The New York Fintech innovation lab was founded in 2010 by the partnership fund for NYC and Accenture. It is one of the longest running boot camps with 35 leading financial institutions including Credit Suisse, Capital One, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo participating. Every Summer, the 35 financial institutions nominate eight fintech startups whose teams are admitted to the innovation lab for 12 weeks. During this period, they are involved with bank executives from whom the teams get to learn the tech needs that financial institutions have and how to position themselves in offering the right solutions. On the 22nd of June, the lab held a demo for these startups which was hosted by Bank of America in its Bryant Park Towers in Manhattan.
Speaking at the event, David Reilly, the global banking and markets chief information officer at the Bank of America, observed, “we are extraordinarily difficult to sell.” He continued to point out that if the startups can figure it out for his bank, they can do the same for JPMorgan and other banks as well. All the eight startups showcased great ideas mostly in data analytics, compliance, and enterprise security. Below is a brief description of each of them.
Founded by immigrants who met at Stanford University, Nova Credit is a cross-border credit bureau helping companies obtain credit reports from different countries. The firm seeks to make it possible for immigrants to obtain credit by availing their credit history to lenders, a move that will not only help these people to obtain credit but will also benefit lenders by expanding their markets.
Cutting Edge has developed security features that make banks’ communication invisible to cyber criminals. To achieve this camouflage, Cutting Edge has developed Net Abstraction, a cloud-based network service that obscures customers’ network pathways over multiple providers protecting their identity, critical systems, and sensitive data. If the cyber attackers cannot find the banks’ communications, then they won’t attack them.
Alloy is more of a regtech startup running a data-based KYC for customer onboarding. Its focus is the automation of back office operations such as customer due diligence with a view to making customer experience with banks much better.
BehavioSec provides behavioural biometric identification technology. It verifies users by analyzing the way they swipe, type, hold their phone or tap. It calculates the risk score for each user with all those having low scores being taken through additional steps.
Detectica has developed a know your employee (KYE) software to monitor employees. This helps financial institutions to detect any collusion involving employees. It’s a critical part of internal compliance which contributes to the overall regulatory compliance.
dMetrics is an artificial intelligence firm. It reads data and documents and then lets you query that data. it can help financial institutions find customers’ life events.
ModelShop is helping banks to replace the error-prone spreadsheets with a data model platform that allows easy sharing of data in form of dashboards and reports.
Demyst Data’s software helps in cleaning and structuring data. Additionally, it helps determine what data matters most.
