Blog: 6 Best Ideas for Banks at Finovate Day 1

Of the 30 new products demoed, six seemed to have the strongest potential for banks.

Bank Technology News | May, 2011

The Finovate conference was off to a good start with 850 attendees and lots of enthusiasm for the 30 new financial technologies being demoed. It was telling that the handful of banks that sent a posse of people to attend -- Ally Financial, BBVA, Capital One, TD, USAA, Wells Fargo, Zions Bank – are all ones that are already innovative, perhaps seeking to keep their edge. There were many good ideas, but I've selected five that I think make the most sense for banks (these are not in any particular order):

1. Lendio: This site matches small business borrowers with banks that offer loans that might be a good fit for them. It's a Match.com of sorts for small business owners and banks. It could help a bank that wants to grow its small business loan portfolio to find new customers.

2. Dwolla Dashboard: Several products shown at Finovate provide e-coupons and/or customer purchase data. Dwolla is doing both – it facilitates mobile and online payments and coupons (10 banks have signed up for Dwolla payments already) and provides a dashboard that lets banks track their customers’ purchase behavior and make decisions. For example, should the bank create a Windows 7 app or not -- how many customers use a Windows 7 device for banking or shopping?

3. Code Green: This company demoed ratecast software that broadcasts live messages about loan rate changes over social media and updates loan rate data on the bank's website automatically. A Virginia credit union is beta testing this, another credit union executive in the audience said she was very interested in it as a marketing tool.

4. Hoyos's iris scanner: Although this product wasn't popular in the Twittersphere today, I feel there's a lot of potential for this technology, which takes a picture of the human iris and uses it to identify a customer, say for online or mobile banking. Hoyos today has a tiny USB device bankers could distribute to online banking users and it’s experimenting with using a humble mobile phone camera photo of an eyeball to authenticate mobile banking users.

5. oFlows: The solution oFlows showed today, Mobilize, lets banks provide paperless account openings and loans on a tablet and was a hit among the Twitterers in the audience. To me, this type of technology – electronic documents and digital signatures – is not brand new and is available from Adobe, MortgageBot and others. But the concept of making paperless, tablet-based loans that banks and customers are comfortable with has a bright future.

6. Backbase: This online banking portal provider unveiled today an app store for widgets that banks can add to their online banking sites. The first two apps in the store are a Reuters news feed and Strand personal financial management. The Backbase folks say they will add many more widgets in coming months.

Also noteworthy –

Best demo: Bankon had a guy on stage who breakdanced while spinning a large cardboard arrow that said "GEO" for the geographic location component of its electronic coupon service for banks, for instance, 30% off at the local pizza parlor.

Most appreciated food: The afternoon snack was small chocolate and vanilla cupcakes and thin pieces of mystery meat that turned out to be bacon. This was a winning combination for many members, who slipped into what one attendee referred to as "bacon comas."

Most intriguing non-banking ideas:

1. Enloop lets people with business ideas create a business plan on its site, the hosted software uses predictive analytics to determine how likely it is to succeed. "Everybody has a business idea, having it vetted gives them the confidence to pursue it," says Cynthia McCahon, founder and CEO. The company makes money when people register for the premium version of its service, which 22% of users do.