I got to attend my first Finovate in London last week. Very impressive! There were over 1000 folks, with innovations for banks, for SMEs, and for linking idea/people. This scene has become very big, with bankers and investors crowding the halls...both bankers wanting to keep up, and disrupters wanting to eat the bankers' lunch! And most important for our SME Finance Forum, there were many exhibitors with relevance for SME Finance. Among the companies I found very interesting are:· Pixeliris - Sonic wave based alternative to NFC for mobile phone transactions that all can use today! Pixeliris, a French firm which marketed its Copsonic technology, is probably the company I remember the most from a most memorable 2 days in London. Why? it's a contactless, mobile-based payments system that can work not only on smartphones and special cellphones that can handle extra SIMS, but on ALL cellphones out in the market today...it used sonic waves to do this, and the demo showed this very clearly...and it works with POS, EFT, and all sorts of devices that small merchants might have (including the small merchants' cheap cellphones, if they wish). It's compatible with all the emerging standards for contactless payment, and Emmanuel Ruiz (CEO and head of innovation) and the other representatives who presented it at Finovate seemed very interested in emerging markets. · Nostrum Group – Managing loan portfoliosNostrum Group debuted a technology called "virtual collector". They note that while many companies are offering automated decisioning tools for lending, there isn't as much talk about helping manage the loan portfolios. Their technology can be applied in both consumer and commercial lending. They even allow online negotiating of rescheduling/refinancing, with a clever algorithm which combines financial with behavioral data to try to optimize for both financier and client. One needs a smartphone to run this technology. · Advanced Merchant Payments – Merchant creditAdvanced Merchant Payments showed off their platform to the European market. As readers may recall, their system, which specializes in merchant credit, does both origination and portfolio management, with some impressive results to date in Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines. · Crowdfunderso EZBob – UK SMEso Kown - UK consumer and business loanso KreditAja/Plutus – Singapore basedIt wouldn't have been an innovation fair nowadays on finance without representation from crowdfunders. EZBOB focused on loans for SMEs, showed its European platform, which has key partnerships with the European Investment Bank and the Royal Mail. While originally designed for online retailers, they've adapted to serve the 5 million plus UK SMEs (initially), providing feedback in minutes about what amount of funding might be available, and from whom. Kown is another UK-based operation, offering both consumer and business loans. They focus on accredited investors to date, but are going to open up to the general public soon. They track over 100,000 firms to identify customized investment opportunities for their users Finally, a Singapore based firm, Plutus Software, showed off their KreditAja platform, which helps financial institutions and consumers/SMEs meet up. KreditAja is the Indonesian name for their product known as ‘LoanGarage’ in other countries. The pitch emphasized consumer finance, but in my talk with the principals, they demonstrated strong interest in SME lending, and are in active talks with Indonesian financial institutions on this topic.· Cloud-based productso Topicus Finan o efigence/idea banko SaasMarketso AtsoraThere were a number of firms at Finovate offering cloud-based products that could help even SMEs with minimal computing capacity to improve their own financial management and to ease (and make cheaper) their exchange of essential information with bankers and other financiers. These included: - TopicusFinan a Dutch firm already working with ING, Rabo and other major financiers; - SaasMarkets working with Global Payments; - Efigence / Idea Bank The latter included a US module to help with tax advice and compliance.This is an area I feel is worthy of much further exploration in emerging markets. - Atsora another Polish group with useful technology in this area, with its Momentum product that deals with currency transfer (only available for UK so far).· Innovation managemento Innovation agency - How to improve internal innovation in bankso Matchi - Another way to connect innovatorsOne of the areas of innovation I didn't expect to see at Finovate was innovation in the management of innovation itself! Two firms displayed technologies to help encourage more innovation either inside financial institutions or in the wider marketplace. Innovation Agency headquartered in New York but operating globally showed off its "Innovation Cafe" software, already deployed in emerging markets with clients such as FNB, StandardBank, IDC and ABSA Capital. It's an internal crowdsourcing agent to help companies engage their innovative idea folks, and build internal communities to encourage innovation. Matchi from Hong Kong is a matchmaking platform that helps connect innovators to banks. Their clients include La Caixa Bank. For more information and to see YouTube videos of all presentations, check Finovate website
