By Aliza Gutman, Financial Health Network There’s no arguing that fintech has tremendous potential as a delivery channel for high-quality products and services to help consumers improve their financial health. Yet many fintech tools are still not designed with the needs of underserved consumers in mind. In our just-published brief, we share what we learned…

By Rachel Schneider & Jennifer Tescher, Financial Health Network Sometimes, complex problems demand simple solutions. According to Financial Health Network’s research, 57% of Americans are financially unhealthy. The Pew Charitable Trust found that over 70% of Americans are income limited, savings constrained or debt challenged, and a third of Americans experience two or even three…

By Financial Health Network Underserved Consumers spent $141 billion in 2015 to borrow, spend, save, and plan their financial lives. What products do they use to meet their needs, and where are the opportunities for innovation? American consumers have never had more choices when it comes to financial products. But having choices doesn’t always mean…

As highlighted in UNC’s recent evaluation of the Financial Solutions Lab, one of the key differentiators of the Financial Solutions Lab from other accelerators, incubators, and investment activities is our commitment to improving consumer financial health. Success for us goes beyond helping an organization raise its next round of capital. What matters most is being […]

By Tyler Griffin, Financial Health Network This post is a follow-on to our recently released FinLab Snapshot, a report in which we identified industry insights, trends and analyses based on FinLab’s 356 applicants in 2016. In this post, we’ll share more about something we called out as one of the “trends on the horizon” we…

By Katherine J. Flocken Financial Health Startups Win Their Way to Money20/20 As autumn arrives, financial services innovators know it is almost time for Money20/20 — one of the largest conferences for payments and financial services innovation in the world. It is a major event for those in, or trying to break into, the financial services industry….

By Asad Ramzanali & Josh Sledge, Financial Health Network This shouldn’t come as a surprise to most of you reading this post, but it is worth stating: Fintech has a diversity problem. Specific numbers for diversity in fintech are hard to nail down. But we do know that both technology and finance have a significant…

This post is a follow-on to our recently released Financial Solutions Lab Snapshot, a report in which we identified industry insights, trends, and analyses based on Financial Solutions Lab’s 356 applicants in 2016. In this post, we’ll share more of our funding related applicant data and call out what we think these data imply. As we […]

By Tyler Griffin I think one of the most interesting tensions in our world of fintech exists between building a product that our customers love and building a product that is good for our customers. Much ink has been spilled about the tension between building a successful business and doing good; that is well trod…

By Aja McClahanan I’m a child of the 80s and came of age in the 90s. If you don’t know much about that time period, I’ll sum it up for you: the rise pop culture consumerism. Rappers, ball players and other larger-than-life personalities defined success for us in terms of the “bling.” The more diamond-encrusted…

By Steven M. Hughes LET’S REWIND. I’m a freshman in college, hungry for food and new experiences as I’m walking across the library bridge. From one end to the other are tables filled with coupons for free pizza, subs and credit cards (one of these things are not like the others). Shortly after all the…