The financial reporting and auditing process is not often on the list of sexy topics that technology startups want to go after.
After years of performing reporting and auditing work for companies like Miro, Autodesk, Dropbox, Flexport and Yelp, Mary Antony and Kelsey Gootnick decided reporting and auditing needed some technology love, too.
So they started San Francisco-based InScope in 2023, leveraging machine learning and large language models to provide financial reporting and auditing processes for mid-market and enterprises.
We make it possible for our customers to have effortless, but accurate and reliable financial statements every time.”InScope’s financial report drafting tool.
So much so that they could be customers, Gootnick said.
When generative AI tools started making waves in late 2022 after the launch of ChatGPT, the finance industry was one of the first to recognize these tools’ potential for speeding up the data-gathering and research process.
MIT alumni Jacob Chanyeol Choi and Subeen Pang founded Linq after they won the Samsung Open Collaboration in 2023, an accelerator-like program hosted by Samsung Financial Network.
Choi told TechCrunch that win spurred him to build large language models (LLMs) for enterprises, particularly the financial sector.
“We knew the potential for a tool that could seamlessly integrate with a company’s data ecosystem, which led to the birth of Linq,” Choi said.
In addition to its B2B service for enterprise clients, the startup also plans to build B2C tools for AI equity research.
“I couldn’t get a credit card because my parents couldn’t co-sign,” Kobe recalls, “and I didn’t want to put down a large security deposit.
Scott points out that New York-based Fizz set out to offer college students a different entry ramp into building credit.
And if you ask any of them, they’ll tell you that they’re credit card averse, but they’re not necessarily credit averse,” he told TechCrunch.
”Fizz is one of several fintechs aiming to serve the expansive Gen Z market.
For instance, Frich, a financial education and social community for Gen Z, just raised $2.8 million in seed funding.
Midas, a fintech startup that allows people in Turkey to invest in U.S. and Turkish equities, says it has raised $45 million in a funding round led by Portage Ventures of Canada.
The startup is aimed at Turkey’s retail investor market and claims to have more than 2 million users.
That’s in a country of 80 million,” Egem Eraslan, CEO and founder of Midas, told TechCrunch.
The company has plans to expand beyond Turkey, and aims to target countries in the MENA region.
Globally, Portage invests in transformational financial technology and Midas is poised to lead that initiative in a region of early adopters.”
Hackers are threatening to publish a huge stolen sanctions and financial crimes watchlist The stolen World-Check database contains 5.3 million recordsA financially motivated hacking group says it has stolen a confidential database containing millions of records that companies use for screening potential customers for links to sanctions and financial crime.
The hackers, which call themselves GhostR, said they stole 5.3 million records from the World-Check screening database in March and are threatening to publish the data online.
A portion of the stolen data, which the hackers shared with TechCrunch, includes individuals who were sanctioned as recently as this year.
The incident involves a third party’s data set, which includes a copy of the World-Check data file.
Banking giant HSBC shut down bank accounts belonging to several prominent British Muslims after the World-Check database branded them with “terrorism” tags.
The CFPB is permanently banning BloomTech from consumer lending activities and its CEO, Austen Allred, from student lending for a period of ten years.
Allred founded BloomTech, which rebranded from the Lambda School in 2022 after cutting half its staff, in 2017.
(According to the CFPB, BloomTech originated “at least” 11,000 such loans.)
BloomTech didn’t market the loans as such, saying that they didn’t create debt and were “risk free,” and advertised a 71%-86% job placement rate.
And, unbeknownst to many students, BloomTech was selling a portion of its loans to investors while depriving recipients of rights they should’ve had under a federal protection known as the Holder Rule.
TechCrunch Early Stage is gearing up for another insightful event on April 25, and one roundtable session promises to be particularly illuminating for early-stage founders.
Titled “Finance Fundamentals Before Your First Finance Hire: A Founder’s Guide to Navigating Early Financial Decisions,” this roundtable will offer invaluable insights into navigating the financial complexities that often accompany the early stages of startup ventures.
Led by Dan Kang, the vice president of finance at Mercury, this roundtable aims to demystify the core aspects of early-stage financial management.
With years of experience in building and scaling fintech companies, Kang brings a wealth of knowledge to the table.
Secure your spot at TechCrunch Early Stage today to take advantage of this invaluable opportunity to learn from industry experts like Dan Kang.
Jio Financial and BlackRock to tap India’s wealth management and stock broking marketJio Financial Services, part of the Indian conglomerate Reliance, is forming a joint venture with U.S. asset manager BlackRock to set up a wealth management and stock broking business in India, the two firms said Monday.
The announcement follows BlackRock and Jio Financial launching a joint venture last year to offer asset management services in India.
The two companies plan to invest $150 million each in the joint venture, they said last year.
The expansion of BlackRock and Jio Financial’s partnership underscores Reliance’s growing ambitions in the financial services sector.
Since its public debut in August, Jio Financial Services has already expanded to insurance and lending businesses.
Avendus, India’s leading investment bank for venture deals, is looking to raise about $300 million for its private equity unit, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
With its third private equity fund, Avendus plans to write larger checks more frequently, one of the sources said.
The firm raised its second fund, amounting to around $185 million, in 2021.
Avendus employs over 150 bankers and was the top financial advisor in India last year.
In the past decade, similar to financial advisors in other regions, Avendus has diversified its offerings, venturing into wealth management, credit financing, and private equity.
So Chen founded NewRetirement, a Mill Valley-based company building software to help people create financial retirement plans.
Today, NewRetirement’s direct-to-consumer products power financial planning for 70,000 users managing close to $100 billion in their own financial plans, according to Chen.
And while 37% of respondents say that they work with a financial adviser, two-thirds of Americans believe that their financial planning needs improvement, according to Northwestern Mutual’s Planning and Progress Study 2023.
Now, you might wonder, what makes NewRetirement different from startups like Retirable, which similarly provides an array of retirement planning tools and access to asset managers?
Chen asserts that NewRetirement is one of the few — and perhaps only — financial planning platform that serves consumers as well as advisers and workplaces.
