Posts Tagged ‘Finovate 2008’

The Banktastics - Finovate is Over!

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

We have spent the past two days doing all things Finovate 2008 in New York City! Mark and I had a blast meeting with the presenters and getting some great video interviews. Here’s a list of all the content we’ve gotten at Finovate so far:

Company Reviews: First 6 | Second 6 | Third 6 | Last 6

Interviews: Fiserv MyMoney | Quicken Online | SmartHippo | Digital Insight | MoneyAisle | Vidoop | WeSeed | Boulevard R

Mark and I would like to thank all of the presenters that took some time to do a video interview with us. We live-blogged all day long on Tuesday, and we hope you’ve enjoyed the content that came from it! We appreciate everybody that has shared our reviews and videos so far, and we look forward to seeing more conversation coming from Finovate 2008.

Email us if you have any questions or comments on our coverage at Finovate. See ya later!

Interview with Boulevard R from Finovate 2008

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

We sat down with John & Matt of Boulevard R at Finovate 2008 today. Check out the video above!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our day-long coverage of Finovate 2008 live from New York City today. Here are some quick links to connect you with other Finovate content from today:

Check out the first 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the second 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the third 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the last 6 presenter reviews!

Interview with WeSeed from Finovate 2008

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

We snagged an interview with Jennifer of WeSeed at Finovate 2008 today. Check out the video above! And thanks to the WeSeed team for the great dinner event tonight!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our day-long coverage of Finovate 2008 live from New York City today. Here are some quick links to connect you with other Finovate content from today:

Check out the first 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the second 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the third 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the last 6 presenter reviews!

Interview with Vidoop from Finovate 2008

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

We snagged an interview with Mitchell of Vidoop at Finovate 2008 today. Check out the video above!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our day-long coverage of Finovate 2008 live from New York City today. Here are some quick links to connect you with other Finovate content from today:

Check out the first 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the second 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the third 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the last 6 presenter reviews!

Interview with MoneyAisle from Finovate 2008

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

We took a few minutes to catch a great interview with Mukesh Chatter of MoneyAisle at Finovate 2008 today. Check out the video above!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our day-long coverage of Finovate 2008 live from New York City today. Here are some quick links to connect you with other Finovate content from today:

Check out the first 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the second 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the third 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the last 6 presenter reviews!

Interview with SmartHippo from Finovate 2008

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

We snagged an interview with George Favvas of Smart Hippo at Finovate 2008 today. Check out the video above!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our day-long coverage of Finovate 2008 live from New York City today. Here are some quick links to connect you with other Finovate content from today:

Check out the first 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the second 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the third 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the last 6 presenter reviews!

Finovate 2008 Coverage - The Last 6 Presenters!

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

mShift
Mark’s Review:
A mobile solution that has the most deployments worldwide. Their latest offering targeted at business banking, ‘CFO on the Go’ moves business financial reports, transfers, ACH, and other operations through an application on a mobile phone. Also has a ‘push’ component for alerts via email, sms, voice, and fax.
I think this addresses a space (business banking) that has been under served by mobile banking and the MShift offering looks to be a good first step to bridge that gap. UI still is very mobile looking, but the functionality is really strong.

Lisa’s Review: No Rating
I missed this presentation as I was working on getting stuff on the blog. Sorry, everybody.

Mint
Mark’s Review:
An online PFM with over 500k that is now out of beta. It’s adding custom budgeting categories and now allows you to track your investments.
Pretty graphs and cool charts are still there for Mint and it remains one of the leaders in the online PFM space.

Lisa’s Review:
Mint is a personal finance management site that helps users budget and track their money. Just launched this morning their investment tracking feature on Mint. Shows you market value and other stats of your investments that mirrors the slick budgeting and money breakdown side of Mint. The site is the fastest-growing money management tool online today.

mFoundry
Mark’s Review:
Today MFoundry demoed their iphone mobile banking application. It’s one of 2 native iphone banking apps out there and looks and feels like a great iphone app. (Man iphone apps are so much prettier than other mobile apps. I’m sure my iphone makes me biased.)
Basic account lookup with date and other filtering all flows as you would expect an iphone app to flow. Also included are transfers and bill pay which, have I mentioned, look and act beautifully.
The big bonus: ATM and Branch finder BY CURRENT LOCATION! (Zip code is also an option, but who needs it!)
I want this on my iphone. Now

Lisa’s Review:
Another iPhone app demo. Mobile banking and payments solutions for banks. It looks easy to use, and the search function for your phone is awesome. Great setup with the sort transactions by dates. You can tell they’ve put a lot of work into this app. Really quick and easy payments made to credit cards and other vendors. You can manage automatic transactions (add, cancel) on your phone. Honestly, doing the whole demo from the phone was fantastic. And what would this app be without the “find an ATM” feature? Awesome. FIs really need to check this out!

Digital Insight
Mark’s Review:
Small Business FinanceWorks is geared at small businesses (duh) and offers bill management, invoice generation and home remote capture that is integrated into your banking site. It can also handle payroll and legal filing.
For small businesses, it’s sits somewhere between using a personal PFM and going full fledged into a quickbooks type product. I needed something like this when I was at McSpadden Technology.

Lisa’s Review:
Digital Insight helps small businesses of all kinds get everything organized. This looks like a fantastic tool for the new business owner that needs some help getting everything squared away. The Billing Manager feature allows you to send reminders to customers if they owe you money, print invoices, manage your drafts, etc. You can manage payroll and taxes, as well. I can think of a few people that could really benefit from using this.

Thrive
Mark’s Review:
A PFM that does offer the basic transactional dashboard views but really isn’t focused there. It’s focused more a ‘financial health score’ and offering ways for you to make that score better. Some of those tips are where to place your money, some of those are based on the type of spending you are doing. (Discretionary vs. Bills)
In addition, it helps you target savings specific goals and tips to reach those. They’ve also partnered with credit.com and will start looking at how credit scores play into financial health

Lisa’s Review:
Another personal finance management tool. I’m loving the way Thrive looks. Provides you 11 dimensions of your financial status. Thrive gives you tips on how to better manage your money, get better rates, and transfer money from “bad accounts” to “good accounts.” Thrive analyzes your information and suggests areas of your finances to focus on and clean up.

BillShrink
Mark’s Review: BillShrink is an online application to help you find the best deals on things like cell phone plans and credit cards. For the credit card comparision, using a super simple survey (only a few questions) the are able to pull numerous offerings. In addition you are able to filter based on the rewards you care about. (Cash v. food v. airfare)
Launched today, if you sign up with BillShrink let’s you monitor new offers that appear after you’ve made your initial decision.

Lisa’s Review:
Pretty, pretty site. Love the charisma in the presentation, too. BillShrink gives usage-based recommendations of wireless plans and credit cards. Another site that shows you how to shift things around to save money. They analyze your latest phone bill to help you find a better plan to suit your needs. Just got funding, too. Good job guys!

Check out the first 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the second 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the third 6 presenter reviews!

Finovate 2008 Coverage - The Third 6 Presenters!

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

SmartHippo
Mark’s Review:
An online community built to help increase simplicity and transparency in the mortgage lending process. Includes community ratings. Rate search engine that pulls from several sources, including other members. Lenders can feed their rates into SmartHippo for FREE, which can help smaller FIs (especially credit unions) get more exposure for their great rates.
I think your FI needs to be feeding your rates into SmartHippo if you are in their market.

Lisa’s Review:
A community-driven site geared toward helping its members save money and find the best interest rates. Members can rate different lenders in several different areas. You can give your specific information on what you’re looking for in a borrower, and the site will show you the best rates with different lenders. It’s free for lenders to show their rates on SmartHippo. The site looks great and easy to use. Community members share information on rates and FIs, but SmartHippo also goes and searches for rates to aggregate it all on their site. I’m loving this!

LendingClub
Mark’s Review:
An SEC registered (that’s a big deal) peer to peer lending site for borrowers with good credit which has kept their default rate for their lenders under 2% since their launch. In addition to allowing lenders to actually pick up loans from borrowers, Lending Club has also added a trading platform that allows them to trade and sell those loans.
I think the loan marketplace is a super interesting one that is worth giving Lending Club a look if you’d like to move into the P2P lending space.

Lisa’s Review:
The design of the site is great. LendingClub is a P2P lending site. Their differentiation as a P2P site is that lenders have the opportunity to invest in instruments that are registered with the US SEC. I’m not seeing as much of a community aspect in this site as I have in others (Zopa), but I see some unique points in this one. Definitely worth checking out.

Credit Karma
Mark’s Review:
Credit Karma is a service that provides free (like really free) access to your credit score. This allows you to monitor and assess your credit and you are offered services and discounts based on your credit score.
New to Credit Karma is a ‘personalized credit simulator’ which will allow you to input various scenarios (new credit, late payment, etc) and see the impact that event would have on your credit score.
I really dig this addition to Credit Karma and believe it can really help consumers make educated decisions about what they are doing with their credit.

Lisa’s Review:
I’ve used Credit Karma for some months now, and it’s no secret that I adore this site. From a purely consumer standpoint, I see incredible value in Credit Karma. I’m extremely interested in knowing what my financial status is at all times, including my ability to get credit if I must. This site has made it extremely easy for me to see an up-to-date number on my credit score, which is great. I think that the advertisers they have in place are great, and the fact that members can vote on offers increases the value of this site. The cool new feature is the Credit Score Simulator - very awesome.

CheckFree
Mark’s Review:
This former stand alone bill payment options now has integration into a FiServ PFM. Basic bill pay and PFM with useful multi function dashboard and nice charts. Ads, though relevant based on activity, look very intrusive and slow to disappear.
The cool thing about this product is it’s integration with consumer remote capture (scan in your check at home) but for me it’s not enough to overcome the generic nature of the rest of the offering.

Lisa’s Review:
CheckFree offers a full suite of solutions for FIs of all sizes. The site looks pretty good, and the services look nice. I like how you can see the bills when you’re looking at payment transactions. The graphics and functionality of this site are smooth. Really looks like they put a lot of effort into this. Talk about a full suite of solutions - it really is.

MoneyAisle
Mark’s Review:
MoneyAisle is a rate auction site that is fully automated. You put it in your simple criteria and a are given the best rate out there with an option to accept the bid and move on to open the account with the bank. The full transaction is handled by the bank.
A fully automated process (including account opening) seems to be the missing piece of this puzzle to make it one that I would actually use.

Lisa’s Review:
Weird commentary from someone with a mic on during the presentation. Yikes. But back to the review. I’ve seen MoneyAisle in the news recently, and I think that what they’re doing is pretty great. Providing the opportunity for smaller banks to compete for your loans is great. Smaller FIs are able to bid for your business with better rates since they don’t have a massive advertising budget as some of the bigger banks do. And the site is very transparent about the entire process, which is fantastic.

Yodlee
Mark’s Review:
Along with their PFM and account aggregation, Yodlee has been making big headway in the ‘Pay Today’ space. Through a partnership with Western Union, through Yodlee can offer immediate payment processing. This is available through their SDK and I’m sure you’ll see more built on top of this in the future.

Lisa’s Review:
Big site, about 3.5 million users on Yodlee’s PFM site. They offer some cool billpay feature looks smooth. Really great thing is that you can pay a bill at the last minute with Yodlee, something I know many people will find useful! Only downside is that there’s a fee involved, but to get money rushed over and avoid any huge issue, it’s really worth it. The site is clean and concise.

Check out the first 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the second 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the last 6 presenter reviews!

Interview with Quicken Online from Finovate 2008!

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

We’re bringing you live coverage of Finovate 2008 from NYC today! Here’s a quick video interview with Quicken Online and their presentation here at Finovate today. The big news with Quicken was that it’s going free!

Keep watching the Banktastic Blog to get your Finovate fix all day long!

Interview with FiServ MyMoney at Finovate 2008

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

We’re bringing you live coverage of Finovate 2008 from NYC today! Here’s a quick video interview with FiServ about MyMoney and their presentation here at Finovate today. They presented this morning, and it was great to watch them!

Keep watching the Banktastic Blog to get your Finovate fix all day long!