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TORONTO – Snapsheet, the industry-leading provider of virtual claims technology for the personal and commercial insurance marketplace, expanded its North American presence to Canada by partnering with Aviva Canada, a property and casualty insurance group.

“We’re thrilled to expand our services to the Canadian market with a partner who works to provide cutting-edge solutions to its customers,” said Brad Weisberg, Snapsheet’s CEO and founder. “Aviva is an industry leader who shares our core goal of making the claims process easier for everyone, so they’re an ideal choice as our first Canadian partner.”

How does Snapsheet work?

Once a customer files a claim, he or she takes photos of the damage and submits them through the carrier’s branded app – AvivaExpress, powered by Snapsheet. Snapsheet’s team of appraisers processes and inspects vehicle damage based on the photos using specialized software and engagement tools in order to provide an estimate for repairs. The customer then receives payment from their insurance carrier and can take their car to the body shop of their choosing. Snapsheet’s customer service team walks customers through the entire journey.

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Needham-based TripAdvisor Inc. is partnering with one of Boston’s fastest-growing startups, Toast Inc., to boost its recently launched restaurant ads business. The companies announced on Wednesday that they are both integrating their technologies and offering joint marketing incentives to restaurant owners.

The tech integration will allow restaurants that use Toast’s point-of-sale system to also buy ads on TripAdvisor (Nasdaq: TRIP) through the same software interface. On the marketing side, restaurant owners who are registered on TripAdvisor but don’t already use Toast will be offered a $500 ad-buying credit or a free six month subscription to TripAdvisor Premium when they buy Toast’s software.

The deal comes a few months after TripAdvisor launched its ads service for restaurants, which allows owners to pay in order to have listings for their restaurants appear near the top of relevant searches. The service is meant to open up a new line of revenue for travel-review site TripAdvisor, which has faced challenges in its core hotel business and seen its stock price suffer over the past two years.

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The prospect of blockchain technology remaking financial services just moved a step closer to reality after banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. completed a successful six-month test in the $2.8 trillion equity swaps market.

The program, managed by blockchain startup Axoni, kept track of the swaps contracts after they were executed, recording things like amendments or termination of the deals, stock splits and dividends, and achieved a “100 percent success rate,” Axoni said in a statement Monday. Other participants include the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Citigroup Inc., BNP Paribas SA and Credit Suisse Group AG.

“We’re on a path to take this forward,” Axoni Chief Executive Officer Greg Schvey said in an interview. “We know the thing works now.”

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Cars for international students can be a surprising complicated issue. Buying a car outright can be a hassle — it’s costly, and it might just be one more thing to sell off after graduation. Leasing might seem like the ideal option, but that, said Jeff Althaus, executive vice president and general manager at Flywire, comes pre-loaded with all kinds of friction points for international students.

Depending on a student’s home country, paying with a local currency or payment method can be tricky. And, many of these students, even those from affluent families, may not have a credit score that is easily interpreted by U.S. lenders.

Add to that the complicated structure of car sales between the manufacturers and the franchise dealerships, the financial department that handles financing and the fact that the car will need insurance for the entire time it’s on the road, and putting an international student behind the wheel quickly becomes a complicated and frustrating process.

It was that complication and frustration into which Volvo kept running headlong — and eventually became the reason the two firms collaborated on the International Students program. The program, which was announced Thursday (August 3), features a collaboration the pair have had in place, albeit privately, since the program’s launch in March of 2017.

“Volvo was actually having success in leasing to international students coming to study in the U.S.” Althaus said, “but [it] had no way to reconcile the vehicle payments as they were moving through the dealership.”

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For advisors who want to offer 401ks to their business-owner wealth management clients, Fiserv and Vestwell just made it easier.

Fintech giant Fiserv announced Monday that it is integrating robo 401k provider Vestwell into its platform, further adding to the digital streamlining of 401k services.

The partnership will provide “convenience and low-cost, high-value automation, allowing advisors to open a 401k that sits alongside their clients’ other accounts that are managed either directly or through a third-party.”

“Our partnership with Vestwell brings retirement planning and wealth management together, empowering financial advisors while expanding the offerings and enhancing the value they can bring to their clients,” Cheryl Nash, president or Investment Services with Fiserv, said in a statement. “The ability to offer a flexible, turnkey retirement platform provides advisors with a strong touchpoint and benefits peoples’ financial lives by reducing the time to investment and elevating the digital experience.”

Vestwell’s white-labeled solution allows advisors to deliver what the company describes as a “consistent client experience through an open-architecture, multi-custodial, multi-record-keeping platform.”

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Flywire, a leading provider of international payment solutions, today announced that it has acquired PACE Invoice, a multi-currency invoicing platform provider based in London. With the acquisition, Flywire adds international invoicing to its cross-border payments and receivables services, enabling its business, education and healthcare clients to more easily link invoices to cross-border receivables, saving time and costs in invoice preparation and payment reconciliation.

The move comes on the heels of Flywire’s recent expansion into the cross-border payment market for businesses. PACE Invoice CEO James Shattock will join the company and lead expansion efforts in the UK and Europe for that new business segment.

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NEW YORK, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Quovo, a data platform providing insights and connectivity for financial accounts, today announced it has raised $10 million in Series B funding. F-Prime Capital and Napier Park Financial Partners co-led the round and were joined by existing investors, FinTech Collective and Long Light Capital. Quovo will use the funds to accelerate the growth of its suite of data analytics offerings, which include the company’s recently launched bank authentication API and Quovo Connect module.

By providing efficient access to financial account aggregation and analytics via APIs and front-end dashboards, Quovo has played a key role in driving the ongoing digital transformation in wealth management. Demand for high-quality financial account data is rapidly growing as the broader financial services industry turns to data to optimize their client relationships and drive valuable insights. Leading this trend, Quovo has expanded across multiple financial services verticals, offering solutions for banking, lending, insurance, and more.

This expansion has most recently led to the launch and growth of Quovo’s Bank Authentication API and the launch of Quovo Connect, an easy-to-use module that offers an elegant user experience for adding financial accounts from thousands of institutions. The new Bank API and Quovo Connect are both easily embedded into any website or mobile app with just a few lines of code.

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Earlier this week, fintech firm Even Financial announced it increased loan originations by 205% quarter over quarter since the beginning of 2016 and surpassed $1.5 billion in loan requests. The company has experienced solid growth since it was founded in 2014.

Even Financial is aiming to become an important supply channel for online lenders in search of borrowers. The company claims to be the first and only dedicated supply-side platform for both online financial products and services. Even has established a set of well-known online finance partners, such as Prosper, Ascend, and Upstart, providing an integrated real-time API for search, comparison, and loan recommendations.

Following Even Financial’s latest milestone news, CEO Phill Rosen shared details about the platform’s development and the P2P industry with Crowdfund Insider.

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