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.
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.
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.
Albert
Albert is a Los Angeles-based personal finance app that bundles budgeting, banking, automated savings, investing, cash advances and human-plus-AI financial guidance into a single subscription. Founded in 2015 by Yinon Ravid and Andrzej Baraniak, it pairs software automation with real people - its 'Genius' experts - to help everyday Americans manage money, and has grown to serve tens of millions of users while raising roughly $177M, including a $100M Series C.
Rain
Rain is a Santa Monica fintech that lets employees tap the wages they've already earned before payday. It plugs directly into employer payroll and time-and-attendance systems to calculate real-time earnings, then pairs instant access with budgeting tools, free tax filing, financial coaching, an AI financial assistant and a debit card. Since 2019 it has reached over 3.5 million workers and moved more than $2 billion in wages, positioning earned wage access as an employer benefit that cuts turnover and financial stress.
Mine
Mine (formerly Fizz) is a New York-based fintech building an AI-powered personal finance platform for young adults. Its flagship product is a credit-building card that works like a debit card - spending is capped by your bank balance, repaid daily via autopay, and reported to the credit bureaus so users build credit history without interest, fees, or the risk of falling into debt. In January 2026 the company rebranded from Fizz to Mine and launched MoneyGPT, an AI money agent that learns a user's habits and goals to deliver spending, saving, and planning advice.
Clair
Clair is a New York-based embedded fintech that lets employees access wages they have already earned before payday, at no cost to their employer. Built directly into payroll and workforce-management platforms like Gusto and TriNet, Clair offers no-interest, non-recourse wage advances backed by partner bank Pathward, N.A. The company positions itself as a compliance-first alternative to payday lenders, aiming to break the traditional two-week pay cycle for America's frontline workforce.
Finhabits
Finhabits is a bilingual financial wellness platform built by Latinos, for Latinos, that turns small, automatic deposits into diversified investment portfolios. Founded by MIT-trained engineer Carlos Garcia, the New York fintech pairs low-minimum Roth and Traditional IRAs with Spanish-and-English financial education to close the wealth gap for first-time investors, serving hundreds of thousands of members who often start with as little as a few dollars a week.