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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
There’s still one more day to enjoy FinovateSpring. But as far as the live demo portion of our program is concerned, the Best of Show celebrations have begun. With that in mind, please join us in congratulating the winners of Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2023.
1Kosmos for its technology that automates user onboarding for workers and customers, protecting against stolen and synthetic identities while eliminating ATO and fraud.
9Spokes for its technology that unlocks the potential of open data, giving financial institutions a powerful set of tools to engage business customers.
Flybits for its personalization platform that enables financial institutions to deliver best-in-class personalized digital banking experiences.
QuickFi for its 100% digital, self-service equipment financing platform that enables business equipment financing in minutes.
SAVVI AI for its technology that helps any FinCo team build and deploy AI apps in minutes. No data scientists, pre-existing data, or custom infrastructure required.
Wink for its biometric payments and identity platform that enables users to say goodbye to passwords and fraud – and say hello to secure and simple authentication.
On behalf of the entire Finovate team, we want to thank all of our demoing companies, our partners, and our sponsors. We also want to express our gratitude toward our attendees in the fintech and financial services industry who bring so much positive energy to our events. We look forward to seeing you again next year right here in San Francisco for FinovateSpring 2024!
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2023 conferences are below:
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 23 and 24. Register today and save your spot.
QuickFi’s latest e-commerce technology allows business borrowers to shop and consummate financing for business equipment – all within minutes, instead of days or weeks.
Features
Easily embeds into lender or manufacturer’s website
100% digital, borrower self-service, and accessible 24/7
Automated credit, contract structuring, and business verification
Why it’s great
With this latest technology, banks and manufacturers can now offer a combined online shopping and financing experience that is 100% digital, fully self-service, and able to be completed in minutes.
Presenters
Nate Gibbons, CXO Gibbons oversees QuickFi’s customer experience strategy, leveraging automation and technology to enable dramatic improvements to the borrower experience. LinkedIn
Jillian Munson, VP, Process & Automation Munson leads core technology projects at QuickFi. She develops seamless user experiences for both internal and external business processes. LinkedIn
For a second year in a row, Finovate is commemorating Black History Month by showcasing those Black and African-American founders and executives who demoed their company’s fintech innovations on the Finovate stage in 2022.
Ariam Sium – VP of Product with FinGoal
Sium not only leads Product at FinGoal, the self-described “Listener. Thinker. Doer” also led FinGoal to a Best of Show award at FinovateSpring last year. In her role at FinGoal, Sium said that she uses the tenets of focus and value to govern each product decision made in the rapidly changing world of fintech.
FinGoal most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall in September. The Boulder, Colorado-based company offers an insights platform that helps financial institutions better understand their customers.
Joseph Akintolayo – CEO and Founder of Deposits
Akintolayo is a “builder of ethical products that solve complex problems in fintech, insurtech, and social enterprise.” As CEO and founder of Deposits, Akintolayo heads a startup that offers banks, brands, and communities a plug and play solution to deliver financial services such as payments and lending, without requiring coding experience.
Deposits made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in September. The Dallas, Texas-based company was founded in 2021.
Left to right: Joseph Akintolayo and Samuel Ailemen of Deposits
Samuel Ailemen – Director of Mobile and Identity at Deposits
As Director of Mobile and Identity at Deposits, Ailemen helped lead the company’s demo at FinovateFall 2022. A fraud prevention expert who is “building cool stuff everywhere”, Ailemen leverages his talent as “a software engineer who loves research” to solve real-world problems using new technologies.
Nathan Gibbons – Chief Experience Officer at QuickFi
Gibbons oversees the customer experience at QuickFi, a company that provides “nearly instant,” self-service 24/7 term financing to business equipment buyers. Demoing the company’s technology at FinovateFall last year, Gibbons and colleague Jillian Munson earned QuickFi its first Finovate Best of Show award.
A C-suite executive with QuickFi since 2018, Gibbons previously spent more than 11 years as Project Manager and later Vice President with First American Equipment Finance. QuickFi was launched by founders of First American Equipment Finance in 2018.
Michael Duncan – CEO and Founder of Bankjoy
Founder and CEO of Bankjoy, Duncan demoed his company’s Business Banking Platform at FinovateFall 2022. The company he launched in 2015 offers a range of modern banking technology solutions, including mobile and online banking, as well as a banking API.
Before founding Bankjoy, Duncan spent more than four years as a Programmer/Analyst and later Software Development Manager at Michigan First Credit Union.
Michael Broughton – CEO and Co-founder of Altro
Broughton co-founded and is CEO of Altro, a solution that helps consumers build credit through non-traditional recurring payment processes such as rent and even monthly subscriptions to services like Netflix. Altro’s app is free-to-use, and helps increase financial literacy while boosting existing credit and helping stabilize credit histories. The company made its Finovate debut last May at FinovateSpring.
Broughton is also Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for the USC Credit Union (since 2017), and was both a Scout at Sequoia Capital and a Thiel Fellow at The Thiel Foundation.
Christen Wright – Head of Product at Spave
As Head of Product at Spave, Wright was part of the three-person demo team that won Best of Show at the company’s Finovate debut last May at FinovateSpring. Spave is a financial wholeness solution that enables users to easily save and donate as they purchase products and services. The Spave app provides purchase tracking and analysis, goal setting, group giving, and more.
Wright has a diverse background, having served in senior management roles at AT&T and Delta Air Lines. A member of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, a mentoring and empowerment organization for African American youth, Wright is a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, where he earned an MBA.
Anthony Heckman – as Director of Sales at unitQ
Heckman was part of the founding team at unitQ, a company that turns customer insights into data-driven decisions for firms ranging from Chime to fellow Finovate alum Klarna. At FinovateSpring 2022, Heckman led the company’s live demo of its unitQ monitor, which serves as a centralized, searchable, repository for customer feedback.
Heckman founded TWC Advisors in October of last year. The firm specializes in providing go-to-market and sales support to early-stage, high-growth, VC-backed startups.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 12 and 13. Register today and save your spot.
QuickFi® allows business borrowers to obtain low, fixed-rate business equipment term-loans in minutes, instead of days or weeks. The borrower completes the loan process on a mobile device, 24/7/365.
Features
Includes flexible integrations for global manufacturers, serving direct, dealer & ecommerce sales channels
Uses disclosed, fixed interest rates on borrower-friendly terms, with no hidden fees or costs
Available 24/7
Why it’s great
The QuickFi® platform dramatically improves the business borrower experience by enabling self-service, borrower-friendly, digital financing 24/7/365.
Presenters
Nathan Gibbons, Chief Experience Officer Gibbons is CXO of QuickFi and oversees the platform’s customer experience strategy, leveraging automation and technology to enable dramatic improvements in the borrower experience. LinkedIn
Jillian Munson, Technology Project Manager Munson leads core technology projects at QuickFi. Munson develops seamless user experiences for both internal and external business processes. LinkedIn
Join Finovate VP and Host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer as he shares his video conversations with companies that earned Best of Show honors at FinovateSpring in May.
“What Keep does is it enables employers to implement what we call ‘investing cash plans’ which is a new compensation technique that enables an employer to issue what’s essentially a retention bonus, but that cash is provided on the front end of some period of time … There’s an ongoing obligation of the employee to stick around the company for whatever the vesting period is and, once they hit that vesting period or vesting periods along the way, that portion, or all of the debt that they owe for getting that retention bonus up front, disappears.”
“Spave is all about helping realize financial wholeness and more balance in their life. You can think of Spave as a number of apps altogether. It’s Mint. It’s Acorns. It’s Digit. It’s United Way. It’s Venmo. All in one. We want people to be able to use their spending, so Spave is all based on people’s spending … (That) spending ignites micro amounts that we call “spavings”. So you can either round up spare change, you can apply a percent, you can spave now and do a one-time donation or one-time savings (set-aside) … We’re helping people decide how they’re going to save for their future, give to the causes that they care about and live a more balanced whole life.”
“QuickFi is a business financing platform that really is meant to serve banks and manufacturers. It enables them to offer their business customers a secure, completely digital way of applying for an consummating lower rate term loans in a matter of minutes instead of days or weeks. (This is) because the platform is 100% digital and self-service. It really allows banks and manufacturers to close more loans and more sales faster and much more cost-effectively.”
“We’re an innovation platform that helps banks, credit unions, and other fintechs offer cutting-edge financial tools to their customers. For example, we offer credit and identity protection solutions, personal privacy components that we allow our partners to easily embed within their experience so they can offer these services directly to their customers.”
“We build insights and data infrastructure for financial institutions. The fintech space has a lot left to be desired when it comes to serving actual human beings. And that’s really where (Fingoal) shines. When it comes to our insights, it’s the personalization that actually makes them worth anything. And when it comes to our technical solutions for our clients … at the end of the day we’re improving the overall user experience. It’s also nice that it happens to save the financial institutions money and time.”
“We solve quite a few business problems (for financial institutions). But the three that Steve probably will talk about a little later is reduce the cost to serve digital customers, increase the number of fully-digital customers, drive mass adoption of new products and features. We do this by educating both customers and employees across the full bank ecosystem: retail banking, business banking, wealth management, insurance, just to name a few.”
Stay tuned for more videos from Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast’s Conversations with Best of Show winners.
The votes have been cast and counted! Meet the winners of Best of Show for FinovateSpring 2022:
Array for its financial enablement platform, specializing in embeddable tools and white label solutions, used by leading financial institutions. Demo.
FinGoal for its insights platform that cleans, enriches, and analyzes personal financial data to better understand users and provide actionable insights. Demo.
Horizn for its platform that helps banks globally accelerate digital banking knowledge, fluency, and adoption with both customers and employees. Demo.
Keep Financial Technology for its innovation that solves the hiring and retention challenges of companies by introducing a new form of employee compensation called Cash Vesting Plans. Demo.
QuickFi for its 100% digital, self-service, mobile equipment financing platform that enables business equipment financing in minutes. Demo.
Spave for its all-in-one financial wholeness app that allows users to effortlessly save and give as they spend. Demo.
Our thanks to all of our demoing companies, our sponsors, our partners, and – of course – our attendees – for continuing to make FinovateSpring such a success. Thank you for being a part of our annual spring fintech conference. We’ll see you again next year!
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2022 conferences are below:
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.
QuickFi is a 100% digital, self-service, mobile equipment financing platform. QuickFi employs facial recognition, drivers’ license authentication, AI/ML, blockchain, and other advanced technologies.
Features
SPEED: QuickFi allows financing in minutes, not days or weeks.
COST: QuickFi costs 2/3 less vs. traditional lending.
TRANSPARENCY: Low, fixed rates without hidden costs.
Why it’s great
QuickFi is available 24/7/365, and QuickFi also offers borrowers live support (via chat or telephone) anytime of the day or night (also 24/7).
Presenters
Nate Gibbons, Chief Operating Officer Gibbons was a VP of Operations at First American Equipment Finance before becoming one of the founders of QuickFi. He oversees the customer experience strategy at QuickFi. LinkedIn
Jillian Munson, Technology Product Manager Munson graduated from Oswego State College with a degree in Computer and Information Science. Prior to joining QuickFi, she was a Systems Analyst at First American Equipment Finance. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.
QuickFi allows business borrowers to obtain low, fixed rate business equipment term-loans in minutes, instead of days or weeks. The borrower completes the loan process on a mobile device, 24/7/365.
Features
Flexible platform integrations for global manufacturers, serving direct, dealer, and e-commerce sales channels
Stated, fixed interest rates with no hidden fees
24/7 equipment financing in 3 minutes
Why it’s great The QuickFi platform is designed to dramatically improve the business borrower experience by enabling self-service, transparent, digital financing available 24/7/365, with no fees and no hidden costs.
Presenters
Nathan Gibbons, COO Gibbons oversees the platform’s operational strategy, leveraging automation and technology to enable dramatic improvements to the borrower experience. LinkedIn
Jillian Munson, Technology Project Manager Munson leads core technology projects at QuickFi. She develops seamless user experiences for both internal and external business processes. LinkedIn
With companies hailing from Singapore, Australia, and India, as well as Europe and the U.S., FinovateAsia Digital is a great opportunity to find out more about fintech innovation in the APAC region. Our all-digital fintech conference – June 22 and June 23 – is also a good way to learn how companies outside of Asia have successfully built relationships and gained market share within the area.
Here’s a look at the current roster of companies that will demonstrate their latest solutions at FinovateAsia next week. There’s still plenty of time to get your ticket; register today and join us next week for our two-day, deep dive into fintech in Asia.
Australia-based Amber offers a Bitcoin accumulation app that allows users to dollar cost average, and offers auto-buy-the-dip, auto-withdraw, and self-custody features.
Crayon Data, headquartered in Singapore, offers the world’s first AI-led platform that enables businesses to create highly personalized experiences for their customers.
Bangalore, India-based FinBit.io offers open banking technology that enables financial institutions to transition from outdated financial APIs to smart and compliant APIs based on open banking specifications.
Headquartered in Fairport, New York, QuickFi offers the world’s first, 100% digital equipment financing platform that enables business equipment financing in three minutes.
Strands offers white label, AI-driven fintech solutions for banks and financial institutions around the world.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateAsia Digital on June 22, 2021. Register today and save your spot.
QuickFi allows business borrowers to obtain low, fixed rate business equipment term-loans in minutes, instead of days or weeks. The borrower completes the loan process on a mobile device, 24/7/365.
Features
Flexible platform integrations for global manufacturers, serving direct, dealer, and ecommerce sales channels
Stated, fixed interest rates with no hidden fees
24/7 equipment financing in three minutes
Why it’s great The QuickFi platform is designed to dramatically improve the business borrower experience by enabling self-service, transparent, digital financing available 24/7/365 with no fees and no hidden costs.
Presenters
Nathan Gibbons, COO Gibbons is COO of QuickFi and oversees the platform’s operational strategy, leveraging automation and technology to enable dramatic improvements to the borrower experience. LinkedIn
Jillian Munson, Technology Project Manager Munson leads core technology projects at QuickFi. She develops seamless user experiences for both internal and external business processes. LinkedIn
