{"id":5876,"date":"2021-04-12T12:59:36","date_gmt":"2021-04-12T12:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/12\/fintech-firm-monva-raises-more-than-450000-through-crowd-funding\/"},"modified":"2021-04-12T12:59:36","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T12:59:36","slug":"fintech-firm-monva-raises-more-than-450000-through-crowd-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/12\/fintech-firm-monva-raises-more-than-450000-through-crowd-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"Fintech firm Monva raises more than \u00a3450000 through crowd funding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?rct=j&#038;sa=t&#038;url=https:\/\/www.business-live.co.uk\/enterprise\/fintech-firm-monva-raises-more-20367403&#038;ct=ga&#038;cd=CAIyHDkyYmU1MGQ5NjY1NjYxZTA6Y28udWs6ZW46R0I&#038;usg=AFQjCNHbaLLfgKUB6GqIqBvR623yavg7DQ\">Fintech firm Monva raises more than \u00a3450000 through crowd funding<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!-- Article Start--><\/p>\n<p> A Deeside based smart comparison fintech more than doubled its crowd fundraising target. <b> <u> <br \/><\/u> <u> <br \/><\/u> <\/b><\/p>\n<p>Fintech firm Monva has more than doubled its latest fundraising target, attracting more than 600 investors and raising \u00a3451,905 through Crowdcube. This latest funding round comes one year after smashing its initial crowdfunding target in 2020 and comes ahead of a larger institutional round expected to take place towards the end of 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Monva is a new comparison service that seeks to use customer data and artificial intelligence to personalise and revolutionise the price comparison customer experience.<\/p>\n<p>The company says the personalised service helps users make smart decisions that are right for them, while its technology and automation means there are less forms to fill in, making it easier to compare and buy. Monva\u2019s customers also receive guidance and support through Mo, the Money Virtual Assistant, which guides users through the comparison search, assists buyers in making their decisions and uses AI and machine learning to alert users to new personal offers.<\/p>\n<p>The service is the brainchild of CEO Steve Wiley and COO Stuart Wakefield, who previously held senior executive positions at MoneySuperMarket, MBNA and Virgin Money, with decades of experience in Fintech and financial services.<\/p>\n<section data-embed-group=\"read-more\" data-embed-items=\"2\" data-ad-dockable=\"true\" data-redesign-embed=\"true\">\n<aside class=\"read-more-links\" data-mod=\"readMoreTweak\" data-immediate>\n<h5 class=\"publication-theme-icon publication-theme-border\">Read More<\/h5>\n<h5 class=\"hidden related-articles publication-theme-icon publication-font\">Related Articles<\/h5>\n<\/aside>\n<aside class=\"read-more-links\" data-mod=\"readMoreTweak\" data-immediate>\n<h5 class=\"publication-theme-icon publication-theme-border\">Read More<\/h5>\n<h5 class=\"hidden related-articles publication-theme-icon publication-font\">Related Articles<\/h5>\n<\/aside>\n<\/section>\n<p>Commenting on the fundraising success, Mr Wiley said: \u201cWe are once again delighted by the response of our enthusiastic Crowdcube investors who believe in our vision to deliver a better, more personalised price comparison experience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a team, we are excited about our technology, which we are continuing to refine and develop, but even more so about the lasting impact Monva will have on users.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mr Wiley said that he hopes Monva can help play a proactive part in people&#8217;s financial recovery as the country heads out of lockdown.<\/p>\n<div class=\"factbox\">\n<span class=\"factbox-header\"><\/p>\n<h3>Sign up to our BusinessLive Wales email service<\/h3>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"factbox-content\">\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"DSC_6234.jpg\" data-content-type=\"picture\" id=\"_a019928d-7ddf-49cf-88b8-58deed501317\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/techclot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/HTt5Wp.jpg?w=200&#038;ssl=1\"  src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\"><\/p>\n<p>BusinessLive Wales is your new comprehensive home for business news from across Wales; from large corporates to exciting start-ups and sectors ranging from advanced manufacturing to financial and professional services.<\/p>\n<p>To sign up to our breaking news and daily newsletter service <a href=\"https:\/\/www.business-live.co.uk\/newsletter-preference-centre\/\" data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" data-content-type=\"section\">CLICK HERE<\/a>. <a data-content-type=\"section\" data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.business-live.co.uk\/newsletter-preference-centre\/\"><br \/><\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As well as our in-depth early morning newsletter, we will be sending out regular breaking news email alerts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Mr Wiley added: \u201cSince our last raise in May 2020, Monva has made incredible progress. We have hired several senior specialists; built partnerships with key brands to enable extensive product coverage across credit cards, loans and energy; and built key elements of our innovative technology through our Ai chatbot, online dashboard and foundation automation services.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019re excited about the huge opportunity ahead of us to continue building Monva and developing the next generation of price comparison service for our users.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- Article End--><\/p>\n<p>Published at Mon, 12 Apr 2021 10:18:45 +0000<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?rct=j&#038;sa=t&#038;url=http:\/\/internationalbanker.com\/technology\/how-the-financial-industry-is-using-natural-language-processing\/&#038;ct=ga&#038;cd=CAIyHDkyYmU1MGQ5NjY1NjYxZTA6Y28udWs6ZW46R0I&#038;usg=AFQjCNFyZWDK6ogndLhTQZYx4yJPUhHzSw\">How the Financial Industry Is Using Natural Language Processing<\/a><\/p>\n<p><div><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/techclot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/bNcv85.png?w=640&#038;ssl=1\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\"><\/div>\n<p><span><em>By&nbsp;<\/em><strong>Alexander Jones<\/strong><em>, International Banker<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In a financial world that is increasingly relying on data and information to obtain that marginal edge and with such resources being represented not only by cold, hard numbers but also by words and mountains of text, the benefits that natural language processing (NLP) presents to financial firms worldwide cannot be underestimated. Whether for efficiency and accuracy gains in the compliance and back-office divisions or opportunities to explore new, untapped sources of alpha for fund managers, the powerful capabilities of NLP look set to help transform the finance industry permanently.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>NLP falls under the broader category of artificial intelligence (AI), whereby computers learn to read and interpret words and sentences. As such, it broadly represents the power of computer programmes to understand human language. Tackling unstructured data and extracting useful, actionable insights remains one of the biggest challenges for investment and trading professionals\u2014whether it\u2019s from traditional sources such as company filings and earnings calls or increasingly popular forms of alternative data that can encompass everything from social-media sentiment to geolocation data. And now, with regulatory documentation having ballooned in volume, the need to automate the process of interpreting reams of words has only intensified during the last few years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>NLP begins by requiring the computer to understand the natural-language source, typically using speech-recognition techniques that break down the speech into smaller chunks such as sentences and words. These smaller units are then compared against ones from a previous speech; afterward, each unit is applied to a part-of-speech classification model coded to identify its grammatical properties and context. Once the computer comprehends the speech, the text-to-speech conversion is executed to convert the language into an audible or textual format to be used by the end-user across a range of financial applications, such as chatbots and voice assistants that analyse customer queries or examine corporate documents and news feeds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Indeed, corporate releases such as earnings calls provide an ideal example of where NLP can add considerable value, with speech-recognition representing a highly important method of analysis of the company\u2019s performance. Such calls provide ample opportunities to analyse the company\u2019s overall health, followed by a presentation of the results and the question-and-answer (Q&amp;A) session during which the company responds to various questions from analysts, offering much scope for scrutiny by NLP algorithms. \u201cWhat and how they ask the questions, and what and how the company answers, including their tone, are likely to reflect on the company\u2019s stock price,\u201d according to Kelvin Rocha, lead data scientist at Refinitiv Labs. \u201cProfiling the tone of speech, and converting it to text to quantify it across different key topics, such as revenue, is extremely useful.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Similarly, financial research also provides an ideal use case for NLP, especially given the copious amounts of potential information invariably contained within research documents. For analysts, making sense of all this information as quickly as possible can be critical in generating timely trading recommendations and gaining a competitive edge. And with more recent regulatory requirements mandating that investment firms pay for all research, the need to discern which particular sources of information are the most useful and relevant becomes even more important.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>As such, NLP-based solutions have come to fruition over the last few years to improve efficiency when interpreting this voluminous research. State Street Corporation, for instance, launched Quantextual Idea Lab in 2017, which uses NLP and machine learning to more efficiently organise and extract information from various types of content. This has involved implementing research-aggregation software, which tags and classifies the research. Text-summarisation algorithms then shorten the content into condensed form while ensuring the text\u2019s formal tone is not compromised. Ultimately, analysts derive the relevant insights quicker than would otherwise be possible and without losing important information.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Compliance divisions in banks can also leverage NLP applications to enhance a variety of processes. For instance, named-entity recognition can be used to contextualise unstructured content by detecting and labelling concepts of interest, such as people, companies and other entities. This allows compliance officers to retrieve important information quickly and ensure regulatory requirements are met. This has become especially pertinent given the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape financial firms have faced during the last decade or so. With new directives coming into play regularly, documents that often consist of hundreds and thousands of pages can require considerable time and energy to decipher.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But instead of allocating such tasks to compliance professionals or paying external firms to carry out the documentation analyses, firms can increasingly utilise AI and NLP to thoroughly and efficiently extract the required information. NLP techniques can be applied to scan the documents, identify key entities to which the regulations apply, extract metadata and interpret key objectives that the text stipulates. Ultimately, this enables financial institutions to have a better chance of consistently remaining compliant with increasingly onerous regulatory burdens. And by automating much of the process, not only does NLP lower the opportunities for human error but also the risks of the regulations being exposed to cognitive and emotional biases that all humans possess\u2014compliance officers included.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In terms of specific subject areas in which NLP is proving valuable, sustainable investing ranks close to the top. Among the biggest challenges in the sustainability sphere\u2014which includes such activities as environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, impact investing and socially responsible investing\u2014is the persistence of \u201cgreenwashing\u201d, a practice frequently carried out by financial firms, whereby they exaggerate their sustainability credentials and commitments through their formal disclosures but fail to carry them out in practice. This invariably means companies file substantial disclosures related to sustainability, but much of it is effectively meaningless.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Noticing this unfortunate trend, Deutsche Bank found that larger-cap companies tended to receive higher ratings pertaining to ESG risks, which it attributed to their possibly having more resources at hand to write longer\u2014albeit largely irrelevant\u2014reports. As such, the bank created the \u03b1-DIG system to more accurately ensure companies are aligning their businesses with sustainability practices in reality. \u201cThis uses machine learning algorithms and natural language processing techniques to infer context and understanding from company information that is increasingly subject to greenwashing,\u201d Deutsche Bank noted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The bank trained the \u03b1-DIG\u2019s NLP algorithm to assess company commitments and detect carbon-related discussions in sustainability reports. The result was the identification of five different topics, along with each topic\u2019s top associated keywords. It then created a ranking system to identify which companies are most focused on climate mitigation and adaptation and combined the rankings with other linguistic features extracted from sustainability reports. Ultimately, it exposed significant evidence of greenwashing. \u201cIt is a shame that many companies greenwash their communications, especially as this influences the ESG scores calculated by traditional data vendors,\u201d acknowledged Deutsche Bank Research\u2019s Andy Moniz, chief data scientist, and Spyros Mesomeris, global head of quantitative strategy. \u201cBut investors, in combination with new technology can begin to uncover the reality of a firm\u2019s ESG position and help model many ESG investors\u2019 ultimate goal: to predict the carbon transition risk and a company\u2019s future carbon footprint.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>According to a research report from Quince Market Insights, the global NLP market was valued at US$9.2 billion in 2019 and is anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.4 percent from 2020 to 2028. In terms of what is achievable, therefore, NLP is set to jump by leaps and bounds this decade. And much of this growth is likely to be driven by financial services. With NLP being increasingly applied across a range of financial use cases and a number of successful applications having already been registered, it is proving to be among the finance industry\u2019s most transformative technologies.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Published at Mon, 12 Apr 2021 10:18:45 +0000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fintech firm Monva raises more than \u00a3450000 through crowd funding A Deeside based smart comparison&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/techclot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/HTt5Wp-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3orZX-1wM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}