases. Avocado takes advantage of new camera features on smartphones, which automatically capture QR codes, to produce an easy and secure form of payments. “Avocado has short-circuited the path between the customer and the merchant, allowing for an easier and more reliable payment experience,” said Chris Sturm, founder and CEO Avocado, during his demo.

Budgit: With just a few lines of code, Budgit, an INV Fintech Class 6 company, allows financial institutions to deploy an omni-channel wellness experience with solutions from best-in-breed Fintech providers. Ruben Izmailyan, CEO of Budgit, told the audience at DEMOvation that “working with the team at INV, we had a eureka moment. We realized that the solution was to put the bank in the center by turning it into a financial hub for its customers.”

Community Capital Technology: CCT is a loan marketplace for community banks and other financial institutions. The platform is designed to serve and empower financial institutions focused on serving local and regional communities across the United States. CCT’s intuitive platform provides seamless online access to originators, purchasers, and investors across the U.S., to buy, sell or participate out loans. CCT is based in New York City and is an INV Fintech Class 6 member. “Before CCT was developed, you had a fragmented set of siloed institutions based on particular types of credit or geographic focus that were heavily intermediated. With Community Capital, we connect all those nodes into a single platform that generates transparency around how credit is being priced,” said CEO Garrett Smith.

Diro: The DEMOvation winner is a blockchain based digital security firm that allows capture of web documents behind secure logins across the web and government websites by individual consumers. Diro uses a decentralized private key with a decentralized custody solution to secure the access and storage of important documents. “Our product is not just better than video KYC, it’s even better than physical KYC, because you are verifying from the absolute original source,” said Vishal Gupta, founder of Diro.

Also See: BI Ignite 2019: ID Verification Startup Diro Wins DEMOvation Challenge

Exagens: The Exagens personal banker is the only digital AI-powered relationship manager proven to dramatically increase engagement and digital sales to retail & SMB clients, providing banks with a cost-effective solution to increase customer lifetime value. Exagens uses behavioral sciences, machine learning and AI to engage with a bank’s customer base. As Exagens President Michael Stojda said at the competition, “by focusing on the why, the when and the how of financial decision making, we’ve created a highly effective behavioral based relationship manager which engages and convinces people to take specific financial action in their best interests.”

Fintel Labs: An INV class 5 alumnus, Fintel Labs launched the Fintel Cloud, an AI cloud for the financial service industry. The Fintel Cloud can be leveraged to allow banks to build solutions for retail banking, asset management, capital markets, wealth management and more. “We are providing (FIs) with building blocks to build new AI solutions. Our vision is to be the AWS of fintech,” said Krish Gopalan, CTO of Fintel Labs. Fintel’s Eva Money is a voice chat bot available in several languages that helps users keep track of their finances.

IGTB: iGTB is a white label digital transaction banking platform that leverages Machine Learning and predictive analytics, delivered through APIs and an omnichannel UX. This enables banks to accelerate customer self-service and both upsell and cross-sell their services by providing clients with context-aware recommendations on the best-next action or best-next offer needed to meet their immediate objectives.

Judi.Ai: Through its AI-driven loan adjudication platform, JUDI.AI provides financial institutions with a configurable, AI-driven loan adjudication platform with a unified credit engine for SMB and consumer lending. Judi.AI reduces the time it takes to process applications, and its easy loan application takes just minutes to complete, according to its CEO and co-founder Troy Wright. “What we’ve done here is specifically solved for lending to small businesses using artificial intelligence,” Wright said.

Kapitalwise:  INV Fintech Class 6 member Kapitalwise powers deeper relationships between financial institutions and their customers, offering personalized recommendations and helping consumers set and achieve financial goals. Using the power of machine learning and predictive analytics, KapitalWise’s solution uncovers opportunities for savings and investing for FIs and their customers.

OpenDoor: OpenDoor Securities is an institutional, electronic trading platform designed specifically for buy-side and sell-side firms to meet in one place and trade US off-the-run treasuries and TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities). OpenDoor has been live for 20 months, managing over $1.4 trillion in orders year to date.

Operant.ai: Toronto-based Operant.ai presented its solution to a relatively untapped market: debt collections. The startup uses AI to more efficiently help banks and collections agencies recover debt by suggesting optimal times to contact debtors. Operant’s technology can effectively identify when a debtor is most likely to repay. INV Fintech has been working with the Class 6 member to find the right institutions and targets to deploy their cutting-edge collections platform.

To apply to INV Fintech Class 7, click here.