21 startups join MassChallenge inaugural fintech programme

“Our inaugural cohort represents trailblazing technologies that advance financial services, from AI-powered onboarding platforms to modern giving solutions,” said Devon Sherman, Program Director of MassChallenge FinTech. “We look forward to structuring and driving meaningful, outcome-driven partnerships between startups and enterprises that tackle some of the industry’s biggest pain points and opportunities.”

MassChallenge FinTech is supported by a public-private partnership that includes founding partners Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), Putnam Investments, Fidelity Investments, Citizens Bank, John Hancock, and the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership (MACP), challenge partners Eastern Bank, AARP, Columbia Threadneedle Investments, Walmart, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), and community partners FinTech Sandbox, Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator, and Brandeis International Business School.

MassChallenge FinTech’s diverse group of partners in asset management, insurance, retail and commercial banking, e-commerce, and transportation reflects the program’s vision to drive the future of financial services. Startups in this year's cohort will work with these partners to solve challenges around important areas such as AI-powered research assistance, big data for small businesses, and student finances.

From January to June, startups will work 1:1 with one or more partners to tackle these challenges. Additionally, startups will leverage MassChallenge FinTech and FinTech Sandbox’s tailored enterprise-readiness program, as well as FinTech Sandbox’s data and resources. At the end of the program, MassChallenge FinTech will award a total of $250,000 in cash prizes, all at zero cost and for zero equity.

“To us, innovation means looking for new tools, new technologies and new ways of working that can enhance the businesses we’re already in or give us insights into creating new opportunities,” said Steve Dorval, Head of Innovation and Advice at MassChallenge FinTech partner John Hancock. “Connecting with the startup community through MassChallenge FinTech is an opportunity for us to engage with intelligent, passionate people that are solving important problems. We will see how these ideas complement or compete with what we do, and take away key learnings and share our experience and expertise. We’re looking to partner with startups and grow the Boston Fintech ecosystem to help create and enhance services for the participants, advisors and customers today and in the future. We can’t wait to get started.”

2019 MassChallenge FinTech Inaugural Cohort:

AlphaSense
New York City, New York
AlphaSense is an AI financial insights platform that accelerates and improves strategic decision-making.

Cake
Boston, Massachusetts
Cake modernizes end-of-life planning by providing guidance and 24/7 access to wishes and documents in the cloud.

Catapult HQ
Charlotte, North Carolina
Streamlining the procurement processes for Request for Proposal's & Due Diligence Questionnaire's through a collaborative web-based solution.

Coalesce.ai
Boston, Massachusetts
Coalesce is an AI software company that automates tedious, mundane workflows for financial services firms.

Datavore
New York, New York
An adaptive data analytics platform that enables any user to quickly and easily explore multiple datasets and ask meaningful questions.

Diffeo
Boston, Massachusetts
Diffeo is an AI-powered research assistant that uncovers relationships in disparate data and recommends the best insights next to your work.

Digital Onboarding
Boston, Massachusetts
A.I.-driven customer onboarding platform. We automate time-consuming marketing tasks and maximize customer engagement and profitability.

Edmit
Boston, Massachusetts
Edmit’s software provides personalized, data-driven advice to help families understand the true cost and overall value of different colleges.

eGiftify
New York, New York
eGiftify unifies data into a contextual engagement platform for businesses and banks to wow customers with meaningful and profitable actions.

Elsen
Boston, Massachusetts
Elsen nPlatform is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for large financial institutions that enables financial professionals to effortlessly harness vast quantities of data to make better decisions and quickly solve complex problems.

Fincura
Boston, Massachusetts
Fincura is automating middle-market commercial lending through process digitization and risk scoring.

ForwardLane
New York, New York
ForwardLane augments the capabilities of financial professionals, empowering them to determine who to speak with, what to say and understand why.

GainLife
Boston, Massachusetts
Gain Life empowers individuals to achieve their best life.

LifeSite
San Francisco Bay Area, California
LifeSite is a cloud-based digital safety deposit box for individuals, families & advisors to organize, secure and share all life information.

Pinkaloo Technologies
Baltimore, Maryland
Pinkaloo's Modern Giving enables Banks & Employers to build stronger relationships with customers and employees through philanthropy.

Posh
Boston, Massachusetts
Posh is a conversational AI platform company out of MIT. Posh powers humanlike bots to automate routine enterprise communications tasks.

SizeUp
San Francisco Bay Area, California
SizeUp is big data for small business. It’s a SaaS Fintech for financial service enterprises so they can better serve their SME customers.

Surround Insurance
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Surround builds technology-powered insurance to protect modern consumers in an uncertain world.

TellusLabs (Honorary Finalist - now part of Indigo Agriculture)
Boston, Massachusetts
TellusLabs is a Boston-based satellite imagery and machine learning company building a living map of the world's food supply.

WalletFi
Raleigh, North Carolina
WalletFi is the first subscription management platform for financial institutions and their customers.

Zylotech
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Zylotech continuously unifies/cleanses all available customer/account data, enriches it, and runs predictive analytics for maximum lift.