Trust and verification in the age of ai
President Ronald Reagan famously used the Russian proverb "doveryai, no proverai" ("trust, but verify") to describe his approach to arms negotiations with the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s. Today, the use of powerful, new technologies like AI by unsavory actors has forced banks, lenders, and other financial institutions to confront their own "trust, but verify" challenges when it comes to keeping themselves and their customers safe from fraud and financial crime.
This week's Finovate Alumni Profile features Agentic AI solutions provider for community banks and credit unions, interface.ai . Headquartered in Covina, California, interface.ai won Best of Show in its Finovate debut in 2020. The company most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2023.
In our profile, we look at a pair of new capabilities recently introduced by the company — device biometric authentication and Generative AI (GenAI) bot training — as well as the firm's first major investment: a $30 million funding round led by Avataar Venture Partners.
I'm David Penn with this week's Finovate Weekly newsletter!
Weekly news
Signicat partners with AsiaVerify to help businesses meet compliance requirements.
LendingTree taps Coverdash to launch small business insurance offering.
Alera Group (GCG Financial) partners with TIFIN @Work to personalize wealth management.
Creating opportunities in alternative investments
Can alternative investments help investors diversify their portfolios, reduce volatility, and grow their wealth?
In my November column, I interviewed Scott Harrigan, President of Alto . Alto provides a self-directed investment platform that enables investors to grow their portfolios not just with investments in stocks, but also via investments in alternative assets, including art, real estate, and cryptocurrencies.
In our conversation, we discuss the pain points that investors face when trying to incorporate alternative investments into their portfolios and what companies like Alto are doing to help.
Best of show: interviews with the winners from FinovateFall
Finovate VP and host of the Finovate podcast Greg Palmer catches up with seven of the eight companies that won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2024 in New York.
“FinovateFall’s Best of Show winners come from different backgrounds and contain a wide range of solutions, but they all have one thing in common: they were able to capture the attention of our audience in a very competitive landscape,” podcast host Greg Palmer said. “Hear more of their stories and find out why they’re worthy of your attention too.”
Check out the conversations for yourself. Featuring Bancography , CardLift , Credit Mountain , Eko , Illuma , and Delfi !
Pause button: for all (wo)mankind
One season into the popular alternative history/science fiction series, For All Mankind, and I'm finding it hard not to notice that the only characters you really care much about are the women. From the bravest astronauts to leaders of Mission Control to the precocious child of an undocumented immigrant who becomes interested in space flight at an early age, For All Mankind uses a clever and ironic plot twist to get women in space far earlier and far more frequently than they did in real life and the storyline is all the better for it.
As of November 2024, there have been approximately 100 women in the history of space travel - more than half of whom were from America. The first woman in space was the Soviet Union's Valentina Tereshkova in 1963, and it was not until the early eighties when the second woman in space, Svetlana Savitskaya, made her voyages (1982 and 1984). The first American female astronaut, Sally Ride, made her first space flight in 1983. Sadly, the next woman in space, American Judith Resnik, perished in the Challenger disaster in 1986.
More recently, women have notched some significant milestones when it comes to space flight. As part of SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission, two engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, have flown farther from the Earth than any other women to date. Polaris Dawn was a five-day space mission designed to test Starlink's laser-based communications system.
Looking forward to September of next year, NASA will launch Artemis II, a crewed mission that planners believe will pave the way toward landing the first woman on the moon with Artemis III. Artemis II will include Mission Specialist Christina Koch, along with crew mates Reid Wiseman (Commander), Victor J. Glover (Pilot), and Jeremy Hansen (Mission Specialist). Additionally, Jenni Gibbons has been named as Hansen's back up in the ability that Hansen is unable to participate in the mission.
FinovateEurope 2025: impact and innovation
FinovateEurope 2025 is coming to London on February 25 through 26. With interest growing in a range of fields from embedded finance and BNPL to cryptocurrencies and faster payments, FinovateEurope 2025 promises to be one of our most content-rich conferences in years.
If you are fintech with innovative solutions for banks, lenders, and other financial institutions, FinovateEurope 2025 is a great opportunity to showcase your technology before a live, professional audience. Finovate VP Heather Stowell makes the case below.
Photo by Jonathan Velasquez on Unsplash