We end this week with the latest fintech news, bringing you closer to the most important fintech stories. Tili Financial is launching a banking platform for kids, after having raised over $5 million. Ether hits its record high after days of rumors regarding the European Investment Bank launching a “digital bond” sale on the Ether blockchain network. Meanwhile, South Korea’s finance minister speaks out about the earlier plan of taxing the capital gains made through crypto. FinTron will start offering investment services through their new app and DBS, J.P. Morgan and Temasek are partnering to develop a blockchain-based payment platform and they want to get more banks on board. CogniCor, a female-founded and female-led startup launch three new AI-powered digital assistants that will make life much easier for wealth managers and financial advisors, and SteelEye also leverages the power of AI to tackle market abuse.
AI In FinTech: SteelEye Leverages AI To Tackle Market Abuse
SteelEye, the compliance technology company is going after market abuse with their new lexicon technology, offering a new AI in FinTech solution. Monitoring six times as many search terms as a standard lexicon, the product is aiming at meeting the strict regulations.
The AI-powered fintech lexicon developed by SteelEye covers tens of thousands of search terms that allow it to detect all linguistic variations, colloquialisms, ‘text-speak, abbreviations, and even typos. The technology also leverages AI to filter out for context and decrease the chance of false positives, a common problem in traditional technology.
“One of the main reasons legacy lexicons trigger such vast volumes of false positives is because they don’t consider the context in which a communication takes place,” Matt Storey, chief product officer at SteelEye said. “As a result, many firms have ended up limiting themselves to a small number of search terms to reduce the number of alerts triggered. However, in doing so, they risk missing key signs of market abuse.”
“Our new lexicon completely solves this problem by not only accounting for an unparalleled degree of linguistic variety – but also introducing AI to determine the context of how and where a piece of communication took place. These two fundamental changes enable firms to monitor for a much wider range of risks and greatly reduce the number of false positives,” he adds.
SteelEye has ambitious plans to improve its AI fintech product and add more sophisticated methods to detect signs of illicit behavior.
“Lexicons are and will remain important to help firms detect signs of wrongdoing. The industry must focus on getting them right by thinking about searching for language, meaning, and intent rather than individual words or phrases,” Storey adds.
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FinTech App: Tili Financial Launches Kids Banking Platform After $5 Million Funding
Tili Financial has launched an interesting fintech app, its family banking platform that targets kids aged eight and up after a $5 million funding. The aim behind the platform is to help kids with managing their money.
The free platform is targeting the 50 million “pre-banked” American kids that represent roughly $400 billion in buying power. The kids are provided with a real bank account, debit card both in a digital and physical form, and saving tools. Parents remain heavily involved on the platform.
The funding round on the new fintech app for kids was joined by Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures with Magnify Ventures, Elysian Park Ventures, Afore Capital, Luge Capital, Alpine Meridian Ventures, The Gramercy Fund, SM Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
“Parents and the current banking options miss the point when they just focus on savings. We need to first prepare kids to be smarter spenders, supported by savings and investing,” says Taylor Burton, co-founder, Till. “With Till, kids learn to spend with intention and purpose, while parents gain confidence and trust based on transparency and accountability.”
Ether Hits Record High As Crypto Continues On Its Winning Streak
Ethereum , the second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market cap has hit their new record-high on Wednesday, after rumours about the European Investment Bank launching a “digital bond” sale on the ethereum blockchain network.
The reports were first announced on Tuesday by Bloomberg that cited an anonymous source, with other media outlets closely following the story.
Ether hit a record high of $2,713.95 on Wednesday.
“The amount of ethereum sitting on exchanges continues to drop lower and has been the lowest in the past year,” Danny Kim, head of revenue at SFOX, a full-service crypto broker, said. “With less supply on exchange available, there’s less likely a chance of a major sell-off.
South Korea’s Finance Minister Calls Taxing Crypto Gains As “Inevitable”
Hong Nam-ki, South Korea’s finance minister said on Tuesday that the government will start taxing capital gains from trading of cryptocurrencies.
Nam-ki confirmed that the taxes on crypto will start from next year, following the plan proposed by the government earlier.
“It’s inevitable, we will need to impose taxes on gains from trading of virtual assets,” Nam-ki said in a news conference.
Any annual gains of more than 2.5 million won ($2,253) from trading of cryptocurrencies will be subject to a 20% capital gains tax.
AI In FinTech: CogniCor Launches An AI Digital Assistant For Wealth Management Firms And Financial Advisors
Yesterday, CogniCor, the female-founded and female-led provider of AI-powered digital assistants for the wealth management sector announced the launch of three new AI-powered modules that can assist the companies with the most labor and time-intensive operational issues, increasing the efficiency of the firms and showing the potential of leveraging AI in fintech.
“In wealth management, as in other highly regulated industries, the completion of many everyday tasks can entail a series of steps, any of which can derail the entire process if done incorrectly,” CogniCor Founder and CEO Sindhu Joseph said. “Consequently, firms devote excessive resources to user-support infrastructures, such as support desks and call centers, which in turn can lead to operational inefficiencies, lost revenue, and stymied growth. CogniCor’s solutions take much of the burden of user support off firms’ shoulders and enable them to focus the core missions of their businesses.”
The three new digital assistants include:
The Forms Assistant that helps the wealth management customers with identifying and filling the right forms, pre-filling a part of the form and guiding the user through the whole process.
The Navigation Assistant assists the clients with navigating their wealth management firm platform.
The Smart Call-Routing Assistant analyzes the context and intent of a customer’s query and matches the client with the expert that can best help them with revolving their issue.
“The complexity of the online workflows financial services firms use to perform core business tasks can force advisors and employees to spend around 40 percent of their time executing routine, manual tasks, time that should be devoted to serving clients and performing other value-generative activities. Our solutions put time back into advisors’ and employee’s workdays, while eliminating errors, mitigating costs and providing enhanced experiences for wealth management employees, advisors and their clients,” Dr. Joseph added.
FinTech App: FinTron To Offer Investing Services Through Its New App Together With Apex Clearing
One of the youngest investment firms globally, FinTron Invest, has announced it will offer investment services through its new fintech app. The company has named Apex Clearing, as its clearing and custody partner.
Due to Apex’s innovative technology, FinTron will now be able to offer its clients fractional share trading, facilitate ACH money movement efficiently, and provide a seamless and scalable backend solution.
“We are incredibly excited to partner with Apex Clearing, an industry leader,” said Wilder Rumpf, CEO of FinTron. “Our goal is to empower young people to overcome the fear of investing and working with Apex will enable us to connect with these digital natives at the level they have come to expect.”
The FinTron Invest app available for IOS devices will provide the customers with a variety of benefits such as 2,000+ fractional stocks & ETFs, automated investment features, automated savings features, and simulated trading games.
The app will also include the traditional banking features such as free ATM withdrawals worldwide, interest-bearing checking accounts, and mobile check deposits.
“Since our founding nearly a decade ago as one of the first all-digital custody and clearing firms, Apex has been trailblazing through the fintech space with today’s consumer in mind,” said Dustin Kirkland, Chief Product Office of Apex Clearing. “We never stop enhancing our technology as we aim to level the playing field, and FinTron’s app launch featuring investing and fractional trading does just that, and in a scalable way to support their future growth.”
FinTech App: DBS, J.P. Morgan, And Temasek To Develop A Blockchain-Based Payment Platform
DBS, J.P. Morgan, and Temasek announced that they will collaborate on developing a blockchain-based platform where users will be able to trade, settle foreign exchange and conduct payments.
The company named Partior will provide 24/7 infrastructure and focus primarily on the flows between Singapore-based banks, both in USD and SGD.
The infrastructure aims at enabling financial institutions to co-create applications that support use cases such as FX Payment Versus Payment (PVP), Delivery Versus Payment (DVP), and Peer-to-Peer escrows. Patriot will engage leading banks to join the platform, in order to ensure broad participation from the banking industry.
“By harnessing the benefits of blockchain and smart contracts technology, the Partior platform will address current points of friction,” Piyush Gupta, the Chief Executive Officer of DBS Bank said. “The open platform will enable banks around the world to provide real-time cross-border multi-currency payments, trade finance, foreign exchange and DVP securities settlements on a world-class platform, with programmability, immutability, traceability built into its suite of services.”
“We are pleased to work alongside DBS and J.P. Morgan to create a global platform that will have a tangible impact on global payments,” Chia Song Hwee, Deputy CEO, Temasek said.
“Finding the right approach to payments transformation using new technologies should be a priority as we take our existing infrastructure into the next stage of digitalization and connectivity. We’re also heartened by the interest from other banks and partners, and look forward to welcoming them on board as this new platform builds out,”
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