ION, the leading provider of mission-critical trading, risk management, and workflow automation software, has won two categories in Chartis Research’s annual BuySide50 2023 rankings. ION’s LatentZero topped the compliance and cash/treasury management categories. ION also rose nine positions in Chartis Research’s rankings from last year, breaking into the top 15.

Chartis Research, the leading provider of research and analysis into risk technology, publishes the BuySide 50 report, ranking the top 50 risk and buy-side vendors. Featuring a record number of submissions, the 2023 report is a comprehensive, clear, and independent analysis of investment management services for the buy-side.

Market volatility, regulatory change, and interest in new asset types have heightened the pressures on buy-side firms. As a result, quick, reliable, and uninterrupted access to data is increasingly critical for asset managers to navigate and compete successfully. Actively seeking to help clients to deal with these demands, ION continually enhances its solutions. Fully automated, LatentZero simplifies these complexities, unlocking greater efficiency for the buy-side by prioritizing both data and transparency.

Chartis BuySide 50 named ION's LatentZero as the leading solution for compliance and cash/treasury management. With its fully web-based UI, LatentZero Compliance SaaS supports compliance teams through a transparent view of transactions - providing best-in-class control, monitoring, and audit capabilities to review every trade action and ensure that portfolios remain compliant.

LatentZero provides access to markets and brokers worldwide, giving a complete view of cash, positions, liquidity, and total cost analysis in real-time. It remains unparalleled in guaranteeing quick and accurate order and trade management. With continuous compliance checks incorporated at every stage, LatentZero OMS enables firms to meet regulatory demands – no matter the pace of change.

LatentZero’s cloud-hosting functionality integrates easily with existing platforms without requiring specialist resources, reducing infrastructure costs and offering an improved experience for buy-side firms and their clients. The platform is fully customizable, equipping all traders to manage their transactions of any size – and meet compliance demands as they evolve.

“We’re delighted with our increased ranking from last year; and honoured to be named the leader in compliance and cash/treasury management,” said Steven Strange, Head of Product (Asset Management) at ION Markets. “As regulations continue to evolve and margins tighten, efficient compliance and cash management processes will be vital to buy-side success. LatentZero automates these processes, delivering real-time and actionable insights. This recognition testifies to how our best-in-class solutions are evolving to meet market needs.”  

Finastra, a global provider of financial software applications and marketplaces, announced that Salve Financial Hub SpA (Salve FH), a European payments processing startup based in San Marino, has selected Finastra Essence to reduce payment delays resulting from over-compliance. Finastra’s SaaS solution, integrated with Digital Engagement Hub, its suite of digital applications, will help Salve FH process rapid, high-value payments for corporates and their beneficiaries by providing stringent compliance checks during the onboarding process and on a regular basis thereafter. The company will also leverage Finastra’s APIs to build and maintain integrations with custodian and central banks.

“As a startup with ambitious growth plans, we need a flexible solution, underpinned by robust technology, that enables us to tackle a major driver of late payments for our customers in Europe and eventually other regions,” said Massimo Ferracci, CEO at Salve Financial Hub SpA. “Coupled with the team’s expertise and ongoing support, Finastra’s innovative, proven SaaS solution and suite of applications will help us adapt quickly to new regulatory and customer demands and implement more applications as we grow. This is a strategic move that allows us to help more customers reduce the time and costs of delayed transactions resulting from over-compliance.”

Essence is a cloud-first, next-generation digital banking solution which combines sophisticated functionality and advanced technology to increase enterprise agility, reduce costs and improve operational efficiency. Powered by open, microservices architecture, Essence's rich, broad and deep retail and commercial banking functionality will enable Salve FH to rapidly deploy market-leading products and services as it grows. Enabled by Digital Engagement Hub, the fintech will also deliver data-driven, insight-led customer experiences, across a range of areas including, streamlined onboarding, seamless origination and sophisticated, omni-channel mobile and online banking.

“Salve FH is a fast-growing fintech that speeds the flow of payments between its customers, via a hub model operating within a wider ecosystem,” said Siobhan Byron, EVP, Universal Banking at Finastra. “Balancing compliance checks and speed is crucial for the company as it works to remove friction from payments services and deliver a seamless experience to its customers without compromising security or fraud prevention. With open technology, cloud and seamless integrations, we are supporting Salve FH as it continues to grow its customer base and contribute to the economic growth of the San Marino financial system.”

Mark Johnson, Commercial Director at Acquired.com, said, “Mondu’s products and services complement our payment offerings, and the values of our two businesses are incredibly aligned. We deliver best in class services with a customer-centric focus, and we can clearly see an incredible value for our business customers looking to introduce a buy now, pay later service to their B2B clients using Mondu.”

Roger De’Ath, UK Managing Director at Mondu, added, “We’re hugely excited to have partnered up with the team at Acquired.com. As a well-established player in the payment space, they know the challenges associated with B2B payments very well and have built a great service to support any company to create a perfect payment experience. We’re sure that combined with Mondu we can provide a huge benefit to shared customers looking for better B2B payment solutions through Buy Now, Pay Later and Acquired.com’s services.”

Consumer fintech Salmon today announces it has secured a USD 20MM debt facility from U.S. emerging-markets specialist investment firm Argentem Creek Partners, enabling Salmon to further scale its lending operations across the Philippines. Building on significant investor interest in the debt placement, Salmon will expand its loan book, leveraging its existing point-of-sale and cash loan lending, and will launch new disruptive products in the second half of 2023. 

The debt transaction, which was completed despite the volatile market environment, sets a new benchmark as the largest-ever debt financing for a Series A tech company in the Philippines. The deal positions Salmon, which was founded less than a year ago in July 2022, as one of the fastest growing fintechs in Southeast Asia. Salmon was set up by a group of fintech and financial services industry veterans led by Pavel Fedorov, George Chesakov and Raffy Montemayor, who brought together a team with a track record of delivering fast and profitable growth. In year one, the fintech has expanded rapidly, launching its first credit product only four months after inception and delivering new product launches every three months since then. 

Salmon Co-founder Raffy Montemayor commented: “We are tremendously humbled by the strong investor interest, as well as Argentem Creek’s support for Salmon’s vision to create the best credit-led fintech in Southeast Asia and for making financial services more accessible to all. We especially want to highlight Argentem Creek’s focus on building a win-win partnership with Salmon and believe that there will be many options for extending our work together, as Salmon maintains its rapid pace of development in Southeast Asia. We see this milestone as a testament to Salmon’s potential, as well as the market’s trust in our vision and business model. This transaction also conveys a message of hope to many young and aspiring Filipinos, highlighting to them the incredible opportunities that the global investment community sees in the Philippines today. Financial inclusion will be an important driver of sustainable economic growth in the Philippines, and Salmon is committed to continuing to play a key role in this transformation.”

Argentem Creek Partners President and Co-CIO Maarten Terlouw commented: “Argentem Creek Partners is delighted to deliver an important component of Salmon’s capital structure. We are a long-term value-oriented investor and are excited to support Salmon in its ambitious drive to expand financial inclusion across the region, as well as to provide best-in-class customer service and make lending more accessible to consumers in the region.

“We look forward to working together with Salmon’s world class investors including Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund ADQ, one of Europe’s top venture investors and a group of prominent local investors, as well as Salmon’s top notch management team, to deliver long-term value in the Philippines.”

Argentem Creek Partners’ CEO and Founder Daniel Chapman commented: “Consumer lending is one of the fastest growing segments in Southeast Asia. We are convinced that the new generation of credit-focused fintechs like Salmon have a tremendous opportunity and that Argentem Creek could play an important role in driving forward financial inclusion in these exciting markets”.

An innovative FinTech business dedicated to improving the payments sector through the power of technology is on track to double its market share, after accelerating growth by an impressive 80% over the last 6 months alone. 

Established in 2018, Modern World Business Solutions was founded by CEO, Warren Whitfield, with a clear vision to ‘join the dots’ in the payments ecosystem and improve the relationship between acquiring banks and end merchants. 

Since this time, Modern World Business Solutions has developed its own tech platform, which not only improves how payment solutions are offered, but also provides merchants with its own dedicated panel that delivers valuable financial analysis and insights.  

As such, not only has Modern World Business Solutions quickly grown into one of the UK’s most popular providers for merchant services - but it also boasts direct relationships with 14 acquiring banks, enabling it to build out a successful partner programme with over 1,000 resellers already on board. 

Now on track to turnover in excess of £2.5 million by the close of 2023, Modern World Business Solutions is quickly disrupting the payments industry – with plans already in place to launch new solutions within the coming months. 

Warren Whitfield, Founder and CEO of Modern World Business Solutions, confirmed: “For many years, the payments sector has been synonymous with outdated and disjointed processes – particularly when it came to sales – leaving many businesses in uncertain positions. 

In launching Modern World Business Solutions, we not only recognised this issue but worked hard to develop our own tech platform that would overcome it and disrupt the sector, while delivering more value to acquiring banks and merchants alike. 

The growth we have achieved since launch - and particularly over the last 6 months - is just brilliant and highlights that we are right in our approach to the market. I now look forward to continuing to innovate and in firmly establishing Modern World Business Solutions as a leading provider in the sector.”

Headquartered in Cambridgeshire, Modern World Business Solutions works closely with leading acquiring banks, including Elavon, Worldpay and AIB.

Its impressive growth has been supported by an experienced team of FinTech specialists, with headcount now at 25.

Adrian Field, Director of Market Development at OneID®, said, “As a bank-based UK identity scheme, OneID® enables anyone who uses online banking to prove who they are online in the fastest and safest way. To extend our reach to those who don't bank online and to offer global ID capabilities, OneID® has chosen IDVerse as our partner for document-based ID. They bring the best in AI technology and services which complement OneID®'s offering. Their next-gen, app-free document recognition and selfie matching capabilities are also unparalleled, removing friction from the onboarding journey and empowering businesses to offer a smooth customer experience.”

Russ Cohn, General Manager EMEA at IDVerse, added, “OneID® customers can now benefit from our extensive global document coverage and forensic fraud analysis and Zero Bias AI™ tested neural network which is trained on generative AI. Our collaboration will significantly improve and streamline their customer journeys, where previously paper-based processes added painful friction. Providing customers with multiple ways to securely verify their identity in seconds will help organisations increase conversion rates and enjoy significant cost savings, replacing existing methods while enabling digital ID verification to be used to its full potential.”

New York-based Cognaize, an intelligent document processing (IDP) company harnessing proprietary hybrid intelligence technology, announced the closure of an $18m Series A funding round.

The funding round, spearheaded by Argonautic Ventures and featuring significant contribution from Metaplanet among other investors, seeks to fuel Cognaize’s rapid growth trajectory and consolidate its leading position in hybrid intelligence-driven AI solutions targeted at the global banking and insurance market leaders.

Cognaize operates by deploying an innovative hybrid intelligence approach to fulfil the promise of AI in financial services. Its advanced AI platform combines bespoke deep-learning AI technologies and financial models, informed by more than 1.3 million financial documents such as loan applications, SEC filings, and ESG-related documents.

With a unique user interface, the platform ensures the smooth involvement of human “experts in the loop” throughout the document automation process. By tackling the complex challenges faced by data scientists and frontline financial analysts, the Cognaize AI platform streamlines decision-making and drives notable results.

The recent funds are set to supercharge research, product development, marketing, and sales, thus expanding Cognaize’s capacity to meet the escalating global demand for their AI solutions. The firm’s products are uniquely positioned to address the specific challenges of the global financial industry.

Following a year of remarkable growth, with Cognaize’s annual recurring revenue and GAAP revenues increasing by 4x and three times respectively from the previous year, the firm has sustained its upward momentum in the first half of 2023.

Argonautic Ventures managing partner Viken Douzdjian said, “We are thrilled to partner with Cognaize as they apply the transformative power of AI and large language models (LLMs) to finance. We have strong conviction in Al, Vahe, and the Cognaize team to define how the finance industry interacts with AI.”

Rauno Miljand, managing partner at Metaplanet, expressed similar sentiments. “Cognaize is a company to watch. They are rapidly redefining how the finance industry can leverage modern AI to harness the power of their own data to dramatically cut costs while simultaneously creating new competitive advantage.”

CEO of Cognaize, Al Eisaian, said, “Closing this oversubscribed Series A is a testament to our investors’ commitment as well as the value Cognaize’s AI solutions are delivering to a who’s who of global leaders in the financial industry.”

Vahe Andonians, founder, CTO and CPO, Cognaize, said, “We remain committed to constructing a cross-source knowledge graph that will deliver deeper intelligence – a critical step for substantial progress in our domain.”

Despite earning six-to-seven-figure-a-year incomes, many content creators are denied the capital they need to expand their businesses. The reasons vary, but most are relatively young and have limited business and credit histories, and deal with inconsistent income across platforms.

It’s a lucrative problem to crack. According to one source, hundreds of millions of people now create content full-time, and could well drive the market for digital content creation to over $180 billion by 2032.

The huge addressable market spurred Eric Wei and Will Kim, best friends who met in 2016, to found Karat Financial, which aims to help creators manage their money across payments, bank accounts, invoicing and more.

Y Combinator-backed Karat’s first product was a business credit card that provides creators higher limits based on their social and financial stats instead of FICO scores. But the company’s now looking to expand its offerings with a card that builds personal credit history.

“The bottom line is that Karat sees creators as the brands and businesses of tomorrow, but high-end creators, just like any other business, need access to capital to grow,” Kim told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Karat is here to fuel that growth, democratizing access to capital that remains outside the focus of large banks. Creators are eating the world, and Karat is in a great position to be the financial system that powers them.”

Wei, a McKinsey and Blackstone veteran who previously worked at Meta as a product manager on Instagram Live, makes the case that traditional banks don’t understand the ins and outs of the creator business. Banks usually require a steady monthly income from “conventional” revenue sources, like products and services businesses, to make loan decisions — leading them to turn down even high-earning creators.

More than two million creators make over $100,000 per year, and according to VC firm SignalFire. And over 46.7 million people have enough of an online following to monetize their content part time.

No business can possibly hope to predict viral trends, especially in the creative content space. But Karat makes an effort to minimize risk using an underwriting model it developed in-house, the details of which remain under wraps.

“Karat analyzes creators’ cross-platform success, looking at factors like social reach, audience engagement, mix of platforms and monetization to create a more accurate picture of their business model,” Wei said, adding that Karat plans to add some form of machine learning to the model in the future. “This enables Karat to serve creator businesses that otherwise wouldn’t have access to capital.”

Wei wouldn’t say how exactly how many creators have been approved for Karat’s credit card to date. But he did volunteer that over 1 billion users follow its clients, which include real estate agent Graham Stephan, Linguatrip co-founder Marina Mogilko and Arab-Israeli vlogger Nas Daily.

“No one is doing what Karat is doing at this level or scale that’s uniquely tailored to the creator economy,” Kim said. “Creators have already made millions of dollars in transactions using Karat business cards, benefiting from higher limits and exclusive rewards.”

Having built out the base card business, Karat is shifting its attention to the aforementioned new card — the one focused on personal credit history — in partnership with Visa. As holders of the new card make on-time payments, Karat, which won’t  require a hard credit pull for the card, says it’ll report the payments to major credit bureaus — much like a typical credit card company.

The new Karat card will come with standard benefits like reimbursement for items stolen or damaged within 90 days of purchase. But it’ll also offer creator-specific rewards like access to “member experiences” at industry events such as VidCon and VidSummit.

Cardholders will also have the opportunity to upgrade to personalized bookkeeping and tax services through Karat. Or — if they prefer not to pay — the platform will provide fee-free tools for tracking business write-offs with the card. 

“Our partnership with Visa is the first of its kind for this fast-growing segment, which allows creators to build a history of credit using the Karat card that they can use to secure better rates and terms for other key financial products to scale their businesses,” Wei said.

Karat has competition from startups, like Creative Juice, which underwrite creator businesses in exchange for a cut of their revenue over a certain period of time. But it’s managed to hold its own in the nascent industry, today closing a $70 million Series B funding round, a combination of debt ($30 million, led by TriplePoint Capital) and equity ($40 million, led by SignalFire).

The Series B, which had participation from Union Square Ventures, CRV, GGV, Commerce Ventures as well as actor Will Smith via Dreamers VC, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, brings Karat’s total raised to over $100 million.

“The decision to raise a combination of equity and debt financing was based on careful strategic considerations,” Kim said. “Debt financing allows Karat to access working capital and cover cardholder spend while maintaining control and flexibility, while the equity round led by SignalFire and the participation of esteemed investors brings not only financial resources but also valuable insights and networks to support the company’s trajectory.”

Wei added that the new cash will help Karat scale its existing products and continue to build tools to help creators manage money.

“Karat Financial closed the round now to keep up with the growth of the creator economy, which Goldman Sachs predicts will reach nearly half a trillion by 2027,” Wei said. “Having proved the model and expanded it under a new partnership with Visa, creators now have a smoother path to accessing the capital they need when they need it.”

Kuflink Group PLC (and associated entities, collectively “Kuflink”), one of the UK’s most respected bridging & development non-bank lenders, and European Risk Capital LLP (“ERC”)  jointly announced today that Kuflink has entered into a £35 million institutional debt facility placed by European Risk Capital with Paragon Bank PLC. 

Secured on a diverse portfolio of bridging & development loans, the Revolving Credit Facility provides Kuflink with strategic access to institutional capital, scalable growth, funding optionality, and a significant alternative source of debt finance. With an initial £35 million aggregate size subject to increase, and a flexible three-year commitment renewable annually, the  Facility complements Kuflink’s award-winning Market Place lending platform having originated in excess of £300 million gross loans since its inception with zero investor losses to date. 

Narinder Khattoare, CEO, Kuflink commented: 

“The new facility will take Kuflink to the next stage in the development of our growth plans and is particularly welcome as it ensures certainty of funding for our introducers and complements our existing, successful Market Place lending platform. This agreement is the culmination of a lot of  hard work, not only from our team at Kuflink but especially at European Risk Capital and  Paragon Bank and I would like to thank everyone involved for making it happen.” 

Tony Gioulis, Managing Partner, European Risk Capital commented: 

“Against the current macroeconomic backdrop and challenging market conditions, the Facility is a testament to Kuflink’s loan portfolio credit quality, robust underwriting criteria and, in particular, Team Kuflink’s resilience and track record, in conjunction with Team Paragon’s product skill and asset class expertise. The transaction is consistent with European Risk Capital’s  strategy of delivering transformative value to UK non-bank originator lenders in terms of  committed growth capital and enabling them to access enhanced leverage at a competitive cost of  funds, underpinned by our institutional investor base and its broad risk/return credit profile.” 

Jamie Pickering, Director, Structured Lending, Paragon Bank commented: 

“Paragon is delighted to further our support for innovative specialist lenders by providing  Kuflink with a bespoke, structured solution. With a strong management team and a positive focus  on the UK housing market, Kuflink is ideally placed to achieve their growth plans. I look forward  to following Kuflink’s successful progress, and supporting the growth of other specialist lenders,  in the years ahead.”