AI & Finance™ | News for the Week Ending 4/4/25

Apex Fintech Solutions Inc. (“Apex”), an innovation launchpad for the global investment ecosystem, has announced the release of Ask Ascend, an AI-powered assistant designed to provide immediate, accurate answers to technical questions and, in the future, operational questions for clients who are integrating with Apex Ascend™, the next generation clearing, custody, and trading platform. By providing prompt answers, Ask Ascend can accelerate technical integrations and speed to market.  

After evaluating the available AI platforms, Chen-Wynn and her team chose to build Ask Ascend on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform. Vertex AI empowered Apex to develop Ask Ascend with enterprise-level reliability, security, scalability and advanced permissioning, tailored for internal and external use. Furthermore, Vertex AI provides grounding — also referred to as in-line citations — that anchors AI outputs to verifiable sources of information.  

Ask Ascend supports integration with Apex Ascend, the cloud-native clearing, custody, and trading platform. The AI was built on Ascend’s existing client-facing documentation — including API specifications, help files, and sample code — to act as a specialized assistant that currently supports developers and, in the future, operations professionals.  

Aria Systems, the leader in AI-powered billing automation, announced today that Early Warning Services, LLC., a financial services technology leader and the company behind Zelle® and PazeSM, has expanded its use of Aria Billing Cloud. 

Early Warning Services has been empowering and protecting consumers, small businesses, and the U.S. financial system with cutting-edge fraud and payment solutions for more than three decades. Zelle recently announced that in 2024 the network reached 151 million enrolled users and helped American consumers and small businesses send over $1 trillion—the most money ever sent by a person-to-person payments service in a single year. 

In addition to Aria Billing Cloud, Early Warning will continue to leverage Aria’s Technical Account Management (TAM) expertise, which supports Early Warning’s complex billing needs. Early Warning will also use Aria Data Extend to capture billing data in real time and combine it with other analytics and business intelligence sources to enable data-driven strategic business decisions. 

Dominion Financial is expanding its commitment to speed, service, and innovation with the launch of two new AI assistants: Harvey, designed to support real estate investors, and Donna, built for mortgage brokers. These 24/7 AI-powered platforms are now live on DominionFinancialServices.com and DominionFinancialWholesale.com, giving users instant access to answers, loan information, and program support—anytime, anywhere. 

Dominion AI powers both assistants and responds quickly, accurately, and clearly. Whether it’s an investor researching DSCR loan terms or a broker prepping for a client call, Harvey and Donna are designed to reduce friction, save time, and keep deals moving. 

Harvey supports real estate investors by delivering real-time guidance on everything from fix & flip loans to rental strategies. He explains loan programs, walks users through documentation, and helps them understand eligibility without waiting for business hours. On the broker side, Donna now serves visitors to the Dominion Financial Wholesale website. She helps mortgage professionals get fast, accurate answers about DSCR, Non-QM, and other loan programs. From directing brokers to key resources to cutting down time spent digging through loan criteria, Donna is built for efficiency. 

FiscalNote Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: NOTE), the leading provider of AI-driven policy and regulatory intelligence solutions, today announced it has closed the divestiture of two of its Global Intelligence businesses, Oxford Analytica and Dragonfly, to Dow Jones, a global news and information provider and division of News Corp, for total consideration of $40.0 million. 

Following customary post-closing adjustments (taxes, fees), net proceeds of approximately $27.1 million will be used to further reduce the Company’s senior term debt by 30.6%, resulting in a net post-closing balance of approximately $61.5 million. Over the last twelve months, the Company has reduced its senior term balance by over 60%. 

This transaction further strengthens the Company’s balance sheet and contributes to the Company’s continuing path to future positive free cash flow. 

HDI Global Insurance Company (HGIC), the U.S. subsidiary of international Corporate & Specialty insurer, HDI Global SE (HDI), and Guidewire (NYSE: GWRE) announced that HGIC selected Guidewire PolicyCenter as its new system for policy administration and underwriting. The company will implement PolicyCenter on Guidewire Cloud by line of business, beginning with general liability. HGIC selected Guidewire PartnerConnect Consulting Global Strategic member Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) to lead the implementation project.  

Happiest Minds Technologies Limited (NSE: HAPPSTMNDS), a ‘Born Digital . Born Agile’, Mindful IT Company, today announced the launch of Investment Companion, a generative AI investor solution, in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Azure. Happiest Minds customers can now use the productive and trusted Azure cloud platform with streamlined deployment and management. 

Investment Companion is a comprehensive investor relations knowledge management system that extracts, processes and prioritizes content from multiple sources. It provides interactive, multimedia-rich responses via a chat interface with integrated feedback, enhancing the accessibility and usability of critical information. 

By leveraging Investment Companion, organizations can ensure that valuable company knowledge is preserved and made accessible to those who need it, such as employees and stakeholders. This not only enhances collaboration and innovation but also improves performance and decision-making processes. 

martini.ai, a leader in AI-driven credit risk analysis, today introduced Financials Agent, an AI-powered tool that lets users upload financial documents — such as 10-K filings — and instantly generate a financial risk report. Instead of spending hours manually extracting data and calculating credit scores, professionals can now get a full financial assessment in just minutes. 

Financials Agent changes that. Using AI, it automatically extracts key financial data, generates instant risk reports, identifies red flags and prioritizes security – By default, all uploaded financials data is immediately deleted after processing for full privacy.  

But AI doesn’t replace professional judgment — it enhances it. Credit professionals have full control over the process. While the agent does the heavy lifting, users can verify and correct extracted metrics, tweak benchmarks, and adjust credit scoring weights for a tailored analysis. 

NICE Actimize, a NICE (NASDAQ: NICE) business, today announced the availability of the next generation X-Sight ActOne which expands upon the robust and open architecture of X-Sight with Agentic AI capabilities that are foundational to transforming fraud and financial crime prevention programs. The Agentic AI capabilities orchestrate all fraud and financial crime prevention workflows on a single platform. X-Sight ActOne delivers a step change in the efficiency of financial crime prevention programs, transforming current analysis to be predictive, proactive, and automated. 

Leveraging access to billions of financial transactions daily and an unmatched global perspective on confirmed fraud, money laundering, and trading misconduct, NICE Actimize’s Agentic AI capabilities deliver analytic precision and investigator efficiency while supporting compliance with data privacy regulations through robust encryption, access controls, and role-based permissions. 

The latest Agentic AI capabilities are now available via X-Sight ActOne’s InvestigateAI which has the ability to understand financial institutions policies and procedures guidelines, the reasoning to recognize the context of an investigation and the agency to determine what data, data sources and Actimize-curated risk signals to leverage for accurate and fast decisioning. Investigate AI currently reduces investigation time by 50% or more. 

Octus, a global leader in credit intelligence and data, is proud to announce the launch of CreditAI Vault by Octus™, a groundbreaking AI-powered research tool designed to revolutionize how buy-side professionals access and analyze critical private credit data. Built on Octus’ SOC2-certified environment, CreditAI Vault delivers fast, precise and secure intelligence that simplifies workflows and empowers data-driven decision-making. 

Transforming credit intelligence and decision-making, CreditAI Vault introduces unparalleled capabilities for buy-side professionals, including portfolio analysis to reduce research time by querying complex documents in seconds; investment decision support to gain insights into structured debt, portfolio trends and comparables for data-backed decision-making; and legal and compliance management to extract and analyze key details from credit agreements and regulatory filings with ease. 

S&P Global Market Intelligence, a provider of information services and solutions to global markets, announced today the launch of its Global Entity Linking and ESG Data Management Services, now accessible via Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud. This unique solution offers clients the ability to aggregate data from both public and private sources while utilizing advanced artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technology to create a unified and comprehensive view of their entities, hierarchies and associated reference data. 

Part of the Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Insights Platform, the Global Entity Linking solution enables clients to consolidate private and public entity data from multiple sources, facilitating the aggregation of insights and analytics across front-, middle- and back-office teams. Customers can now access validated, enriched and reconciled data directly in their Snowflake environment using Secure Data Sharing. 

Socure, the leading provider of artificial intelligence (AI) for digital identity verification, compliance, and fraud prevention, today announced that its Socure For Government (SocureGov) platform has achieved the “Moderate” authorization from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP®). 

The General Accountability Office’s (GAO) 2025 update to its High-Risk Series highlighted how reducing improper payments and fraud in key programs such as those administering taxes, grants, emergency relief, and Medicare, could save billions while improving government efficiency and effectiveness. SocureGov harnesses AI to help agencies address many of the challenges leading to higher rates of identity fraud and improper payments while delivering both security and service at scale. 

Through SocureGov, agencies will have access via a single platform to advanced digital identity proofing and fraud prevention capabilities to realize a simple, seamless, and secure verification process for the American public. Central to the platform is the application of AI and machine learning techniques to analyze and correlate every facet of an individual’s digital identity, accurately verifying identities and bank accounts in real time while simultaneously detecting and preventing fraud before it occurs. 

UX Wealth Partners (UX Wealth), a leading turnkey asset management platform specializing in AI and machine learning investment technologies, announced the appointment of Brad Roth to the role of Chief Investment Officer. Roth will be responsible for improving platform integrations and enhancements and assisting in the creation of new models, advisor outreach, manager due diligence, and investment content and education. 

Alongside his appointment, Roth will continue in his current role as Co-Founder and CIO of THOR Financial Technologies, where he has played a pivotal part in developing its investment strategies and solutions. 

Prior to co-founding THOR Financial Technologies, he was a managing partner at Sardonyx Capital, overseeing a quantitative securities fund. His expertise covers a broad range of financial instruments and markets, giving him a unique perspective on investment strategy and risk management. Roth earned his Certified Financial Planner designation from New York University and received his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Duquesne University. 

Wealthbox, the fastest-growing and #1-rated CRM software platform for financial advisors in the United States, is excited to announce its plan to expand into Canada next month. In April, Wealthbox will host customer data on in-country servers through Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support Canadian advisory firms and ensure alignment with local data regulations.  

This strategic expansion reflects Wealthbox’s commitment to providing a modern, intuitive, and secure CRM software platform to financial professionals across North America. With the introduction of in-country AWS hosting, Canadian wealth management firms will benefit from Wealthbox’s faster performance, improved data privacy, and alignment with Canadian data residency requirements.  

The Wealthbox expansion into Canada is part of the company’s ongoing mission to enable financial advisors with cutting-edge technology that enhances collaboration, streamlines workflows, and drives business growth. Canadian financial advisors can look forward to accessing the full suite of Wealthbox features, including contact and task management, automated workflows, AI-generated reporting, and seamless integrations. 

Wellesley Hills Financial (“WHF”), the leading payments, fintech and B2B software investment bank in the lower middle-market, is proud to announce the launch of Merchant Portfolios, a new marketplace dedicated to helping payments companies maximize investment and optimize returns through accessible, high-level financial services. The new business unit will provide payments companies with investment banking and advisory expertise typically reserved for larger enterprises. Merchant Portfolios will help with the most common challenges merchant acquirers face, including go-to-market strategy, commercial partnerships, product suite expansion, mergers and acquisitions, and capital needs. Through an array of new partnerships with leading industry solution providers, from top data analytics firms to financial providers across the capital stack, Merchant Portfolios goal is to become the marketplace for payments processing and merchant acquirer ecosystem participants, maximizing growth and value creation. 

Merchant Portfolios is collaborating with industry leading technology companies to help merchant acquirers expand their product suite and enable new revenue streams. One of its most exciting new partnerships is with data intelligence platform AdvanceIQ.ai, which drives smarter risk assessment and merchant portfolio optimization in the SMB, alternative lending sector. The partnership will help merchant acquirers, ISOs, and agents assess their existing merchant portfolios for merchant cash advance opportunities and optimize existing MCA programs. Combined with its merchant portfolio lending engine, Merchant Portfolios becomes a unified service provider, equipping payments company founders with the capital and strategic tools to fuel growth and maximize value. 

Yooz, a leading cloud-based purchase-to-pay (P2P) automation provider, today announced the North American launch of YoozProtect, an advanced fraud prevention and security solution designed to set a new standard in safeguarding accounts payable (AP) operations. Already established and highly rated in EMEA, YoozProtect is now available to businesses in North America, delivering the most powerful combination of AI tools against fraudulent activity, enhanced vendor authentication and secure payment workflows. 

The launch comes at a critical time as financial leaders face increasing risks of fraudulent attacks. According to CFO.com, 83% of CFOs have experienced payment fraud attempts in the past year, with 70% expecting these risks to grow. YoozProtect equips finance and AP teams with cutting-edge AI and machine learning tools to proactively detect and stop fraud before payment execution. 

Unlike traditional fraud detection solutions that rely on post-incident audits or basic anomaly detection, YoozProtect leverages a unique combination of AI-powered document analysis, vendor behavior tracking and real-time risk assessments to prevent fraudulent transactions before they happen. This proactive approach helps finance teams reduce financial exposure, improve compliance and maintain stronger vendor relationships.