We're pleased to announce that the demo videos from FinovateFall 2010 are now available for free download (or immediate consumption) from the Finovate archives.

This fall's NYC conference showcased 56 handpicked companies doing 7-minute demonstrations (no slides allowed) of their latest technology innovations to a sold-out audience of 650 financial & banking executives, venture capitalists, press, analysts and entrepreneurs.

Check out these cutting-edge ideas in financial, banking, payments, mobile, lending, investing and security technologies today for inspiration and your next edge on the competition! 

Following are summaries of the articles posted recently on our Finovate blog. More alumni news is available on our Finovate Twitter feed.

Bling Nation's pilot program serves 500 bank customers in Colorado

Bling Nation began its pilot program with Colorado's State Bank of La Junta in February 2009. Now nearly half the bank's checking account customers are signed up for the service. The company recently announced its first East Coast client, New York's Adirondack Trust Company.

The company offers a unique take on mobile payments, using stickers called Bling Tags that attach to mobile phones. To make a purchase, the user touches the tag to a point-of-sale device called a Blinger. The transactions are authenticated over cell phone networks and do not involve national processing networks, making the process less expensive.

Read the full post here.

Lending Club milestones

Peer-to-peer lending company Lending Club has recently reached a number of milestones.

· Issued more than 10,000 loans worth $100 million

· Surpassed $1 billion in loan applications

· Received $24.5 million VC round on April 14

The company recently updated its visual branding by changing its logo and redesigning its website.

Read the full post here.

Yodlee powers online PFMs

Yodlee estimates that it powers 85% of the U.S. online PFM industry. The company licenses data aggregation, personal finance management, online account enrollment, account verification, bill payment, and funds transfer systems to more than 150 clients including 40 of the top 50 financial institutions. The company projects that the PFM industry will have more than 30 million users by the end of 2010.

In February, Yodlee launched its Yodlee FinApp Store, a platform for developers to create new financial applications.

Read the full post here.

Zecco launches new tools for traders

Zecco launched two new browser-based tools, Zecco Streamer and Zecco Streamer Lite, which provide market data in a customizable dashboard. Users can personalize their trading dashboard by adding and removing modules to present the data they need to track market opportunities. The tools also allow users to place buy and sell orders directly from the dashboard.

Read the full post here.

Following are summaries of the articles posted recently on our Finovate blog. More alumni news is available on our Finovate Twitter feed.

Expensify: One Year Anniversary

Online expense-report generator Expensify marked the first anniversary of its product being live and available to a mass audience on March 10. Some notable accomplishments for the year:

• Raised $1 million in funding
• Developed integrated applications with Salesforce, Outright.com and Intuit
• Launched mobile apps for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Palm Pre
• Launched in the new Google Apps Marketplace.

For more on Expensify and its accomplishments, read the full post here.

FiLife and Mint Remain on Top of Finovate Alumni Traffic Chart

Each month we survey the U.S. Web traffic data for Finovate alumni websites. In our second survey, FiLife and Mint kept the top spots, with 1.5 million and 1.1 million unique visitors respectively. FiLife also showed the highest year-over-year growth, gaining more than 1.3 million visitors.

TradeKing took the prize for month-over-month growth, gaining an additional 69,000 visitors in February for a total of 78,800 -- nearly eight times as many unique visitors than the month before.

And the highest growth for a site not in operation a year ago belongs to Credit Karma's private-label site for Sears' Sears Credit Score which reached 139,000 visitors in less than six months of operation (full post here).

Mint Holds iPad Sweepstakes on Facebook

Mint was the first company we'd seen capitalize on the recent iPad publicity by giving one away to Facebook followers.

To enter the sweeps, users first register as fans of Mint's Facebook site, an action that is usually visible to the user's Facebook friends, further increasing Mint's visibility on the social network. The contest also allowed entrants to name the person who referred them, with the referrer also winning an iPad (full post here).

Prosper Launches Talk Taboo Site

Prosper launched a new social website called Talk Taboo where users can share stories about their finances.

The site includes a simple interface for users to post stories, a page displaying the stories, and a debt-consolidation guide. The landing page contains a link to Prosper, inviting consumers to consolidate their debts with a Prosper loan (full post here).

Stories from our Finovate blog are covering the most innovative financial technology companies in the world, and more alumni news is available on our Finovate Twitter feed.

Half of Fast Company's 10 Most Innovative Financial Companies are Finovate Alums

Fast Company's list of the 10 most innovative financial companies includes five Finovate alums - FiLife, Intuit, Yodlee, Credit.com, and Simplifi. FiLife was not only #1 in finance, but also the only financial company to be ranked in the overall Top 50.

Finovate alumni commanded the top three positions, with Intuit and Yodlee following FiLife. Credit.com was #7 and Simplifi was #9 (full post here).

FiLife and Mint Top Finovate Alumni Traffic Chart

FiLife also has the highest website traffic among Finovate alums with more than 2.7 million visitors. Mint was second with 1.7 million. FiLife and Mint were also the fastest-growing alumni sites, gaining 2.6 million and 612,000 visitors respectively over the previous year.

And the zero-60 awards go to ThreatMetrix and Home-Account who both went from zero to nearly 200,000 unique visitors, a phenomenal amount of traffic for a financial company in their first year (full post here).

Firethorn App Provides Mobile Access to More Than 3,700 Financial Institutions

Firethorn has updated its mobile banking app to allow consumers to access accounts at more than 3,700 U.S. financial institutions. Expanding beyond its current list of integrated banking partners brings the company's app to a wider range of consumers.

Since its mobile app interfaces with existing online banking systems, Firethorn can provide consumers with mobile banking even when their bank doesn't support it. The app also gives users the ability to access account information from multiple institutions from within a single interface (full post here).

Jawalla Adds Skype and Twitter Alerts to its Online Banking Platform

Jwaala has added Twitter and (in what we believe to be a first) Skype alerting capabilities to its MoneyTracker BOB (Better Online Banking) platform. The addition gives Jwaala's clients the ability to offer consumer alerts through channels already familiar to their customers.

Alert systems are important to financial institutions because they provide personalized information to customers where and when they most need it. Expanding its alert capabilities helps Jwaala differentiate itself from competing platforms (full post here).

Stories from our Finovate blog cover some of the most innovative financial companies in the world. More alumni news is available on our Finovate Twitter feed.

BancVue Acquires Financial Literacy Company Skill-Life

In its first corporate acquisition, BancVue purchased fellow Finovate alum Skill-Life, a company that produces interactive games that promote financial literacy. The purchase price was not disclosed. BancVue expects to make more acquisitions and strategic partnerships in the future.

Skill-Life produces customizable game platforms where children can earn real-world rewards as incentives in games that teach financial skills. Skill-Life licenses its platforms to financial institutions, enabling them to add their own branding to the game environment (full post here).

Billeo Adds Bing to Offer Assistant

Billeo has added Microsoft Bing to the list of search engines supporting its Offer Assistant product. Partnering with Bing gives Billeo the top-three players in the Internet search market (it already works with Yahoo! and Google), representing about 97% of U.S. searches.

Offer Assistant helps consumers take advantage of incentives and rewards from credit or debit cards while using search engines to shop online. Billeo's partnership with Microsoft adds Bing's cash-back rewards program to the service (full post here).

Credit Karma Launches New Dashboard Tool

Consumer credit information provider Credit Karma has launched a new feature that provides targeted offers to visitors at its site. The feature, called the Ways to Save Dashboard, draws on information provided by visitors to anonymously shop for and present financial products offers.

With its new Dashboard feature, the Credit Karma site automates the complex process of researching new loans, credit cards, saving accounts, and other financial products (full post  here).

Syphr's RateMatch system was designed to help credit unions find new members and loan customers. Syphr generates revenue by charging financial institutions when prospective clients click on a link to contact the institution. According to Syphr, the RateMatch engine has processed more than 5,000 reports, with an average loan payment savings of $239 per month.

Syphr's newest innovation is MoreThanACreditReport.com, a credit reporting website with targeted loan information. It's designed to help consumers save by comparing their current loans to those offered by Syphr's affiliated banks and credit unions. Instead of offering just the credit report, the company provides money-saving loan deals. The site launched January 14, 2010 (press release here).

Although the site emphasizes a free credit report, MoreThanACreditReport charges users $14.95/month after a seven-day free trial (see screenshot below; highlighting has been added).

As part of that membership fee, the site's customers get access to other Syphr products including monthly credit monitoring, a credit report every six months, and Syphr's Payment Patrol system, which allows customers to receive notifications of better loan options as interest rates change.

How MoreThanACreditReport.com Works:

1. Consumers register at the MoreThanACreditReport.com site to get their credit report.

2. The site uses the consumer's Zip code to display average loan rates for the local area.

3. Next, using the consumer's credit card information, the site pulls an Experion credit report using a soft pull that does not show as an inquiry on the borrower's credit file.

4. Syphr's RateMatch technology analyzes the user's existing loans and searches for better deals available from affiliated financial institutions in their local area. RateMatch is powered by DataTrac, one of the largest interest rate databases in the United States.

5. The site shows the comparison to the consumer, highlighting where they can save money by refinancing or switching loans. In the example below, Eastern New York FCU is identified as a place that could save the user $60 per month.

If there are no participating financial institutions in the consumer's local area, they are given a RateTrac report, which compares the consumer's loans against the average payment plans offered by loan providers in the area. If the report shows that the consumer is paying more than the local average, the consumer can use the data to help negotiate lower rates.

6. If there are participating lenders available, the website allows consumers to contact the lenders directly simply by clicking on the "exchange it" button. Lenders automatically receive the customer's contact details and credit info.

7. Clicking on an offer on the MoreThanACreditReport site does not constitute a firm offer of credit. The bank or credit union follows up to arrange the actual loan. Because the loan information presented by the website is based on the consumer's credit report, it is likely to be representative of what the participating bank will offer.

My take: Saving money on loans is one of the key reasons people check their credit reports. Syphr says that more than 175,000 people check their credit reports online each month. As a lead-generation system for financial institutions, MoreThanACreditReport.com has the advantage of putting loan offers in front of consumers at the precise time they are thinking about a new loan. 

The MoreThanACreditReport.com site

RateMatch Offers Loan Savings