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.

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.

The demo lineup at our upcoming FINOVATE Startup conference just keeps getting better. With the additions of SocialPicks, SimpleTuition, Zecco, and Tyfone we now have a total of 34 presenting companies on board. We have a few more cool startups vying for the last couple spots, which we'll announce next week.

The full lineup for the April 29th event is maintained at our website (here). If you want to be in the audience and have a chance to see and interact with these companies, please register here. 

Last week’s Net.Finance conference entitled Online Innovations in Financial Services Marketing brought thought leaders together in New York to examine trends and breakthroughs in the world of banking.

For me, there was one clear take away: The new social tools that allow people to connect with each other online are ushering in a new economy.

We are moving into a social economy, where collaboration and participation between and among consumers will sway their choices more than marketing messages do. Those companies that enable social participation, add value to people’s lives and create authentic experiences for their customers will lead in this new economy. There were other topics discussed, but this theme kept creeping into the presentations and conversations in a way I had never before encountered. I’m going to narrow in on this one theme, which ran throughout the two days of the conference, and I apologize to those companies and speakers I’m not highlighting here.

Jurie Pieterse – ING Direct
Jurie outlined several of the key ways that ING is handling the power of its marketing and messaging to consumers by opening up its brand to customer participation. It is clear from ING’s early experimentation that it has a brand with strong emotional appeal and resonance. The bank opens the doors to people who engage with the brand to create photos, videos and prose about how their relationship with ING helps them manage their money.

Jurie explained that when they delivered the prizes in their user-generated content contests, which ranged from $1,000 to $15,000, most winners said that they entered the contests more from a sense of fun and participation than for the money. After this initial experimenting, ING will begin to examine the data to determine if these contest entrants are more loyal and profitable than less engaged customers. I would bet my Electric Orange account they are.

Chris Larsen – Prosper
It is fascinating to watch Prosper evolve their model. Chris spoke at length about the importance of social capital to improving its default rates. The idea is that people who have peer pressure built into their borrowing habits will pay back at a better rate than they do to traditional financial institutions.

Prosper has found that people who receive at least one of bid from friends or family have significantly lower default rates than those who only borrow from strangers. By leveraging this social capital, the entire community acts more honestly, even if lending to friends and family is a small part of the overall equation.

Jason Knight – Wesabe
Jason sees Wesabe as a community of interest focused on money. By allowing members to tag their financial transactions and share whatever information they choose with the greater community, they create a collective intelligence I find very exciting. I see them as the long tail of financial advice. People discuss better ways to use their money, from smarter investing habits to buying better cuts of meat. All of this collective intelligence fuels a social economy where people rule their situation by having a much healthier relationship to the way they spend their money.

Shari Storm – Verity Credit Union
Shari oversaw the creation of the first “bank” blog, which Verity started in 2004. She has strong information and advice to other FIs considering jumping into the world of blogging. It is clear that the blog is an excellent way to humanize the company and engage with their community in an honest and transparent way.

Thomas A. Desmond – TradeKing
I was blown away by TradeKing, a company I had not heard of before. Their marriage of social tools inseparable from their trading platform is perhaps the very best example of social media being used strategically by a company that I have seen.

They have baked community aspects into everything that happens on their site, so, if traders opt in to the community, they can learn from each other based on their actual trading results (similar to Zecco.com, below)

Asheesh Advani – Virgin Money
It took me a minute to wrap my head around Virgin Money’s model, but once I got it, I was hooked. Many people who buy houses get side loans from friends and family to make a bigger downpayment. Same with student loans, or with unsecured personal or business loans. Virgin creates a model around this kind of lending, so both sides can take advantage of the tax benefits available via a documented lending relationship. It creates excellent flexibility, because if a borrower needs to skip payments, the lender can adjust the loan accordingly. The loan can always be turned into a gift at a later date. This takes a part of the social economy which was underground and unseen, and brings it above board, recognizing it as an important part of the overall economy.

Gabriel Dalporto – Zecco.com
Zecco and TradeKing's models have many similarities (one exception being that Zecco offers 10 free trades each month). Community features are built right into the tools making it easy to track individual investors within the community. That allows the higher performers to gain a following and for newcomers to learn from the veterans. Like TradeKing, Zecco allows community menbers to see the actual trading results and portfolio holding of members (that have opted in), adding an enormous amount of credibilty to discussions about individual stocks and trading strategies.

Summary
It feels more and more to me that we’re at a turning point. I admit that these innovations are small, just barely bubbling up to the surface. But I believe these examples of companies quietly tapping into unmet needs provide a model of the future.

Anyone working at a financial institution who wants to understand the potential opportunities and threats coming our way should watch these companies and understand their models. If my experience is any indication, the social economy will begin to trickle into your FI's strategies and executive discussions and those who best understand these concepts can help inform, influence and shape the outcome.

William Azaroff is the Interactive Marketing & Channel Manager at Vancity where he develops interactive marketing initiatives, and pioneered ChangeEverything.ca, the groundbreaking change-themed online community. William builds on a decade of experience at digital agencies in Vancouver, Seattle and Los Angeles driving strategy, extending brands to the Web and building relationships for companies in several verticals, including Honda, Disney, Intuit Canada and the Government of BC. He discusses trends and noteworthy achievements in social media at his blog: azaroff.com/blog.