Live at Finovate Startup - San Francisco

Notes from Demo Session #1 (Morning)

• Authentium - CEO and CTO demoing SafeCentral - solution that prevents identity theft. Locks down the desktop to prevent keyloggers, etc. Patent pending. Showing what happens with an already infected laptop logging into PayPal with IE7. Using the AllInOne keylogger - captured the logon credentials, the actual screen shots as well. At this point, the attacker would have all they need to take over the account. Next, showing SafeCentral browser session - blocks any keyloggers on the machine, connects out to a trusted DNS to get to Bank of America. SafeCentral is a modified FireFox browser that's specially modified. Looking at his real account on BofA. Going back to look at the keylogger and there's no information captured. All of the technology can be private labeled by banks, etc.
• Credit Karma - provides free credit scores to consumers. No credit card required. Resource for "all things credit related". Offers ability to improve credit score. (Demo god struck - wireless connection problem - nice recovery!) 20 questions to register. 86% of consumers complete the process. You get history of past credit requests (graphed), current score. Using last 4 digits of SSN, can request immediate score. All inquiries are "soft". Explains what the scores mean. Karma Offers - personalized discounts for each user. Shows rating - how other users rated the offer. Also what percentage of users take advantage of the offer. Do not sell or share any consumer information with sponsors - consumer has to provide that when they get to the sponsor site. Advertisers like this model.
• WorkLight - users only visit bank sites once a week. "Next generation of e-banking". One iGoogle home page, there are new widgets with the user's financial data - balance, holdings summary, transactions, etc. Emphasis on protecting the user's data. Widgets provided by the bank - bank branding, etc. Don't have to leave my iGoogle home page - don't have to go to the bank's site. User's can see problems earlier and help prevent fraud. Server installed on bank's site. Using Facebook, secure bank application - bank-sponsored groups allow users to participate in a community. 3 things to remember about WorkLight: will create an optin channel that's much more effective, will reduce costs and churn, your competitors have "seen the light".
• Prosper - 680,000 registered users, $138 MM in loans to date. Showing how to request a loan - personal details, bank account details, employment details, pull credit score (with permission), personalize the listing, provide guidance on what rate to start out with (borrow sets rate), agree to full disclosures, listing now live. Can invite friends to endorse the listing. Rate was bid down from 13% to 10.8%. Showing friend's account - provide endorsement. Shows bidding on the loan - with low interest rate (a social bid). Others can see the listing has "social capital". Showing lender account - search for listings with social capital. Can see listings that qualify. Seeing 35% lower default rate on listings with social capital. Can setup a portfolio plan to only bid on social capital listings.
• Andera - Focused on online account opening and funding. #1 provider in the market. Showing bank site for online account opening. Electronically sign bank's disclosure - consistent with the e-sign act. Provide personal details. Final review - authorize. In middle of verification, asked several multiple choice questions to verify identity. Then provide target offers. Funding - can be credit/debit card or via external bank account. Verify by either providing home banking credentials (via Yodlee) or 2-3 day process via random deposit. Can allocate the incoming funds into the various accounts that are opened. Have 200 financial institutions using the technology.
• Bouldvard R. - Online 3 step process to provide unbiased financial advice - plans from financial planners for $49. Focuses on: Goals, Plan and Support. Showing how user can assess their financial readiness for retirement. Second step is the plan process - unique 30+ page plan for each user. Showing user dashboard - community based discussion. Advice videos from financial planners. Decision tree embedded in the video.
• Diversinet - Showing mobile application: mobiFinance payment wallet. Provides: P2P remittance applications, access to secure vault, mobile authentication with one time password security. Showing sending USD to himself - receiving in Euros. Transaction shows exchange rate, $5 service charge, can include message to recipient (e.g., paying invoice number 1234). Next, showing access to personal vault - personal health data, passport details, etc. Finally, a one-time password capability generated on the handset.
• SocialPicks - Cancelled.
• Findabetterbank - Facilitas, Inc. is company name. Two tools for banks - one that makes it easy to find a better bank and a second that makes it easy to switch. Consumers select the banking features that are important to them. Provides feedback to banks as to which features consumers value most in a particular zip code. Consumers then estimate fees - and banks also get that feedback. Presented with a range of matches - can review in detail. Provide consumers with everything they need to open an account - Google Map of branch locations, etc. Enable banks to customize this page. Switching is hard - make it much easier. BankSwitcher - collect data from consumer about current banking relationship - looks at the banking activity file to see what has to be switched for billers and deposit actiivty. Provides a list to the consumer as to what they need to have changed to switch the accounts. Include any forms required in a PDF for the customer.
• Buxfer Personal finance for 20 somethings - does 3 things: know where your money is going, keep track of shared expenses, do it on the web, mobile, Facebook or via email. (Demo god strikes again!) Add bank account and username/password at bank - can store password or not - provide extensions for local security if you don't want Buxfer storing passwords. Connect to 300 banks - but can use Firefox extension to capture data from other bank sites. Now showing mobile view on iPhone. (More demo god problems).
• Guardian Analytics - Protecting the online channel - concerns about fraud are the #1 barrier. Threats increasing. FraudMap turns the tables to protect online accounts without impacting the customer experience. Showing FraudMap alert screen showing all of the recent suspicious activity. Drill down into red alerts - shows full history of user's activity. Lots of behavioral data displayer - used to assess suspicious activity. Can look across accounts at fraud ring activity. Lots of reports, etc. for fraud analysts. Fraud prevention is about protecting the brand and a trustworthy online channel.
• Jwaala - Showing MoneyTracker. Cites Javelin report about consumer's reasons they select a bank. #1 was rates/fees, #2 was online capabilities, #3 was customer service, #4 was branch locations. Online capabilites more important than #3-4. Large disconnect between what consumers want and what banks are delivering online. Have about a dozen bank customers. MoneyTracker is either an extension or a complete replacement for banks. Presented as a dashboard. Can add additional widgets - very much like iGoogle. Can customize the widgets for custom search, etc. Can also embed the widgets directly into other web pages - like iGoogle, blogs, etc. Online banking sites provide lousy search today. MoneyTracker delivers great search - lots of selectivity, etc. Natural language search built-in. Smart like Google in figuring out search intent. Sold to banks and credit unions for full PFM, doc mgmt, etc. Makes banks competitive with the other personal finance sites.
• Zeeco - Pronounced "zecko". Free stock trading and online financial community. Showing buy of 1 share of Visa - fast execution, etc. What's different is that it was free. $2500 in assets required for free trades. More interesting part is the online financial community. Allows users to share portfolio and trading results with others. Shows searching for top performers who hold a particular stock. Shows activity feed - what's happening with that user's portfolio, trading activity, etc. In aggregate shows the buy/sell ratio for particular stock over last day and last 5 days. Link to PredictWallSt.
• Guardian ID - ID Vault - USB device that protects online identity. Contains secure smart card chip - same as used in Europe. Showing logon to WaMu - ID Vault asks for PIN - entered by clicking on display. Trusted network - monitor the IP addresses of the financial sites - before sending credentials, checks that the IP address is valid. (Demo god strikes again!) Use a private browser - SecureView - no plug-ins supported. No keystrokes - so no vulnerability to keyloggers, etc. Shows protection against phishing email. 150,000 sold - available at the big box retailers - $49.95 suggested retail.
• VaultStreet - Company name is Docuthentic. VaultStreet is first product. Gets rid of paper documents. 34 billion consumer financial documents mailed in 2006. If they cost $2 - that's about $70 B per year in cost. Why still so much paper? Everyone's trying to get consumers to switch over. Consumers say paperless takes more time and is frustrating - VaultStreet solves those problems. Collects (no scanning), organizes, and allows sharing with trusted advisors. Showing adding a new account - list of institutions comes up. Provide username/password. Showing filing cabinet - shows all of the documents captured from the FI's. Can choose to share individual documents with contacts. All shared docs are SSL-protected - not sent via email. Shows capture of Fidelity statement. Turns paperless from being a negative into a positive.
• Cake Financial - Consumer internet company for investing - with a twist. Help investors with 3 things: see all your stuff in one place (proprietary aggregation platform - can give you things the brokerage firm can't like daily, monthly, ytd and average annual return). Also show portfolio risk across accounts. Rank the results compared to others. Community with credibility - can see what others are doing. News feed for community members - like Facebook. Also on Facebook as an app. Can compare your stats to your friends. Ties what people are sharing with what they are trading. #3: Cake Take - shows the aggregate data across the community for a particular stock.
• SmartHippo - Helping consumers shop for mortgages. Can compare rates, etc. No sponsored results, no ads. Banks feed them rates on a daily basis. Consumers can also post rates based upon what they've found. Open database available to anyone who wants to use it. Can sort, rank, etc. Sliders used to adjust parameters. Consumers can rate their banks and provide a review writeup. On banking side, loan officers may want to post local rates, have a blog, etc. Provides free blogging to bankers - bank can feed rates manually. Allows banks to monitor activity around their brand - for example when consumer's rank, etc.
• Mint - A lot has happened in the last 7 months - now the leader in free online personal finance applications. 2 mins to setup, easy alerts, takes the work out of personal finance. Also looks cool compared to others. Showing all the new stuff. Added "world's easiest budgeting system" - graphs spending by category, suggests a budget based on history. During the month, as you spend, it graphically tracks spending by category. Improved categorization - Showing slick interface - click on pie graph wedges and they explode into new pies. SpendSpace shows spending across time and allows comparison to others in same or different cities. Can see spending at specific merchants - Starbucks. Business model - make financial product recommendations. Have signed up about 40 advertisers - all the major credit cards. Getting a 12 per cent clickthru rate for deposit accounts, Citi is getting 20% click thru on credit card offers. Adding home services plans. Can offer scale to advertisers. Have just added investments - showing all performance across the portfolio. Lots of graphs - also exposes all the fees charged by brokers (not just commissions).
• GreenNote - Launching in June. Focus on student loans - "from people who believe in you". Student loans getting more difficult. Showing how student would signup - build their case for a loan. Provide contact information for prospective lenders. Emails sent to the lenders - provide a standard template but can customer as appropriate. Starts the pledge drive. Student gets borrower's dashboard to track lender activity. Showing the lender side - receiving email. Brings them back to the student's profile. Can make a pledge or ask to be reminded or decline. Lender sees how their contribution helps the student. Followed by the actual funding side. Working with a number of schools - very schoool centric. Don't look at student's credit - helping students borrow at lower costs than traditional private student loans. (Note: I'm an advisor to GreenNote)
• Motley Fool CAPS - Community based effort to improve investment results. Community-generated stock ratings (Zecco embeds their ratings). Showing how the ratings result in better performance. Updated every 20 mins. Shows using it to find stock recommendations - can follow your friend's trades, etc. Every day you get a personalized stock of the day recommendation. Showing new CAPS stock screener - based on combining community sentiment and fundamental financial criteria.

Whew! Time for a break. We'll be back this afternoon with the second round of demos from FinovateStartup San Francisco!

For some more reviews from Finovate, see The Banktastics Blog. Erin McCune's also blogging from Finovate on the Forte Financial Blog.

Notes from Demo Session #2 (Afternoon)

• Expensr - Two announcements - has just been acquired by Strands (more info here). Creating a new PFM with Strands (http://money.strands.com). Redone front-end and back-end. Widgets. New analysis widgets - income vs. expenses. Community - compare yourself to other folks like you. Strands suggests ways to improve - tips and products. Notes that Mint is running Google Ads against Expensr.
• SmartyPig - Iowa-based startup (pig country!) A social banking application. 21st century piggy bank. Can make your savings goal public - families and friends can contribute. Passthrus from sellers. Very competitive interest rates. Showing personal account - all funds FDIC insured. Saving for 3 goals - trip to Italy, a family iMac, etc. Ever goal has to have a monthly recurring contribution. Creates widget you can put on other pages. Contributing $25-500 via Visa/MC or via bank account if registered. Can spend using SmartyPig MasterCard. Can get additional funds from partners for purchases.
• Invesra - Private label investment planning tool. Aggregates user's portfolio data and builds a profile and retirement plan. Recommendations of customized lifecycle portfolio to achieve retirement goals. Provides instructions on how to trade specific funds, etc.
• Wesabe - Blend of money management tools and community. Community is what Wesabe's all about. New Value Engine uses collective data to help save users money. Showing Whole Foods vs. Safeway based on collective data. Shows avg ticket, repeat visit percentage and user popularity. Users can tag transactions - can use tags to drill down. Add Trader Joe's to comparison. Qualitative reviews provided from other users. Can search around - showing looking for bike shops.
• Tyfone - Mobile financial services - build technologies to enable secure transactions. Both software and hardware for mobile contactless payments. Believe that mobile financial services are separate from the carrier. For contactless mobile phones, any phone that has a memory card slot is supported. Has security solution built-in to the memory card. Adds NFC to non-NFC phones. Showing a Palm (without NFC builtin) being used for contactless payments. Banks don't need to wait for carriers or handsets. 12 patents applied for. Also do software only mobile banking. Showing iPhone banking interface.
• Wonga - UK-based startup. Short-term cash flow problems causes stress. Provide short term loans quickly, conveniently and responsibly. Showing buying an airline ticket - on checkout page click on Wongo. Consumer selects amount of cash they want and for how long - see how much it will cost. Makes real-time risk decision. Use mobile to deliver a PIN to bring back to Wongo web site. Funds sent to bank account. Sent within minutes into the personal bank account in the UK. Now showing mobile solution - still being developed. Use mobile phone to apply for a short-term loan in real-time. Validate PIN - money sent to personal bank account.
• Loanio - Borrowing and lending of money through auction-style platform. Launching in a few weeks. Many consumers aren't able to get loans at online sites today. Adds a co-borrower feature - a guarantor. Also adds a Platinum listing - allows borrower to submit additional doc and verification as part of loan request. Borrower invites co-borrower to come in. (Seems similar to the social capital aspect that Prosper showed)
• ConfIdent Technologies - Live at Charles Schwab Retirement Technologies. What comes after passwords? Displays 9 images in box at logon. Pictures are from specific categories - ie. airplanes. Images move around and the specific images change from logon to logon. Easier on the user.
• IP Commerce - Payment-enable any application. Partnered with Chase Paymentech, Bankserv, developers, banks. A technology enabled. Showing dynamic service provisioning - RapidReceipts - payments-enables Quickbooks. Upgrade app to support remote deposit by entering activation code received from bank.
• SimpleTuition - The smart way to choose student loans. Search for student loan lenders. Work with colleges to make available. Partnerships with LowerMyBills, LendingTree, etc. In business for 2 years - will deliver out 40,000 leads to lenders this month.
• BlingNation - Open alternative payment network. Enables FI's to offer mobile payment solutions to their customers. Bank-branded on phones. Anything that happens to your account is pushed to the mobile device. Can send money to others. Also supports proximity payments. Demo showed two NFC-equipped phones exchanging money from two phones. Tied to prepaid cards. Platform has developer interfaces, flexible for the FI, etc.
• Zopa - World's first social finance community (2005). 225,000 users worldwide. Italy, US, UK - opening in Japan. Zopa fits its model to the regulations and culture of each market. In the US, Zopa has teamed with credit unions. Showed 8.49% starting point interest rate. Borrow fills out profile to reach out to investors. Borrowers helped by investors. Zopa CD's held at one of six credit union partners. Each investor helps a particular borrower lower their monthly payments. Borrowers can end up with negative interest rates.
• TrustedID - helps protect consumers from identity theft proactively. Alarm system metaphor vs. a strong lock on the front door. New announcements: new ID Freeze service features. First family plan option - any number of people at same address. Also protects health insurance identity. Puts fraud flags on the 3 credit bureaus. Private label with Suze Orman - sold over 100,000 in one day.
• MoneyPools - Company name is Business Logic. Aggregates investment accounts and shows graphs, etc. performance over time. Compares to benchmarks based upon asset classes. Click on pie chart wedge to drill down. Lots of cool graphing, highlighted hover boxes, etc.
• Aradiom - Mobile solutions based on a proprietary platform (Java-enabled platforms). Showing handset mobile banking application. Showing application build live. WYSIWYG app development - results in Java app for the phone. Showing emulator version of the phone app.
• First ROI - BankVue serves 450 credit unions with rewawrds checking - patent pending. First ROI provides consumers with easy one stop place to find these accounts. CheckingFinder.com - will be nationally advertised site. Uses online account opening solution from Andera (see above). Launches June 2, 2008. Watch out big banks! ;-)
• Sparkroom - Business to business product - lead performance optimization for big buyers of leads on the Internet. Enables marketers full transparency into their lead buys. Graphical reports showing the lead sources and how they're performing.
• TradeKing - Online options and stock broker. Another community-centric investment site - says they're the first. Trading activity - shows recent trades. Trade notes allow trader commentaries. All content is monitored.
• ClairMail - Showing mobile banking. Just got a bill - can choose to pay. But maybe first want to see bank balance and then decide to pay. Launch web browser via SMS exchange - server sends a dynamic link back - avoiding entering username/password. Cute. "Two-way triple play". The open platform for mobile banking. Deployed on 5 of top 10 banks. Showing mFoundry application. Enables bank to ask customer yes/no question. Asks everyone to send a text msg to their demo server (22551 short code). Send a 'b' and get balance, etc.
• Vestopia - Connects self-directed investors to Wall St pros. Recruit pros into the program. 10's of thousands of consumers. In midst of public beta.

It's a wrap. Long day. Not going to stay for the Best of Show Awards - we'll report on those later. Hope you all had a great time - I did!