Fintechs Stepping Up to Respond to COVID-19

During this time of uncertainty and change, fintechs and proptechs are responding in inspiring and innovative ways. 

Here are a few that caught our eye.

Jumio is donating AI-fueled identify verification services to organizations directly involved in helping with COVID-19 relief.

Stratyfy, which provides interpretable AI products for financial institutions, is offering several free services and solutions in response to COVID-19. These offerings aim to help institutions manage the impact of their customers’ changing behaviors, identify at-risk loan requests, and flag loans at higher risk to become delinquent due to the crisis.

Ron Shevlin, one of the names from our 200 fintech revolutionists series, has been capturing a robust list of other fintechs providing tech during this time.

On the proptech side, Clear Capital — the largest independent provider of real estate valuations and analytics technology solutions in the U.S. — is responding to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) directive for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide alternative flexibilities to satisfy appraisal requirements, which reduces the frequency of in-person interaction to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Clear Capital's tool, OwnerInsight, will launch the week of March 30 and be offered for free. It allows homeowners to provide timely, high-quality information and images of the interior and exterior of their homes to lenders, appraisers, and appraisal management companies.

With thousands of small businesses and workers losing out on income due to COVID-19-related cancellations, Joust is offering advances on unpaid invoices and no-fee payment processing. And NorthOne (a digital bank for small businesses, start-ups, and freelancers) is providing relief from bank fees to small businesses that have been impacted.

Propel, which builds software that helps low-income Americans better manage their social safety-net benefits, is partnering with GiveDirectly to help its 2 million Fresh EBT users access what they need most right now: cash.

In the U.K., a team of fintech entrepreneurs built a proof of concept called Covid Credit to support freelancers during the economic crisis. Self-employed persons would answer questions about their personal circumstances and log into their bank account via open banking to retrieve historic transaction information and verify past income, thereby providing an estimate of lost future income. The consortium involves Credit Kudos, Fronted, 11:FS, Coconut, Capital on Tap, Mazuma, SeedLegals, and TrueLayer. 

Small business lender Kabbage launched an online hub to help boost sales for U.S. small businesses. The site allows the public to purchase gift certificates from participating businesses, putting money into their pockets today while encouraging customer traffic once the pandemic passes.

A new U.K. fintech taskforce has banded together to help SMEs secure funding during the outbreak. The taskforce includes Trade Ledger (digital lending platform), Wiserfunding (digital SME credit scoring platform), Nimbla (trade credit insurance provider), and NorthRow (remote client onboarding platform).

Symphony, a secure and compliant collaboration platform designed for Wall Street, is helping companies transition to remote work and manage business continuity by offering existing customers the ability to add users for the next three months at no additional charge. 

Also, LemonadeLXP is helping financial institutions respond to the influx of customers using their tech tools amidst social distancing. Its Digital Academy platform is designed to help customers learn to use the new tech while reducing the strain on call center and online support staff trying to help customers. The platform is being made available for free at this time.

For our part, The Financial Revolutionist has opened up our All Access version of Event Analyzer to help the financial services and fintech community consider how their marketing and sales strategies will evolve in response to the coronavirus. This first-of-its-kind platform centralizes data on hundreds of conferences across 15 industries, and the complimentary access will allow users to find updates on rescheduled events while planning for Q3/Q4.