AI & Finance™ | News for the Week Ending 10/18/24

Fast-growing digital wealth management platform Arta Finance today launched globally. Arta’s platform is now open to accredited investors in Singapore and to international investors open to managing their wealth in Singapore – a global wealth hub where an expected 1.6 million non-Singaporeans are expected to manage $4.8 trillion in assets by 2028. The international launch comes after Arta’s successful debut in the US in October 2023, where it has since grown to manage hundreds of millions in assets for thousands of clients.  

Arta’s wealth platform offers a curated deal flow that includes private investments from exclusive fund managers, intelligent public market strategies, and innovative structured products, without the sales pressure, opaque pricing and manual processes found in many other financial institutions. Arta’s designed-in-Singapore product has various unique features, including support for philanthropic giving in partnership with Co-Axis – a Temasek Trust initiative, a Founding Member community, and even a Singlish setting in its AI Copilot.  

Arta also launched the first-of-its-kind AI Copilot, purpose-built for wealth management and finance. This patent-pending technology, rolling out progressively to members will empower them to make smarter investment decisions – ideate, analyse, and monitor their portfolios with the tools and insights that usually require large teams of relationship managers, private bankers, and investment analysts.  

Bitdefender, a global cybersecurity leader, today announced the launch of Scam Copilot, an advanced technology platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and designed to detect and fight scams along with fraud attempts across devices including computers, tablets, and mobile phones. The platform has been integrated into several Bitdefender digital life protection consumer products adding another powerful layer of defense to protect against malware, credential stealing, and data theft. 

In a report by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), global losses from scams amounted to over one trillion U.S. dollars in 2023 with 78% of nearly 50 thousand surveyed experiencing at least one scam over a 12-month period. The Bitdefender 2024 Consumer Cybersecurity Assessment Report found that scams delivered via text messaging were the most experienced security incident affecting nearly half of seven thousand respondents. 

Scam Copilot was developed in response to the sharp rise in scam-related cybercrimes, fueled by Large Language Models (LLMs) AI. These technologies allow cybercriminals to craft and deploy highly convincing phishing messages (both text and email) in any language at scale, making it extremely challenging for consumers to spot scams and fraud attempts on their own. 

Clearspeed, the leading provider of AI-powered risk assessment technology for enterprise organizations, today announced a partnership with RSA Insurance, providing its voice analytics solution to improve fraud detection, to support a more efficient claims process, and drive an improved customer experience. 

With opportunistic and AI-augmented fraud increasing dramatically, while consumer expectations for faster, simpler claims settlements also rise, accelerating workflows through automation and advanced technologies is a key area of investment. By leveraging Clearspeed’s risk assessment technology, RSA is able to more quickly and confidently identify potential fraud during the claims process, complementing the robust fraud mitigation efforts already in place. 

Since the start of its partnership with Clearspeed, RSA has significantly improved its fraud detection capability, including identifying instances where opportunistic fraud may exist – a challenge with current approaches and a growing concern across the industry. A deterrent impact is also reflected by the increase in the number of walkaways by claimants filing fraudulent submissions. 

Communify Fincentric, a leader in unifying market and client data through best-in-class digital solutions for the financial sector, today announces the launch of a next generation suite of sophisticated client and advisor experiences for wealth management. Born in the era of AI, and leveraging Communify Fincentric’s mature and extensive knowledge base, the flexible platform powers solutions that provide unprecedented access to information, personalization and automation for advisors – strengthening their ability to service their clients and drive growth at scale.  

At the core of Communify Fincentric’s new client and advisor experiences is MINDTM– Market Intelligent News Discovery. This is a proprietary collection of smart applications that transform large data knowledge bases into intelligent insights using deterministic AI. In stark contrast to probabilistic AI, in which outcomes can vary massively and suffer from hallucinations, MIND insights are precise, accurate and therefore can be trusted by investors and advisors – and compliance. MIND delivers hyper-personalized insights in sub-seconds that contain reliable, relevant information (through video, text and more). With over 140 established event triggers based on real-time data, 1500+ models and a suite of useable apps, MIND provides advisors with the tools to deepen client relationships and streamline workflows.  

Communify Fincentric’s MIND has the advantage of a proven track record – being used by many of the largest wealth management platforms in North America, for several years behind the scenes every day.  

Conquest Planning Inc. (“Conquest”), a technology platform modernizing financial planning with customized and convenient advice, today announced its partnership with FÉRIQUE Investment Services (“FÉRIQUE”), a financial firm that offers a range of investment products and services tailored to meet the needs of professionals in Quebec’s engineering community. This collaboration aims to strengthen FÉRIQUE’s client outcomes by integrating its investment expertise with Conquest’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology platform that enables personalized and better refined financial advice.  

Conquest’s platform is designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of human financial advice with features that include goal-based financial planning, sophisticated modeling tools and a collaborative client interface. By integrating various data sources and leveraging advanced analytics, Conquest facilitates the creation of detailed, customized financial strategies that are suited to the unique needs of individual investors and families. Its intuitive design streamlines the planning process, helping FÉRIQUE’s financial professionals to provide personalized advice and manage client relationships more effectively. With a focus on innovation, Conquest empowers advisors to offer high-quality, client-centric service while optimizing their operational workflows.  

Financial professionals from the FÉRIQUE Investment Services team can now utilize Conquest’s Strategic Advice Manager (SAM) to streamline financial planning workflows, boost productivity and improve client service. Powered by AI, SAM enables FÉRIQUE’s advisors and mutual fund representatives to analyze and build financial plans tailored to each client’s unique situation. This allows for the rapid development of flexible, personalized plans that adapt seamlessly to clients’ changing life circumstances, priorities and risk tolerances. 

Conquest Planning (“Conquest”), a technology platform modernising financial planning with customised and convenient advice, announced its partnership with PlannrCRM, a next-generation back-office technology platform tailored for financial advisers. This strategic collaboration aims to streamline and enhance processes, delivering meaningful financial advice faster and more accurately to more clients. 

By leveraging an API-first approach, this integration unlocks scalability, seamlessly adapting to business requirements. The partnership will benefit advisers and their clients by centralising information and communication that ensures all stakeholders have access to the most recent data, promoting a more connected work environment. 

Datalign Advisory (“Datalign”), an AI-enhanced platform that matches consumers with leading financial advisors, today announced its early compliance with new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations concerning automatic telephone dialing systems (ATDS) and artificial or pre-recorded voice technology.  

The new FCC rules, introduced in December 2023, require companies to obtain one-to-one express written consent before contacting consumers through phone or text messaging. These regulations are set to take effect on January 27, 2025. However as of August 28, 2024, Datalign has implemented the necessary changes, ensuring its RIA clients are well positioned to be compliant with the FCC regulation and protected well ahead of the deadline.  

Key points of Datalign’s compliance include implementation of a new consent process that explicitly names the specific advisory firm before matching a prospect with a firm, provision of clear opt-in language on a page with visible contact information, and enhanced record-keeping for auditability, including specific opt-in language in individual lead reports.  

DataVisor, the world’s leading AI-powered fraud and risk platform, announced today that EQ Bank selected the company’s next generation fraud detection suite to enhance its fraud-fighting capabilities. EQ Bank, the digital arm of Canada’s Challenger Bank™ with a mission to drive change in banking and enrich people’s lives, will now augment its advanced fraud protection across its diverse array of competitive banking offerings. This encompasses a wide range of products ranging from everyday banking accounts to guaranteed investment certificates (GICs), tax-free saving accounts (TFSAs) and other registered products, all seamlessly overseen within DataVisor’s comprehensive end-to-end fraud platform. 

EQ Bank is leveraging DataVisor’s extensive functionalities and powerful data orchestration to bolster real-time fraud detection efforts. By unifying and optimizing EQ Bank’s data flow and signals for multiple use cases, DataVisor’s system acts as a central hub of intelligence, offering a holistic view to support real-time decision-making capabilities. The integration of advanced machine learning and Generative AI technologies within the platform will not only improve fraud control measures but also reduce operational costs and significantly improve the customer experience. 

Over the past year, Embroker, the digital insurance company radically simplifying the insurance buying experience for businesses, has made significant strides in this mission, with new leadership appointments and introducing new AI-powered features to its ONE platform. The company has also expanded its vertical reach, including new comprehensive, tailored coverage programs for real estate, consultants, and financial professionals. The company has also released a new program of policies for law firms on its ONE platform. Embroker has also partnered with Everspan, named 2024’s Fronting Carrier of the Year by Insurance Insider, to further digitize the insurance experience. These achievements not only highlight the momentum Embroker is making in its goal to deliver a seamless insurance buying experience, but also to grow the company’s leadership position in the insurtech industry, setting new standards in digital insurance. 

Through this strategic partnership, Everspan, a specialty property and casualty insurer, now underwrites new coverage programs on Embroker’s ONE platform, which includes their newly released packages for accountants, bookkeepers, tax preparers, real estate agents and consultants. This enhances Embroker’s ability to provide tailored solutions for a broader range of businesses and allows Everspan to expand its distribution capabilities and improve the overall customer experience for policies on Everspan paper. 

Amidst the traditionally slow pace of innovation in commercial insurance, Embroker’s partnership with Everspan is a prime example of strategic adaptation in the evolving marketplace. By creating a digitally-driven underwriting experience, Embroker cuts down on the repetitive processes many experience when purchasing coverage. 

Fenergo, the leading provider of AI-powered solutions for Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-money laundering (AML) transaction monitoring and Client Lifecycle Management (CLM), today announced the appointment of financial crime veteran Michael Shepard to its Growth Advisory Board. Shepard will leverage his extensive expertise to support Fenergo’s continued U.S. expansion, enhance global AML and financial crime compliance strategies and provide strategic guidance to support growth. 

Michael Shepard brings nearly four decades of expertise in financial crime risk management, specializing in areas such as anti-money laundering, sanctions, fraud and white-collar crime investigations. He has held key leadership roles across major U.S. organizations and spent the last 18 years as a principal at Deloitte, where he led the Global Financial Crime practice. 

Prior to Deloitte, Shepard served as the Head of Financial Crime Compliance at Commerce Bank, N.A., (subsequently acquired by TD Bank), overseeing the transformation and daily operations of the AML, fraud and sanctions programs. He also practiced law specializing in white-collar defense, corporate investigations and financial crime compliance at Blank Rome LLP, and worked as a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Treasury Prime, a leading embedded banking software company, announced today the addition of Greenlite to the Treasury Prime Partner Marketplace. Banks in Treasury Prime’s network now have the option to leverage Greenlite to help scale their anti-money laundering (AML) and risk management programs by automating repetitive workflows. 

Greenlite provides financial institutions regulated by the OCC, SEC and FDIC the ability to automate rigorous customer due diligence with generative AI. Its platform augments risk and empower compliance teams with intelligent AI workflows, allowing financial institutions to onboard, periodically review, and investigate more business customers with ease. 

Kyriba, a global leader in liquidity performance, announced today an AI-driven platform designed to enhance financial connectivity and operational agility for CFOs and their teams. Kyriba App Studio is a first-of-its-kind solution that aims to eliminate Liquidity Gridlock, simplify API adoption, and streamline integrations for any software that supports APIs, including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). By empowering finance teams to automate and control connectivity workflows without requiring technical expertise, Kyriba App Studio significantly boosts operational agility, productivity, and efficiency. 

A Gartner survey found that 63% of CFOs are prioritizing improving their forecast capabilities, which underscores why real-time financial information is crucial for CFOs dealing with complex financial situations. APIs have been a proven solution but they often require development work. Kyriba App Studio bridges this gap, giving financial teams complete control over their operations without relying on tech savvy resources, ultimately unlocking new levels of productivity, agility, and competitive advantage. 

Kyriba App Studio enhances the company’s market leading Connectivity-as-a-Service (CaaS) offering by providing an even more flexible user experience that empowers CFOs and finance teams to optimize their financial connectivity and operations. 

LendingClub Corporation (NYSE: LC), operator of America’s leading digital marketplace bank, and Pagaya Technologies LTD (NASDAQ: PGY), a global technology company delivering AI-driven product solutions for the financial ecosystem, today announced that they partnered together to acquire the intellectual property behind Tally Technologies, Inc. (“Tally”). 

Tally’s innovative technology simplifies credit card management, helping users optimize payments, reduce interest, and improve credit health. Tally’s consumer solution allows users to link credit cards, automate card payments, and adopt strategies to lower interest costs and avoid late fees. The company also created an embedded, white-label business-to-business credit card debt management platform leveraging the same functionality. 

LendingClub uses proprietary technology and data to provide consumers with compelling solutions to reduce the cost of their debt and pay it off more quickly. This transaction will accelerate the evolution of LendingClub’s member engagement platform to drive future growth. 

Noetica AI, an AI-powered software platform for benchmarking deal terms, today announced $22 million in Series A funding as it continues to deliver best-in-class capital markets insights to top law firms and financial institutions. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Thompson Reuters Ventures, Bling Capital, Flybridge Capital, Company Ventures, and TheLegalTech Fund. 

Over the past year alone, Noetica’s platform has been used to benchmark terms in over $350 billion of capital markets transactions, with professionals utilizing its proprietary database of more than 100 million aggregated, analyzed, and indexed terms nearly daily. In less than a year and a half since launch, Noetica has quickly become one of the most relied on data sources for deal data across the market, including working with 10 of the top 25 law firms, among others. 

Options Technology (Options), a trailblazer in capital markets infrastructure, today announced a significant investment by Vitruvian Partners, a leading private equity firm known for backing high-growth companies. This investment marks the next phase of Options’ growth, with Vitruvian Partners bringing capital and strategic support to drive the company’s continued global expansion and innovation. 

Vitruvian Partners’ investment will provide Options with the financial resources and expertise needed to accelerate its growth in key areas such as high-performance Networking, Cloud, Security, AI, and Market Data services. With Vitruvian’s backing, Options is well-positioned to capitalize on new opportunities and enhance its service and product offerings to financial institutions worldwide. 

Planto, a leading digital banking solution provider headquartered in Hong Kong, has partnered with Citibank HK to launch Wealth 360 within the Citi Mobile® App, a pioneering digital wealth management feature on the Citi Mobile® App. This new offering provides Citi’s customers with a next-generation personal financial management (PFM) experience, including sustainability insights and advanced customer intelligence features.  

Integrating Doconomy’s award-winning carbon footprint measurement technology alongside Planto’s advanced AI-driven data enrichment capabilities, Wealth 360 delivers a variety of smart banking tools and personalized insights to help Citi customers better manage their finances and their environmental impact. These include cash flow analysis, spending reports, sustainability insights and over 20 other financial insights and recommendations tailored to each user’s data.  

Going forward, the Wealth 360 experience will seamlessly incorporate data through the Interbank Account Data Sharing (IADS) pilot program introduced by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) allowing Citi customers to view and manage their finances across multiple bank accounts in one place. 

AlphaTrAI, a leading provider of tech-enabled services for the wealth and asset management industries, today announced the completion of a rebranding effort and the implementation of a strategic shift in its value proposition. The newly resulting firm is called Praxis Solutions (“Praxis”).  

The reorganized firm will deliver a unified client experience built around the concepts of “Think. Make. Do.” The company’s unique approach encompasses business process experts on the front end, scientists to build algorithms and technology operations specialists to implement and integrate solutions with clients’ existing tech stacks. 

The firm’s new name and direction culminate a two-year undertaking that built upon AlphaTrAI’s roots in artificial intelligence to merge the equally necessary but often segregated components of the tech creation and implementation process: ideation and execution. The name is rooted in Greek philosophy and utilized across academia—and often is simply defined as the process of thinking, making and doing.  

SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFI), a member-centric, one-stop shop for digital financial services that empowers members to borrow, save, spend, invest, and protect their money, today announced its adoption of Galileo’s modern, cloud-based Cyberbank Core to power a range of payment services to commercial clients, including debit, prepaid, ACH and wire transactions, and associated banking services. Cyberbank Core became an integral part of Galileo’s offering after SoFi’s acquisition of Technisys in 2022. Galileo is a subsidiary of SoFi. 

Galileo delivers a wide range of benefits for clients like SoFi that are modernizing their core infrastructure in order to improve customers’ experience. SoFi’s commercial payment services program implementation of Cyberbank Core is expected to be complete in November 2024. This collaboration is the latest step in SoFi’s partnership with Galileo, which currently powers an array of Banking, Payments, Lending, and Risk products for SoFi Bank’s consumer business. 

Surfin, a financial technology platform dedicated to serving the underserved middle class, has raised $12.5 million from Insignia Ventures Partners. This funding round comes as Surfin announces its service to 60 million individuals across eight countries on three continents, with approximately $2.7 billion in cumulative transactions.  

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Singapore, Surfin began with consumer lending and expanded into a suite of financial services including payments and remittance, credit card issuance, and wealth management. Leveraging AI and analytics, Surfin is committed to offering an ecosystem of transparent and innovative financial services to the growing middle class that is often overlooked by traditional banking systems.  

The company has a significant presence in Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, Nigeria, Kenya, India, Uganda, and Australia. In Indonesia, its largest market, Surfin holds licenses for P2P lending, mutual fund distribution, remittance, and payment gateway services.  

Swift today announced that it is rolling out new AI-enhanced fraud detection to help the global payments industry step up its defence as bad actors grow increasingly sophisticated. Available from January 2025, the service is the result of extensive collaboration with banks from around the world and a successful pilot earlier this year. 

The new capability builds on Swift’s existing Payment Controls Service — used by many small and medium-sized financial institutions — by drawing on pseudonymised data from the billions of transactions that flow over the Swift network each year to identify and flag suspicious transactions so that action can be taken in real-time. 

The rollout is part of Swift’s broader collaboration with its global community of more than 11,500 banks and financial institutions to test how AI can solve cross-industry challenges. With global industry estimates putting the total cost of fraud in financial services at USD 485 billion in 2023 alone1, Swift is focused on using AI to give financial institutions stronger and more accurate insights into instances of potentially fraudulent activity. 

TIFIN AG, a leading provider of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions for the wealth management industry, is excited to announce a strategic partnership with GenWealth Financial Advisors, LLC (GenWealth), a leading wealth manager in Arkansas and Louisiana.  

TIFIN AG aims to deliver AI-powered insights and intelligence to accelerate organic growth at GenWealth by equipping advisors with new opportunities integrated directly into their CRM. This collaboration will leverage TIFIN AG’s advanced AI/ML models to address the challenges of expanding existing client business, and identifying and converting new prospects into loyal clients.  

Over the past 12 months, the efficacy of TIFIN AG’s models have yielded results showing that prospects scoring in the top twenty-five percent are six times more likely to convert to clients, and existing clients are 17 times more likely to consolidate assets. This showcases the strength of TIFIN AG’s data science capabilities. This partnership aims to replicate and exceed these results for GenWealth. The solutions deployed at GenWealth are some of the many personalized models that TIFIN AG offers as part of its comprehensive growth platform.  

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded a grant to The Sentry and Castellum.AI to launch a groundbreaking initiative to provide corruption risk data to the private sector. The partnership between Castellum.AI and The Sentry will leverage artificial intelligence and Castellum.AI’s patented data enrichment process to enable companies globally to identify corruption risk across customers and counterparties. 

This partnership between The Sentry, an investigative nonprofit that uncovers transnational corruption networks, and Castellum.AI, a compliance screening solutions provider, transforms investigative reports on corruption into actionable data for the private sector. As a result, compliance teams worldwide will be able to quickly and easily identify corruption-related risk associated with customers, transactions and supply chains. This data will be publicly accessible through Castellum.AI’s online compliance platform. 

Investigative NGOs, like The Sentry, publish critical information on corruption globally. However, this data is not readily accessible to financial institutions and others who need this data for effective customer and supply chain due diligence. The absence of this data in an accessible format hinders compliance professionals’ efforts to detect and address corruption risks. The Sentry and Castellum.AI first joined forces in 2022 to address this gap by making the information derived from The Sentry’s investigations available for screening. 

Visa (NYSE: V), a global leader in digital payments, today announced that it has entered into a new strategic partnership with Analytic Partners, a global analytics solution provider. Together, Visa and Analytic Partners plan to address commercial challenges faced by merchants and brands, including improving the return on advertising investments, with value-enhancing AI-driven data analytics. 

In a dynamic business environment rich with data, companies need meaningful, near-real-time insights to make informed decisions, yet solutions are often fragmented or not actionable. The partnership will combine Visa’s merchant relationships and consumer spend insights with Analytic Partners’ commercial decisioning platform to bring powerful marketing spend optimization analytics to merchants and brands around the world. 

Initially, the partnership will be focused on the United States, with a planned global expansion to follow. Visa and Analytic Partners have made certain exclusivity commitments for merchant and brand marketing spend optimization offerings and services. Visa and Analytic Partners also plan to collaborate to develop new and enhanced analytics solutions that enable merchants and brands to turn insights into measurable business growth. 

The collaboration will bring an AI-powered solution to help financial institutions level up their lending business through a no-code SaaS model that puts the ownership of credit modelling in the hands of Worldline’s clients of all sizes globally. The FinbotsAI solution will enable financial institutions to develop & deploy credit scorecards with powerful artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms that are embedded across the value chain; from data to decisioning, for both individual and business lending. 

CreditX blends the best of traditional and AI/ML modelling enabling credit risk modelers to quantum-build scorecards that are based on the modeler’s choice of data and parameters. The human-centered AI design enables credit modelers to develop scorecards rapidly, leveraging AI to enhance the accuracy of each scorecard, all at a fraction of today’s costs.