The Future of Finance: Insights from Fintech Meetup and HumanX 2025

Tearsheet recently attended two major industry events – Fintech Meetup and HumanX – where we had the opportunity to speak with executives from innovative companies in financial services and technology. From AI-powered automation to enhanced customer experiences and strategic marketing approaches, these conversations revealed the technologies and strategies shaping the industry’s future. 

Here’s what we learned from the leaders who are driving financial services innovation forward.

AI and Automation: Coming to financial services

The integration of AI into financial services was arguably the most prominent theme across both conferences, with companies using machine learning and automation to tackle everything from mortgage processing to compliance verification.

Better.com, an AI mortgage company, has developed a voice AI loan officer named Betsy that’s changing how mortgages are processed. “[In addition to Betsy], we’ve built an AI underwriting platform called Tinman, which integrates all of the functions of the mortgage process into one seamless workflow,” explained Vishal Garg, Founder and CEO of Better.com. Their AI solution isn’t just about efficiency — it’s about delivering a better customer experience at critical moments: “It’s not just about the cost savings, it’s about user delight… consumers can get the answer at 9 pm on a Friday, because they need to talk to their realtor Saturday morning.”

Likewise, Persado, a gen AI company, is applying AI to solve the longstanding friction between marketing and compliance departments at financial institutions. “In the world today, in the US at least, there are about 22 million hours that are spent to get content to be compliant and go out the door,” noted Assaf Baciu, Co-founder and President of Persado. Their solution uses “AI agents that talk between themselves to understand what is compliant and likely to perform,” enabling marketers to create content that drives conversion, while adhering to strict financial regulations.

Ocrolus, a data and analytics company for lenders, is using AI to streamline the underwriting process across small business, mortgage, and consumer lending. “We help lenders automate their underwriting process,” said Sam Bobley, Co-founder and CEO of Ocrolus. “Our software reads all that financial information, checks to see if anything suspicious or fraudulent is going on, runs a detailed analysis… and then ultimately helps the lender make a faster and more accurate decision.” Ocrolus demonstrates the practical side of AI implementation, combining automation with human oversight: “We provide this catch-all service where we have a human in the loop process. We quickly and accurately verify any discrepancies that the machine could not automatically confirm, and then we return perfect results to the customer.”

Enhanced customer experience through technology

Financial institutions are increasingly focused on using technology to create more personalized, coordinated customer experiences, particularly in the traditionally fragmented areas of checkout and identity verification.

Justin Grooms, President of Bolt, explained how their checkout solution has evolved: “We kind of pioneered that concept of integrating it all into one system” where “checkout would be easy to complete, stored information from a consumer so they didn’t have to enter it over and over again, and then would be kind of real time integrated with dozens of different financial products and management systems.” This focus on customer experience has paid dividends, with Bolt now counting “well over 80 million active wallets in our network of active information.”

AuthID is tackling the identity verification challenge through biometrics. “We built a document verification solution where you take the picture of the front and back selfie, we correlate all of the data and do a forensic analysis of the document,” explained Erick Soto, Chief Product Officer of AuthID. What sets the firm apart is its speed and accuracy: “By providing the highest level of assurance and verification of that ID within 700 milliseconds, we’re able to  deliver a very smooth customer experience.” This approach is especially critical as fraud threats evolve in the generative AI era.

Jennifer Dimenna, SVP of Enterprise Partnerships at Apiture, a digital banking technology firm, offered a forward-looking vision for how financial institutions can better serve small businesses through digital banking tools: “We see a world where the financial institution already knows information about you. It already knows the day that you get paid… And it knows that you pay your mortgage on the 15th. It already knows this. So, we can see a day when it’s going to start to do that for you.” This evolution toward a “self-driving bank” represents how customer experience will likely continue to evolve.

Ushur, led by CTO and co-founder Henry Peter, is positioning itself at the intersection of AI innovation and customer experience automation for regulated industries. Founded in 2014, the company recognized early that communication preferences were shifting from voice to messaging, and developed their platform to provide end-to-end automation for financial services firms, combining conversational AI with document processing capabilities to streamline customer interactions and back-office operations through what Peter calls “micro-engagements.”

“Look, we play in regulated industries. That means there’s a lot of compliance that has to be done,” Peter explains. “We call it the “entire human” in the picture…our approach has been to scrutinize, audit a lot of things in terms of confidence levels, the trends, the drift that happens. We then bring in humanity from an oversight perspective. It is a necessary ingredient in our equation in the end-to-end automation.”

Data and Analytics: Driving smarter financial decisions

The strategic use of data emerged as a critical differentiator for companies seeking to improve risk assessment, fraud detection, and business intelligence.

Carrington Labs is using alternative data sources to improve its credit decisions. “We build risk scoring models using alternative sources of data such as transaction data,” explained Jamie Twiss, CEO of Carrington Labs. “In doing so, we give lenders significantly more insight into their current customers as well as new applicants. That enables them to manage their own risk better, say yes to more customers,  and get limits right for those customers.” This approach is especially valuable for underserved segments: “The flow-through effect of the economy is that credit is deployed where it’s most effective and most responsible.”

DataVisor focuses on fraud and anti-money laundering through sophisticated data analysis. “We build an end-to-end platform, covering everything from data model and strategy to case management and reporting,” shared Alex Niu, Risk Leader at DataVisor. Their approach is especially valuable for real-time payment scenarios: “We’re very good at money movement. Like when you talk about real-time payments and all that fun stuff.”

CloudBees, while not a traditional fintech, provides valuable infrastructure for financial services companies through software automation. “We provide a much larger scope around open source Jenkins with a lot of capabilities that are very specific to the stability and reliability of the software factory,” explained Sunil Mavadia, Chief Technology Officer of CloudBees. For banks specifically, CloudBees addresses critical governance needs: “They need that scalability factor and the visibility around what’s happening in the software factory. Executives, in most cases, need to know how well or how securely the software is doing in production.”

Strategic partnerships and growth strategies

As financial services companies develop innovative solutions, strategic partnerships and thoughtful marketing approaches are becoming increasingly vital for growth.

Vy Lake from Galileo Financial Technologies shared insights on developing more strategic marketing partnerships: “Personally, when I evaluate vendors, I look for that person who can direct me because they’re the expert in that space. It’s a true partnership versus a transactional partnership, where I’m just paying them to listen to what I’m telling them to do. I need the other way to come from the experts.”

This sentiment was echoed by many companies looking to build deeper relationships rather than transactional engagements. 

Middesk, which focuses on business identity verification and KYB solutions, sees strategic partnerships as essential to its expansion. Liang Zhao, who supports Middesk’s public relations, explained: “We have about 500+ customers overall. That represents a mix of banks and financial institutions. And then we’re also getting into the ecosystem commerce space. So, it’s very much focused on business identity, with KYB through and through.” Zhao noted that their partnerships with two of the top three banks in the US have been instrumental to their growth.

DataVisor’s Alex Niu emphasized the importance of building brand awareness beyond simple recognition: “If you ask people, have you heard about DataVisor? They have heard of it. The second question is, hey, what do you know about data? What are they good at?” This challenge of establishing not just brand recognition but brand understanding is critical for specialized fintechs seeking to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Looking Ahead: The future of financial technology

The conversations at both conferences signaled that the industry is undergoing a profound transformation. From AI-driven process automation to enhanced data utilization and improved customer experiences, financial services companies are reimagining every aspect of how they operate.

As financial services continue to evolve, the partnerships between established institutions and innovative technology providers will be crucial. Jennifer Dimenna of Apiture summed up this collaborative approach: “We build a lot of software, but we don’t build everything, and we’re not great at everything. There are fintechs out here that are doing amazing stuff… these guys have already done the work, so let’s just integrate.”

The financial services landscape of 2025 and beyond is expected to be shaped by those companies that can successfully harness advanced technologies while maintaining security, compliance, and customer trust. Conversations at Fintech Meetup and HumanX highlight that the industry is heading toward greater personalization, enhanced automation, and improved accessibility for previously underserved segments.