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7 Questions with Arne Westphal, co-founder of Finprove

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1. Who are you?

We are a small but experienced team with a ready-to-use solution for optimizing the checking account for both the bank and its customers.

We have always focused on B2B business and are pioneers in online sales and financial products. We have been creating web applications for, among others, Postbank,

PSD Bankengruppe and Teambank’s easyCredit. We are an experienced and reliable partner for banks wanting to upgrade their customer service in an easy, safe and profitable way.

2. Which services do you sell and who are your competitors?

The Change Agent of Finprove can be integrated in the online banking expands the checking account to offer added value for banks and their customers. It opens the treasure chest and turns the customers’ savings potential into earnings potential for the bank. Banks generate easy monetary benefits due to change commissions and thus have a chance to stand out in a competitive market and to offer added value with the potential for customer loyalty in a secure online environment. The customers optimize their current expenses and sees the bank as his “consulting agency for private households”, which increases the customer loyalty.

We generally compete with the business model of the online comparison portals.

Moreover there are moneymap and procheck24 that are our main competitors as they are also working B2B in the finance area.

3. How did you get your startup idea and how did you finance your startup?

During our conversations with bank employees and the insight into customer data projects we constantly have been noticing that banks have the customers’ data but they do not help them save money regarding their recurring expenses. So we decided to open this chest full of data for the banks.

We start with the private funding of our owners and managing directors, at the moment we are looking for further investors.

4. What were the biggest challenges in starting?

Our biggest challenge was to win the first customer and to persuade the bank to use its customers’ data as there are many obstacles and regulations standing in the way. We are still looking forward to going live with this pilot project.

5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?

I find it amazing how fintechs influence the established finance companies and the whole surrounding industry. Motivated by cooperation or competition, banks and insurances are having a big chance of adapting the modern digital tools and going in line with the current trends. It is not about founding the next fintech company to make fast profit – it is about making progress towards digitalization, no matter what side on – as fintech or established institution.

6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech startups in the DACH region, and how can we help to accelerate it?

I see an enormous potential in deep learning/AI. There is such valuable data that can and will be upgraded through the analysis of artificial intelligence. We have just taken that path and it is thrilling!

7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?

Find an easy solution for an existing problem.
Put a real effort in marketing to promote it.
Don’t give up!

7 Questions with Ralf Penndorf, Niels-Jens Kühn & Dejan Maljevic from CURENTIS RISK FACTORY

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1. Who Are you?

We are Ralf Penndorf, Niels-Jens Kühn and Dejan Maljevic.
We are the management of CURENTIS AG who has developed the CURENTIS RISK FACTORY within the last three years and intend to found the CURENTIS RISK FACTORY GmbH to accelerate the growth of this product.

2. Which services do you sell and who are your competitors?

The CURENTIS RISK FACTORY digitizes identity papers, salary slips and account statements for the business processes of financial service providers and all other companies for whom the creditworthiness and identity of their customers is important.

The authenticity of this information is automatically checked and made available for all business processes.

The CURENTIS RISK FACTORY consists of three modules:

ID-CHECK

Authenticity check in real time: Using ID-CHECK, cards, driving licenses, passports or residence permits can be checked for authenticity.
ID-CHECK makes the data from the machine readable zone and the visual zone, including a picture, available for further processing in the customer systems.
CURENTIS uses the card reader of the Bundesdruckerei (Federal Printing Office) for this.

Docu-CHECK

Digitization of the credit check: Salary slips are scanned and digitized via an integrated OCR software. The digitized data is professionally interpreted by Docu-CHECK. A predetermined set of rules checks the data for plausibility and reports any problems.
The data are available for further process steps (e.g. e-file).
Docu-CHECK can also be trained for other documents.

Account-CHECK

Automated checking of electronic account statements: Account-CHECK allows banks to have read access to the current accounts of the person applying for credit.
The bank customer can submit the access data of his account (user name, PIN) or his accounts via an internet front-end.
On the basis of the data from the electronic account statements, an expenditure accounting can be carried out fully automatically.

3. How did you get your startup idea and how did you finance your startup?

CURENTIS AG has been active in the field of consulting for banks, especially in financing, fraud management and external reporting. Doing this business we understand that the retail banking business have to check the identity and credit worthiness of their customers. The needed information is often only physically available (e.g. printed salary certificates) and entering them into the company data banks, as well as verifying their authenticity, generates high costs and time required. This process is very prone to error and opens the door to fraud.

We have financed the product development from the profits of our consulting business.

4. What were the biggest challenges in starting?

Product development and sales need more investment than we can derive from the consulting business. Therefore, we decided to found a separate company and seek venture capital to accelerate growth.

5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?

Retail banking, because this is the field of our competence and experience. Moreover, there is still a big need for industrialization and digitization in retail banking.

6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech startups in the DACH region, and how can we help to accelerate it?

Digitization of banking. Banking is essential, banks are not.

7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?

You have to be well prepared and informed about your business and your competitors.

7 Questions with Arne Westphal, co-founder of Econ Application GmbH

Veröffentlicht von admin@tochter

1. Who are you?

We are a small team of UX specialists, consultants, developers and marketeers from western Germany who wants to radically simplify the management of online forms. As we have a lot of experience in creating innovative solutions for banks and insurances, we developed an user-friendly software solution for complex processes of online forms and applications functioning like a high-performance content management system.

2. Which services do you sell and who are your competitors?

We have developed a new generation software solution that works on internal and external websites, triggers complex events and has an intuitive user interface so that everyone with no programming skills can keep up with increasingly shorter product cycles and product launch times. As this is an unique solution, we don’t have any competitors yet.

We mostly compete with the cost-consuming projects for programming fixed application forms. Our challenge is to persuade the internal IT department of the company we want to work for, that programming of rigid online forms belongs in the past.

3. How did you get your startup idea and how did you finance your startup?

Our idea evolved during our daily work with online forms in the financial industry. In conversations with our clients – online marketers, sales specialists and product managers – we repeatedly heard the wish for a form solution enabling them to create, update, manage, test and release online forms without IT support or extensive IT knowledge. Therefore we created Econ.

The financial support throughout the developing stage was guaranteed by our holding company, as we could “borrow” some developers for our project before founding it officially. Econ was launched and is still a fully privately owned company.

4. What were the biggest challenges in starting?

To explain our business model to the target audience. As it is so innovative, it was difficult for us to convince the future customers that our new way is possible and effective. But we accepted the challenge and succeeded!

5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?

I find it amazing how fintechs influence the established finance companies and the whole surrounding industry. Through cooperation or competition, banks and insurances are having a big chance of adapting the modern digital tools and going in line with the current trends. It is not about founding the next fintech company to make fast profit – it is about making progress towards digitalization, no matter what side on – as fintech or established institution.

6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech startups in the DACH region, and how can we help to accelerate it?

I see an enormous potential especially in the insurance area – they need a real “insurtech shot”. Fintech event that boost the dialog between the startups and the established companies accelerate the digitalization of the industry. We need less one-way talks and pitch shows but more conversations and real partnerships for the road leading to it.

7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?

1. Find an easy solution for an existing problem.

2. Put a real effort in marketing to promote it.

3. Don’t give up!

Newsletter, 06 October – 13 October 2017

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Spotcap Raises €22M in Equity and Debt Funding

Spotcap, a Berlin, Germany-based online lender, raised an additional €22m in equity and debt funding. Existing investors participated in the funding round which brought total capital raised to €100m.
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A British insurtech startup has raised £27 million in its mission to become the ‚Uber of premium finance

PremFina, a British insurtech startup that aims to make insurance more accessible, has raised £27 million ($36 million) in a funding round led by Rakuten Capital, the investment arm of Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten.

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Ad: WeWork: Opening 1st Dec. 2017 in #FinTech City #Frankfurt

Exclusive Hot Desk sign up promo code for FinTech Forum community members: with the code WWHD72430, you receive a 50% discount for up to 3 months. Sign up here:

https://www.wework.com/plans/hot-desk

Seedrs Raises £10M in Funding

Seedrs, a London, UK-based equity crowdfunding platform, raised £10M in funding.

In early September, Woodford Investment Management made a £4m investment, followed by over 2,000 investors, who invested the remaining £6m. During a campaign lasting less than five days, nearly £7m was and the company could only accept £6m.

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Online real estate investment platform BrickVest raises €7.9 million and partners with Berlin Hyp

BrickVest, the London-based online real estate investment platform, today announced the final close of its second fundraising round with €7.9 million, representing one of the largest Series A funding rounds in the property tech (‘proptech’) sector.

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Blackbaud Completes JustGiving Acquisition

Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ: BLKB), a cloud software company powering social good, announced on Tuesday it has completed its acquisition of U.K.-based crowdfunding platform, JustGiving.

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Online banking startup Outbank announces its bankruptcy.

Eine der bekanntesten deutschen Banking-Plattformen meldet Insolvenz an: Outbank. Das gab das Dachauer Startup am Dienstagmorgen bekannt. „Trotz stetiger Updates und erster Schritte in Richtung Monetarisierung mussten wir gestern schweren Herzens einen Insolvenzantrag stellen“, heißt es in einer Pressemeldung.

Read More…

Newsletter, 23 September – 29 September 2017

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FinTech Forum’s 4th anniversary event recaps European FinTech’s successes and travails

While we were wicked with the timer for all preceding sessions, nobody seemed to mind as the last two spellbinding guest presentations went past the allotted time: Our alumnus Cashboard’s seven year journey that included winning multiple awards, €3mn in VC funding (2016) to insolvency in May 2017 – a breathtaking “last 30 days” down to the last few hours aggravated by modern journalism (Robert Henker)…

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Neueste Artikel

1. Who are you?

2. Which services do you sell and who are your competitors?

3. How did you get your startup idea and how did you finance your startup?

4. What were the biggest challenges in starting?

5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?

6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech startups in the DACH region, and how can we help to accelerate it?

7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?

1. Who Are you?

2. Which services do you sell and who are your competitors?

3. How did you get your startup idea and how did you finance your startup?

4. What were the biggest challenges in starting?

5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?

6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech startups in the DACH region, and how can we help to accelerate it?

7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?

1. Who are you?

2. Which services do you sell and who are your competitors?

3. How did you get your startup idea and how did you finance your startup?

4. What were the biggest challenges in starting?

5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?

6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech startups in the DACH region, and how can we help to accelerate it?

7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?

1. Who are you?

2. Which services do you sell and who are your competitors?

3. How did you get your startup idea and how did you finance your startup?

4. What were the biggest challenges in starting?

5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?

6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech startups in the DACH region, and how can we help to accelerate it?

22nd Sep. 2017, Frankfurt am Main Samarth Shekhar, Co-Founder, FinTech Forum

1. Who are you?

2. Which services do you sell and who are your competitors?

3. How did you get your startup idea and how did you finance your startup?

4. What were the biggest challenges in starting?

5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?

6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech startups in the DACH region, and how can we help to accelerate it?

7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?

22^nd Sep. 2017, Frankfurt am Main
Samarth Shekhar, Co-Founder, FinTech Forum