Tag: AI

Meet Menos AI — A Demo Day 12 Presenting Startup

Posted on by Jim Smith

This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on Tuesday, April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been highlighting this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Junchen (William) Wu, Co-Founder & CEO of California-based Menos AI.

Menos AI is building a central intelligence system for asset management, combining the capabilities of a financial information terminal with the judgment of a senior analyst. It is designed to generate, evaluate, and validate alpha ideas for institutional investors. The system transforms unstructured market content into structured trade ideas, identifies the most credible signals, and supports end-to-end testing across different market conditions.

Junchen (William) Wu, Co-Founder & CEO of California-based Menos AI.
Junchen (William) Wu

William, tell us a bit about Menos AI. What problems are you solving? What makes your approach different?

Menos AI is building the AI-native central intelligence system for asset management.

Today, a portfolio manager typically has six screens in front of them — Bloomberg, OMS, portfolio systems, risk tools, research feeds. All showing different pieces of information, but not connected. Even with AI tools, they still have to jump between systems and stitch things together themselves.

We solve this by bringing everything into one AI-native layer. Our system connects across all these tools, understands the full context, and gives you a clear, unified view.

What makes us different is simple: we’re not another screen. We replace the need for all those screens by turning fragmented data into one source of intelligence.

What is your company’s origin story?

The idea for Menos AI was derived from my experience as Head of Quant at Northern Trust’s Front Office Solutions. My role was to help hedge funds and large asset managers manage their data, including investment book of records, risk, accounting, portfolio analytics, and compliance, etc. What I saw consistently was fragmentation everywhere: different systems, siloed data, and no unified view.

We started addressing this by building what we called a “Total Portfolio View”, bringing everything into one place so investment teams could finally see the full picture.

Menos AI is the next step of that idea with the power of AI. Instead of just aggregating data, we’re turning it into intelligence by using AI to not only unify information, but also understand it and help drive better decisions.

Who is your target market?

Our target market is institutional investors: hedge funds, asset managers, pension funds, and family offices. These are highly regulated organizations dealing with large amounts of data, complex workflows, and high-stakes decisions. They don’t just need AI tools. They need a system that is secure, compliant, and can bring everything together to help them make better investment decisions.

What do you mean when you say the distinction between AI-enabled and AI-native is existential for asset managers?

AI-enabled means you’re adding AI on top of existing workflows, like summarizing reports or helping with notes. It makes things a bit faster, but the core process doesn’t change. AI-native means the workflow itself is built around AI. The system continuously reads information, connects it to the portfolio, and generates insights in real time. The difference is scale and speed.

* If you stay AI-enabled, you get incremental improvement.
* If you become AI-native, you operate in a completely different way.

In asset management, where information and timing drive returns, that gap becomes existential.

Which Fintech Sandbox Data Partners have you worked with?

Through Fintech Sandbox, we’ve worked with leading data providers like FactSet and S&P Global.

What were you able to demonstrate based on access to this data?

We were able to demonstrate that structured and reliable data is the foundation for truthful AI. With access to high-quality data from providers like FactSet and S&P Global, we showed that our platform can ingest this data, connect it with portfolio context, and turn it into actionable insights. More importantly, we can use AI to generate results that are explainable, traceable, and deterministic, which is critical for institutional use. In simple terms, this brings AI from a black box into something investment teams can actually trust and use in real decisions.

What milestones has Menos AI achieved so far?

We’ve achieved strong early milestones across product, market validation, and client adoption. First, we successfully launched our product, and it was shortlisted by Hedgeweek as “New Product of the Year,” which is strong recognition from the industry.

Second, we’ve been recommended as a top institutional-grade AI solution for asset management by major prime brokerage consulting teams, who are introducing us to their hedge fund clients.

Third, on the client side, we’re already working with multiple leading global asset managers, supporting teams that manage trillions of dollars.

Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?

Being part of the Fintech Sandbox community has been incredibly valuable for us, especially at this stage of building Menos AI.

What stands out most is access — not just to high-quality institutional datasets like FactSet and S&P Global, but to a broader ecosystem of partners who understand how financial infrastructure actually works. In our space, structured and reliable data is the foundation for building truthful, institutional-grade AI. Fintech Sandbox gave us the ability to prototype and demonstrate that our system can generate explainable, traceable, and deterministic outputs on top of that data.

Beyond the data, the community itself is very high signal. You’re surrounded by founders and teams who are tackling real problems in financial services, not just building surface-level applications. That creates a very different kind of conversation, more focused on scalability, compliance, and real-world deployment.

It’s also been a great platform for visibility. Being part of the Sandbox has helped us engage with major institutions and validate that what we’re building is not just interesting, but actually needed.

What’s next for Menos AI?

First, scaling adoption — expanding from early clients and design partners to broader enterprise deployments.

Second, deepening the product — continuing to build out the platform into a true central intelligence layer, with more advanced, explainable AI workflows that investment teams can rely on.

Third, defining the category — helping the industry move from fragmented tools to AI-native infrastructure.

Our long-term goal is simple: every investment organization will have its own AI-powered central intelligence and we want to be the platform that makes that possible.

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To hear more about Menos AI and five additional exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 12!

Meet DigsFact — A Demo Day 12 Presenting Startup

Posted on by Jim Smith

This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on Tuesday, April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Nishant Tomar, Chairman and CEO of Chicago-based regtech startup DigsFact.

There has been a significant rise in AI driven fraud attempts that mimic customer identity and bypass rule-based fraud engines. DigsFact’s Agentic AI based fraud engine uses human-like reasoning at machine speed to prevent financial crime like fraud and money laundering in any transaction, in less than 1 millisecond. Transactions can be traditional, like check, ACH, wire and cards (credit, debit) or modern like RTP, A2A, Wallet to Wallet, etc. They can be domestic or cross-border or use digital currencies.

Nishant Tomar, Chairman & CEO of DigsFact.

Nishant, tell us a bit about DigsFact. What problems are you solving? What makes your approach different?

DigsFact is a team of people who convert their dreams and aspirations into reality and tangible achievements with the power of Artificial Intelligence. Our proprietary product – The PreCogs (https://theprecogs.ai/) – was created to augment existing fraud and money laundering solutions to reduce financial crime and lower the cost of manual reviews.

While all existing financial crime (fraud and money laundering) solutions are focused on identity validation and authentication, we complement them by detecting financial crime based on behavioral anomalies and a dynamic rule engine that is evolving on its own. For example, every fraud attempt introduces brand new rules in our fraud engine, so that the fraudster is constantly chasing a moving target. We also predict new crime patterns before they emerge, keeping us one step ahead of the fraudsters.

What is your company’s origin story?

I have spent most of my career in financial services, so I was aware of fraud being a pain point, but I never knew the extent of the problem. When I met one of the executives of Swift at one of the conferences abroad, he shared how the problem of financial crime – fraud and money laundering – is growing worldwide despite all the existing solutions.

Coincidentally, when I returned home from that trip, my wife and I witnessed my brother-in-law lose a big chunk of money within a matter of minutes, while he was with us. I saw him getting a series of SMS alerts from his credit card as well as the bank that issued his debit card. By the time he called each of them, his bank account balance was almost nothing and his credit card was already maxed out. Without getting into the details of how this fraud occurred, this whole thing happened while he was trying to book a rental car – or at least that’s what my brother-in-law thought he was doing. I was there so I saw most of it LIVE, although I wasn’t paying much attention to what he was doing until he told me he is getting SMS alerts about the repeated money withdrawals.

Could this have been avoided? I am sure with the benefit of hindsight, we can think of ways to avoid it. However, I noticed how the fraudsters were using more sophisticated techniques and how creative they were in fooling someone. I also remembered the conversation I had with the Swift executive, at the conference I just came back from, about fraud being a global phenomenon. I realized that if nothing is done, it’s only a matter of time before these fraudsters play a trick on me or my kids at some point in the future.

We gather you’re a fan of the film Minority Report.

Yes 🙂 Love the movie. Loved the concept of preventing crime by detecting it before it happened. That’s why we named our product – The PreCogs – with 2 main differences:

  1. The movie had three precogs and we have two – one for fraud and the other for money laundering
  2. The movie was focused on preventing crime like murders while we are focused on preventing financial crime like fraud and money laundering.

Who is your target market?

We have operations in the US and India but our customers have operations worldwide.

  • For customers – we are focused on financial institutions like banks, credit unions, and insurance companies.
  • For partnerships – we are focused on partnering with existing fraud solutions that focus on ID validations and authentications where our Agentic AI approach compliment their solution to reduce false positives and missed detections.

Does your product augment or replace existing payment fraud solutions?

It augments existing payment fraud solutions.

Which Fintech Sandbox Data Partners have you worked with?

Equifax.

What milestones has DigsFact achieved so far?

  • Crossed 25 millions transactions per day.
  • Saved $2.8 million in median losses annually per customer.
  • Reduced cost of manual reviews for our customers by 70%.

Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?

Fintech Sandbox offers a very unique value proposition for the startups – specially to fintechs. Any fintech founder can tell you that it is very helpful to have easy access to data partners, but even more importantly, there are opportunities to even partner together with those data partners, if the synergies exist. We have come a long way in the past 12 months, since joining the Fintech Sandbox community and we continue to look forward to collaborating further within the community.

What’s next for DigsFact?

We have enjoyed exceptional growth in the last two years and signed two major strategic partnership deals in the past six months. We continue to stay focused on surpassing our own growth record this year (2026) through continued strategic partnerships, where it makes sense. If you are interested in learning more, you can check out our website at https://theprecogs.ai/ or contact me at nishant@digsfact.com

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To hear more about DigsFact and six additional exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 12!

Meet sumtyme.ai — A Demo Day 12 Presenting Startup

Posted on by Jim Smith

This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on Tuesday, April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll continue highlight this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Ade Jinadu, Co-Founder of London-based sumtyme.ai. Operating as an AI research lab, sumtyme.ai has built a universal framework for navigating complex systems, from the volatility of global financial markets to the unpredictability of atmospheric patterns.

The lab has pioneered a form of autonomous intelligence focused on causality rather than statistical pattern recognition. Their technology solves the inherent lag of statistical AI, offering a universal understanding of change in the world’s most critical systems.

Ade Jinadu, Junchen Co-Founder of UK-based sumtyme.ai.

Ade, tell us a bit about sumtyme.ai. What problems are you solving? What makes your approach different?

The current AI paradigm suffers from a built-in statistical lag, as it must wait for patterns to become significant before it can identify change. In high-stakes environments like finance, this delay is often costly because by the time a shift is statistically recognised, the opportunity has passed or the crisis has already occurred.

We are solving this by building a machine that treats the entire world as a network of interconnected data streams. Starting with the global financial system, our proprietary architecture observes every pulse in real-time, using a mathematical understanding of causality to autonomously track change from the moment it begins. This continuous learning framework eliminates the reliance on training data, re-training or context graphs.

What is your company’s origin story?

We built sumtyme.ai out of a shared team frustration: the attempt to predict change using traditional neural networks. We spent eight years engineering a framework that eliminates the industry’s greatest bottlenecks: massive training datasets, large-scale compute and the constant need for retraining.

What do you mean when you say you’ve developed the first intelligence layer for the global financial system?

We have built the first true intelligence layer by leveraging Causal AI that understands the underlying mechanics of how change forms and evolves, rather than the pattern-based guesswork of Predictive AI.

An intelligence layer for global markets should never require asset-specific training or a “retraining break”. We are the first lab to demonstrate technology capable of autonomously identifying systemic change at the point of inception, operating in real-time across any publicly traded asset and independent of historical context.

Who is sumtyme.ai’s target market?

We are shifting the financial industry from reactive panic to proactive management across three key pillars:

  • Central Banks: Autonomous monetary policy monitoring.
  • Commercial Banks: Real-time systemic health tracking.
  • Hedge Funds: Information advantages that capture alpha before risk is priced in.

Which Fintech Sandbox Data Partners have you worked with?

We are incredibly grateful to Massive for working with us and providing timely feedback to all our questions. Their high-quality time series data was instrumental in our recent case studies and POCs, allowing us to prove the strength of our framework in live market environments.

What were you able to demonstrate based on access to this data?

Access to this data allowed us to validate our framework against two of the most volatile events of the last 20 years: the 2008 Financial Crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 crash. By identifying and tracking causal shifts in time-series data before the market panic, we demonstrated the ability to mitigate drawdowns by 99%.

We did not try and analyse external factors to predict the virus or the subprime collapse. Instead, we demonstrated how our framework identifies systemic breakdowns by analysing the underlying time-series of each asset with zero reliance on external context, manual labelling, or historical training sets.

What milestones has sumtyme.ai achieved so far?

Our technology is now fully in production. We have achieved six months of testing with zero downtime and 94% directional accuracy. With pilots currently underway, we have moved into our next phase: forming a consortium to organise a private Effective Challenge with several G-SIBs.

Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?

Our experience with the Fintech Sandbox community has been great. From the core team to partners like Massive and other startups, the community has provided a real-time testing ground for our causal framework. The access to institutional feedback and high-quality data provides a level of value that far exceeds what is advertised.

What’s next for sumtyme.ai?

Having validated our framework in live markets and against the market’s most volatile periods, our focus is now on scaling our solution across global markets. We are moving beyond the reactive models to a world where risk is managed at the point of inception. By providing insights that are fully explainable, auditable and traceable, we are removing market uncertainty and replacing it with mathematical transparency.

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To hear more about sumtyme.ai and five additional exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 12!

Meet CleverChain.ai — A Demo Day 12 Presenting Startup

Posted on by Jim Smith

This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on Tuesday, April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Daniele Azzaro, Co-founder and CEO of London-based fintech CleverChain. CleverChain is a next-generation regtech platform that transforms compliance with AI-driven, real-time, global due diligence and automated risk intelligence. It empowers financial institutions to onboard faster, stay fully compliant, and eliminate manual work with unparalleled speed, accuracy, and scale. CleverChain was ranked 2nd in BusinessCloud’s RegTech 50 for 2025.

Daniele Azzaro, Co-founder and CEO of London-based fintech CleverChain
Daniele Azzaro, Co-founder & CEO of CleverChain

Daniele, tell us a bit about CleverChain. What problems are you solving?

CleverChain is a next-generation regtech platform that transforms how financial institutions perform business due diligence and manage compliance.

Today, compliance teams struggle with fragmented data, manual workflows, slow onboarding, and rising regulatory pressure.

We solve this by delivering AI-driven, real-time global due diligence and automated risk intelligence in a single click. Our technology enables institutions to onboard customers faster, stay continuously compliant, and eliminate huge amounts of manual work without sacrificing accuracy or regulatory confidence.

What is your company’s origin story?

CleverChain was born out of first-hand experience. My co-founders and I spent years building and operating compliance functions inside global financial institutions, and we repeatedly saw the same pain points: disconnected data sources, expensive tools that don’t talk to each other, and analysts wasting time stitching together information. We realized compliance needed a fundamental redesign one that treats data as real-time, connected, and intelligent. That insight became CleverChain.

What problems do financial institutions encounter with compliance data?

The biggest issues are fragmentation, latency, and trust. Data comes from dozens of vendors, arrives in different formats, updates at different speeds, and often conflicts. Teams must manually reconcile everything, which slows onboarding, increases cost, and creates risk. On top of that, regulators increasingly expect continuous monitoring rather than point-in-time checks. Financial institutions need unified, real-time, and auditable intelligence—not static reports.

What were you able to do with the data from the Data Partners you worked with?

We worked with Equifax during our time in the Data Access Residency to access high-quality datasets that allowed us to test, validate, and refine our AI models across global corporate, ownership, and risk data. This access has been invaluable in accelerating product development and strengthening our data orchestration capabilities.

What makes CleverChain different from other AML or KYB solutions?

Most AML and KYB tools focus on running checks. CleverChain focuses on delivering intelligence. We don’t just aggregate data – we normalize, link, and reason over it using AI. Our platform creates a real-time risk graph of companies and people, continuously updating as new information emerges. This means faster onboarding, fewer false positives, and a much richer understanding of risk. We’re also infrastructure-agnostic, so we plug into existing stacks rather than forcing replacement.

EY is a Fintech Sandbox sponsor. What was it like participating in the EY FinTech Growth Programme?

Working with EY through the FinTech Growth Programme was extremely valuable. We gained direct exposure to senior industry experts, refined our go-to-market strategy, and pressure-tested our product positioning with real financial institutions. The programme helped accelerate commercial conversations and sharpen our enterprise readiness.

Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?

It’s been an incredibly supportive and high-quality ecosystem. The community combines startups, data providers, and financial institutions in a way that’s genuinely collaborative. You get fast feedback, meaningful introductions, and access to resources that would normally take years to secure. It’s one of the most practical fintech communities we’ve been part of.

What milestones has CleverChain achieved so far?

We’ve earned the trust of major financial institutions and global enterprises, including top-tier banks and complex, highly regulated organizations across Europe. CleverChain has been recognized as Best KYB product by Chartis Research and ranked 2nd in BusinessCloud’s RegTech 50 for 2025.

More importantly, we’ve crossed a strategic threshold: moving beyond traditional AML and KYB tooling into a new category of autonomous, intelligence-led compliance. Customers are using CleverChain not just to run checks, but to fundamentally change how risk decisions are made—faster, continuously, and at enterprise scale.

What’s next for CleverChain?

We’re building toward a world where compliance operates itself. Our next phase is about delivering fully automated, continuously running risk control—where AI agents monitor, investigate, and resolve risk in real time across customers, counterparties, and transactions.

As we scale globally, CleverChain is evolving into the autonomous intelligence layer that sits at the heart of the financial system, giving institutions live, explainable control over risk at any moment. Not just faster compliance—but a fundamentally safer financial ecosystem.

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To hear more about CleverChain and five additional exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 12!

Meet Gemsen — A Demo Day 12 Presenting Startup

Posted on by Jim Smith

This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on Tuesday, April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Charlie Ko, Co-founder and CEO of Boston-based fintech Gemsen. Gemsen is capable of processing massive amounts of data efficiently and securely, producing output that is accurate and in a usable form. Gemsen tames the data deluge using prediction models that require less compute and storage than other technologies.

Gemsen allows organizations to harness the power of machine learning without exposing sensitive data, ensuring complete compliance with data protection regulations. Whether applied within workflows such as insurtech, regtech, fraud detection, credit analytics, compliance, or investment research, Gemsen enables secure collaboration throughout the entire process.

Charlie Ko, Co-founder and CEO of Gemsen
Charlie Ko, Co-founder and CEO of Gemsen

Charlie, tell us a bit about Gemsen. What problems are you solving? What makes your approach different?

Most of today’s advanced technologies are extremely resource hungry. To perform at the speed of current data streams, they often require massive compute and storage in the form of GPU server farms. We took a completely different approach to use math to simplify the computations to what is essential. This not only preserves predictive performance, but also dramatically reduces the required resources by 99% or greater.

What is your company’s origin story?

We are driven by simplicity and elegance. For nearly two decades, our founding team has tackled complex and large-scale data problems by distilling information from noise. We have always understood that data is only useful if patterns can be detected quickly and reliably.

What does it mean to say that you capture the essential statistical structure of data in motion?

When deconstructing the AI/ML models, the functions of these ‘machines’ are distilled into essential equations. Even the most sophisticated models are defined by equations that perform the work of finding patterns. Many models can be simplified. Some models can be captured and interpreted through pre-computations that reflect the inter-relationships of the input data. These relationships can be described via higher and lower order statistical moments. The key is finding the sufficient set of statistics to produce a lossless rendition of the data for the relevant ML models in question.

This essential structure is the key to extremely fast ML training and inference. Additional important outcomes of this design are Gemsen’s adaptability to streaming data, in addition to interpretability and transparency of the models themselves.

Who is Gemsen’s target market?

We target financial institutions that deal with large-scale streaming data volumes each day. Sample institutions include banks, investment firms, brokers, payment processors, and insurance companies. Sample workflows include fraud detection, customer prediction, securities trading, and credit analytics.

Which Fintech Sandbox Data Partners have you worked with?

massive.com provides an extremely rich data set of market flow information spanning many years. Since data is the fuel that powers AI/ML, their clean and reliable data made testing easier for Gemsen. Billions of rows of data flowing at millisecond speed helped us prove our reliability and improve our capabilities.

What milestones has Gemsen achieved so far?

Our software is already enterprise scale and has been deployed in Fortune 100 companies outside finance. There, we have demonstrated substantial increase in efficiency and reliability of the technology. Gemsen was founded to bring this technology to finance and is in active testing within the finance domain.

Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?

It’s been an amazing experience. The people in this community have been extremely giving of their time and expertise. The best part is everyone’s approachability. Coupled with their willingness to share their experience and ideas, this makes a powerful combination.

You also took part in the MassChallenge Fintech Program last year. What was that like?

It was great from the start. The number of conversations and connections from day 1 was extremely important for us to gain quick momentum. I can’t overstate how helpful the entire ecosystem has been for Gemsen. In fact, the connections brought us include two key advisors. Both helped gain resources that are critical in our ongoing work. This is on-top of getting an inside track to Fintech Week and other high-profile events throughout the year, which nets more ideas and connections.

What’s next for Gemsen?

Just spreading the word – that you can tame the data deluge while still being reliable, accurate and efficient.

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To hear more about Gemsen and five additional exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 12!

 

The Museum of American Finance is Coming to Boston

Posted on by Jim Smith

We had many distinguished, accomplished, fascinating speakers at Boston Fintech Week in September, but perhaps none attracted as much attention as Alexander Hamilton.

What’s that, you say?

One of our most popular participants was Alexander Hamilton, the “ten dollar founding father,” the first U.S. secretary of the treasury, and a leading proponent of a central banking system for the United States.

Through a collaboration between the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT®) and the Museum of American Finance (MoAF), attendees of Boston Fintech Week had the opportunity to engage in conversation with Alexander Hamilton and ask him questions about U.S. financial history, his life, current events, and fintech.

A conversation between Sarah Biller, Co-Founder of Fintech Sandbox, and an intelligent avatar of Alexander Hamilton during Boston Fintech Week. 

This intelligent avatar of Hamilton is powered by generative AI. It’s much more than just a visual representation – it’s a subject matter expert capable of engaging in bi-directional conversation about U.S. financial history and current events. It demonstrates how AI can be used to create immersive and informative experiences.

AI Hamilton will be a permanent part at the Museum of American Finance, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, when it opens in Boston’s Seaport District in 2026. The museum’s mission is to illuminate U.S. financial history and to make financial education accessible to all. The museum will also make space available for use by the community for public program.

David Cowen is the CEO & President of MoAF.

Q.  David, what kind of reaction did attendees have to Alexander Hamilton during Boston Fintech Week?

A.  Fintech Week attendees were amazed by their interactions with AI Alexander Hamilton. They asked him questions on a wide variety of topics related to finance, economics and history, and he provided thoughtful responses to each question. He even gave some insightful opinions on current topics, such as tariffs and taxes, and he replied in whatever language the question was asked. The most surprising moment came when an attendee asked him a question in Swahili, and he answered the question appropriately with perfect diction!

Q.  What can you tell us about your collaboration with FCAT?

A.  Our Museum has a strong relationship with the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT) and a shared vision for moving forward. Our collective goal is nothing short of reimagining the field of financial literacy, given the incredible progress of technology and AI learning in the past few years. We are currently working with FCAT and their vendors to provide an incredible interactive visitor experience at our new exhibit headquarters on Commonwealth Pier in the Boston Seaport, where we will reach visitors in innovative ways on the topic of personal finance.

Q.  How was this intelligent avatar trained?

A.  The Alexander Hamilton avatar was trained through a proprietary model using a Large Language Model (LLM).

Q.  Why has the Museum of American Finance chosen to relocate to Boston?

A.  Our Museum had been looking for a new exhibit headquarters for the past few years, and we were very excited to learn about the opportunity available on the newly developed Commonwealth Pier. This location is an excellent fit for our Museum, as Boston and Massachusetts were the leading center of American financial innovation for two centuries, from the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s. Our plan is to build on that tradition at the Boston Seaport.

Q.  How will MoAF help visitors with the own financial lives?

A.  We have a 36-year track record of creating engaging, state-of-the-art exhibits, and we are dedicated to educating the public on finance and financial history through our financial literacy programs and public events. Our mission is to improve understanding of the influence of financial institutions and capital markets on the US and global economies, and on individuals’ lives. An affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, we seek to empower individuals of all backgrounds to strive toward financial independence, while encouraging curiosity and discovery.

In Boston, all of our exhibits and programming will be offered free of charge— eliminating barriers to enter and learn. This includes a high-tech, interactive Personal Finance gallery, where visitors will explore topics such as budgeting, spending, saving and compounding. This will equip visitors with the tools and strategies to achieve and maintain healthy financial lives.

Q.  What can people learn from an exhibition of paper currency?

A.  We know that finance can be intimidating, so the topic of our first exhibit gallery will be something everyone knows well—money. Most Americans don’t realize that for a good part of our history, banks issued the currency, or that it was backed by gold and silver. These historical notes are often beautiful in design, and we let them speak for themselves as artwork. Multiple in-depth touch screens will allow visitors to interact with the notes and learn more about them. We will also display high denomination notes—like the $500 and $1,000 bills—which are no longer in circulation.

Q.  Which historical financial documents are in the MoAF collection? You brought one very interesting and important document to Boston Fintech Week.

A.  As part of our mission to preserve the history of finance in the United States, we actively collect important documents and artifacts related to the capital markets, money, banking and free enterprise. Our archive houses thousands of documents, currencies, photographs, periodicals and certificates, including the nation’s premier collection of 18th century US financial documents. We also collect artifacts relating to the financial markets—ranging from vintage stock tickers to Wall Street memorabilia.

The document you mention from Fintech Week was George Washington’s Treasury bonds, and there is a direct line from those bonds to today’s national debt!

Q.  The United States will celebrate its 250th birthday in 2026. What does the Museum have planned?

A.  We are planning to open in Boston in time for the nation’s 250th birthday celebration and the Tall Ships coming into Boston Harbor. One of our featured exhibits will be “A Financial Revolution,” on the origins of the financial markets, which were conceived and created by Alexander Hamilton and his contemporaries around the time of the nation’s founding. Plans are currently in development for our opening events. Information on the Boston project is available at www.moaf.org/Boston and will be updated as we get closer to the opening.

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The Fintech 5 with Erika Alter, Director of Marketing at FundGuard

Posted on by Jim Smith

The Fintech 5 is a series of blog posts consisting of questions and answers designed to help you get to know the people in the Fintech Sandbox community. Today, we’re talking to Erika Alter, the head of marketing at FundGuard

FundGuard is transforming legacy investment operations with an AI-powered, cloud native and multi-asset class SaaS platform for asset managers, asset owners, custodian banks and fund administrators. Their mission is to help investors around the world to accumulate and grow their assets safely and efficiently.

FundGuard is a sponsor of Boston Fintech Week this years and the exclusive sponsor and host of our opening reception.

Erika Alter, Head of Marketing at FundGuard
Erika Alter of FundGuard

 

#1. Erika, What problem does FundGuard solve, and why does it matter now?

At its core, FundGuard solves the limitations of legacy investment accounting platforms. These systems were designed decades ago for a very different market environment, and the workarounds firms have been forced to build on top of them are costly and unsustainable. By rebuilding investment accounting as a truly cloud-native, AI-powered platform, we enable asset managers and servicers to unify books of record, scale seamlessly across asset classes and geographies, and eliminate the operational friction that’s been holding the industry back. The timing matters because the demands on operations are only getting more complex. Regulatory pressure, new asset types and real-time client expectations don’t wait for outdated systems to catch up.

#2. How does FundGuard support operational resilience?

FundGuard was built for resilience from day one. Our cloud-native, API-first architecture runs multiple books of record in real time across asset classes, products, and jurisdictions. That means instant failover, always-on NAV oversight, and no batch bottlenecks. Firms get live transparency, faster recovery, and the agility to adapt as regulations and market conditions change, without the drag of legacy tech.

#3. What role do partnerships play in your growth?

They’re critical. The asset management ecosystem is interconnected, and no single platform can transform it in isolation. We’re partnering with leading asset servicers, custodians, implementation consultants, and technology providers to accelerate adoption and make FundGuard’s capabilities available where our clients already operate. The best partnerships are the ones where both sides are aligned on a vision for modernization, where we’re not just plugging into an existing process but rethinking what that process should look like in a cloud-native, real-time world.

#4. What’s next for FundGuard and the industry?

I think we’re at a tipping point. A few years ago, an asset management industry fully powered by cloud-native operations was still viewed as aspirational. Today, it’s an evolving reality and powering some of the world’s largest asset managers and servicers. The conversation has shifted from “if” to “how fast.” What’s next is broader adoption, more collaboration across the ecosystem, and new innovations we haven’t even imagined yet, because once you move off the constraints of legacy systems, the opportunities to transform are limitless.

#5. How does FundGuard engage with the startup ecosystem?

We see ourselves as part of the fintech community that’s challenging the status quo in financial services. FundGuard is a fintech startup and will always carry that DNA: we’re agile, collaborative, and relentlessly focused on solving real problems. We engage with the ecosystem through programs like Fintech Sandbox, through collaborations with other early-stage innovators, and by contributing thought leadership that pushes the industry conversation forward. Most importantly, we serve as proof that fintechs can drive transformation even in the most conservative corners of financial services. If FundGuard can help modernize investment accounting — a function that many thought could never change — that sends a powerful signal about what’s possible.

Bonus Question! What’s the most interesting thing you’ve read recently?

This study, Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. I think the premise of the study certainly addresses a valid concern, but subsequent articles I’ve read about the story are mostly framing the findings as “AI is making us lazy,” which is perhaps too reductive. History (and science!) shows that human habits and thinking are ever‑evolving, and I believe our intelligence will successfully adapt to AI and other future‑state tech — as we always have.

Another Bonus Question! What is the best career or life advice you have received?

“There’s no race, there’s only a runner. Just keep one foot in front of the other.” It’s a line from a Lucius song that I’ve adopted as a mantra for both life and business. It’s a reminder to just keep going, whether that means taking a small step on a hard day or staying patient when progress feels slow.

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The Q&A from Demo Day 11

Posted on by Jim Smith

Last week, at our 11th Demo Day, we saw five fintech innovators succinctly showcase their solutions to the most pressing challenges in financial services. The companies they founded built these solutions during their recent participation in our Data Access Residency with the support of several of our Data Partners.

The presentations were fast paced, and some of you may have missed the interactions between founders and members of the audience. So, here are a few of the questions audience members asked after seeing what these teams have built, and the answers these founders provided.

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Sandbox Wealth has built a turnkey open banking solution for wealth managers, including independent advisors and family offices, allowing them to offer sophisticated cash management and credit products to their clients. Ray Denis, the Founder and CEO, provided the product demonstration to the hundreds of people who tuned in for Demo Day.

JS: How are you thinking about Agentic AI?

Ray Denis: We’re looking closely at agentic workflows for document ingestion and yield optimization (for both assets and liabilities). Very focused on getting the data layer right before we dive into those features, but it’s a major part of the roadmap.

BC: How are high-net-worth clients onboarded (one at a time or through datasets)?

Ray Denis: We can handle onboarding one at a time or by mass onboarding with an integration to a firm or advisor’s CRM. We let our partners decide how they’d like to address.

BC: Also, how long to integrate for Registered Investment Advisors?

Ray Denis: The process is intended to be quick. After contracting, we can handle the one at a time onboarding almost immediately. I’d budget 60-90 days for mass onboarding to ensure connectivity with the CRM and the accuracy of the data.

Serene is transforming customer care in financial services by helping banks and financial organizations proactively identify, predict, and support customers in vulnerable circumstances. Savannah Price, Serene’s Founder and CEO, provided our Demo Day audience with a demonstration of the capabilities this London-headquartered fintech built while taking part in our Data Access Residency.

SD: What data and systems do you need access to?

Savannah Price: Open banking/ transactional data (current, credit card, savings accounts). Interaction data, voice-to-text (for sentiment analysis).

JB: Who is the end user of Serene? Which business unit of the customer would be the purchaser of this product?

Savannah Price: End user is the financial institution – Heads of Credit Risk, Heads of Collections, Customer Ops. Exploring scam susceptibility use cases at the moment with Fraud/Fincrime teams.

7Analytics has developed AI-driven flood risk modeling for insurers and asset owners, leveraging high-resolution datasets and 600+ physical parameters. 7Analytics can provide crucial information of flood risk, all the way down to the building level. Helge Jørgensen is Co-founder and CEO of 7Analytics, the first insurtech founded in Norway to present at Demo Day.

WC: What is your geographical coverage? Do you have data for commercial and industrial sites? What is the time horizon for your simulations? Which long-term scenarios do you use?

Helge Jørgensen: Yes – we cover commercial sites. We have several industrial customers in the US today that use our technology. Geographical coverage is based on where we see traction. Our technology is scalable, so we are ready to enter new markets.

EM: Are you also considering to expand to the UK?

Helge Jørgensen: We have our technology ready for the UK. We are running several POC in the UK now.

RK: How are your models/products different than First Street?

Helge Jørgensen: Our approach is different in how we are approaching the modeling of flooding. We use high resolution models (3x3ft), high resolution landuse cover, and ML on claims from insurance companies. We provide flood risk covering all flood types – urban, fluvial and storm surge. We also keep our input data up-to-date by using advanced tech for updating/enhancing the terrain and land use data.

Calculum is offering an AI-powered supply chain analytics platform that helps companies unlock working capital, improve supplier intelligence, and generate free cash flow by optimizing payment terms. Co-founder Eric Zager presented Calculum’s capabilities to our Demo Day audience.

JS: Can Calculum help corporates address disruptions in their supply chains caused by tariffs?

Eric Zager: Yes—by leveraging data and benchmarking, Calculum helps corporates negotiate improved payment terms and optimize working capital, providing flexibility to mitigate the impact of tariffs and other cost pressures.

TM: Any intention of supporting your customers on their receivables side, as well?

Eric Zager: Absolutely. While our core focus has been on payables, we’re seeing strong demand on the receivables side and plan to support clients in optimizing their entire working capital cycle.

BL: What are your thoughts about addressing opportunities in supply chain finance yourselves?

Eric Zager: We believe there’s significant potential in integrating supply chain finance capabilities into our platform. While we currently partner with leading providers, we’re actively exploring how we can offer direct solutions to better serve our clients.

Level2 offers the first fully visual no-code systematic trading strategy creation platform built for active traders. Andrew Grevett, Co-founder and CEO, provided a demonstration of the company’s product and an explanation of their B2B2C model. Level2 is making data-driven trading simple and accessible for all.

CS: Does the platform offer any type of education? I understand it enables a lot of resources for traders, but UI seems to assume the user already has a lot of knowledge around trading, and understanding trades.

Andrew Grevett: Yes, education is a key part of our strategy as the visual approach makes learning and understanding simple. It’s something we intend to enhance in the next version, moving more towards a more dynamic approach along with an immersive trading mode.

LZ: Does this include direct feeds (rather than the consolidated SIP tape)?

Andrew Grevett: We do not have any direct feeds at the moment; it’s all from the SIP tape.

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If you’d like to talk to any of these entrepreneurs about what they are building, please reach out to us here. If you weren’t able to attend Demo Day 11, we’ll be posting a recording showcasing the presentations of these five outstanding startups, as well as insights from thought leaders representing the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, MassMutual, and KKR, to our YouTube channel shortly.

 

Meet 7Analytics — A Demo Day 11 Presenting Startup

Posted on by Jim Smith

This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Helge Jørgensen, Co-founder and CEO of Norwegian fintech 7Analytics. 7Analytics develops highly precise predictive models for flood risk for insurers and asset owners.

Helge Joergensen, Co-Founder & CEO of 7Analytics
Helge Joergensen, Co-Founder & CEO of 7Analytics

Helge, tell us a bit about 7Analytics. What problems are you solving?

Floods are frequent and expensive. And this keeps growing. Without much better data people cannot insure their homes and businesses keep their operations going. We provide that data at a much greater granularity.

Why is granularity in flood prediction important and how do you achieve it?

Insurers need to understand flood risk in-depth – property by property. Water moves along the landscape and even a few inches of height difference here or a green spot there makes a huge difference for flood risk. Only the best data tells you the difference in risk from one side of the street to the other.

What is your company’s origin story?

Our founder team built their skills in the offshore oil and gas sector which remains one of the most knowledge intensive industries in one of the toughest environments on Earth. From here a drive to learn and apply the best possible data tool to produce the best possible solutions has led us to flood risk and to breaking away from traditional approaches.

Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?

7Analytics has moved in two dimensions recently and Fintech Sandbox has been an important partner in both consolidating our services to the financial industry and establishing our US organization.

Why is data access important to your startup?

Data is all we do. Much geodata is open source, but we have only made it this far by building partnerships with leading industry players around data access.

What milestones has 7Analytics achieved so far?

Being live on four continents is a major thing that I am super proud of – this includes my own relocation from Europe to Boston and setting up shop here.

What trends in fintech are you most excited about?

Climate innovation has for a long time been very focused on getting emissions down. For good reasons. Now, adaptation is growing in importance and this basically is a matter of risk. Climate risk. And here fintechs play a key part in getting the banks and insurers up to speed.

How does 7Analytics think about leveraging AI in a differentiated way?

AI and Machine Learning is driving a paradigm shift in water risk modelling. The focus is going in a direction of high-quality, rich input data and really understanding patterns and building predictive power. But: many – also insurers – remain anchored in traditional models.

What’s next for 7Analytics?

Kicking in doors to more insurance companies that are realizing that they need much better data to handle the increasing flood risk.

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To hear more about 7Analytics and 4 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 11!

 

The Fintech 5 with Ashlyn Lackey — Director, Emerging Technology & Innovation Strategy at Prudential Financial

Posted on by Jim Smith

The Fintech 5 is a series of blog posts consisting of questions and answers designed to help you get to know the people in the Fintech Sandbox community.

Ashlyn Lackey is a Director on the Emerging Technology team at Prudential Financial. In this role, she works with business units to identify compelling technologies and startups for potential partnership.

Ashlyn is a mentor for the Global Insurance Accelerator and in the mentor pool for RevTech Labs, two of our accelerator partners. She has also participated at Mass Fintech Hub events as a speaker on the future of insurance innovation. Ashlyn was previously named to Innovate Finance’s Women in Fintech Powerlist for her involvement in the fintech ecosystem.

Ashlyn Lackey — Director, Emerging Technology & Innovation Strategy at Prudential Financial 

#1. Ashlyn, what fintech problem has your attention right now?

One fintech problem that has my attention is something I’m calling ‘The Widow’s Windfall,’ where women, who typically outlive their partners, inherit, and manage significant wealth before it moves to the next generation. Despite this, the wealth management industry remains heavily male-dominated, with few tailored strategies for advising and retaining female clients. I’m particularly interested in fintech solutions that address this gap — whether through financial planning tools, education, or advisory models that better support women navigating wealth transitions.

#2. What Trends in Fintech are you most excited about? 

There is one technological and one structural trend in fintech that I’m excited about.

First, agentic AI for hyper-personalization, which holds incredible potential for large financial institutions (FIs). As AI increasingly takes on customer-facing roles, these institutions are at a crossroads: How do you automate everything for scale while still maintaining that deeply personal, human touch that customers value? In industries like insurance, where companies have historically prided themselves on close relationships — whether sitting at kitchen tables or hand-delivering life insurance payouts — there’s a challenge in preserving that ethos. I’m excited to see how AI can evolve to embody a company’s personality, making interactions feel personal and empathetic, while automating large volumes of customer engagement without sacrificing warmth or trust.

The structural shift I’m excited about is the growing collaboration between governments, financial institutions, and fintechs. It’s helping to standardize regulations and create better infrastructure across the board. States like Utah and New Jersey are great examples of this in action — Utah’s fintech initiatives have made huge strides in creating a supportive environment for growth, and New Jersey is doing its part with the development of programs like those at Stevens Institute of Technology. On top of that, the rise of academic programs focused on fintech over the last decade has built a stronger talent pipeline and fostered more innovation between the public and private sectors.

#3. What are some of the biggest learnings from your career journey in fintech and/or entrepreneurship?

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my career — whether in fintech or entrepreneurship — is that the only opportunities are the ones you make. It’s easy to sit back and wait for the right moment or for things to fall into place, but I’ve found that the real breakthroughs happen when you go out and create your own opportunities. Whether it’s making connections, spotting market gaps, or just pushing through challenges, success really comes down to taking action, even when the path ahead isn’t obvious.

#4. What fintech founder / company are you keeping on eye on right now/think is working on something especially innovative?

Instead of zeroing in on a particular fintech founder or company, I’m more interested in how financial institutions (FIs) are thinking about spinning out innovative products or business units. In the tech world, it’s common for companies to spin out successful ventures — like Confluent, which spun out of LinkedIn in 2014 to commercialize Apache Kafka, or Microsoft spinning out cybersecurity software firm Rubrik. What I find intriguing in fintech is the potential for FIs to do something similar. With their deep data, strong product backgrounds, and solid understanding of regulation, FIs have a unique advantage when it comes to building startups. It’ll be exciting to see how they use those assets to spin off new, innovative businesses that can stand on their own while still tapping into the rich resources of the parent organization.

#5. Hot take! What are your thoughts on AI in the industry? Are we about to see a major transformation? Is fintech the key to unlocking AI at scale for financial services? Overrated or underestimated? What are the biggest areas ready to be changed by AI in finance? What problems need to be solved? What’s here to stay vs passing trend? We want to hear your thoughts!

Right now, there’s a lot of tentative excitement around AI. A few months ago, Money 2020 and Acrew Capital put out a report that said 76% of financial services firms have announced some sort of AI initiative — and that is just what they are willing to publicly share. Leaders are now asking what the ROI of these projects have been. The true value of AI in finance isn’t just about fancy interactions — t’s about improving efficiency, enabling seamless customer experiences, and solving complex problems like data privacy and bias detection. While there will be passing trends, AI’s core potential lies in making financial services more effective and equitable for everyone.

Bonus question! What’s the most interesting thing you’ve read recently?

“The Unexpected Spy” by Tracy Walder.

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