Tech Ascension Awards Announces 2025 FinTech Award Winners – Recognizing the Innovators Revolutionizing Financial Technology

The Tech Ascension Awards are proud to announce the 2025 FinTech Award winners, celebrating the organizations redefining how technology drives financial access, compliance, payments, and fraud prevention. These winners exemplify innovation that delivers measurable value across the global financial ecosystem — from AI-driven mortgage origination to real-time payment flexibility and advanced risk mitigation.

“These industry leaders are spearheading the transformation of modern finance,” said David Campbell, CEO of the Tech Ascension Awards. “Their solutions demonstrate how innovation in fintech is not just about automation, but about empowering people and organizations to build faster, safer, and more inclusive financial systems.”

Best AI / ML Powered Solution – Better.com, Tinman® AI Platform

The Tinman® AI Platform is Better.com’s end-to-end, AI-native mortgage decisioning engine that unifies the entire home-loan lifecycle — from borrower intake to underwriting and document generation. Built as a proprietary, API-accessible platform, Tinman integrates multiple essential modules such as POS, CRM, pricing, document, and underwriting engines into a single cohesive system.

By automating nearly 70% of manual tasks and compressing back-office workflows, Tinman has reduced lenders’ origination costs by 35–40% compared to industry averages. It delivers real-time borrower feedback and faster decisioning, enabling even smaller financial institutions to compete on speed, scalability, and user experience.

In 2025, Better.com reported a 25% year-over-year surge in funded loan volume, driven by the Tinman platform — positioning it as the first AI-native mortgage lender to surpass $100 billion in funded mortgage volume.

Most Innovative FinTech Solution – Alpaca, Alpaca API

Alpaca’s API provides a vertically integrated, self-clearing brokerage infrastructure that empowers developers and fintechs to build global investing products effortlessly. The platform removes the complexity of traditional financial integrations by offering modular APIs for trading, account funding, compliance, and reporting — all backed by real-time automation.

By abstracting away legacy brokerage layers, Alpaca enables rapid market access and lowers the barrier for startups and institutions entering the investing space. Its API-first architecture allows companies to embed brokerage capabilities directly into their products, accelerating innovation and financial inclusion across international markets.

Best Payment Tech Solution – DailyPay, On-Demand Pay

DailyPay is redefining employee financial empowerment by giving millions of working Americans real-time access to their earned wages through its On-Demand Pay platform. By enabling workers to control when and how they get paid, DailyPay helps improve financial stability, reduce reliance on payday loans, and boost overall employee satisfaction and retention.

In the past year alone, DailyPay moved over $20 billion through its network, proving that flexible pay solutions can drive tangible impact for both employees and employers. The platform’s secure architecture and seamless integration with payroll systems make it a cornerstone of the modern financial wellness movement.

Best Compliance Solution – Temenos, Temenos FCM AI Agent

The Temenos FCM AI Agent is a next-generation compliance and screening platform that leverages AI to automate and enhance financial crime mitigation. Designed to help banks and fintechs meet growing global compliance demands, the agent uses intelligent automation to reduce false positives, increase detection accuracy, and ensure seamless adherence to complex regulations.

By integrating machine learning with explainable AI, Temenos enables organizations to maintain transparency in decision-making while scaling compliance operations efficiently. The platform represents a new standard for responsible AI use in regulatory technology — combining power, precision, and trust.

Best Fraud Prevention Solution – DataVisor, DataVisor Fraud and Risk Platform

The DataVisor Fraud and Risk Platform delivers measurable fraud prevention and risk management through a unified AI-powered engine. By analyzing billions of data points in real time, the platform detects coordinated and evolving fraud patterns across financial transactions, accounts, and digital interactions.

DataVisor’s unsupervised machine learning models identify emerging threats without historical labels, giving organizations a critical edge in combating synthetic identities, account takeovers, and payment fraud. Its scalable cloud architecture empowers leading enterprises and fintechs worldwide to reduce losses, improve trust, and maintain user experience without compromise.

The Tech Ascension Awards continue to recognize the organizations and innovations shaping the future of finance — setting new benchmarks for how technology can deliver smarter, faster, and safer financial ecosystems.

Tech Ascension Awards Announces 2025 Leadership & CEO Award Winners – Honoring Visionary Leaders Driving Innovation and Impact

The Tech Ascension Awards are proud to announce the 2025 Leadership & CEO Award winners, recognizing executives whose vision, innovation, and leadership have redefined technology’s role in business and society. These award winners exemplify the leadership required to steer organizations through disruption, growth, and transformation in the age of AI and digital innovation.

“These leaders represent the highest standard of innovation and impact,” said David Campbell, CEO of the Tech Ascension Awards. “Their achievements demonstrate how great leadership not only advances technology but uplifts people, fosters inclusion, and builds a culture of excellence that propels entire industries forward.”

2025 Tech Ascension Awards Leadership & CEO Category Winners

Woman in Tech Leader of the Year – Linda Yao, VP and GM of Hybrid Cloud and AI Solutions, Lenovo

Linda Yao has been instrumental in advancing Lenovo’s leadership in hybrid cloud and AI infrastructure. She has championed diversity and innovation across Lenovo’s ecosystem, helping organizations harness intelligent infrastructure for sustainable, scalable digital transformation. Yao’s leadership reflects a rare blend of technical excellence, strategic foresight, and dedication to empowering the next generation of women in tech.

CEO of the Year – Owen Ryan, Chair of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, BlackLine

Owen Ryan has led BlackLine through a period of remarkable growth and innovation, redefining financial automation for the enterprise era. Under his leadership, BlackLine has expanded its AI-driven capabilities, strengthened global partnerships, and advanced a company culture rooted in integrity, performance, and inclusion. Ryan’s strategic vision continues to drive transformation in accounting automation and enterprise finance. Women in Cyber Leader of the Year – Kirsty Paine, Strategic Advisor, EMEA, Splunk (a Cisco Company) Kirsty Paine is a globally recognized cybersecurity strategist whose work at Splunk has helped government and enterprise organizations navigate today’s evolving digital threat landscape. She has been a vocal advocate for cyber resilience, diversity in security, and responsible AI. Paine’s thought leadership and mentorship continue to shape the future of cybersecurity across the EMEA region and beyond.

Industry Innovator of the Year – Jason Lancaster, Senior Vice President of Investigations, SpyCloud

Jason Lancaster has revolutionized the way enterprises approach identity protection and cybercrime intelligence. Through his leadership, SpyCloud has advanced its cyber threat intelligence platform, empowering organizations to detect and neutralize criminal activity faster than ever. Lancaster’s technical expertise and relentless pursuit of innovation have set new standards for security intelligence and digital identity defense.

The Tech Ascension Awards continue to celebrate leaders who inspire innovation, cultivate trust, and build a more inclusive, secure, and forward-thinking technology ecosystem.

How Best Managed Services Provider Award Winner Hughes is Redefining Enterprise Security with Managed SASE

Hughes Network Systems was recently recognized as Best Managed Services Provider by the 2025 Tech Ascension Awards for its Hughes Managed SASE solution. In a market crowded with point products and rising complexity, Hughes is helping enterprises take a smarter, phased approach to Zero Trust and SASE adoption. By unifying networking and security capabilities into a single managed platform, Hughes is giving IT teams the ability to simplify operations, strengthen protection, and scale confidently in the face of today’s cyber threats.

We sat down with Colleen Caruso, VP of Enterprise Managed Services at Hughes, to discuss how Hughes is redefining managed services, what sets its Managed SASE offering apart, and how enterprises are achieving real-world outcomes with the solution.

How does Hughes define its role as a managed services provider, and what does that mean for enterprise customers navigating today’s cybersecurity landscape—especially for those who may not be ready for a full transformation but are looking for the right place to start?

At Hughes, we define our role not just as technology providers, but as an extension of our customers’ IT and security teams, working right alongside them. Many enterprises are not ready to overhaul everything at once, so we meet them where they are in their journey. That might mean starting with a single capability, like a Zero Trust implementation, and then expanding into a fully integrated Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) framework as their needs evolve. This step-by-step approach allows organizations to strengthen protection without overextending budgets or resources. Our broader suite of managed services extends this philosophy, helping customers simplify network operations, improve performance, reduce vendor count, and enhance security across every stage of their digital journey.

Cybersecurity threats are evolving rapidly. How does Hughes Managed SASE help enterprises stay ahead of modern risks?

Hughes Managed SASE consolidates multiple security functions—including Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs), secure web gateways (SWGs), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Firewall-as-a-Service (FaaS), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)—into a unified cloud-based platform built on Zero Trust principles. Every access request is continuously validated, helping prevent unauthorized behavior in real time. With our 24/7 monitoring and adaptive security posture, customers gain proactive protection against sophisticated and constantly changing threats. 

Beyond threat prevention, this unified approach eliminates the silos and inefficiencies of managing separate tools, reducing complexity for IT teams and ensuring consistent enforcement of policies across all users, devices, and locations. By embedding Zero Trust into every layer, the solution enables enterprises to safeguard sensitive data, support compliance requirements, and deliver a seamless experience for employees whether they are working on-site, remotely, or in the cloud. The result is a security framework that is not only more effective but also easier to scale, providing enterprises with the confidence to grow and innovate without compromising protection. This focus aligns with market momentum, as 42% of organizations are planning to implement Zero Trust within the next 12 months, making managed Security Service Edge (SSE) and SASE a foundational strategy for staying ahead of evolving threats.

The market for SASE solutions is increasingly competitive. What sets Hughes apart?

What differentiates Hughes is the combination of our leadership in managed services, our deep networking expertise, and extensive commitment to collaborative customer service. We have been recognized by industry analysts as leaders in managed network services and SD-WAN, and we complement that track record with advanced AI-powered data loss prevention that protects sensitive data across websites, SaaS applications, emails, and even generative AI platforms. Along with strategic partnerships with leading security focused technology companies like Fortinet, Netskope, and Lumifi, we deliver a solution that is both comprehensive and proven in the most complex enterprise environments.

Many enterprises struggle with stretched IT teams and limited cybersecurity talent. How does Hughes lighten that load?

Our managed model is designed to remove the operational burden from in-house teams, providing people, processes, and consultation that deliver impact. Instead of juggling multiple vendors and tools, customers rely on Hughes as a single partner to manage deployment, monitoring, and optimization. Our in-house expertise also allows customers to get the most out of their implementation of these security frameworks that they may not achieve with limited staff capabilities. Our nationwide service footprint and Security Operations Center ensure around-the-clock coverage, while predictable costs and fee structures eliminate financial surprises. As a result, IT teams can focus on business priorities while we handle the complexity of securing their networks. This approach directly addresses a key market challenge, as 47% of IT leaders cite lack of in-house expertise as their primary reason for turning to managed security service providers.

How does the Hughes approach to integrating SASE, SD-WAN, CASB, DLP, FaaS, and ZTNA within a single service change the game for enterprise security?

By integrating network and security functions into one platform, we remove the silos that create gaps in visibility and control. Our SASE and SD-WAN foundations optimize traffic performance, while CASB, FaaS, DLP, and ZTNA deliver layered security without adding latency. This convergence gives enterprises a consistent user experience and stronger defenses across every site, application, and cloud service. It also streamlines policy management, allowing IT teams to apply and enforce rules centrally rather than configuring them across multiple systems. This integrated design creates greater agility, while enabling enterprises to scale rapidly or adapt to new business demands without compromising performance or protection.

What kinds of business outcomes are Hughes customers seeing (e.g., whether cost savings, operational efficiency, or improved time to deployment)?

Our customers are seeing faster time to deployment because they do not need to have in-house expertise or integrate dozens of vendors. They also see efficiency gains from centralized management and performance optimization across distributed networks. By partnering with Hughes, enterprises reduce operational and compliance risks, while benefitting from predictable costs and a scalable service model that grows with their needs.

For example, Hughes built The Vitamin Shoppe an entirely new network utilizing a cloud-based architecture and Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) delivery model. The Hughes Managed Services solution features a SASE framework—delivering network functionality, performance optimization, and security policies. What’s more, by moving away from the hub-and-spoke model of data center connectivity, Hughes enabled The Vitamin Shoppe’s network to become more robust and cost effective with applications that are easier to run, manage, operate and optimize—positioning The Vitamin Shoppe to get the most out of IT-based capital expenditures. At each store, the retailer can leverage advanced networking technologies, capabilities, and security solutions from Hughes, with confidence that their network capabilities will remain on the leading edge.

Looking ahead, how is Hughes evolving its managed cybersecurity services to meet future demands in AI, compliance, and remote work?

We are focused on keeping enterprises ahead of the curve by integrating AI-driven insights into data loss prevention, enhancing compliance tools for industries with stringent regulatory requirements, and further securing hybrid and remote workforces. As threats become more complex, Hughes continues to innovate through partnerships, automation, and adaptive security frameworks that evolve alongside customer needs. Our goal remains consistent: to be the most trusted managed services provider, delivering secure, simplified, and future-ready networking and security solutions.