Q&A with Elisabeth Dana, Founder at Infinity Circle Fintech Innovation

Media 7 | September 6, 2021

Elisabeth Dana, Founder at Infinity Circle Fintech Innovation, was a former wealth management banker at Barclays. She has spent two decades of her professional career in finance with a passion for technology. She wants to make wealth management digital.

I know that you think it is going to be challenging. And you are right. I know that you believe in your concept and in your project. And you should. But don't underestimate how much of a commitment it is to create and run a start-up. Have no illusions.



MEDIA 7: Hi, would you like to tell us about your professional journey?
ELISABETH DANA:
With pleasure. Listen, I am French and British, I think that's a good start, so you understand where my accent comes from. And I am based in the United Kingdom in London.  And I have been in financial services for 20 years. So basically, that's my whole career to date. I started in Paris, as a banker, banking SMEs, which involved extending a lot of credit to small companies. Then I went and did an MBA in the U.S. after which I arrived in London. I have worked in big banks for 16 years. So that's kind of a big part of the first half of my professional life. And then in 2016 -as an alignment of many things professional and personal- I decided I was going to walk away and resign from the big bank I was working in (Barclays Bank Plc, which is a British bank) and build a business of my own, and use what I learned in the first half of my career to create something different, and to contribute to my industry, instead of just being a soldier in a big bank.

For the last four years, I have been working on the Infinity Circle ecosystem. Infinity Circle is at the intersection of financial services and technology. It is about creating a digital offering, which can be global, and which can be quite a departure from the traditional way of operating in wealth management, which is what I specialized in financial services. That’s the entrepreneurial journey to date. And it has been quite different from what I expected it to be. On many levels, it has been
more intense working around the clock, In the corporate world, I was already working close to 100 hours a week. But it has also been much more interesting. And it has also been about having an element of freedom to some extent. It has come at a cost, of course, but I am free to decide what, how, and when.  Although, again, it's not what I expected it is freedom. The stakes are however much higher when you don't work for someone else. So, I guess it's one thing to know the entrepreneurial journey is going to be tough, it is a different thing to walk the walk.


M7: So, you have always been associated with financial services. So how did you take an interest in it? When did you come to know that you wanted to build a career in finance?
ED:
Oh, that's a very good question. And actually, the answer might surprise you. Because if somebody had told me when I was 18, I was going to be a banker, I would have said, “No way! That's not me.��� I wasn't someone who started with a vocation early on. My undergrad was in political science and journalism. In fact, when I was 18-20, I had no idea who I was. I had no idea what I was going to do. I studied for quite a long time because I went to university for eight years in total. So I think that tells you that 1) I love studying and 2) I had no intention of getting into the active world in a hurry. So, I wasn't destined to be a banker. I actually started my career in my early 20s as a freelance journalist in Paris writing articles. I wasn’t even hired by one specific newspaper; I was on my own. I was writing articles for several newspapers in France. At the time, all my leads to get work led me to the financial services or the banking world. I was very young, and I needed to work. So, I just took whatever I found as mandates. I interviewed CEOs of banks, heads of compliance in banks, new financial product designers in banks, the regulators.

As a journalist, I approached these people, interviewed them, I wrote interviews or articles that I would then sell on to national newspapers in France. At one point, one of the CEOs of a Middle Eastern bank in Paris accepted to take my interview and said, “You know, I don't have much time. I have 40 minutes. So, why don't you join me for lunch? And as we eat, you can ask questions and take notes.” So, I went for that interview over lunch. He was a senior banker in his 50s and I was in my early 20s. Towards the end of the lunch, he said to me, “I think you are great people's person, and that your time is a bit lost being a freelance journalist because that's quite a lonely path. Would you ever consider a career in finance?” I told that person at the time, that I wasn't even particularly good at maths and that I didn't see that happening. And he said to me, “Listen, I scout talent constantly for the bank. You know, I have loads of geeky quants, and tech people, but I don't have many people who can actually talk to clients, who have social skills and can go and represent the bank and negotiate with clients.” It's alright to be client-facing when everything is fine however EQ is needed to negotiate and problems solve. If you decided to learn, I will offer you a job, I will train you in the quantitative aspects of the role because I think you could be a great client-facing banker. So, I finished that lunch, and I thought it was all a bit weird.

I continued a few months as a freelance journalist, and I took him up on his offer! That is how my career started. I worked for years for that bank which gave me the needed foundation to pursue a banking career. Afterwards, that branch of the middle eastern bank in Paris had to shut down, it wasn't profitable enough. The commercial activity was then transferred to the neighbouring Luxembourg branch. At that point, I decided to pursue an MBA in the U.S. because I thought, “Okay, I have learned a lot. I do have soft skills that are valuable however if I really want to turn this into a career, I need to get quantitative training.” I went to the University of Chicago, which was renowned for its almost mathematical approach, which is everything I was lacking. So, I studied for two years for my MBA, where I was challenged by my peers who in the main were engineers looking for a more commercial edge and career catalyst. I was competing with professionals who were highly quants oriented. My MBA helped me level up. And afterwards, the gates opened, and I found an amazing job in London at Barclays, just before the global financial crisis. So, you see financial services found me.


M7: Thank you. This is such an amazing story. Like, it's usually the other way around, you know, from school only being pressured to choose your field of expertise. So, what do you want to pursue when you're going to college? What are you going to do for your MBA? But in your case, the profession chose you?
ED:
Yes, I would say my path was and still is quite unusual. I never would have thought I would spend 16 years in big banks. Equally, I never thought one day I would have my own company. And I never thought that I would have ambitions to disrupt my industry. But that's just how life unfolded.


M7: So, what is the 21st-century FinTech for you?
ED:
That is exactly what we have been working on for the last four or five years- to define what that is exactly. For me, 21st-century FinTech is the ability to deal with your finances as a private person in a totally ubiquitous manner. Until now, everything to do with finance- whichever field of banking, is a very closed-off world. It's very regulated. It's very male-dominated. And for clients of any department in big banks- it's an expensive, slow, and rigid service suite. There are a number of reasons why this is, but for me, FinTechs in the 21st century is going to be the opposite of that. The new value propositions in my view going to simplify and demystify financial services in general. Services are going to be simpler, cheaper, faster and more personalized. As a client, you are going to be able to take action from your phone, or your laptop, or your desktop, or your iPad or tablet. And it's going to be secure.

As a private individual, you are going to be empowered to take control of your finances, instead of having these big banks dictate pace, cost and access.So, I think it is partly about giving power back to the people. And I think that's been the take of the 21st century. And when you look at other parts of the nascent FinTech industry, not specifically wealth management, or personal finance, but for instance cryptocurrencies or the use of the blockchain, within financial services, or any new developments in technology- it's all about decentralization, about empowering users over institutions or central governments or central banks. So, for me, the FinTech of the 21st century is freedom.


You need to manage yourself emotionally, psychologically, physically. And you have to push, push, push. You have to become very, very good at knowing when to push and when to regroup. You have to be very good at time management.



M7: So, did COVID-19 bring any challenges for Infinity Circle?
ED:
Another very good question. We are an early-stage business. Infinity Circle is 300 years old, as some banks. We are a young business. Being a start-up is already challenging. Everything about is challenging. But being a start-up hit by both Brexit and then the pandemic has been very tough. It has been 18 months now since the global pandemic was declared. We started our first material fundraising efforts for a pre-product, pre-revenue business literally a month before the pandemic. So that means that most of our fundraising to date has been done, from my kitchen, here on Zoom, talking to investors all around the world. In a way, it is fantastic, because we still could carry on. But on the other hand, it's very challenging because asking investors to part with money without even having met them physically is a very difficult thing to ask. Now, I know that that there has been a record high level of funding all around the world during COVID-19, especially for digital businesses, but it’s been for more mature businesses. The younger the businesses, the riskier the investment is for an investor. And so for early-stage start-ups fundraising during the pandemic entirely on zoom, having to demonstrate that there is a good reason for investors to part with their money and that you are the right team to deliver on a vision has been brutal.

When you are a mature business, it is a different matter. Investors can see past years’ financial statements, track records, or a mature product and cash flow and revenue generation. They can see the user experience; they can go on the platform if it's a digital offering. If I had a penny for every prospective investor who told us he will invest when the product is launched, traction is evident and the business is revenue-generating, we would now have the funding we seek! When you are building costly innovation, at a conceptual stage, it is very challenging to convince investors only on zoom to invest a million or two million dollars. Now when you meet someone face to face, you are negotiating strong of your six senses. You can see that person, you can see their body language, you can spend some time with that person and build a level of trust. However, on zoom, you have just two senses, you can see and hear, and that's it. And so it is much more difficult.


M7: Oh my God! It has been a crazy journey for you. You have been building a start-up during COVID-19, getting enough funds for that, convincing people to invest. It's a big deal, even meeting face to face.
ED:
You know, doing everything on zoom is okay. It is harder to convince investors. That's one thing. But the hardest thing is when you're looking for funding, you have to do your due diligence on who you are talking to and where that money is going to come from. In normal circumstances, without COVID-19, if somebody offers you 1.2 million pounds of equity funding, you would jump on the plane, take a train, or drive and go and meet that person. If that prospective investor runs a business, for example, you would check out that business and the operation. You would have been able to do due diligence in the normal way, which implies meeting people physically. But during COVID-19, the lockdowns and the travel ban, you can't do that. So if you get a funding offer, which was our case for example from a plausible Thai investor, it was almost impossible to ascertain fully the legitimacy of the offer.

It was very difficult to validate data in the usual way taking into account cultural differences. So you find yourself doing so many things from your kitchen, again, with your laptop and your phone. But it's very difficult to perform full due diligence. But anyway, that's only the fundraising part and hopefully, the business is going to move on from fundraising at one point. But yes, it has been challenging. And I feel for all the other entrepreneurs out there who run start-ups and who also have had to endure the economic effects of the pandemic because there were times here where, as a team, we wondered whether the business would survive.


M7: So, you mentioned that at Infinity Circle you are combining finance with technology. So, being a business lead leader, how do you prepare for an AI centric world?
ED:
You are right, the developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the acceleration of AI during the pandemic is extraordinary. I was, personally, a great believer in the potential of AI before the pandemic but now we can all witness the speed of development of AI and machine learning in every area of our life- from IoT to a whole host of applications. And although potential applications can still seem very abstract, these are already present in every digital platform and service that we use. So we here at Infinity Circle are aiming to really be part of the future AI innovation applied to financial services. We are aiming to develop our bespoke algorithms on the platform to serve our clients. I am a great believer in the fact that you can, thanks to AI, scale new types of businesses and service clients in new and exciting ways, even in financial services, where it's very red-taped and regulated. I believe it will be a cost-efficient way of delivering an amazing, personalised service. Ultimately, there is a lot to be done. And it is going to take a number of years to refine the AI component on the platform. It is not going to be an overnight deliverable, but we are definitely integrating AI in our offering. We are great believers in that methodology.


M7: Wow. So lastly, what is your advice to the people who are looking forward to building a start-up? Or, you know, making a career in FinTech industry? What would you like to advise them?
ED:
I would think the best way to go about answering your question is to imagine that I am talking to myself five years ago. And I would say: “I know that you think it is going to be challenging. And you are right. I know that you believe in your concept and in your project. And you should. But don't underestimate how much of a commitment it is to create and run a start-up. Have no illusions. It is a fantastic opportunity, but it is all-encompassing, meaning, the moment you start, it becomes your responsibility from the moment you open your eyes to the moment you fall asleep. It is relentless. There are no Saturdays and Sundays and there is no “it's-the-evening-now” and no “it's-lunchtime-I'm-hungry”. If you want this, know that it will come with a lot of sacrifices. You need an extraordinary level of resilience and a level of being thick-skinned and cannot be destroyed by negative feedback. Because there are thousands of other start-ups out there also fundraising. So, the turndown rate when you pitch is probably around 98%. So, 98% of the people you pitch to will say no. During the pandemic, as a team, we held 256 pitches on zoom, with a 98% rejection rate. Without resilience, you are not going to make it, let alone be happy!


If you have a dream, and if you have leadership skills, go for it because the world needs innovation and the world needs a new breed of leaders. And I think the pandemic showed us all, is that the world needs things done differently.



M7: How did you deal with the no? If the ratio is that 98 percent of people say no, how did you deal with it? Didn't you feel demotivated?
ED:
The process has involved lots of stress, tears, loneliness and of self-introspection. Because when these people say no, you have to really ask yourself, “Do I believe in my vision? Do I have what it takes to execute on my vision? You have to be brutally honest.” Like Beyonce said if you get really, really down, you can only allow yourself one day off your game, but then you need to move forward.” So I think that's how I deal with it.
Sometimes, I take one day off where I don't work and spend time with people that matter or spend some time alone in nature. One day, that's the allowance.” One day to detox all the negativity and then come back to work.

It’s almost like being an athlete. And that, I think anybody who has entrepreneurial ambitions needs to understand. You need to prepare to perform at the Olympic levels. You need to manage yourself emotionally, psychologically, physically. And you have to push, push, push. You have to become very, very good at knowing when to push and when to regroup. You have to be very good at time management. You cannot waste your time, you have to focus on things that matter. You have to prioritize. You have to grow. You have to learn constantly and also learn how to say no. And you know what, that's an important piece of advice. I think before the Infinity Circle, I would always try and say yes to request of me and of my time. I learned quite quickly that if I continued with that attitude it wouldn't work. So I think it is important to learn the art of saying no. I even read a book during the pandemic called “The Art of Saying No” by Damon Zahariades.


M7: Do you recommend reading this book?
ED:
Absolutely. It’s simple. It's not quantum physics. But it's very important. The few hours I spent reading this book focusing on this topic was valuable. Saying no doesn't mean you're unpleasant and unkind with someone. You can say no with a smile and explain why it's right. It's very important to know how to say no.


M7: Is there anything else that you would like to add?
ED:
Well, I think as a concluding thought, beyond the challenges presented to us all by the pandemic, is to stress how critical it is to pursue a venture you love. If you have a dream, and if you have leadership skills, go for it because the world needs innovation and the world needs a new breed of leaders. And I think the pandemic showed us all, is that the world needs things done differently. The old ways of leadership, mostly about profit and market domination is not very interesting and certainly not the optimal way to impact the world positively. I think a world where we embrace everybody's uniqueness, a world where we are respectful to people and the planet, is a world I would much prefer to leave for my son.

ABOUT INFINITY CIRCLE FINTECH INNOVATION

Infinity Circle Fintech Innovation is the ground-breaking digital wealth creation platform that will be providing the highway to exclusive opportunities otherwise only usually available to the ultra-wealthy. It is currently being built to be a unique global digital and real-world platform that brings together like-minded entrepreneurs, investors and game-changers. The platform will be truly trans-actional and not just a networking tool. It will allow users to share and view off-market business, investment and lifestyle opportunities.

More THOUGHT LEADERS

Q&A with Sarita Bahety, Strategic Alliances and Partner Marketing Lead at Cognizant

Media 7 | March 31, 2021

Sarita Bahety, Strategic Alliances and Partner Marketing Lead at Cognizant, builds and nurtures partnerships with technology alliance partners to strengthen Cognizant’s position as an industry leader in enterprise Data and Intelligence solutions and to accelerate growth by delivering on joint value propositions with the partners that solve their customer’s needs and increase their digital maturity. She manages pan-European partner marketing. Her work experience ranges from startup to Fortune 200, across multiple industries and geographies. In addition to managing and growing a network of their tier-one strategic alliances and trifecta, she also advises a leading telco in the Middle East on how to accelerate data protection and privacy adoption for all of their employees....

Read More

Q&A with Bronwyn Pretorius, Head of Marketing at Mukuru

Media 7 | September 17, 2021

Bronwyn Pretorius, Head of Marketing at Mukuru, is a seasoned marketeer with over 14 years of experience. In her current position as HOD Marketing for one of the largest Remittance led FinTech's in Africa, she has entered into a new industry of Financial Services where she aims to bring a positive change with strategic planning, implementation and leveraging her innate interpersonal skills with the focus of delivery....

Read More

Kraken's Head of Banking and Payments, Maximilian Marenbach discusses their platform and the future of cryptocurrencies

Media 7 | October 27, 2021

Maximilian Marenbach, Head of Banking and Payments/Business Development at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, takes us through his professional journey with Kraken - one of the largest and oldest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Read on as he talks about the Kraken Bank,  the significance of digital currencies and their impact on our financial system....

Read More

Q&A with Sarita Bahety, Strategic Alliances and Partner Marketing Lead at Cognizant

Media 7 | March 31, 2021

Sarita Bahety, Strategic Alliances and Partner Marketing Lead at Cognizant, builds and nurtures partnerships with technology alliance partners to strengthen Cognizant’s position as an industry leader in enterprise Data and Intelligence solutions and to accelerate growth by delivering on joint value propositions with the partners that solve their customer’s needs and increase their digital maturity. She manages pan-European partner marketing. Her work experience ranges from startup to Fortune 200, across multiple industries and geographies. In addition to managing and growing a network of their tier-one strategic alliances and trifecta, she also advises a leading telco in the Middle East on how to accelerate data protection and privacy adoption for all of their employees....

Read More

Q&A with Bronwyn Pretorius, Head of Marketing at Mukuru

Media 7 | September 17, 2021

Bronwyn Pretorius, Head of Marketing at Mukuru, is a seasoned marketeer with over 14 years of experience. In her current position as HOD Marketing for one of the largest Remittance led FinTech's in Africa, she has entered into a new industry of Financial Services where she aims to bring a positive change with strategic planning, implementation and leveraging her innate interpersonal skills with the focus of delivery....

Read More

Kraken's Head of Banking and Payments, Maximilian Marenbach discusses their platform and the future of cryptocurrencies

Media 7 | October 27, 2021

Maximilian Marenbach, Head of Banking and Payments/Business Development at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, takes us through his professional journey with Kraken - one of the largest and oldest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Read on as he talks about the Kraken Bank,  the significance of digital currencies and their impact on our financial system....

Read More

Related News

CORE BANKING, DIGITAL BANKING

Qorbis and Mbanq Create Personalized FinTech Solutions for Any Brand

Businesswire | June 09, 2023

Qorbis, a leading innovator in end-to-end embedded finance and FinTech personalization, today announces its partnership with top Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider, Mbanq, to create a unique financial control and brand enhancement platform for clients. Already live at the alpha-testing stage, the solution is unique in its flexibility for brands: Each brand can have an unlimited number of cards and accounts, suitable for employees, fans or customers. Each brand has full balance control and can tailor expenses from airport transfer to superyacht purchase, in real time. Brand financial controllers have ultimate spend management oversight to streamline massive events, like film productions, sports and entertainment events and corporate travel. Previously such use-case scenarios were completely inaccessible to smaller businesses. Qorbis enables any organization to create new revenue streams, enhance brand loyalty and simplify corporate spend management with flexible, customizable, and scalable financial solutions. Qorbis offers branded corporate cards, smart money management tools with real-time reporting, accounting integration and a global concierge service in one easy-to-use solution. It allows any brand to build branded banking and payment services, such as current and savings accounts, payments solutions, and debit cards. Additionally, Qorbis is a very different type of FinTech platform due to its level of customer personalization. Key features of the platform include the ability to: Implement comprehensive and robust corporate financial controls with real-time visibility into spending, and expense reporting with total flexibility from a single device. Unlock new digital revenue streams to share income from customer purchases and interchange. Provide a powerful promotional tool to enhance brand loyalty and seamlessly add value to customers. Organizations can deliver simple, smart and secure financial services as well as bespoke reward and loyalty programs under their own brand. Stephen Williams, CEO of Qorbis, says, “Embedded finance works best through a personalized approach. Qorbis’ platform allows brands to treat each user as an individual.” “In addition, Mbanq has enhanced our financial solutions so brands can integrate regular banking services across the international financial system with full regulatory compliance. Mbanq’s proprietary technology allows Qorbis’ clients to gain an increasingly important competitive advantage.” Vlad Lounegov, CEO of Mbanq, says, “Qorbis leads the way towards unique and personalized digital financial services for any brand and its customers. Qorbis’ solutions provide a multitude of benefits, including uniquely flexible expense management and increased customer engagement, while at the same time opening new FinTech income revenue streams.” About Mbanq Mbanq is a world-leading Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider with a comprehensive ‘as-a-service’ portfolio, including compliance, lending, back office and disputes. Mbanq is a fully compliant, vertically integrated technology and services solution that covers the entire range of banking products for retail and corporate clients, with front-to-back office functionality. Its white-label mobile apps and open banking APIs enable access to best of breed FinTech innovators while offering a modern digital experience to banking customers. www.mbanq.com About Qorbis Qorbis helps businesses across the US take control of spending and take advantage of the benefits of embedded finance. Its secure and scalable platform embeds customized financial and concierge solutions into a company's own product and services, creating new revenue streams, enhancing its brand, and saving time and money. Through partnerships with best-in-class providers of banking and technology, any size business can then offer a range of branded and licensed services to end users, including corporate cards, accounts, P2P payments, and a global travel and lifestyle concierge. www.qorbis.com

Read More

CORE BANKING, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

Momnt Partners with Cross River to Make Lending More Accessible

Businesswire | June 08, 2023

Momnt, a financial technology company that powers real-time lending and payment solutions for businesses at the point of need, is excited to announce the launch of a partnership with Cross River Bank (“Cross River”), a leading financial services and technology infrastructure provider that offers embedded financial solutions. Merchants on the Momnt platform are now able to further expand their loan offering capabilities to reach more consumers. Embedded finance is globally recognized as the future of financial services. Momnt’s industry-leading technology connects lenders with borrowers through their merchant network in the home improvement and healthcare industry. These merchants become the “face of financing” to the consumer, offering loans originated by partner financial institutions at the moment when the consumer is making a purchasing decision. The API-based platform presents custom, real-time loan offers to individual borrowers at the point of making a purchase. This approach helps drive demand for the merchant; extends creative, well-structured financing to the consumer; and generates new revenue sources for financial institutions. Through this partnership with Cross River, an award-winning banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider, Momnt can extend flexible and advantageous terms while providing a seamless and value-driven experience to consumers. The partners teamed up earlier this year and have been working to bring Cross River’s API technology to Momnt’s platform, creating a streamlined process for borrowers in all 50 states and supporting the platform’s growth. "We're thrilled to partner with Cross River as we continue to expand the ways we serve our merchant and consumer customers,” said Chief Revenue Officer, Chris Bracken. “This partnership combines Momnt’s industry-leading moment-of-need lending capabilities with Cross River’s industry-leading financial services technology, and we could not be more excited about the opportunities the partnership will create.” “We are proud to partner with game-changing innovators like Momnt, with their extensive industry knowledge, to provide expanded access to credit via convenient, flexible, point-of-sale loans,” said Greg Caminneci, Head of Client Services, Marketplace Lending at Cross River. “Our partnership will allow Momnt to responsibly serve customers nationwide and we look forward to growing our offerings together.” About Cross River Cross River provides technology infrastructure powering the future of financial services. Leveraging its proprietary real-time banking core, Cross River delivers innovative and scalable embedded payments, cards, and lending solutions to millions of consumers and businesses. Cross River is backed by leading investors and serves the world’s most essential fintech and technology companies. Together with its partners, Cross River is reshaping global finance and financial inclusion. Member FDIC. Find out more at www.crossriver.com. About Momnt Momnt powers modern lending solutions that enable businesses to provide low-friction financing to their customers at the moment they need it — all funded by trusted lending partners. Its API-based platform leverages alternative data sources and ML/AI-informed decisioning to present real-time loan offers fit to each individual borrower, all done within the banking industry’s current regulatory infrastructure. momnt.com

Read More

CORE BANKING, DIGITAL BANKING

iuvity and Mambu Partner to Empower Financial Institutions with Integrated Solutions that Modernize the Banking Experience

PRweb | May 31, 2023

iuvity, a cloud-first digital banking, and open service platform provider announced today that it has partnered with Mambu, a SaaS cloud core banking platform provider, to enable financial institutions to rapidly build and deliver modern customer experiences. The pre-built integration between iuvity’s digital banking platform and Mambu’s core cloud deposit and loan solutions offers financial institutions access to banking solutions that span the entire financial flow for personal and business banking customers allowing them to launch their digital capabilities in a few months. Both iuvity and Mambu cloud platforms provide flexible and scalable solutions that enable financial institutions to adopt a component-based banking approach to rapidly modernize outdated systems and deliver unified banking experiences that meet the unique needs of financial institution customers and members. Mambu is a compliant, secure, cloud-native SaaS cloud banking platform designed to drive financial innovation, bring solutions to market faster, reduce cost barriers, and enable ecosystem expansion. Mambu's suite of solutions includes a core cloud banking platform that includes a feature-rich and highly flexible deposit engine for both personal and business banking; and a lending engine that includes the breadth of origination and servicing for individuals, SMEs, mortgages, and Buy Now Pay Later services. “The demand for cloud-based financial services continues to grow at a rapid pace and partnering with Mambu demonstrates our commitment to creating an ecosystem that supports the diverse needs of financial institutions around the world,” commented Felipe Uribe, CEO of iuvity. “By offering the pre-built integration and orchestration capabilities of these two powerful platforms, financial institutions of all sizes can leverage both to quickly adapt their business models and accelerate the delivery of new fintech products and integrations, driving faster innovation and growth.” iuviOPEN and iuviBANKING are iuvity's digital solutions that leverage a modular architecture and true market-first micro frontend technology, enabling financial institutions to integrate with fintech and third-party solutions faster to create highly configurable and modern user experiences at the speed of digital. With more than 300 services exposed as APIs and a robust orchestration tool, iuviOPEN makes it easy for financial institutions to create new solutions for digital channels, offering the flexibility to use any frontend development tool, programming language, or digital experience platform (DXP). About MAMBU Mambu is the only true 100% cloud-native core banking SaaS platform. Since its launch in 2011, Mambu accelerates the design and creation of almost any type of financial offering for banks of all sizes, financial, fintech, retail, telecommunications companies and more. Under the component banking approach, its open architecture allows, through APIs, to connect to other players in the ecosystem to meet the needs of the business, as well as the demands of end users. Mambu has more than 800 employees who support more than 200 clients in more than 65 countries, including N26, BancoEstado, Ualá, Te Creo Holding, Naranja X, OakNorth, Raiffeisen Bank, ABN AMRO, Bank Islam and Orange Bank among others. http://www.mambu.com About iuvity For more than 22 years, iuvity has been transforming the banking industry with its cloud-first, digital-native solutions that power flexible, open, and inclusive financial services. iuvity’s Open Service Platform and micro frontend technology uniquely empower banks, credit unions, and fintech companies to securely deliver personalized, meaningful online customer experiences while innovating at the pace the digital world demands. iuvity’s track record of success with both large and small institutions across seven countries in North and South America speaks to the advanced multinational, multilingual capabilities required in today’s global financial economy. The company’s accountable and collaborative culture serves as the foundation on which customer and employee relationships are built, which in turn has fueled 95+% customer satisfaction and retention rates as well as rapid growth across markets and geographies. To learn more about iuvity, visit http://www.iuvity.com.

Read More

CORE BANKING, DIGITAL BANKING

Qorbis and Mbanq Create Personalized FinTech Solutions for Any Brand

Businesswire | June 09, 2023

Qorbis, a leading innovator in end-to-end embedded finance and FinTech personalization, today announces its partnership with top Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider, Mbanq, to create a unique financial control and brand enhancement platform for clients. Already live at the alpha-testing stage, the solution is unique in its flexibility for brands: Each brand can have an unlimited number of cards and accounts, suitable for employees, fans or customers. Each brand has full balance control and can tailor expenses from airport transfer to superyacht purchase, in real time. Brand financial controllers have ultimate spend management oversight to streamline massive events, like film productions, sports and entertainment events and corporate travel. Previously such use-case scenarios were completely inaccessible to smaller businesses. Qorbis enables any organization to create new revenue streams, enhance brand loyalty and simplify corporate spend management with flexible, customizable, and scalable financial solutions. Qorbis offers branded corporate cards, smart money management tools with real-time reporting, accounting integration and a global concierge service in one easy-to-use solution. It allows any brand to build branded banking and payment services, such as current and savings accounts, payments solutions, and debit cards. Additionally, Qorbis is a very different type of FinTech platform due to its level of customer personalization. Key features of the platform include the ability to: Implement comprehensive and robust corporate financial controls with real-time visibility into spending, and expense reporting with total flexibility from a single device. Unlock new digital revenue streams to share income from customer purchases and interchange. Provide a powerful promotional tool to enhance brand loyalty and seamlessly add value to customers. Organizations can deliver simple, smart and secure financial services as well as bespoke reward and loyalty programs under their own brand. Stephen Williams, CEO of Qorbis, says, “Embedded finance works best through a personalized approach. Qorbis’ platform allows brands to treat each user as an individual.” “In addition, Mbanq has enhanced our financial solutions so brands can integrate regular banking services across the international financial system with full regulatory compliance. Mbanq’s proprietary technology allows Qorbis’ clients to gain an increasingly important competitive advantage.” Vlad Lounegov, CEO of Mbanq, says, “Qorbis leads the way towards unique and personalized digital financial services for any brand and its customers. Qorbis’ solutions provide a multitude of benefits, including uniquely flexible expense management and increased customer engagement, while at the same time opening new FinTech income revenue streams.” About Mbanq Mbanq is a world-leading Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider with a comprehensive ‘as-a-service’ portfolio, including compliance, lending, back office and disputes. Mbanq is a fully compliant, vertically integrated technology and services solution that covers the entire range of banking products for retail and corporate clients, with front-to-back office functionality. Its white-label mobile apps and open banking APIs enable access to best of breed FinTech innovators while offering a modern digital experience to banking customers. www.mbanq.com About Qorbis Qorbis helps businesses across the US take control of spending and take advantage of the benefits of embedded finance. Its secure and scalable platform embeds customized financial and concierge solutions into a company's own product and services, creating new revenue streams, enhancing its brand, and saving time and money. Through partnerships with best-in-class providers of banking and technology, any size business can then offer a range of branded and licensed services to end users, including corporate cards, accounts, P2P payments, and a global travel and lifestyle concierge. www.qorbis.com

Read More

CORE BANKING, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

Momnt Partners with Cross River to Make Lending More Accessible

Businesswire | June 08, 2023

Momnt, a financial technology company that powers real-time lending and payment solutions for businesses at the point of need, is excited to announce the launch of a partnership with Cross River Bank (“Cross River”), a leading financial services and technology infrastructure provider that offers embedded financial solutions. Merchants on the Momnt platform are now able to further expand their loan offering capabilities to reach more consumers. Embedded finance is globally recognized as the future of financial services. Momnt’s industry-leading technology connects lenders with borrowers through their merchant network in the home improvement and healthcare industry. These merchants become the “face of financing” to the consumer, offering loans originated by partner financial institutions at the moment when the consumer is making a purchasing decision. The API-based platform presents custom, real-time loan offers to individual borrowers at the point of making a purchase. This approach helps drive demand for the merchant; extends creative, well-structured financing to the consumer; and generates new revenue sources for financial institutions. Through this partnership with Cross River, an award-winning banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider, Momnt can extend flexible and advantageous terms while providing a seamless and value-driven experience to consumers. The partners teamed up earlier this year and have been working to bring Cross River’s API technology to Momnt’s platform, creating a streamlined process for borrowers in all 50 states and supporting the platform’s growth. "We're thrilled to partner with Cross River as we continue to expand the ways we serve our merchant and consumer customers,” said Chief Revenue Officer, Chris Bracken. “This partnership combines Momnt’s industry-leading moment-of-need lending capabilities with Cross River’s industry-leading financial services technology, and we could not be more excited about the opportunities the partnership will create.” “We are proud to partner with game-changing innovators like Momnt, with their extensive industry knowledge, to provide expanded access to credit via convenient, flexible, point-of-sale loans,” said Greg Caminneci, Head of Client Services, Marketplace Lending at Cross River. “Our partnership will allow Momnt to responsibly serve customers nationwide and we look forward to growing our offerings together.” About Cross River Cross River provides technology infrastructure powering the future of financial services. Leveraging its proprietary real-time banking core, Cross River delivers innovative and scalable embedded payments, cards, and lending solutions to millions of consumers and businesses. Cross River is backed by leading investors and serves the world’s most essential fintech and technology companies. Together with its partners, Cross River is reshaping global finance and financial inclusion. Member FDIC. Find out more at www.crossriver.com. About Momnt Momnt powers modern lending solutions that enable businesses to provide low-friction financing to their customers at the moment they need it — all funded by trusted lending partners. Its API-based platform leverages alternative data sources and ML/AI-informed decisioning to present real-time loan offers fit to each individual borrower, all done within the banking industry’s current regulatory infrastructure. momnt.com

Read More

CORE BANKING, DIGITAL BANKING

iuvity and Mambu Partner to Empower Financial Institutions with Integrated Solutions that Modernize the Banking Experience

PRweb | May 31, 2023

iuvity, a cloud-first digital banking, and open service platform provider announced today that it has partnered with Mambu, a SaaS cloud core banking platform provider, to enable financial institutions to rapidly build and deliver modern customer experiences. The pre-built integration between iuvity’s digital banking platform and Mambu’s core cloud deposit and loan solutions offers financial institutions access to banking solutions that span the entire financial flow for personal and business banking customers allowing them to launch their digital capabilities in a few months. Both iuvity and Mambu cloud platforms provide flexible and scalable solutions that enable financial institutions to adopt a component-based banking approach to rapidly modernize outdated systems and deliver unified banking experiences that meet the unique needs of financial institution customers and members. Mambu is a compliant, secure, cloud-native SaaS cloud banking platform designed to drive financial innovation, bring solutions to market faster, reduce cost barriers, and enable ecosystem expansion. Mambu's suite of solutions includes a core cloud banking platform that includes a feature-rich and highly flexible deposit engine for both personal and business banking; and a lending engine that includes the breadth of origination and servicing for individuals, SMEs, mortgages, and Buy Now Pay Later services. “The demand for cloud-based financial services continues to grow at a rapid pace and partnering with Mambu demonstrates our commitment to creating an ecosystem that supports the diverse needs of financial institutions around the world,” commented Felipe Uribe, CEO of iuvity. “By offering the pre-built integration and orchestration capabilities of these two powerful platforms, financial institutions of all sizes can leverage both to quickly adapt their business models and accelerate the delivery of new fintech products and integrations, driving faster innovation and growth.” iuviOPEN and iuviBANKING are iuvity's digital solutions that leverage a modular architecture and true market-first micro frontend technology, enabling financial institutions to integrate with fintech and third-party solutions faster to create highly configurable and modern user experiences at the speed of digital. With more than 300 services exposed as APIs and a robust orchestration tool, iuviOPEN makes it easy for financial institutions to create new solutions for digital channels, offering the flexibility to use any frontend development tool, programming language, or digital experience platform (DXP). About MAMBU Mambu is the only true 100% cloud-native core banking SaaS platform. Since its launch in 2011, Mambu accelerates the design and creation of almost any type of financial offering for banks of all sizes, financial, fintech, retail, telecommunications companies and more. Under the component banking approach, its open architecture allows, through APIs, to connect to other players in the ecosystem to meet the needs of the business, as well as the demands of end users. Mambu has more than 800 employees who support more than 200 clients in more than 65 countries, including N26, BancoEstado, Ualá, Te Creo Holding, Naranja X, OakNorth, Raiffeisen Bank, ABN AMRO, Bank Islam and Orange Bank among others. http://www.mambu.com About iuvity For more than 22 years, iuvity has been transforming the banking industry with its cloud-first, digital-native solutions that power flexible, open, and inclusive financial services. iuvity’s Open Service Platform and micro frontend technology uniquely empower banks, credit unions, and fintech companies to securely deliver personalized, meaningful online customer experiences while innovating at the pace the digital world demands. iuvity’s track record of success with both large and small institutions across seven countries in North and South America speaks to the advanced multinational, multilingual capabilities required in today’s global financial economy. The company’s accountable and collaborative culture serves as the foundation on which customer and employee relationships are built, which in turn has fueled 95+% customer satisfaction and retention rates as well as rapid growth across markets and geographies. To learn more about iuvity, visit http://www.iuvity.com.

Read More

Spotlight

Infinity Circle

Infinity Circle is the ground-breaking digital wealth creation platform that will be providing the highway to exclusive opportunities otherwise only usually available to the ultra-wealthy. It is currently being built to be a unique global digital and real-world platform that brings together like-min...

Events

Resources