Our second annual financial innovations conference, Finovate 2008: Experience the Future of Finance, will take place Oct. 14 in mid-town Manhattan. Like the sold-out event last year, 20 innovative financial tech companies will demonstrate their latest products and technologies. Each company exec has seven minutes in front of the audience, and is then available at a dedicated demo station for 90+ minutes for one-on-one discussions. 

While we won't be releasing presenter names for some time, you can get a taste of the content by reviewing our blog coverage (here) and videos from Finovate 2007 (here). Last year, the audience selected Mint, Mortgage Marvel from Mortgagebot, and Prosper as Best of Show. For the entire list of 2007 presenters, see our blog post here.

Nomination process for presenters
Presenter slots are by invitation only. But since we don't (yet) know every cool financial services company on the planet, we're also taking nominations (yes, you can nominate yourself). The two main selection criteria are simple. The product/service/technology must be:

• highly innovative
• related to financial services (either direct-to-consumer, or delivered through financial services companies)

So if you are interested, tell us how you will impress an audience of banking execs, reporters from the major dailies, top industry analysts and bloggers, VCs and a variety of "new product folks" from major tech companies. Please contact my colleague, and conference director, Eric Mattson, <mattson@netbanker.com> for more information on becoming a presenter. 

Attendees, save $350 by registering before May 31
The super-early-bird price ends in three days. So take a moment to lock in your $350 savings on Finovate admission (price = $745). We have a liberal cancellation policy (note 1) if your plans change, so register here before prices go up.

Press, analysts, and bloggers
Subject to space limitations in NYC, we are again inviting press and industry analysts and bloggers to attend at no cost. So get your press requests in early. Contact OBR/Netbanker editor Jim Bruene <jim@netbanker.com>, to request a press pass. For bloggers, please detail your reach in the financial and/or tech industries.  

Note:

1. Cancellation policy: At any time prior to the day of the show, you may transfer your ticket to someone else or roll it over to a 2009 Finovate event. Alternatively, you may elect to receive a refund of the full amount through the end of July, 75% through Aug. 31; 50% through Sept. 30; and 25% up until two days before the event, in this case, by midnight PST Oct. 11.

It takes enormous concentration to listen, much less write about, 40 companies in a single day. So thanks  much to Erin, Scott, Ron, Brad, Matt, Jeff, Corey, Christophe and the others who tirelessly spent their day bringing the event to life through their blogs, videos, and photos (links below).

Blog coverage:

• For a rundown of each company and its demo:
  -- Scott Loftesness of Glenbrook Partners thorough post in Payments News
  -- Erin McCune's thorough coverage in her Forte blog
  -- Christophe Langlois live blogs at NetBanker
• For critiques of each demo:
  -- Brad Garland and friends rate each presentation on a 1 to 5 scale on the Banktastics blog
  -- LazyMan demonstrates he's anything-but in his review of the 40 presentations at Lazy Man and His Money
• For an insightful critique of the value propositions (or lack thereof) presented by each category of presenter, see Ron Shevlin's Thursday must-read post in his Marketing Whims (and check out the comments as well)
• Jeff Stephens at Creative Brand Communications adds his thoughts on several of the themes at The Story blog
• Wing Yu at FinancialMedia.org posted his interview with Vestopia CEO Steve Markowitz
• RateLadder posts about Loanio

Video coverage:

We'll have exclusive full coverage of all 40 demos in their entirety at our Finovate Startup website within a few weeks. We also had two blogger/videographers active at the event:

• Banktastic has a 7-minute video with excerpts of interviews with Mint, SmartyPig and Credit Karma here; their conference photos are here
• Christophe Langlois from Visible Banking shot a number of videos that will be available shortly; his Flickr photostream is here (sample above)

Related press coverage of presenters:

• Daniel Wolfe at American Banker writes about two presenters today, Mint and Wesabe
• Kathering Boehret at the Wall Street Journal and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch cover Mint's new investment-tracking features

An important part of Finovate Conferences, at least for the winners, is the voting process for best demo. All non-presenting attendees receive a ballot which allows them to rate each demo on a scale of one to seven. At the end of the final demo sessions, the ballots are tallied and the presenters ranked 1 through 40 based on the average score. A majority of attendees complete a ballot so it's a good indicator of the group consensus.

There were dozens of awesome demos to choose from, but the peoples' choice yesterday are shown below (in alphabetic order). Congratulations!

 First ROI (BancVue)             Jwaala

Zecco                                                                        Zopa

Videos of all the demos will be available soon at the FinovateStartup website.

Thanks to Christophe Langlois for live blogging today. Unfortunately, we had our first serious NetBanker downtime at 2:30 PM today, so after gallantly posting on 32 presenters, he finished the coverage at his Visible Banking site. We'll post a few more concluding comments tomorrow including the Best of Show winners.

Last demo of the day. Investment information for individual investors with community aspects.

CEO Steve Markowitz takes the stage. Can use the service, in public beta, to track the activity and advice of vetted professional investors. Easy to use and navigate, attractive interface. Have had success in attracting a large following. Good demo.

Second to last demo. Back to mobile.

ClairMail CEO Joe Salesky takes the stage with so much energy he doesn't even wait to be introduced. It's much needed at this point in the afternoon. Shows mobile bill delivery/payment and login via SMS exchange with dynamic link that needs just a password.

Joe closes with a live demo of how fast a text-message query can be returned, asking audience members to text "bal" to a shortcode on the screen. He's run over his time but closes with a flourish.

Mike Massey is going to focus on the TradeKing Community. Excellent news.

Shame Mike was reading, and not sharing his passion and expertise with us. That's what you would expect from the Director of Community Development, right?

Mike was more passionate and relaxed when he started showing the community homepage.

They have a wide range of activities and features to urge people to produce content and contribute: group, blogs, active forums, research produced by members... Excellent.

CEO Jamie McDonald demonstrates Sparkroom's new lead-management service, LeadIQ is currently focused on mortgage leads and has found an average 120% ROI improvement across clients.

Aradiom and mobile strategies are going to build a mobile banking application live, during their 5-minute slot.

You don't have to be an IT expert: The interface is 100% graphic.

Simple, easy to understand, efficient. Well done, Aradiom. Perfect delivery at this time of the day.

Fun presentation. One of the most entertaining of the day. New service allows user to comparison shop for new rewards-checking accounts.

Online account-opening application powered by Andera.

Good interface. Launch date: 2 June 2008.

Proactive identity protection. New version of their flagship service, IDFreeze. Yesterday, they announced the first true family package.

Another service to manage your investments. The interface is simple and intuitive. A lot of graphics and a good Web 2.0 look and feel. The colors are not as fun as on either Zecco, or Mint. It looks like a comprehensive service, but not as cool as the leading Web 2.0 startups.

The presentation was also a bit too dry. No jokes, no frills. Remember that it is already 2:30 p.m., and the pace at Finovate is hectic. Nothing personal, but we need some entertaining presentations!

Proactive identity protection. New version of their flagship service, IDFreeze. They also announced their first true family package. In January, sold 100,000 Suze Orman-branded units in a single day on QVC.

Again, good delivery from Scott but I would have liked to see more of the security products. Good PR: Scott urged the attendees to use the word "finovate" to benefit from a 25% discount on their online security products.

Zopa was the first ever social lending company launched back in Q2 2005 in the United Kingdom. It is one of the most famous Web 2.0 brands with Prosper, Wesabe and Mint. Doug gave a general presentation of its P2P service. Good presentation, but I am a bit disappointed that Doug had no new enhancements or services to demo.

BlingNation and its open payment clearing network BlingLink provide innovative mPayment solutions to financial institutions. Third company at FinovateStartup providing mobile banking technologies. Info is pushed to you. The presentation is the first today with two cellphones and showing how they push info or pay another person. Their goal is to sell bundles: prepaid cards with the phone. Shame we couldn't see the screens of the cellphones very clearly. Perhaps they covered too much during their presentation.

ConfIdent - A new approach to secure login

I really liked Mitchell's presentation. He was interesting, sharp and I am almost tempted to take back the comments I made earlier. I said that online security was critical, but not as "sexy" as online communities, social lending or personal finance.

I liked their innovative approach to secure login. Basically, they use a mix of pictures and numbers. You just need to remember your image secret. Then, you just have to recognize a couple of categories you have chosen. The image category shifts position and the digits change.

Good presentation.

1:46pm - Loanio is on stage

Minor issue with the resolution of the screen.

Loanio is another P2P social lending website. The social lending space is as equally crowded as personal finance. Their unique value proposition is around the concept of borrower and co-borrower.

Everybody in the room likes the example with Bill Gates as borrower and Michael Jackson as co-borrower.

Welcome to Wonga, the only company based outside North America. I met founder and CEO Errol a few times in London. Good presentation, fun to watch with a few entertaining pictures of Errol on Vacation. Wonga is a new way to borrow money when you need it, via your mobile phone. You build a credit profile, and the more often you use the service, the more money you can borrow. Benchmark capital, one of the early investors in Zopa, has invested some money in Wonga.

1:33 p.m. - Gabe is on stage. We fixed their connection issues. According to me, Wesabe is one of the most innovative startups. They were the first startup to focus on the personal finance space back in late 2006. They launch new features, and improve their interface, on a regular basis. What a busy last week for Marc Hedlund, co-founder and chief product officer: They launched a Firefox uploader 2.0, the Wesabe automatic uploader, and the new tips tab the Wesabe Value Engine. Today, Gabe focused on their new feature, the value engine, a great way to make the most of the excellent data available on Wesabe. It enables the members to compare their usual shops and find alternatives. It is a great way to promote smaller businesses. Gabe underlined one of the key strengths of Wesabe: their community, and the team, do a good job engaging with their members. Good presentation, good use of the time.

1:28 p.m. - We had some technical issues with the setup of Wesabe. We will change the order: Tyfone is on stage now. This is the second company at FinovateStartup specializing in mobile banking. Siva is doing a good job on stage. He won't show too many features. He speaks clearly and focuses on one of their key applications, contactless payments. They provide a sim card for financial institutions and financial implementations. They do software and mobile banking as well. Again, very different startup with a bit of Web 2.0/ajax, but no online community. Good time management. Well done, Siva.

1:16 p.m. - Sunil is on stage. Invesra is a planning- and investment-management system, again not as Web 2.0 as the leading startups. You will find more on the video and Visible-Banking.com.

1:10pm - Smartypigg "The 20 first century piggy bag." Again, another personal finance online community with a few differentiators: you can make your goals public, smartypig offers cash booth from retailers, as well as a competitive interest rate. It is easy to contribute to your friend's goals. If you have set up your goals on Smartypig, you can send gift cards to your friends: 25, 50, 100 and 500 cards - way to encourage sensible saving. Their approach is slightly different from competitors with their credit card and their gift cards. The interface is not as "Web 2.0" as the main players.

1:30pm - The co-founders of expensr.com are on stage, Reman Child and Shawn Gupta. Announce acquisition by Strands. 

Expensr is another online personal finance community. Busy market with two clear leaders: Mint and Wesabe. Then you have Buxfer, but it is not clear the other companies will be able to differentiate themselves and reach a critical mass of users. But apparently, expensr has convinced the people from Strengths who acquired the company at an early stage. Interesting.

They launched a new online personal finance manager, moneyStrands, very Web 2.0, focused on widgets.

The interface is pretty but does not look as sleek as that of Wesabe or Mint. Good presentation. Fresh. The two co-founders were dynamic, and the pace of the demo was perfect.

I liked their last slide with the search results on Google and the sponsored link from Mint.

Apologies to the following three companies: GreenNote, SmartHippo and CAPS. I wasn't able to take any notes, still catching up.

* GreenNote: GreenNote is an innovative new company striving to help students obtain loans for education via social networking rather than through traditional lending methods.

* SmartHippo: SmartHippo.com is a vertical search engine and comparison shopping service for financial products. We are the first-ever site that uses the power of community to help consumers find the best finance rates and save money.

* CAPS: Pooling insight from the Fool community, major brokerage firms, and market mavens, CAPS generates stock ratings by weighting the influence of the CAPS community based on their past performance as stock pickers. I invite everybody to check their videos as soon as Jim makes them available on the NetBanker / Finovate website.

The award-winning Mint is the leader in the free online personal finance applications space. Mint was part of the lineup at the first Finovate in NYC. Aaron executed another excellent demonstration. It takes two minutes to set up, and you can receive alerts by email or text. The key strength of Mint is to make personal finance easy.

I am quoting Aaron: "Mint looks cool!" Their user interface is extremely intuitive. Aaron demoed a few recent additions such as "the world's easiest budgeting system," and spend-space which enables you to compare your spending with other Mint members). I liked Aaron's example: he showed us how much he was spending on coffee every month, and compared it to the average spenders in San Francisco and Seattle.

You probably know that Mint's business model is to make financial product recommendations. Mint has signed up about 40 advertisers - among them, all the major U.S. credit card issuers. In the future, they plan to expand in several verticals such as student loans. At the end of his demo, Aaron was proud to show how they flag the charges from banks, and the impact Mint will have on the industry. Good delivery Aaron. And cool product.

Docuthentic says financial institutions mailed 40 billion financial documents in 2007, with an average cost of 2 dollars per mail.

VaultStreet is one of the providers of online storage space, online vault. They collect, organize their documents, and help you securely share their documents with their trusted advisors or contacts. Everything is centralized. I understand the concept, and reckon it would be useful to access all my important documents in an online repository.

In the last few months, many companies launched an online vault service: in the U.K., BT (Britishi Telecom) and O2 (one of the leading cellphone operators); in the U.S., Wells Fargo and its vSafe service.

I wonder whose role it is to help centralize those documents. A telecommunication company, a bank, or a third party? I can't wait to ask VaultStreet how their service compares to Wells Fargo new vSafe service.

Steven is on stage. Cake did a good piece of PR a couple of months ago when they launched an application on FaceBook. Their goal is to help American investors to manage and invest their money themselves. He demoes his homegrown aggregation platform. "You can see all your stuff in one place."

They bring all their transaction history up to 10 years, in real time they calculate your average annual returns. You set up your account in only 2 minutes. The interface looks quite sleek. They calculate your risk for you; you can display them by category, by holding. They use their own proprietary algorithm.

I was particulary interested in how they are leveraging their community: "Community with credibility." Steven didn't have too much time to demo all the features, but he showed us the real time alerts, and started to talk about the cake tick feature and collective wisdom.

Steven was the second presenter to talk at least 30 secs past the five-minute limit.