AI & Finance™ | News for the Week Ending 1/31/25

BCC Iccrea Group, Italy’s largest cooperative banking group, and Accenture (NYSE: ACN) have signed a partnership agreement to support the Group’s IT transformation within the framework of the broader IT reinvention plan devised by BCC Sistemi Informatici. 

This plan, which includes an investment program of over €300 million over the next three years, aims to accelerate the transformation initiated with the establishment of the Group. The objective is to provide improved levels of service for the 114 BCC member banks and other subsidiaries, thereby offering members and customers services that are increasingly secure, efficient, innovative and user-friendly. 

Specifically, the new Group IT plan covers improvement and modernization of key core banking applications, the further expansion of products and services available through digital channels, and the acceleration of its AI strategy program. 

Algebrik AI Inc., a Delaware-incorporated company headquartered in New York City, pioneering the world’s first cloud-native, AI-powered, digital-era Loan Origination Platform (LOS), today announced a strategic partnership with Auto Exam, a leading provider of vehicle service contracts, GAP insurance, and collateral protection products. This collaboration aims to revolutionize auto lending by integrating comprehensive protection solutions directly into the loan origination process, enhancing value for both lenders and borrowers. 

Algebrik AI was founded with a vision to transform the lending experience by addressing the challenges faced by community financial institutions. Recognizing the stagnation in lending technology over the past two decades, Algebrik set out to build a platform that bridges the gap between legacy systems and modern borrower expectations. With a foundation in cutting-edge AI and cloud-native technologies, Algebrik’s mission is to enable credit unions, auto lenders and financial institutions to reclaim their competitive edge while delivering personalized, seamless lending experiences that resonate with next-generation members. 

Award-winning enterprise digital documentation infrastructure leader Arteria AI is thrilled to announce the creation of Arteria Café, a dedicated research arm focused on advancing generative and agentic artificial intelligence technologies in financial services documentation use cases. 

The future of AI is vertical. This strategic initiative underscores Arteria AI’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities in documentation processes in financial services and delivering specific ROI in high-impact workflows. 

Alongside this announcement, Arteria is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Amir Hajian as Chief Science Officer, who will lead this important initiative. 

Deaglo, an emerging FinTech company providing foreign exchange solutions, announced that its platform will now be available to financial institutions as a white label solution. This new FX solution, the first of its kind, utilizes dynamic AI and real-time data integration to optimize and explain FX risk and hedging strategies to enhance decision-making and reduce costs for Financial Institutions and their clients. 

FX hedging inherently includes inefficiencies, risks, and complexities. Traditional FX hedging processes also require input from multiple stakeholders across sales, credit, and compliance departments, making the process cumbersome. Additionally, FX teams largely rely on time-consuming spreadsheets, Bloomberg terminals, and fragmented systems for data analysis, which can lead to human error and missed opportunities. 

With the Deaglo white label platform, financial institutions can control the full lifecycle of a client’s hedging process. Integrating AI, machine learning, and automation, Deaglo’s platform removes bottlenecks by offering a user-friendly, data-driven solution with real-time, actionable insights. Its suite of advanced tools and features—such as the Strategy Simulator, Hedged vs Unhedged Simulator, Margin Simulator, FX Options Builder and Exposure Management—helps financial institutions meet the needs of multiple stakeholders, simplifies workflows for FX sales teams, account managers, and compliance officers, and support clients in making faster, data-driven decisions. 

Delfi, a machine-learning risk management platform for financial institutions, has partnered with three U.S. banks to revolutionize interest rate risk management. Representing over $11 billion in assets under technology, these institutions are leveraging Delfi’s cutting-edge solutions to enhance performance, reduce volatility, and seize growth opportunities even in an unpredictable rate environment. 

From Louisiana to Wyoming, these forward-thinking banks, with diverse asset sizes ranging from less than $100 million to $8 billion, have embraced Delfi’s balance sheet solutions, including OVERWATCH, WHAT-IF, and its revolutionary AI CO-PILOT. OVERWATCH analyzes the risk performance of the balance sheet, with advanced forward-looking dynamic models and thousands of Monte Carlo simulations, providing a real-time picture of a bank’s current risk exposure. WHAT-IF bridges the gap from diagnosis to action by empowering bank management to assess ‘what-if’ strategic decisions by instantly calculating their financial and risk impact. Finally, Delfi’s AI CO-PILOT expands the action space of decision makers by building concrete, immediately actionable solutions for consideration. 

Eton Solutions, a leading WealthTech platform for Family Offices powered by AI, will be the exclusive technology partner of Trigen Wealth, a newly launched multi-family office in India. Prime Trigen Wealth Limited is a full-stack wealth solutions provider offering comprehensive multi-family office services and is a 100% subsidiary of Prime Securities Limited, a publicly listed and SEBI Registered Category-I Merchant Banker, with a distinguished legacy of delivering exceptional financial services in India. This strategic collaboration is set to redefine wealth management for Ultra-High-Net-Worth (UHNW) and High-Net-Worth (HNW) families across the country. 

This partnership underscores Eton’s commitment to offering an integrated and innovative ERP platform for UHNW and HNW families and individuals across India. Eton Solutions has had a presence in the country for the past 5 years with over 375 employees working at their Global Technology Center in Bengaluru supporting clients globally. The emergence of India as a financial powerhouse with the 3rd largest concentration of billionaires in the world after the USA and China, fits squarely with Eton Solutions’ international expansion plans. 

AFO™ offers clients a single integrated web and mobile application, providing complete visibility into their wealth portfolios, seamless management of investments, and tracking of private assets — all within the secure, high-quality data infrastructure of AtlasFive®. Combined with Eton’s suite of services, family offices can eliminate the need for outsourcing middle and back-office operations, creating an entirely digital and client-centric experience, from investment reporting to accounting and document management to tax support services. 

GReminders, a leading end-to-end meeting and automation management platform for financial advisors, announces more than 2,000 advisors now using its innovative, artificial intelligence (AI) powered solution to help improve workflows and daily firmwide operations. With more than 450 registered investment advisor (RIA) firms currently using the software to streamline functions, the milestone highlights GReminders’ rapid growth and continued commitment to improving advisor-client interactions. 

GReminders is designed to streamline operations for advisors, implementing AI-powered tools without disrupting their ongoing operations. 

According to a survey of 150 GReminders users, the platform is saving advisors approximately 610 hours per year for every 100 clients. This is achieved through intelligent automation of time-consuming tasks, such as meeting prep and follow-ups. 

Intellinetics, Inc. (NYSE American: INLX), a digital transformation solutions provider, is proud to announce the growth of its IntelliCloud Payables Automation Solution (IPAS) into the K-12 market through an expansion of its partnership with Skyward, a school administration software provider committed to helping K-12 leaders spend less time on tasks and more time with students. 

The partnership builds on the existing collaboration established between Skyward and YellowFolder, Intellinetics’ K-12 purpose-built records management system, and enables finance departments to leverage artificial intelligence and system interoperability to save the district time, money, and resources. 

Intellinetics IPAS for K-12 utilizes AI to virtually eliminate all paper and manual steps in the scanning, capture, indexing, and filing of a school district’s AP Invoices and automates the approval process while improving transparency and audit capabilities. 

OneVest, a comprehensive wealth management technology platform, today announced the closure of a $20 million USD Series B equity funding round. The round was led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from new investors, Allianz Life Ventures and TIAA Ventures. Returning investors include OMERS Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, Fin Capital, Luge Capital, and Pivot Investment Partners. 

OneVest’s cutting-edge platform is designed modularly and flexibly, allowing firms to roll out their full end-to-end solution, while large enterprises—including banks, Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), asset management firms, and insurance companies—are able to pick and choose specific modules to modernize their wealth programs. Customers can save implementation time and cut down significantly on the cost of using various legacy vendors and manual processes. Additionally, the platform is highly configurable, enabling customers to offer tailored hybrid experiences for investors, and empower advisors to gain greater control and insights over their books of business. 

OneVest is building out advanced AI capabilities to enhance decision-making and client engagement. The company will expand its offerings in alternative investments, providing enterprises with tools to diversify client portfolios in an increasingly dynamic financial landscape. OneVest is committed to defining industry changes, while providing a unified, seamless experience for customers. 

Options Technology (Options), a leading provider of cloud-enabled managed services to the global capital markets, is pleased to announce the promotion of Michelle Kendell to Vice President and Managing Director of Hong Kong. Michelle will lead the company’s operations in Hong Kong in her new role. 

Michelle brings over 20 years of experience in the financial technology sector, with a proven track record in driving business growth and fostering client relationships. Since joining Options in 2018 as a Technical Account Manager and, more recently, in her role as Client Solutions Director, she has been instrumental in expanding the company’s presence in Asia, leading to significant client acquisitions and partnerships. Her leadership and deep industry knowledge have been pivotal in navigating the complex landscape of the financial markets. 

Michelle’s promotion comes during a period of significant momentum for Options in APAC, with the company making considerable investments in the region, including the expansion of its trading infrastructure and Market Data offerings in Taiwan, Thailand, and Korea, as well as the integration of the Activ business in Tokyo and Singapore. 

Orion, the premier provider of transformative wealthtech solutions for financial advisors and the enterprises that serve them, today announced a new collaboration with Snowflake, the AI Data Cloud company. This initiative further enhances data access and flexibility for Orion clients, moving just-in-time reporting into the hands of the advisor. The Snowflake technology will be available to a beta group of clients in Q2 with general availability to be announced later. 

Orion’s introduction of Snowflake expands client firm’s cross-cloud compatibility, allowing advisors to securely access and analyze real-time data within their own preferred systems and eliminating inefficiencies or the need to navigate new tools. Additionally, Snowflake’s elastic scalability supports seamless performance as data workloads grow, while advanced security measures enable advisors to maintain compliance with industry standards. 

According to Orion’s 2025 Advisor Wealthtech Survey – which will be unveiled next week at the Orion Ascent conference – 60% of advisors currently use real-time data sharing technology and advanced data capabilities for data warehousing. This year, over a third (35%) of advisors are making it a priority to provide clients with real-time data and updates on their portfolios. 

Polly, the leading provider of innovative enterprise technology and artificial intelligence for mortgage capital markets, unveils the impressive productivity gains wholesale mortgage company ResiCentral and national mortgage lender New American Funding (NAF) are seeing from its novel AI platform, Polly/™ AI. Powered by state-of-the-art AI/ML algorithms and Polly’s proprietary technology and data, the platform is embedded directly within Polly’s next-generation, commercially scalable product, pricing, and eligibility (PPE) engine. 

Polly solidified its position as a mortgage tech pioneer in artificial intelligence with Polly/™ AI’s first application: an interactive loan officer (LO) agent that leverages the PPE’s unmatched analytical abilities to examine near-miss eligibility, near-miss pricing, and suggested actions. Introduced in May 2024, the first-of-its-kind agent has empowered mortgage lenders and their loan officers and mortgage brokers to stand out in today’s highly competitive capital markets vertical, drive greater value for their customers, and ultimately, boost conversions and ROI. 

The roadmap for Polly/™ AI is continuously informed by feedback from ResiCentral, NAF, and other Polly customer partners. Polly remains fully committed to advancing its AI and machine learning capabilities and has slated additional significant research and development investments in 2025 to stay ahead of the curve and deliver even greater value to mortgage lenders. 

MML Capital Partners, an international private-equity firm focused on partnership investing, has partnered with Toronto, Canada-based, RAVL Inc. (“RAVL”). RAVL is a high growth technology advisory and engineering firm that specializes in solving complex business problems with technology for the financial services industry in North America. They offer deep expertise across the technology stack, including DevSecOps, Cloud, AI, and software development. RAVL drives tangible business outcomes by involving advisors and engineers on every engagement, ensuring advisors propose actionable strategies and engineers build solutions that solve actual business problems. 

With a strong track record of growth and top-tier delivery capabilities, a large and skilled labor force, and impressive blue-chip customer relationships, RAVL has already built a strong market reputation. Clients hire RAVL to address their critical business issues to drive efficient operations and deliver next-gen technology capabilities. 

Rocket Companies (NYSE: RKT), the Detroit-based fintech platform company consisting of mortgage, real estate and personal finance businesses, today announced the launch of Rocket.com. Rocket.com empowers consumers to search, purchase and manage their home financing with an intuitive, AI-driven experience, simplifying every step of the homeownership journey. 

With today’s limited housing inventory and affordability concerns, Rocket.com simplifies the path to homeownership and offers consumers a one-stop solution. Traditional home search platforms often focus solely on property browsing, leaving buyers without the necessary guidance or actionable options once they are ready to move forward. 

Rocket.com will improve this by bringing home search, financing and servicing together in one intuitive platform. Clients will be able to easily explore properties and receive personalized financing options from a Rocket Mortgage banker – all in just a few clicks. 

Smartsheet, the AI enhanced enterprise grade work management platform, today announced the completion of its acquisition by funds managed by Blackstone (“Blackstone”) and Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”) in a transaction valued at approximately $8.4 billion. 

The transaction was previously announced on September 24, 2024, and approved by Smartsheet stockholders on December 9, 2024. With the completion of the take private transaction, Smartsheet stockholders are entitled to receive $56.50 in cash for each share of Smartsheet common stock they owned immediately prior to the closing. Smartsheet’s stock has ceased trading, and the company is no longer listed on the New York Stock Exchange. 

In today’s workplace, collaborative work management and AI-enabled user experiences are more important than ever as companies seek to become more efficient and productive. Smartsheet, Blackstone and Vista will seek to invest to expand the company’s leading collaborative work management solutions and deliver exceptional products and experiences for customers and partners. Further, Smartsheet will benefit from Blackstone and Vista’s global expertise to help it scale its international business and make its products and expertise available to customers and partners worldwide. 

Talkdesk®, Inc., a global provider of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered customer experience (CX) technology that serves enterprises of all sizes, today announced it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Financial Services ISV Competency. Talkdesk has been recognized for its expertise in using AWS technologies and proven success in empowering banking and insurance customers with innovative, industry-specific tools that transform client experiences and build customer loyalty. 

AWS Competency Partners are measured against a high standard to gain an AWS Specialization, which helps AWS customers find service providers with the right expertise, solutions, and experience to meet their organization goals. 

Talkdesk offers a robust suite of integrated CX applications and products tailored to specific industries’ use cases. Now designated as trusted AWS-based solutions, Talkdesk Financial Services Experience Cloud™ for Banking and Talkdesk Financial Services Experience Cloud for Insurance enable banking and insurance companies to deliver connected, intelligent, and secure client interactions more effortlessly across any communication channel. Featuring out-of-the-box integrations to core banking and digital banking platforms, policy administration, and claims management platforms, the digital-first solutions tie together data from across the client journey and deliver immediate time to value. The platforms are also infused with industry-trained AI and machine learning capabilities to drive agent productivity by promoting real-time assistance and prioritizing activities that result in high-value interactions. 

ThetaRay, a global leader in Cognitive AI Financial Crime Compliance and IDB Bank, a New York-based private and commercial bank, have announced a strategic partnership. The collaboration underscores the Bank’s dedication to maintaining the highest standards of regulatory compliance and financial integrity, while providing an efficient and secure service to its clients. 

With leading international banks in Europe, South America, and Africa, ThetaRay is enabling international corridors of trade that empower legitimate actors to operate with confidence while intercepting bad actors. In the financial crime arena, where the complexity and sophistication of threats are continually evolving, AI is indispensable for addressing these challenges effectively. 

This partnership aligns with IDB Bank’s broader strategy to leverage technology in delivering superior services and fostering regulatory and customer confidence. By integrating ThetaRay’s Transaction Monitoring solution, IDB Bank hopes to continue to demonstrate its commitment to being a trusted partner in the global financial ecosystem and the fight against financial crimes. 

Trillo, a provider of advanced artificial intelligence solutions, announces the general availability of its advanced AI-powered pipeline designed (also known as Intelligent Document Processing, IDP) to process and enable complex documents for generative AI applications. This capability is now available as part of the Trillo Doc AI product, which runs seamlessly on Google Cloud, offering enterprise scalability, security, and performance. 

Trillo’s innovative pipeline combines advanced natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and automation to address challenges in document-heavy industries. With capabilities like document parsing, entity extraction, and content enrichment with metadata, the platform streamlines the preparation of data for generative AI models. Running on Google Cloud ensures robust infrastructure, rapid deployment, and seamless integration with other cloud-based tools, empowering businesses to extract meaningful insights, generate advanced analytics, and create adaptive solutions that transform their operations. By accelerating document preparation processes, Trillo enables organizations to focus on strategic initiatives while reducing manual labor and increasing accuracy. 

Vanilla, the leader in estate planning software, today announced the launch of V/AI Copilot, an AI-driven assistant that transforms how financial advisors approach estate planning. V/AI Copilot is designed to simplify complex tasks, streamline workflows, and help advisors build stronger client relationships. 

Estate planning can often become a complicated and time consuming process, with advisors having to understand nuanced documents, extract key information, and navigate complex scenarios. V/AI Copilot assists advisors, helping distill important information, answer questions, and save time. 

V/AI is built according to Vanilla’s AI principles to be enterprise-ready, secure, and not use client data to train our models. As a part of Vanilla’s long-term AI strategy, V/AI Copilot will continue to evolve with new capabilities to meet the growing demands of advisors and their customers. 

Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting (TAA) today announced the integration of CCH® AnswerConnect within CCH iFirm® in Canada. This enhancement delivers powerful, AI-enhanced tax research capabilities directly within the CCH iFirm platform, creating a faster, more efficient workflow for accounting and tax professionals, just in time for their busiest season, tax season. This integration is the first of its kind, integrating a research solution into practice management software for accountants. 

This cutting-edge integration allows CCH iFirm users to effortlessly access the robust features of CCH AnswerConnect—including AI-powered search and editorially curated answers—without leaving the application. Designed to minimize reliance on multiple tools and general web searches, this innovation streamlines tax research while significantly reducing the risk of misinformation. Available in both English and French, this combination is the first of its kind in Canada, demonstrating Wolters Kluwer’s commitment to continuous innovation and workplace transformation. 

The introduction of CCH AnswerConnect within CCH iFirm enhances tax professionals’ ability to handle complex queries confidently. By simplifying access to trusted resources and research in one seamlessly integrated platform, firms can eliminate risk and stay ahead of the curve.