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Who's Innovating in 2009? Finovate Preview

Thanks Netbanker for this preview of some of the year's financial innovators

By Jim Bruene on September 1, 2009 6:18 PM | Comments (3)

I've participated in dozens of online banking and technology conferences over the years, first as a banker, then as an analyst, and now as the host. Each time, I try to walk away with not only specific action items, but with overall themes that will drive product development over the next few years.

With 32 new products and services being unveiled next month at our Finovate Conference (see note 1) and with planning season just around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to review the themes taking shape this fall:

• Control: More and more tools are being invented to help consumers and small businesses take better control of their finances, both on the credit and deposit side. The tools vary from very focused tools to manage health care expenses or 401(k) allocations, to broad tools that manage the big picture. This trend is expected to continue well into the next decade.
• Mobility: Most simple financial management tasks, such as checking balances, authorizing purchases, and so on will move to mobile devices. Another huge trend that will play out over the next 20 years.
• Peer-to-peer: You can't really cut out the middleman entirely in financial services; a trusted third-party is needed to authenticate both parties. However, the third-party may not always be a traditional financial institution.
• Safety & security: This one never goes out of style. But more so than usual, consumers are seeking safe havens for their savings and investments. And they expect more from their financial service providers. It will be a long time before risk-taking reaches levels seen much of the past 10 years.
• Segmentation (online): For the most part, online banking has been a one-size fits all service, since it came on the scene in the mid- to -late 1990s. That's not good enough going forward. There will be online, and mobile, services tailored for distinct segments. Initial efforts rolling out this year target youth markets, small- and micro-businesses, and savvy investors among others.

Guide to FINOVATE Companies
The following 30 companies (plus two more in stealth mode) will show their latest and greatest innovations in 7-minute demos at Finovate on Sep. 29 in NYC. Here's how our presenting companies describe themselves.

Backbase
Backbase enables organizations to leverage their understanding of valuable customer data into highly-personalized eBusiness Portals and Applications. Branding, content, applications, and tools can be targeted to customers using profile-based personalization. Guidance and expertise can be proactively offered based upon specific customer needs. Customers can even be empowered to tailor their own user experience based upon their individual preferences.

BancVue/First ROI
These successful sister companies provide innovative checking accounts backed by dynamic marketing, data driven consulting and powerful software to community banks and credit unions. BancVue and FIRST ROI aim to change the world of banking by launching a whole new product delivery model for consumer deposit accounts and community financial institutions.

Billeo
Billeo gives consumers a fast, easy and intelligent way to exercise choice and control over their online purchases and payments. Billeo functions as the catalyst to make online purchases and bill paying as easy and financially rewarding as possible. Billeo was founded by experts from the EBPP, card issuer, banking, ecommerce and technology industries.

BillShrink
BillShrink is an unbiased, free online service that saves people money by continuously updating personalized recommendations on everyday bills. BillShrink monitors millions of wireless plans, credit cards and gas prices across the country to provide an apples-to-apples comparison of the best options available on the market.

Bling Nation
Bling Nation brings mobile payments to consumers and merchant points of sale, offering lower costs, increased efficiency and improved security compared to credit cards, debit cards, checks and cash. The Bling Nation service also enables financial institutions and merchants to offer consumers robust rewards programs and real-time redemptions, promoting loyalty and convenience and supporting “shop local” initiatives.

BrightScope
BrightScope is an independent data analytics firm that quantitatively rates 401k plans and gives employers, employees, and brokers tools to enhance plan performance and maximize retirement outlook. The BrightScope Rating™ developed in partnership with leading independent 401k fiduciaries, reviews more than 200 unique data inputs per plan and calculates a single numerical score which defines 401k plan quality at the company level.

Canopy Financial
Canopy Financial provides innovative technology solutions that power the Consumer-Directed Healthcare (CDH) programs of some of the world's largest healthcare and financial institutions. Ranked #12 on the 2009 Inc. 500 list, Canopy empowers millions of consumers to take greater control of their healthcare dollars, enables price transparency for routine medical services, and increases the speed in which healthcare providers are paid.

CashEdge
CashEdge is the leader in Intelligent Money Movement™ services that enable financial institutions to engage customers in new ways. CashEdge's Intelligent Money Movement services provide a single point of access, through an online banking or mobile application, for multiple easy-to-use consumer and small business transfer routes.

Credit.com
Serving as an educator, advocate and facilitator, Credit.com empowers consumers with easy-to-understand information about money, credit, loans and more. Credit.com is partnered with trusted financial experts and select companies in order to offer online consumers insightful tips, helpful tools and excellent deals.

Fidelity National Information Services
Fidelity National Information Services, Inc., a member of the S&P 500 Index, is a leading provider of core processing for financial institutions; card issuer and transaction processing services; and outsourcing services to financial institutions and retailers. FIS has processing and technology relationships with 40 of the top 50 global banks, including nine of the top 10.

Firethorn (Qualcomm)
Firethorn, a Qualcomm company, is the crucial link in the emerging mobile commerce ecosystem. As a pioneer in mobile banking, Firethorn is transforming the traditional wallet into a streamlined, efficient and protected mobile revenue channel that will bridge relationships among financial institutions, retailers, wireless carriers and consumers.

Fiserv
Fiserv, Inc. is the leading global provider of information management and electronic commerce systems for the financial services industry, driving innovation that transforms experiences for financial institutions and their customers.

Home-Account
Home-Account is a web-based mortgage finding service helping America's 75 million homeowners take control of their largest asset-- their home via their ‘home-account’. The service grades and analyzes homeowners and their mortgages, presents scenarios to improve their financial situation and then pinpoints the best realistic mortgage options in the market.

Infosys
Infosys defines, designs and delivers IT-enabled business solutions that help Global 2000 companies win in a Flat World. These solutions focus on providing strategic differentiation and operational superiority to clients. With Infosys, clients are assured of a transparent business partner, world-class processes, speed of execution and the power to stretch their IT budget by leveraging the Global Delivery Model that Infosys pioneered.

Intuit
Intuit Inc. is a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses; financial institutions, including banks and credit unions; consumers and accounting professionals. Their financial institutions division, anchored by Digital Insight, provides on-demand banking services to help banks and credit unions serve businesses and consumers with innovative solutions.

iPay Technologies
iPay Technologies is the leading independent provider of Internet bill payment services. Founded in 2001, iPay develops and fully supports consumer and small business online bill pay solutions for more than 2,800 financial institutions nationwide and in Puerto Rico. iPay offers a 99.93% payment success rate with more than 1,200,000 bill pay customers, and over 4,000,000 payments processed each month.

Kapitall
Kapitall is a rich web application that makes investing easy for everyone. Inspired by game design, Kapitall combines an intuitive and engaging graphic user interface with powerful tools that make it easier than ever to research companies, build portfolios, share ideas and get smarter about the market.

MShift
MShift, Inc. provides Mobile Banking solutions that offer the widest array of features, including Bill Payment, Presentment, Transfers, Account Summaries, History, ATM locators, and much more. MShift also provides the only available Facebook Banking application – online banking directly tied into the Facebook environment. MShift’s Facebook banking application won the Online Banking Report’s “Best of the Web” award for 2007.

On Deck Capital
On Deck Capital offers fair and fast financing to small businesses that do not meet traditional bank lending criteria. The company's proprietary underwriting and loan processing platform looks deeper into the health of small businesses, focusing on the overall business performance, rather than the owner's personal credit history.

Outright.com
Outright.com is incredibly simple, online bookkeeping specifically created for the 20 million Americans who work for themselves. Outright offers a streamlined, online solution, with the bookkeeping needs of the small business owners first. Outright's goal is to keep financial records as simple as possible, helping small businesses accurately track all of their income and expenses to estimate and prepare their taxes. And yes, it works on a Mac too.

PayByMobile
PayByMobile is a virtual wallet that will let anyone text to pay when shopping online. Shoppers load money on their wallet at the same shops where they top up to buy airtime and then simply text to pay when shopping at their favorite online store. PayByMobile uses familiar prepaid mobile usability to deliver a simple yet secure online payment alternative for everyone who has a mobile phone.

People Capital
People Capital underwrites students without credit history by projecting individual income levels and ability to pay. Their Human Capital Score™ incorporates merit data such as GPA, standardized test scores, college and major to provide a true and unbiased, data-driven measure of economic value of an education. Their peer-to-peer lending platform allows students to finance their college educations through improved access to private student loans.

S1 Enterprise
More than 100 banks and three million consumer, small business, and corporate users worldwide rely on S1 Enterprise solutions to access and manage their financial information. A division of S1 Corporation, S1 Enterprise is a leading provider of integrated banking solutions that deliver financial service providers a holistic view of their customers whether online, in the branch or in the call center.

Silver Tail Systems
Silver Tail Systems provides next generation fraud prevention to protect against business logic abuse - a rising threat on application logic costing financial institutions hundreds of millions of dollars and significant loss of trust. Silver Tail products use real-time behavior analysis to detect and alert on known threats and new behaviors, then enables the business to disrupt these attacks in real-time.

SimpliFi
SimpliFi is a free online financial planning and advice service that lets anyone plan for their financial future. The company was founded in 2004 as a tenant company in Wake Forest University’s Babcock Demon Incubator. SimpliFi is headquartered in Winston-Salem, NC, and has been providing white label financial planning services to credit unions since 2005.

Skill-Life
Skill-Life, Inc. began as CentsCity, LLC in January 2007 with the goal of building financially healthy youth and communities. Their initial vision of employing online gaming to teach financial skills has evolved into a more interactive, game-based, and comprehensive resource for awarding incentives and building life skills.

SmartyPig
SmartyPig allows customers to open goal-based savings accounts and to invite their friends and family to contribute to their goals. The system is based on proprietary, patent-pending technology and the latest in security standards. SmartyPig’s U.S. banking partner is West Bank, a subsidiary of West Bancorporation, Inc. The company’s Australian banking partner is Australian New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ).

Strands
moneyStrands is an innovative, easy-to-use online personal financial service that goes beyond providing financial analysis tools, with personalized money-saving advice and recommendations, and lets people anonymously compare themselves with people with similar backgrounds and financial goals. The interface is widget-based and highly customizable by the end user. moneyStrands is accessible via a full-capability mobile web version and a native iPhone application.

Yodlee
Leading financial institutions trust Yodlee to power critical online financial applications. Yodlee's personal financial management, payments, and customer acquisition solutions unify all personal financial account information to deliver a simple, centralized and secure source for consumers to manage all of their financial tasks anytime, anywhere. Yodlee makes financial institutions' websites essential to their customers and generates new revenue opportunities.

Nanotech

Ever wanted a site of what's happening and who's doing in the nanotech spaace? Well look no further:

http://www.nanotechproject.org/inventories/

THE WAVE

Thanks MASHABLE for this guide to the google's latest, ubercool comms platform. If you have 1 aroudn an hour and a half to kill, i've posted the original demo video at the bottom.

Today has been dominated by news and excitement surrounding Google Wave (), Google ()’s new real-time communication platform that will launch to the public later this year. In fact, there’s been so much buzz that you might just not have enough time to read the thousands of articles being released on Google’s biggest product launch in recent memory.

To make sense of it all, we have compiled key information, definitions, and links related to the launch of Google Wave. This in-depth guide provides an overview of Google Wave, discusses the terminology associated with it, details information on Google Wave applications, (i.e. the Twitter Wave app Twave), and goes over ways to keep yourself informed. We know you’re excited about Google Wave, so here’s what we think you should know:

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What is Google Wave?

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While we suggest reading our article on the launch of Google Wave for more detailed information, here’s the sum of it: Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.

Google Wave has a lot of innovative features, but here are just a few:

- Real-time: In most instances, you can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character.

- Embeddability: Waves can be embedded on any blog or website.

- Applications and Extensions: Just like a Facebook () application or an iGoogle gadget, developers can build their own apps within waves. They can be anything from bots to complex real-time games.

- Wiki functionality: Anything written within a Google Wave can be edited by anyone else, because all conversations within the platform are shared. Thus, you can correct information, append information, or add your own commentary within a developing conversation.

- Open source: The Google Wave code will be open source, to foster innovation and adoption amongst developers.

- Playback: You can playback any part of the wave to see what was said.

- Natural language: Google Wave can autocorrect your spelling, even going as far as knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” It can also auto-translate on-the-fly.

- Drag-and-drop file sharing: No attachments; just drag your file and drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.

While these are only a few of the many features of Google Wave, it’s easy to see why people are extremely excited.

Google Wave was the brainchild of a team based out of Sydney, Australia. The core team members are two brothers, Jens and Lars Rasmussen, and lead project manager Stephanie Hannon, all of whom were involved in Google Maps () previously. Google Wave was announced today at Google’s I/O Developer conference, although the product will not be available to the public for several months.

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Terminology

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Google Wave actually has its own lingo - yes, you have to learn a few definitions if you’re going to really understand this new communication platform. Having knowledge of these terms will help you understand more about Google’s newest project.

- Wave: A wave, specifically, refers to a specific threaded conversation. It can include just one person, or it can include a group of users or even robots (explained below). The best comparison I can make is that it’s like your entire instant messaging (IM) history with someone. Anything you’ve ever discussed in a single chat or conversation is a wave.

- Wavelet: A wavelet is also a threaded conversation, but only a subset of a larger conversation (or a wave). It’s like a single IM conversation - a small part of a larger conversation and a larger history. Wavelets, though, can be created and managed separately from a wave.

- Blip (): Even smaller than a Wavelet, a Blip is a single, individual message. It’s like a single line of an IM conversation. Blips can have other blips attached to them, called children. In addition, blips can either be published or unpublished (once again, it’s sort of like typing out an IM message but not yet sending it).

- Document: A document actually refers to the content within a blip. This seems to refer to the actual characters, words, and files associated with a blip.

- Extension: An extension is a mini-application that works within a wave. So these are the apps you can play with while using Wave. There are two main types of extenisons: Gadgets and Robots

- Gadgets: A gadget is an application users can participate with, many of which are built on Google’s OpenSocial platform. A good comparison would be iGoogle gadgets or Facebook applications.

- Robots: Robots are an automated participant within a wave. They can talk with users and interact with waves. They can provide information from outside sources (i.e. Twitter ()) or they can check content within a wave and perform actions based on them (i.e. provide you a stock quote if a stock name is mentioned).

- Embeded Wave: An embeded wave is a way to take a Google Wave and the conversation within it and place it on your website. Users could use this as a chatroom, as a way to contact you, or for something more.

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Wave Gadgets

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A Wave Gadget is one of two types of Google Wave extensions. Gadgets are fully-functional applications. According to Google, gadgets are primarily for changing the look and feel of waves, although this seems to only scratch the surface of the potential of a wave gadget.

First: almost any iGoogle or OpenSocial gadget can run within Google Wave. That means thousands of applications that have been already created will work in Google Wave. Second: a gadget built within Google Wave can take advantage of live interaction with multiple users. This means something like a live online game with active participation from all users. In that way, it has similarities to Facebook or MySpace () applications, which take advantage of your friend network to make games, quizzes, and applications more meaningufl and useful.

Gadgets are specific to individual waves, rather than to specific users. Thus, it’s not like having a Facebook app on your profile - the gadget belongs to everyone within the wave. They also do not have titles, to better integrate with the actual conversation. Some of the gadgets already built include a Sudoku gadget, Bidder (which turns your wave into an auction), and Maps (which allows for collaboration on a Google Map).

For a more technical explanation, be sure to check out Google’s Wave Gadgets Tutorial.

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Wave Robots

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Robots are the other type of Google Wave extension. Robots are like having another person within a Google Wave conversation, except that they’re automated. They’re a lot like the old IM bots of the past, although far more robust. Robots can modify information in waves, interact with users, communicate with others waves, and pull information from outside sources.

Because it acts like a user, you can define its behavior based on what happens in the chat. You could build one as simple as “change the word dog to the word cat” or one as complex as a fully-functional debugger. We’ll probably start seeming some very advanced robots in the near future.

Some of the robots already in service include Debuggy (an in-wave debugger), Stocky (which pulls stock prices based on stock quote mentions), and Tweety (the Twave robot, which displays tweets inside of a wave).

A more advanced explanation is available at Google’s Wave Robots Overview.

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Wave Embeds

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Wave embeds are a little more complex than embedding a YouTube () video onto your blog, yet in the end, that’s really what Google Wave Embeds are: a way to take Google Waves onto a third party website. Embedded Waves support many of the functions of the actual Google Wave client, including dragging-and-dropping files.

While the Wave Embeds is still very early stage, Google has already built two: YouTube Playlist Discuss and Multiple Extensions Embed. The former allows you to discuss a YouTube video via a wave and the latter allows for interaction with multiple waves on the same page.

One possibility: Google Wave Embeds may be a real-time replacement to static comments. If Google perfects wave embeds, you could even see YouTube.com comments replaced with waves, although it is way too early to make any calls on the potential of this.

Google’s Wave Embed Developer’s Guide has more advanced information embedding waves.

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Furthering your Google Wave education

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The Google Wave Logo

Still can’t get enough of Google Wave? While information is sparse, hopefully this collection of links will help you understand this new product even more.

- Mashable ()’s Google Wave Coverage: We highly suggest bookmarking our Google Wave coverage and checking Mashable consistently for the latest information on Google Wave.

- Google Wave Federation Protocol: Google has provided some community principles, architecture information, and more detailed definitions on their Wave protocol webpage.

- Google Wave API: For developers interested in building applications for Google Wave, be sure to check out the Wave API website.

- Google Wave Updates: Want to be informed the second Google Wave is available? Here’s the sign-up form.

Web Trends: What's New in 2009, Part 2

Thanks again ReadWriteWeb for this post on what's new in digi in 2009


Last week we discussed some of the new trends we're seeing on the Web in 2009: open data, structured data, apps that filter content effectively, real-time, personalization, mobile (especially location-based), and Internet of Things (the Web in real-world objects). We asked for your thoughts on these trends, along with your suggestions on what we should add. Also we were interested to know what products you've seen this year that are doing something new and 'beyond Web 2.0'. In this post we look at some of your responses, to try to define further what defines this current era of the Web.

So What Else is New?

Other than the trends we've already listed, what else did our readers identify as new this year?

Babak Samii pointed out that in 2009 there has been an increase in "real, defined business models that can actually generate revenue." MacStories agreed, noting that we'll see many innovations in revenue models as a result.

Aaron Fulkerson of Mindtouch commented that "Web Oriented Architectures are redefining ROI and TCO for enterprises." I had to google the second acronym (shows how long I've been out of the corporate world - it means "Total Cost of Ownership"). Aaron is right that enterprises are taking the Web seriously now for business apps - the slow rise in popularity of Google Apps in enterprises is evidence of this.

Willi commented that there is a "new lightweight" about the current Web. "There is a new granularity, atomicity and a kind of chemistry," he remarked. He noted the way that people can "jump in Twitter from persons to hashtags to new interesting persons and their social bubble in real-time." As examples, he pointed to products like Evernote (a note-taking app - our most recent review) and Mir:ror (we reviewed Mir:ror earlier today - it's an Internet-enabled device which enables you to create actions on your computer via everyday objects such as coffee mugs and books). Willi noted that while they may appear to be relatively trivial products, "new use patterns and user benefits emerge" out of them.

Open Data... Except Export

Not everyone in our previous post agreed with the initial set of trends. RWW commenter William claimed that 'open data' is a misnomer, because users mostly cannot export their data from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Friendfeed, Google, et al. We wouldn't go as far as William and label this "web 1.9.8.4.", however it's fair to say that - as far as users go - the promise of open data far outweighs the reality.

Having said that, the other meaning of 'open data' is that it's open for developers to build on top of. The plethora of Twitter apps built on top of Twitter's API is evidence enough of this. While Jason Barone called this "a one-way stream back to their closed system, in the form of an API," it's better than what we had before - which was fewer APIs and not many Linked Data sets (see the Linked Data graph from just 2 years ago, in this recent post). So overall we're encouraged that API data - or even better, Linked Data sets - will enable more and better connected web apps. This makes for a richer ecosystem of Web apps and social connections, which is a very good thing.

But point taken William and Jason, today for users the idea of 'open data' is half-realized at best. It won't be truly open until we have data portability - when you own your identity and content on the Web.

Real-time in the Real World

So far much of the focus on real-time as a new(ish) trend on the Web has focused on trendy apps such as Twitter and FriendFeed. However, Andria Krewson pointed out in the comments to our last post that real-time will spread much further than the early adopters:

"Real-time is huge. Many companies are built on timed data dumps, with the timing affecting workflow and cash flow, but the always-on generation will soon pressure businesses to provide real-time online information. Banks that don't post real balances in a timely way, or insurance companies that take weeks or months to process paperwork, or government agencies that don't provide timely transparent data will face pressures from millennials demanding faster, more accurate information."

On this note, a commenter called Joe remarked that we may be mis-using the term 'real-time.' "For the record," said Joe, "none of those sites you mentioned are doing REAL real-time, they are simply doing interval-based polling for new data on the server." Joe advised us to check out http://obama.collecta.com to see a good example of pushing to the browser using long-polling, not interval polling. We did indeed check that out, and wrote up our findings. While we were impressed that the search results were all less than a minute old, we're not convinced that just more speed means a better form of real-time than Twitter or FriendFeed. Time will tell.

Note: for a very mathematical explanation of why Twitter isn't really real-time, read this comment by Falafulu Fisi (made on a recent RWW post).

Conclusion

Well, there is no conclusion because the Web is an evolving beast. We're excited to see open data becoming more prevalant, even if it hasn't fully opened up yet. We're excited to see real-time making such an impact this year. We're excited about mobile and Internet of Things. There is a lot of innovation happening this year, which is pleasing to see.

Once again we invite you to list in the comments any other trends you're noticing - and just as importantly, what products you're seeing that exemplify these trends.

Here's the original 5-minute presentation which kicked this series off:

Image credits: cartoon screenshot from Geek And Poke; nano:ztag by aaron schmidt