AI & Finance™ | News for the Week Ending 3/22/24

Alai Studios and Shaping Wealth announced the launch of Lydia. Leveraging AI technology and capabilities combined with behavioral finance content and coaching, Lydia will change how financial advisors engage their clients and build their practices. Lydia augments advisors’ human skills in emotional intelligence, decision making, collaboration, and coaching. Best-in-class financial guidance channels technical expertise alongside wisdom and insight into the financial underpinnings of a meaningful life. As an always-on, meticulously trained companion, Lydia is an always-on, meticulously trained companion. 

Alai and Shaping Wealth are jointly committed to a “human first” approach to financial guidance, ensuring that AI’s implementation into wealth management amplifies human brilliance. As a result, Lydia is a significant departure from traditional “fintech” applications, which prioritize automation over augmentation. Lydia brings out the best in advisors to help their clients achieve financial well-being. Lydia understands that AI, in its best expression, elevates humanity. 

Lydia currently engages advisors through three “conversational agents” with emergent intelligence in three separate themes: 1) Navigating hard conversations, 2) Behavioral marketing, and 3) Funded contentment (money and happiness). Financial advisors who leverage Lydia benefit from tailored, practical content designed to enhance their effectiveness. Lydia meets advisors where they are in their day-to-day of navigating complex markets, overwhelming client obligations, and an ever-changing financial planning landscape. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and AI company Anthropic are coming together to help organizations—especially those in highly-regulated industries including healthcare, public sector, banking and insurance—responsibly adopt and scale customized generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology within their organizations to speed innovation, improve customer service, and make workforces more productive, while keeping data private and secure. 

Through this collaboration, organizations can access Anthropic’s AI models through Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that offers a choice of high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies and Amazon via a single application programming interface. In addition, organizations will gain access to a broad set of capabilities they need to build generative AI applications with security, privacy and responsible AI. Services and accelerators from Accenture provide the ability to customize and fine-tune Anthropic’s Claude models to support specific client needs, including Accenture’s new generative AI switchboard. This will enhance Claude’s capabilities for industry-specific applications in areas like knowledge management, forecasting and analysis and regulatory document generation. These accelerator services will enable clients to get their generative AI use cases into production faster than starting from scratch. 

Teams across Accenture, Anthropic and AWS will also help clients with prompt and platform engineering, providing best practices on how to deploy customized models on Amazon Bedrock or Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service that brings together a broad set of tools to enable high-performance, low-cost machine learning for any generative AI use case. Additionally, more than 1,400 Accenture engineers will be trained to be specialists in using Anthropic’s models on AWS, allowing them to provide end-to-end support for clients deploying generative AI applications. 

Blue Hat Interactive Entertainment Technology Ltd. announced its shift into AI financial services. Dr. Deanna Liu, Executive Director of Golden Strategy Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BHAT, stated that this strategy is a proactive response to the growth in Artificial Intelligence technology and the evolving market dynamics. 

BHAT’s strategic shift is not merely a pursuit of new technology but is based on an understanding of the trends in AI technology development, and also the full utilization of BHAT’s market resources and technological migration capabilities. There has been great interest from financial enterprises regarding AI technology applications and BHAT’s ability to transition to AI financial services and what that will do for their bottom line.  

This shift by Blue Hat Interactive Entertainment Technology Co., Ltd. marks its deepening commitment to the field of AI technology applications and its belief in future development that will open up tremendous opportunities. 

CLARA Analytics, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) technology for insurance claims optimization, announced it has appointed Jeremy Johnson, former CEO of Protective Insurance, to its board of directors. Johnson will further bolster the company’s deep bench of industry veterans, solidifying CLARA’s position as the leading innovator in AI technology for commercial claims management. 

Johnson is the former Chief Executive Officer and board member of Protective Insurance, a publicly traded insurer providing insurance, loss control, and claims capabilities to the transportation industry. In that role, Jeremy executed a successful turnaround and sale of the company to Progressive Insurance, created significant stakeholder value, and invested in new technology and analytics capabilities. Prior to that, he served as President of U.S. Commercial for AIG and was responsible for underwriting, distribution, claims and operations in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Bermuda. Johnson also served as Chief Executive Officer of Lexington Insurance Company. He has a law degree from Oxford University. 

Couplr AI announced the launch of its solution designed to address the escalating challenge of orphaned accounts in wealth management. As the industry grapples with the complexities of managing these neglected accounts, Couplr offers a scalable and efficient solution that will transform the landscape for firms and orphaned clients alike.
Orphaned accounts emerge when clients become incapacitated, pass away, or simply lose contact with their financial advisors, often due to the high attrition rate within the industry. This phenomenon poses significant challenges, including regulatory scrutiny, potential lawsuits, and financial losses for wealth management firms. Orphaned accounts, long recognized as a latent risk within the financial services industry, have come under increased scrutiny from regulatory bodies.

Recognizing the severity of the problem, which is projected to grow by 50% over the next five years according to Cerulli Associates, Couplr has introduced a solution that seamlessly integrates into existing client-facing platforms. This solution empowers clients by providing a tool to match them with the right advisors for their needs at the existing firm, whether through logging into their account, receiving a proactive email, or engaging with a direct mail campaign. This approach not only addresses the immediate need for reconnection but also provides an opportunity for wealth management firms to help next-gen advisors grow their businesses by properly matching them up with orphaned clients in need. 

The CryptoOracle Collective announced the launch of an AI Web3 Accelerator, which will accept its first cohort on April 3. The CryptoOracle Collective has built The Collective Accelerator to address the high demand by startups building solutions at the intersection of Web3 and AI. 

The Collective Accelerator is a program which exposes startups to the funding opportunities, community building, extensive expertise and network of The CryptoOracle Collective. Each cohort is limited to 10 projects that are working at the intersection of AI & Web3 focusing on solving one of seven major issues. The 10-week virtual program includes 30 one-hour sessions taught by leaders and experts in AI and Web3. Each class focuses on a specific area of technology, tokenomics, regulations, branding, messaging, operations, funding and other critical areas for startups focused on AI and web.  

The Accelerator is Co-Lead by Eric Bravick, a 35-year AI veteran, and Head of AI for The Collective, and Lou Kerner, a web3 thought leader and founder of the Collective. 

Deloitte launched CyberSphere, a vendor-neutral services and solutions platform to help clients simplify their organizations’ cyber program data, workflows, reporting and third-party technologies for improved cyber operational efficiency and effectiveness.  

CyberSphere is built by Deloitte to help organizations quickly manage risks with the use of automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), while also reducing cyber program costs, duplicative efforts and threat alert fatigue. The streamlined and integrated platform is designed with multiple capabilities and broad functionality to offer clients new ways to visualize cyber risk metrics and workflows to inform ongoing environment tailoring, stakeholder reporting and cyber risk quantification. 

CyberSphere will offer clients the ability to leverage a curated set of modular capabilities supported by an ecosystem of third-party technology providers augmented by Deloitte services. Modules initially powered by CyberSphere will include digital identity management, managed extended detection and response (MXDR), attack surface management (ASM), managed secure access services edge (MSASE) and incident response. Future iterations of CyberSphere will include additional modules. 

The EY organization announced Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) will help clients implement and accelerate their artificial intelligence (AI) journeys using NVIDIA’s industry-leading technology and solutions. 

EY US’ collaboration with NVIDIA will address the rise of computationally intensive fields such as scientific computing, artificial intelligence, data science, autonomous vehicles, robotics, metaverse and 3D internet applications, helping accelerate and scale the next wave of enterprise computing. 

To support this initiative, the EY organization will train an initial 10,000 people across multiple geographies and Global Delivery Centers on NVIDIA AI technology, including the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform – which includes NVIDIA NIM inference and NeMo Retriever microservices for retrieval augmented generation (RAG) – along with NVIDIA accelerated computing infrastructure. EY US plans to extend the application of NVIDIA technology into its industry and functional solutions to address EY clients’ most pressing business challenges through the use of fit-for-purpose AI solutions and accelerated computing. 

Global reinsurance leader Gen Re and multinational technology firm CME have been working together to bring forth a state-of-the-art, fully digital underwriting solution for the life insurance industry for the MENA and East Mediterranean countries. Together, the two companies are an enticing prospect, with Gen Re boasting a $15.8 billion capital base and $11.5 billion in net premiums, and CME’s 40-year track record in serving and supporting iconic brands and Fortune 500 companies. 

The collaboration between these two companies has resulted in developing a software application designed specifically for primary insurers, which was recently featured at the prestigious 34th General Conference of the General Arab Insurance Federation GAIF 2024. 

This advanced tool conducts a thorough analysis of an applicant’s health, lifestyle, and occupation, integrating cutting-edge Insurtech tools, including AI, to generate rapid health insights, and PPG technology with advanced algorithms for analyzing vital signs and remote health parameters. By adopting such an inclusive, tech-forward approach, insurers can ensure precise risk profiling and, subsequently, tailor policy premiums more effectively. 

HiddenLayer announced the launch of its latest product: AI Detection & Response for Generative AI. The new capability comes as part of HiddenLayer’s award-winning platform, formerly known as MLDR, extending HiddenLayer’s end-to-end security to organizations deploying LLM-based applications. 

HiddenLayer’s AI Detection & Response for Generative AI provides a set of security controls that enable real-time monitoring, detection, and response to threats specific to LLMs. The system supports a majority of LLMs, including GPT-X, LLaMa, Mistral, and internally built LLMs out-of-the-box, and allows for the interception of traffic to and from LLM applications, offering the capability to block harmful transactions or generate alerts for security teams to take necessary actions. This ensures that LLM deployments can be managed securely, mitigating the risk of data leaks, malicious use, and other abuses. 

The launch comes on the heels of the release of HiddenLayer’s AI Threat Landscape Report, which found that AI adoption continues to accelerate without proper security measures. With 98% of surveyed companies considering at least some of their AI models crucial to their business success, and 77% identifying breaches to their AI in the past year, the need to protect and secure all forms of AI is clear. 

Jumptuit, an AI Scenario Forecasting company focused on detecting probabilities of disruptive global events that impact regions and market sectors, announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a Notice of Allowance broadening protection of Jumptuit’s novel AI Search Technology. 

“System and Method of AI Assisted Search” (Application No: 15/950,922) is a system and method for AI assisted expanded search. The inventor is Jumptuit Founder and CEO, Donald Leka. 

The Jumptuit Group (TJG) dynamically tracks anomalous external factors across regions and sectors, the clustering of cross-sector elements and constitution of events, and the geolocations, market sectors, industries, and entities likely to be impacted. TJG dynamically assesses jurisdiction, sector, industry, and company risk. Unexpected events that germinate in a region or sector can now more quickly be seen and the trajectory and time of impact estimated, reducing external shock to market sectors, industries, and companies.   

LeapXpert, the responsible business communication pioneer, announced the launch of Maxen, a patented GenAI application that improves the productivity of relationship managers and enriches their communications with clients. 

Maxen produces Communication Intelligence by fusing data from external communication channels, including WhatsApp, iMessage, SMS and phone calls, internal collaboration platforms, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, client data, and enterprise knowledge. 

Maxen modernizes business communications with clients by providing relationship managers, such as account managers and financial advisors, with live insights of recent communications and recommendations for impactful message topics and content. The application includes collaborative insights, including features for adding comments and sharing across enterprise teams. Maxen also ensures accurate fact and compliance checking for every message and implements robust data controls to meet the strict governance and compliance needs of enterprises. 

Mogo Inc. (NASDAQ:MOGO) (TSX:MOGO), a digital wealth and payments business, announced the launch of Moka.ai, the next generation of its wealth-building app with significant updates and enhancements designed to help the next generation of Canadians get on a real path to becoming millionaires and achieving financial freedom. 

The new Moka.ai app includes a powerful combination of features to help Canadians simplify and automate the wealth-building process. One of the reasons Canadians dramatically underperform the market is because of the high fees charged in the industry. Moka introduces a revolutionary approach with a flat monthly fee of $7.00/month, regardless of the value of your investments. As a comparative example, $100,000 invested in a mutual fund at 2% would cost $2,000 in annual fees, vs $1,000 with a typical wealth advisor and only $84.00 with Moka. Over a typical 50-year investing horizon, this can mean hundreds of thousands in fees that can otherwise go towards your wealth. 

Norque is coming with its ICO around April/May 2024 introducing a pioneering ecosystem that merges blockchain, AI, ML, cryptocurrency, and insurance, marking a first in the sector. Norque aims to bring security, usability, accessibility, and sustainability to the blockchain, Web3, cryptocurrency, and the metaverse. 

In response to the cryptocurrency market’s volatility and high-profile failures, Norque presents a novel approach by offering a digital currency with real-world value. Unlike previous projects that pursued fleeting fame LUNA, Doge and FTX, Norque focuses on providing actual utility backed by tangible assets, such as real estate and consumer goods. 

Norque’s foundation is built on expertise from blockchain professionals, financial market experts, AI specialists, and global influencers. It introduces the first AI and ML-driven blockchain tailored for insurance claim settlements, enhancing efficiency and accessibility. Additionally, the project launches NOQ, a token underpinned by real-world assets, enabling purchases across blockchain, crypto, metaverse, and insurance services. 

European wealth tech company Othis unveils its initial product on the path to become a full-service wealth management company directly servicing individuals and families.   

With the initial product, Othis targets individuals and families with portfolios of diverse assets. The company’s clients no longer need to face the chaos of having to juggle multiple bank and brokerage portals because their data is automatically aggregated from all connected accounts. Alternative assets that are not handled by traditional financial firms, such as venture capital, can be processed by Othis.   

All this data is neatly organized and presented in a single intuitive dashboard, available on both mobile and web. In the future, clients will be able to share the account access with their tax advisors to simplify the flow of information. 

Relativity6 announced its latest partnership with Linq360, a prominent entity resolution solution provider. 

The collaboration between Linq360 and Relativity6 is poised to revolutionize the landscape of small commercial data by addressing some of the most challenging aspects faced by underwriting teams in the insurance and fintech sectors. 

Through the integration of Relativity6’s Linq360’s clients can expect accuracy and efficiency in identifying and classifying businesses. This transformative synergy empowers underwriting teams to streamline their operations, ensuring resilience and agility in navigating even the most complex scenarios arising from business identity challenges. 

6sense announced the recent appointment of Jerome Levadoux as Chief Product Officer. Levadoux, an accomplished leader with over two decades of technology and leadership experience, will lead the product development, design, and strategy efforts. His appointment follows several years of 6sense hyper-growth and innovation. 

The addition of Levadoux to the 6sense executive team marks a crucial milestone in underscoring the company’s transition from category-defining technology to becoming a worldwide authority in sales and marketing intelligence for B2B organizations. 

Levadoux joins 6sense from DocuSign, where he served as Chief Product Officer and helped grow its eSignature business globally, taking the company from $250 million to $2.5 billion in revenue. He’s also held senior product and engineering roles at SAP, and Oracle and HP. Levadoux holds graduate degrees in engineering from UC Berkeley and Ecole Centrale Paris, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. 

Spirits Capital Corporation, a fintech company that merges technology with the premium American whiskey asset class, announced the technology behind its Q2 launch of the Distilled Barrel Financial Exchange (“DBFEX”) has completed a three year long AI based machine learning integration process. The DBFEX global marketplace is set to connect distillers, investors and brands in a transparent ecosystem never seen in the whiskey and spirits industry. The platform will leverage AI in a way that analyzes the entire supply chain behind the manufacturing of every barrel of whiskey in real time. 

SRA Consulting and Bluejaÿ AI announced their strategic partnership. This collaboration brings together SRA Consulting’s advisory services in risk and compliance with Bluejaÿ AI’s artificial intelligence-driven forecasting technology. Together, they are setting a new standard for operational resilience in the banking sector, offering a robust solution designed to meet the unique challenges and strategic goals of financial institutions, especially in fortifying their control environments. 

This strategic alliance is poised to redefine risk management for banks by offering significant benefits such as cost efficiency, improved risk forecasting capabilities, and a shift towards a proactive, forward-looking approach. The partnership addresses critical non-financial risks including governance, compliance, and operational challenges, ensuring seamless integration with existing Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) technology infrastructures, thereby guaranteeing a smooth, hassle-free adoption process. 

TIFIN announced the appointment of Brooke Juniper as the Chief Executive Officer of Sage, its AI-driven investment platform that acts as a personalized CIO, helping advisors through quick ideation and actionability for each client and prospect portfolio. 

With an extensive background in finance and technology, Brooke Juniper brings a wealth of experience and expertise to her new role at Sage. Before joining Sage, Brooke spent 16 years at BlackRock, where most recently she was Head of Digital Engagement, and set the vision, commercial strategy, and roadmap for Advisor Center, BlackRock’s digital ecosystem and portfolio toolkit serving 100,000+ wealth advisors in the US. In addition, she co-founded and led BlackRock’s US Wealth Portfolio Solutions group, bringing Aladdin analytics to the wealth market and helping to drive an industry-wide shift towards more portfolio-centric engagement. 

Sage is an advanced AI-powered investment platform that empowers financial advisors with intelligent portfolio insights and personalized and actionable recommendations. 

TigerEye, a go-to-market platform for sales, marketing and finance, emerged from stealth to offer AI-driven business planning that enables rapid strategy testing and execution. This accelerates the transition from planning to action with greater confidence. Additionally, TigerEye is rolling out a series of advancements, starting with Time Cube, an architecture that manages time-aware data and incorporates large language models (LLMs) for faster, better decision-making. 

TigerEye was founded with a clear mission: to help companies with the best products win through strategic planning and predictable growth. Its Business Simulation Engine, powered by TigerAI, utilizes customer-defined parameters and blends current and historical data to offer a range of growth scenarios from cautious to ambitious. The Business Simulation Engine quickly simulates future plans, guiding leaders through “what-if” scenarios like driving directions from a GPS. This ensures adaptability and stability, even with unexpected changes. 

TigerEye prioritizes customer safety and privacy with a single-tenant architecture, ensuring data security and adherence to stringent best practices. Its Time Cube architecture, already pivotal in recording CRM updates and handling time-aware data, is poised to evolve further by integrating LLMs to provide actionable business advice for go-to-market (GTM) leaders. The company is benchmarking the effectiveness of its forthcoming LLM tools using its own data. Additionally, Time Cube supports decision-making by enabling sales leaders to review past and present business situations via the Time Warp feature. 

WealthFeed , an AI-powered organic growth platform for financial advisors, announced the successful closure of a $2 million funding round. Strategic investors include Thicket Ventures and executives from the Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), Investment Banking and Private Equity sectors. Concurrent with the investment, Justin Wisz and Joe Jolson will join WealthFeed’s Board of Directors. The round reflects the confidence that industry leaders have placed in WealthFeed’s distinctive value proposition, and is poised to drive the platform’s growth initiatives, further enhancing its use of predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to assist Financial Advisors in expanding their market footprint. 

WealthFeed, the financial services spin-off of Catalyze AI which has served over 1,700 real estate and financial services customers, provides an AI-powered Money-in-Motion platform empowering Financial Advisors to grow their book of business, increase client retention and grow wallet-share with current clients. The platform boasts a dynamic money-in-motion prospect database, offering Advisors extensive filtering capabilities to identify high-converting prospect opportunities, in real time. Additionally, the WealthFeed platform enables Advisors to enrich their current client/prospect database with financial data, contact information, and other impactful insights, allowing them to prioritize and convert prospects at a higher rate. Lastly, the AI-powered platform provides Advisors with real-time alerts of money-in-motion taking place within their current client base, enhancing client retention and asset aggregation opportunities.