There’s a fintech revolution going on inside Wall Street’s biggest firms.
At asset management giants from Blackrock to Third Point, banks such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and financial service behemoths Nasdaq, MetLife and American Express, upstart fintech firms are revolutionizing the way they operate. These blue-chip institutions are both users and investors in the most disruptive fintech firms on Wall Street, as laid out in Forbes’ 2019 Fintech 50.
Pioneering fintechs are allowing banks to make faster and better underwriting decisions, and to get a better handle on their risk. Armed with powerful new sets of data and machine-learning algorithms, banks and insurers are now able to sift through haystacks of information to quickly spot financial fraud, identity theft and those who are trying to evade sanctions. Many of these same tools can be used to confirm borrowers’ identities, easing the flow of credit to individual lenders and small business. In markets, algorithms that study language are helping trading houses and exchanges spot manipulation. Mega-banks are using AI to get a better, real-time understanding of their market and operational risks.
Our Fintech 50 list includes stalwarts on Wall Street like pioneering data startups such as Ayasdi, Digital Reasoning and Enigma. Secure communications platform Symphony now counts over 400,000 users who generally pay $15 a month to have access to its encrypted, Slack-like messaging platform and hundreds of other tools such as financial applications like FactSet and KoyFin, screen-sharing functions and even virtual data rooms to settle trades. IEX, another longtime listmaker, is now where billionaire Thomas Peterffy’s Interactive Brokers trades. Addepar, the software platform wealth managers use to manage their client accounts, surpassed $1 trillion in assets in April, and assets rose a further 30% by year-end.
