SAN FRANCISCO — The last presentation had ended at 4 p.m. and,for 90 minutes plus, a thick, anxious crowd had milled around afull bar downing stiff drinks as attendees placed their bets onwhich presenters would be named best of show.

The winners were called up in alphabetical order.

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First up Wednesday afternoon: FamZoo, whose online and mobilesoftware are designed to help parents teach children aboutfinances. Kids are given “virtual bank accounts” to manage theirallowance, earnings, gifts. FamZoo claims among its key customersVerity Credit Union and PenFed.

LendUp was next up. Itstarget audience are people who have been declined for conventionalloans by credit unions and banks and its theme is that theseborrowers deserve “something better” than predatory payday andtitle loans. Loan amounts are initially kept small to mitigaterisk, and a plus, said LendUp, is that borrowers can build up theircredit ranking to score bigger and better loans.

MoneyDesktop,which has been winning praise and customers for its PFM tools forseveral years, was named next. At Finovate it debuted analyticaltools that are designed to help financial institutions gain deeperinsights into what their consumers need, so that they can offermore targeted products and services. MoneyDesktop already claims400 financial institution clients, among them many creditunions.

PayNearMe is based ona what-is-old-is-new again idea, where its focus is on cash. Whatit allows consumers to do is pay their bills with cash, atthousands of participating merchants (including 7,000+ 7-11s). Itsprimary market are unbanked and underbanked consumers who may nothave checking or share draft accounts but who want to avoid thesteep fees some money order retailers impose.

Last up: TipRanks, onlinetools that collect performance data for stock analysts and pickers,then rates them, with scores – much like baseball batting averages.The company uses public data – mainly past picks and stockperformance data – to generate its scores.

No single “best of show” winner was announced but, judging bythe comments heard by this reporter, the crowd favorite wasTipRanks, which, just about instantly, tells you which analysts areall mouth, bad performance, and which deserve a listening to whenit comes to buy-sell-hold recommendations.