financial-wellness
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SmartPath Bet Against the Money Pitch - and Built a Financial-Wellness Business for Everyone Else
Most financial companies teach in order to sell. SmartPath sells the teaching itself - a mix of live classes, dedicated coaches and software now reaching more than one million users through the institutions they already trust.
OneBlinc Bet on Payroll Loans. Then the Money Got Expensive.
The Miami fintech built a data engine around public-sector payroll loans, raised a $100 million credit facility, and then watched higher rates squeeze the model. Its answer was a fast pivot to a smaller, subscription-priced payday bridge - and a revealing lesson in knowing when your first product has become your baggage.
Two Stanford Classmates Bet That Americans Drowning in Debt Would Rather Be Helped Than Hustled
Two Stanford classmates spent two decades building a debt company most people never heard of. Then they renamed it Achieve, wired it to AI, and bet 2 million struggling households on one idea: do the customer's math first.
The Credit Union That Outgrew the Airline Map
UNIFY began as a savings circle for airline employees. Seventy-eight years later, its merger with CommunityAmerica shows what happens when a workplace cooperative becomes a national banking network.
The $380 Billion Business of Giving Savers Permission to Spend
Corebridge sells a surprisingly emotional product: permission to use the money you spent decades saving. Behind that promise sits an old insurance engine, a young public brand and a pending merger that could erase the name almost as quickly as it arrived.
The $1.7 Billion Reason Guardian Life Still Believes in an Old-Fashioned Idea
Guardian Life has spent 165 years selling protection against life’s worst timing. Its mutual structure now pairs a record policyholder payout with the less glamorous work of making benefits, claims and leave easier to use.
The Life Insurer That Would Rather You Stay Alive
At 164, John Hancock is recasting the oldest bargain in insurance: instead of waiting to pay after death, it rewards customers for living better now. The experiment links life insurance to wearables, cancer screening, longevity research and a growing stack of health technology.
Benefit Plans Administrative Services, Inc. (BPAS)
BPAS has built a sizable business around a quiet corporate headache: the pile of rules, records, vendors and deadlines behind employee benefits. Its answer is to put more of that machinery under one roof - while keeping a human expert on the phone.
Gen Digital
The company behind Norton, Avast and LifeLock is stitching cybersecurity to MoneyLion's financial toolkit. Its wager is that the next great consumer platform will sell peace of mind before, during and after something goes wrong.
Horace Mann
Horace Mann built an 80-year business by studying one customer more closely than most insurers study a market. Its wager is that understanding the financial life of a teacher - from the school parking lot to retirement - can still be a durable advantage.
Prudential Financial
The 150-year-old insurer has become a three-engine financial machine: protection for families, retirement risk transfer for institutions, and a $1.4 trillion active asset manager. Its advantage is not novelty, but the ability to price promises that may last longer than the people who make them.
Abhi
Abhi is a MENAP embedded-finance company that started by letting salaried workers draw wages they have already earned before payday, and has grown into a full stack of employer-facing tools - earned wage access, payroll processing, payroll financing and invoice factoring - plus its own microfinance bank in Pakistan. Founded in 2021 by Omair Ansari and Ali Ladhubhai and backed by Y Combinator (S21), it now serves over a million people across thousands of companies in Pakistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, and was the first MENAP fintech named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer.
Eazipay
Eazipay is a Lagos-based payroll and payment automation platform that lets African businesses run payroll, remit taxes and statutory contributions, and pay their teams in about five minutes. Founded in 2021 and backed by Y Combinator (W22), it also offers payroll APIs for banks and neobanks and financial-wellness tools such as early wage access for workers.
GIMO
GIMO is a Vietnamese fintech that lets blue-collar workers draw a portion of their already-earned wages before payday through a mobile app connected to their employer's payroll. Founded in 2019 and part of Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch, GIMO works with manufacturers and other large employers to give underbanked staff an alternative to predatory informal lenders, and has grown to serve hundreds of thousands of workers across the country.
Highline
Highline is a Dallas-based fintech that runs an intelligent payment network called Pay by Paycheck, which lets consumers automate bill and loan payments directly from their paychecks before the money reaches their bank accounts. By capturing funds through a payroll split at the moment payroll is run, Highline helps borrowers avoid missed payments, late fees and overdrafts while giving lenders and billers a more reliable way to get paid - expanding access to lower-cost credit for the roughly 40 million Americans who have steady jobs but thin or subprime credit files.
Tapcheck
Tapcheck is a Texas-based fintech that gives hourly and frontline workers access to wages they have already earned before their scheduled payday. Founded in 2019 by husband-and-wife team Ron and Kayling Gaver, the company connects to an employer's existing payroll and timekeeping systems through no-code integrations, then lets employees transfer up to a share of their net earned wages after each shift - to a bank account or a free Tapcheck Mastercard. The service is offered at no cost to employers and does not touch company cash flow, while employees pay a single, ATM-style fee per transfer. Tapcheck positions earned wage access as an employee benefit that reduces financial stress and improves retention.
Workers Benefit Fund
Workers Benefit Fund is a New York-based, mission-driven company that closes the benefits gap for gig workers, freelancers and independent contractors. Acting as a PEO-style solution for the gig industry, it builds the technology, outreach infrastructure and partnerships that platforms, labor unions and public institutions need to connect non-traditional workers with health, wellness and financial benefits. Its flagship work powers the Drivers Benefits program alongside The Black Car Fund, which has enrolled tens of thousands of New York for-hire drivers at no cost to them.
Geoff Brown
Geoff Brown is the co-founder and CEO of Highline, a Dallas-based fintech that runs a payments network pulling bill payments and loan repayments directly from a worker's paycheck instead of a bank account. A self-described numbers geek with a math and physics degree from the University of Florida, he spent two decades in consumer banking and credit risk at Capital One, Santander and Salary Finance before starting Highline in 2020. The company raised $13 million in Series A funding in 2022 and pitches payroll-linked payments as a way to cut missed payments and expand access to lower-cost credit.
Boldin
Boldin (formerly NewRetirement) is a Mill Valley, California fintech that makes comprehensive financial and retirement planning software affordable and self-directed. What began as a spreadsheet built to help founder Steve Chen's mother draw down her retirement savings has grown into a platform where more than 350,000 people have built plans covering over $300 billion in assets. Boldin sells a low-cost consumer subscription (PlannerPlus) plus a free planner, live classes, coaching, and CFP advice, and licenses its planning engine to enterprises like Nationwide and RTX.
Candidly
Candidly is an AI-native financial wellness platform that helps employers, financial institutions, recordkeepers and banks deliver personalized guidance on student debt, savings and retirement. Formerly FutureFuel.io, the company optimizes income-driven repayment, powers student-loan-to-401(k) retirement matches under SECURE 2.0, and now runs a multi-agent AI system - the Candidly Intelligence Center, fronted by its conversational assistant Cait - that spans debt payoff, budgeting, college planning and tax-advantaged accounts. Founded in 2016 by Laurel Taylor, Candidly reports it can reach roughly 1 in 2 U.S. workers through its distribution partners.
Matt Watson
Matt Watson is the co-founder and CEO of Origin, a Boston-based fintech that in September 2025 launched what it calls the first SEC-regulated AI financial advisor. A former Citigroup high-yield credit trader who previously co-founded Indio Technologies (acquired by Applied Systems in 2019), Watson has raised more than $75 million for Origin from Founders Fund, Felicis, General Catalyst and 01A to make certified-financial-planner-quality advice available to people who normally can't afford it.
Ron Gaver
Ron Gaver is the co-founder and CEO of Tapcheck, a Plano, Texas fintech that lets hourly workers pull earned wages before payday. He runs the company with his wife Kayling Gaver, having spent 14 years operating a real estate development firm before pivoting to payroll technology in 2019. Under his leadership Tapcheck has moved more than $1 billion in early wages across roughly 12,000 employer locations and raised $225 million in equity and debt in April 2025.
Canary
Canary is a New York-based benefits company that helps employers, nonprofits, and foundations give employees fast, dignified cash grants when a financial emergency hits. Its flagship product, Grant Circle, handles the legal, tax, and administrative machinery of running an employee relief fund so an organization can move money to a worker facing an eviction, a medical bill, or a natural disaster in days rather than weeks. Founded by Rachel Schneider - co-author of The Financial Diaries - Canary has channeled millions in emergency grants to workers, with an average grant of roughly $848.
Clockout
Clockout is a fintech company that lets banks and credit unions offer earned wage access (EWA) directly inside their own mobile and online banking apps, so customers can tap a portion of their pay before payday without waiting on their employer. Founded in 2022 by childhood friends from Venezuela, Clockout started as a traditional EWA service for South Florida restaurant groups, then pivoted in 2024 to become the embedded infrastructure layer - often described as the 'Zelle for earned wage access.' The platform connects to more than 1,600 payroll systems and plugs into major core banking providers including Q2, Jack Henry, Alkami and Candescent, letting an institution launch EWA in roughly ten days. Clockout closed a $2 million seed round in June 2025.
HerMoney
HerMoney is a digital media company founded in 2018 by longtime personal-finance journalist Jean Chatzky to give women judgment-free money guidance. It publishes the HerMoney podcast and newsletters, runs the FinanceFixx budgeting and InvestingFixx investing-club coaching programs, and partners with employers and financial institutions to close the gender wealth gap.
Oro
Oro is a Los Angeles social fintech that turns housing into a workplace benefit. Its B2B platform lets employers offer housing wellness to every worker - renters, buyers, and owners - through concierge housing assistance, rent-to-credit reporting, homebuyer education, down payment savings programs, and housing loans. Founded by former Big Law partner George Fatheree, Oro is a Delaware public benefit corporation that raised $3 million in seed funding in January 2026 to make housing the next standard employee benefit.
TomoCredit
TomoCredit is a San Francisco fintech that issues a credit card to people the traditional system can't see - immigrants, students, and first-time borrowers with no FICO score. Instead of a credit check, its proprietary 'Tomo Score' underwrites applicants on cash-flow and bank data, with no deposit, no APR, and no fees, earning revenue purely from merchant interchange. Founded in 2018 by Kristy Kim after she was denied a car loan as a Korean immigrant with no credit history, the company has processed millions of applications and is now building TomoIQ, an AI financial assistant that turns professional-grade money guidance into something anyone can use.
George Fatheree
George Fatheree is the founder and CEO of Oro, a Los Angeles public benefit corporation that brings housing support into the workplace as an employee benefit. A former Big Law real estate partner at Sidley Austin, Munger Tolles & Olson and Skadden, he is best known for engineering the historic return of Bruce's Beach to the Bruce family in 2022, the first time in U.S. history that land seized through racially motivated eminent domain was returned to a Black family. He now applies the same financial and legal machinery to closing the wealth gap at scale, raising $3 million in early 2026 to launch Oro's housing wellness platform.
Rachel Schneider
Rachel Schneider is the founder and CEO of Canary, a New York fintech that lets employers and donors give tax-free emergency cash grants to workers in crisis. Before building software, she spent years studying how American families actually handle money - co-authoring the acclaimed book The Financial Diaries with economist Jonathan Morduch - and held senior roles at Merrill Lynch, the Aspen Institute, and the Financial Health Network. Canary turned that research into a product: a confidential application that moves money to people at the moment they need it most.
Alex Bradford
Alex Bradford is the co-founder and CEO of Rain, a Santa Monica fintech that lets hourly and frontline workers tap wages they have already earned before payday instead of turning to payday loans or overdrafts. A former McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and SAC Capital analyst with a Stanford degree and a Harvard MBA, Bradford launched Rain in 2019 after spotting that payroll and timekeeping systems had finally opened their APIs. The company plugs into employers' payroll and HCM systems (including a native Workday integration), has connected millions of workers and distributed more than $2 billion in earned wages, and has raised capital from investors including QED, Invus and Prosus. Bradford's pitch is personal: he grew up with a single mother in the 1980s and built Rain to kill predatory lending and give workers control over their own money.