Finovate Europe, London’s biggest annual fintech event took place on 11 and 12 February and drew presenters and attendees from all over Europe to pitch their products. Ellie Chambers and Valentina Romeo report from Finovate and pick out some of their banking innovation highlights

In the programme that attendees receive on arriving at Finovate Europe 2014, there is a list of things you should know about the event.

At the top of the list is a bulletpoint that says: "The companies only have seven minutes on stage.

"The demos will come fast and furious, so get ready!"

True to the programme, the demos come thick and fast, with barely time for a company to pitch before they are hustled off-stage in a way that’s neatly analogous to the pace of developments in the fintech world.

There are a few notable trends amongst the presentations, one of which being the proliferation of cloud-based products.

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Five Degrees – cloud banking

Five Degrees is one of the companies presenting a cloud-based product. The Netherlands based fintech firm is at Finovate to demo Matrix – Universal bank in the cloud.

Matrix is essentially a kind of template for online banking – providing models for front, mid and back-end process that can be adapted to the client bank’s requirements.

Five Degrees gives an onscreen demo of the admin side of Matrix, showing how processes can be changed and added.

Björn Holmthorsson, co-founder and CTO says: "As a banker I actually have two options for operating a bank. I could go for the traditional integration of several packages or I could go online and get a subscription for the new matrix of universal banking in the cloud.

"Five Degrees has developed a model bank with all the standard processes of a bank. They can be tailored, on demand, to the local requirements.

"From the admin part of the bank you can manage everything in the bank. Under process templates you see a list of all the standard banking processes that this bank has.

"In Germany, they have a very specific onboarding process called post-ident and to comply with the regulations we need to change the client onboarding process. I will find that process here and onscreen you see the standard process.

"Now I will just drag in an activity and connect it with the standard process, give it a name, set some parameters, validate it and save it."

The model also allows banks to see a list of the products they offer customers and, going into this list, modify a product.

Holmthorsson says:" I can also go into the product part of the system and amend a savings product because this is a new bank and we really want to attract customers.

"So I go into products, I can see a list of all the products we have in the bank and I choose the saver’s account. I’m going to raise the interest rate to 2%."

Fiserv – Mobiliti

Global baking tech company Fiserv is at Finovate to demo the latest version of Mobiliti, its digital banking platform.

The white-labelled platform is already deployed by over 1,600 financial institutions across the world.

Jonathan Atkinson, solution consultant for digital channels at Fiserv says: "As mobile becomes the dominant channel for consumer engagement for banking and more consumers become mobile only users, banks are faced with a number of challenges, but there are three primary ones.

"The 3 primary challenges are, first of all, how can we create an architecture that can effectively cater for the increase in functionality? How do we move from foundational mobile banking to transformative mobile financial services? And how do we deepen customer engagement on a channel that is inherently shallow?"

Along with Denis Zelenskiy, sales executive for digital channels, Atkinson demos the updated Mobiliti smartphone app through way of a fictional scenario in which Zelenskiy needs to pay him back for expenses towards a holiday.

Zelenskiy says: "Without having to authenticate myself I can see how much money I have in my bank account – we recommend this as an optional feature.

"This feature is currently live at a number of banks and has proven to drive mobile banking adoption and usage tremendously.

"I’ve got a push notification from Jon Atkinson – I guess he’s losing his patience and he’s started to request the payment. I choose pay person, and now I have to log into the app. After I log in I am taken directly to the payment screen, where most of the fields will be pre-populated based on the request submitted by Jon.

"So all I have to do is check the amount that I owe him, select the account I want to pay from and confirm the payment. Jon should get the money in a few minutes."

Additional features also include alerts which predict likely financial scenarios, such as a customer going into their overdraft.

GMC – Mobile sales

GMC Software Technology (GMC), the Switzerland-headquartered customer communications management company, showcased its latest mobile sales application.

This app helps banking employees to sell products and services in real-time aiming to improve customer conversion rates, increasing interactivity and speeding up communication.

The Mobile Onboarding program allows the selling of loans, mortgages and other products to create and send policy documents, based on customers’ requirements.

"The platform has already been running in the top 10 financial institutions globally," Antoine Hemon-Laurens, director of mobile products marketing, GMC says.

Hemon-Laurens explains: "On completing the process, clients are sent a digital dynamic welcome kit where they can click on different sections, drill down to areas of interest and view all their signed documents electronically. The welcome kit and all documents can be accessed on any PC or mobile device supporting a completely paperless end-to-end client on-boarding process."

According to GMC, using this technology, staff can sign up customers in minutes. The company claims the previous paper-based process could take up to 14 to 39 days.

With an increase in speed and conversion banks should see a boost to revenue by cross-selling and up-selling products. Hemon-Laurens believes banks could increase their retail revenues by over 30%.