Finovate 2008 | Credit Karma

Presenter: Kenneth Lin, CEO

Notes from the Presentation: Polled if the audience thought credit scores are important. Majority indicated yes. Used this to transition to overview of the product. The product has three value prop – free credit scores within seconds, educational tools to track and better your score, and they provide incentives and financial services offers. New product just launched this weekend – Credit Simulator (see below) – how doing certain things will affect your individual credit score. They simulated what applying for a new credit card would be. The next example – what would be the effect if they paid which card late. Common theme is that it is very pro consumer service.

Show Note: Credit Karma was selected as one of the Best of Show for Finovate 2008.

Finovate 2008 | SmartHippo

Presenter: George Favvas, Cofounder and CEO

Notes from the Presentation: George wanted to use SmartHippo to address the current financial problem – and thinks that if we didn’t solve the core problem we will waste $770 billion dollars. He commented on the fact that there are too many intermediaries with lending. Smart Hippo is a community of consumers helping each other with the collective power to change the way the industry works. First vertical is mortgage and they have consumer reviews. Provide the ability to rank thinks from customer service to disclosures. They also have a rate version – new version which will launch this month was demonstrated. First site of this type that combines data – feed by lenders, proprietary bot and other users who are feeding their own information. Two key innovations – no charge to feed data and the best ones bubble to the top.

Finovate 2008 | My Best Interest (Rate Surfer)

Presenter(s): Mitch Calderwood, CEO and Jackie Meyers, Director of Communication.

Notes from the Presentation: My Best Interest developed Rate Sufer as a desktop application for credit card accounts and the best option for the end user. It will manage all cards on your desktop and help end users save money. How does it save money? On the card accounts page and get the card balances for each account. The bank surfer signs on to the bank site and retrieves the individuals account database – like OFX capabilities with Money or Quicken. On the balance transfer page you transfer balances from one account to another. This was shown as a transfer from Wells Fargo to Advanta credit card. The rate surfer also has SMS alerts for balances or rate guards if the rate changes. Follow the money shows you what your balances are made up from. Apply for new cards, will show the best available card offers. Another push button feature to increase limits.

What is in it for banks – drive adoption of online banking as you need to use an online banking to use rate surfer. Will have a branded application for banks to cobrand.

Finovate 2008 | CheckPoint

Presenter: John Gable, Director of Product Management

Notes from the Presentation: Started by highlighted the browser security wars. Cyber criminals are making over $100M a year which is more than conventional crime. What is happening here? Over 1/3 of cyber crime is done through the attacks are coming through the web browser stealing confidential data. CheckPoint is the most profitable security software in the marketplace and work with 90% of fortune 500 companies.

Went to a Phishing site and showed a warning. Most products only know about a site that is on a list. They showed ZoneAlarm that does real time analysis. Showed a non FI site – the NFL Miami Dolphins site. Showed a key logger site that was loaded on the PC by using keystroke software. ZoneAlarm software that sits in the browser tool bar – they create a bubble around your browser and computer. The software creates a ‘forcefield’ – in a virtual sandbox.

Finovate 2008 | Mint.com

Presenter: Aaron Patzer, CEO and Founder

Notes from the Presentation: Mint's mission has always been to improve personal finance software – they currently have over 500,000 users (no indication of how many are active) and are growing at about 4,000 new account each day. Now are out of beta – the fastest growing user base are women in their mid 30’s. On Thursday they launched custom categories with alerts to let you know when you can go over your budget. They have added mortgages and investments to the site. Key information includes – what is in the users holdings and what it is worth – across all the users accounts. They wanted to know how well they are doing against the rest of the market. The other point of confusion has been performance vs. cost basis. Shows the value of account over time – and diversification across all accounts. New revenue stream to roll over old 401(k) by putting it into a better account – they partner with Fidelity, Scottrade, and eTrade.



Aaron indicated that over 10% users have used “Way to Save” feature – 50% have changed spending behavior.

Finovate 2008 | Vidoop

Presenter: Mictchell Savage, Executive Vice President

Notes from the Presentation: Vidoop has been working for the last three years to solve usability and security are a trade off. Makes your online banking platform easier to access and harder for hackers. Show the user choice platform for Vidoop. Much more secure, user driven, and free. Verification by phone – press one key and you can log into your online banking application (a four digit pin can be used). Showed an image shield based on recognition based on a path he selected at enrollment. They have it live at Charles Schwab.

Free because they have the images sponsored – Smart Car and Mercedes was provided as an example. Celent says that by 2010 over 20% will sign on via their mobile solution. The image shield is available in an optimized mobile version.

Closing comment: “Compliance with FFEIC doesn’t equal security.”

Finovate 2008 | FiLife

Presenter: Dave Kansas, President

Notes from the Presentation: First time that they have shared with outside folks what FiLife is doing. Indicated that FiLife provides simple inputs and dynamic outputs. At the core of the site they have 39 different categories with multiple products and companies. They have subject experts that will answer questions to your specific questions around any product. FiLife introduced a product picker for the credit card product page. You enter a series of data – and sorts through over 60 credit card companies to provide the best product for your individual needs – you can see in one easy number what the product means to you. The community will provide input on the specific product based on value. There is a compare feature that lays out the key attributes side by side.



Dave introduced the ‘The Stacker” (see above) – which performs an analysis of over 4million lines of data that is specific to your individual needs. Your have the ability to narrow categories and can toggle the view between the Pyramid and Geek view.

First on Android | Bank of America Launches G1 Application

From Bank Technology News: Bank of America, the first institution to put a mobile banking application into the iPhone application store, is also the leader in getting on board with an app for Google’s new smartphone Android OS running on the new G1 device from T-Mobile.

The BofA app, one of the debut applications for Google’s Android Market, includes online banking and branch/ATM locator features.

Finovate 2008 | Wesabe

Presenter: Gabe Griego, VP of Marketing

Notes from the Presentation: Wesabe was the first to market with money management tools and community finance. Money is hard to talk about and with the product they have the ability to share insights with spending decisions. New homepage that brings to life some of the new things with Wesabe. They have been innovating with Twitter – you can Twitter information into Wesabe – gave an example of a taxi ride as an expense. They don’t believe that product managers should tell you how to manage your money. The Wesabe product allows you create your own tags – and your sub level tags. Exciting part they highlighted was taking the API to the people in a UX experience, not needing coding and you can compare to other Wesabeans. The product did not appear to be complete as noted by the presenter. Going to build a graph gallery through the user community and share them with every individual.

Interesting Industry Note: Founder and former CEO of Corillian Corporation (acquired by CheckFree) Ted Spooner is now the CEO of WeSabe.

Finovate 2008

This week the financial services software nerds gathered in New York City for the second annual Finovate conference - "the Super Bowl and World’s Fair rolled into one" as the WSJ described it.

The Finovate conference is presented by NetBanker that showcases “the latest and greatest technological innovations in finance and banking.” The “hot products, cool people” format returned with 24 more companies getting 7 minutes each to demo their latest innovations (no PowerPoint allowed!) followed by several hours of focused one-on-one networking time. The event wrapped up with cocktails and appetizers at the end of the day.