Uprise: A Unique AI-Driven Wealth Management Platform

Jim Marous (00:13):

Hello, and welcome to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking. I'm your host, Jim Marous, Founder and CEO of the Digital Banking Report and Co-publisher of The Financial Brand.

Jim Marous (00:22):

71% of Gen Z and 72% of Millennials say there are financial topics they want trustworthy advice on, but aren't sure how to get it. At the same time the top barrier preventing Americans in general from seeking financial advice from a professional financial planner is a belief that they don't have enough money to use one.

Jim Marous (00:46):

The good news is that these generations are more likely to meet with their financial planners versus digital channels. Many Millennials prefer not to meet in person or over the phone. Rather, they prefer to use digital channels such as text messaging, videos, audio messages, and AI communication chat devices to communicate the challenges that they want highly personalized financial plans based on their goals as opposed to just a general answer.

Jim Marous (01:18):

My guest in the Banking Transformed Podcast today is Jessica Chen Riolfi, Co-Founder and CEO of Uprise. She shares how Uprise has leveraged data, AI algorithms, and human expertise to provide the potential for optimal financial outcomes through a wealth management platform.

Jim Marous (01:41):

In a marketplace that is yearning for easy to access, trustworthy financial advice, Uprise's strategy looks at a user's full financial picture, including some often-overlooked aspects like employee benefits, and uses the algorithm and human expert review to offer recommendations on what to do with money based on historical data and best practices.

Jim Marous (02:04):

So, I met our guest at this year's FinTech meetup in Las Vegas, where I was captivated by the mission of Uprise and the journey of this young startup since its beginning in early 2021, and even before that.

Jim Marous (02:17):

Before we start, Jessica, can you share a bit about your background and how your past prepared you for the journey you're on today?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (02:27):

Definitely, and thanks so much for having me on this podcast, Jim. So, I don't know that anything can fully prepare you for this journey, but my background has been at the intersection of finance and technology for a long time. So, before starting Uprise, I was the chief of staff to the Head of Product at Robinhood.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (02:46):

Before that I was the head of product at Earn In, which is a product that helps people living paycheck to paycheck make ends meet. And then before that I was an early employee at Wise, which is International Money Transfer.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (03:01):

So, I've had a lot of experience building in this space. What brought me to start Uprise came from two main things. One was at these companies I was working at, we frequently had customers come to us with questions about their finances.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (03:21):

So, for example, at Robinhood, people would ask, "What should I buy? What should my portfolio look like?" And unfortunately, Robinhood can't answer any of these questions. They direct you to the page of most popular stocks which is the wrong answer for everybody.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (03:40):

And you go one layer deeper, and you talk to customers and customer interviews and things like that and you realize that there's an underlying level of stress and confusion and also just regrets, things that they had wished they had done differently earlier.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (03:59):

And I thought back to my own personal experience growing up, my mom worked at the FDIC my whole life. She was an immigrant, really built up all of her knowledge but also working at the FDIC, she took me from day zero to open up a bank account explaining to me all of the different things, the way I should think about securing my money and savings, and optimizing for taxes and things like that.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (04:31):

And today, she lives on the border of Washington and Oregon, which is very tax-optimized, so you could see where all this comes from. But I thought like it should be possible to take the advice that she gave me at the exact right time, have a trusting relationship with her, she knows what she's talking about, and bring that to the right ... using technology to a lot more people. And basically, scaling my mom is how I describe a lot of that.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (05:00):

So, that was an initial genesis of like, "Hey, I want to try to democratize access to really good financial advice."

Jim Marous (05:10):

What is Uprise? How does it get built? How do the recommendations get formulated or how does a personalization take place?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (05:19):

So, the way our product works is that — the way I describe it is that it creates really good drafts. So, we do two main things. One is we put together initial financial review for a customer. So, looking at your situation, you need to do these three things. So, it could put together a draft financial plan there.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (05:38):

And the other thing it could do is put together a draft response to a customer question. So, "Hey, should I put my money in a solo 401(k) or SEP IRA?" "For your specific situation, you should do this." And I say drafts because philosophically as a company, we believe there always has to be a human in the loop.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (05:59):

A, the technology as you guys probably can guess, is not fully there yet. And even when ChatGPT starts to hallucinate and stuff like that, there needs to be a human in the loop. The second piece is even when the technology is 100% of the way there, we still really believe that the human is so valuable.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (06:20):

For the customer experience, to know that I have a person on the other side, and also to be that person, that accountability buddy, to keep me honest in this kind of stuff and help me overcome psychological and emotional vices. So, that's how we've built the product today, which is it enables a human to deliver more personalized financial advice to a lot more people.

Jim Marous (06:43):

So, what differentiates it from what's in the marketplace today? A lot of firms will say they use AI and they use humans together to bring together solutions and recommendations. What excites your prospects and clients about Uprise?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (06:59):

So, we predominantly partner with financial companies, financial institutions to offer this embedded within their product. And I think we're pretty unique in that we do this via financial institutions. And what I mean by this is a lot of different things. So, first, we focus our product on people who don't really meet net worth minimums yet or for whatever reason, don't want the traditional wealth advisor model.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (07:26):

So, call it people who are between 25, 45 net worth of say 50K, 100K. Even some people who have like a million dollars in net worth who think — I think the main thing a lot of people think is, "Well, that's not enough to have a traditional financial advisor yet."

Jessica Chen Riolfi (07:44):

And so, we tailor our product for that audience, which is to say like the topics they care about: home buying for the first time, oh, having a kid for the first time, getting married, helping them navigate a lot of these things. A lot of our customers have been like, "Startup equity, what do I do with this?"

Jessica Chen Riolfi (08:06):

And so, any specific questions that are coming up for this audience, we aim to be comprehensive for them. And then not only that, have a user experience that speaks to them is concise, doesn't talk to you like I'm in a suit behind a mahogany desk. I'm talking to you like a friend, and using language, avoiding industry jargon, that kind of stuff.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (08:26):

So, that's a lot of how we thought about building the product to make sure it really resonates for the end user.

Jim Marous (08:32):

So, it's interesting that I talked about it in our introduction, that you're really trying to address a marketplace that feels underserved, is skeptical about whether or not there's anything in the marketplace that can answer to their needs and hold their hand in the process.

Jim Marous (08:47):

But when you look at that, is the market big enough for your product? But even more importantly, do you provide enough added value over and above what they're getting today to differentiate yourself?

Jim Marous (09:03):

In other words, I know that in a lot of the writes I wrote about or read about, it talks about optimizing the financial journey. In other words, you find opportunities that others would never have found. Can you explain that a little bit?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (09:15):

Yeah, definitely. So, maybe I'll talk about the second piece first and then talk about sort of the market. So, our product is meant to be comprehensive. I think first of all, it's unique in the fact that there is even a human for this segment of customers.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (09:32):

This segment of customers is used to completely digital, maybe the Wealthfronts of the world, or the Mints of the world where unfortunately, I think it's not flexible and it doesn't fully understand the customer situation.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (09:45):

So, we take the time to actually get your benefits brochure and look through this thing to look for your benefits. Okay, well your 401(k) has this much match, you should put this much in there to hit your goals.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (09:59):

And so, there's a lot of this where we go pretty in depth in terms of understanding who you are, what your current situation is, where you're trying to get to, and then putting the right answer for you.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (10:10):

And so, that's been the main customer feedback that we've gotten from our end users, which has been, "Wow, this felt really personalized to me, and it feels like you guys understand the things that I'm thinking through. Because you've been through it and this kind of stuff."

Jessica Chen Riolfi (10:28):

And so, that I feel like is the key feeling that we're getting on the other side in a way that's not possible with fully digital solutions or fully human solutions because then it's way too expensive and out of reach.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (10:41):

The second piece is, is this market big enough? And surprisingly, maybe it is a little bit surprising to us because — so we partner with financial institutions. That is really broad category and basically, we have now done 105 conversations with different financial institutions.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (11:06):

This could be the traditional banks, community banks, credit unions, FinTech's, so Neobanks, investment products, real estate, life insurance. There's just so many different things and even, oh, small business.

Jim Marous (11:25):

Employer benefits.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (11:27):

Employer benefits, payroll.

Jim Marous (11:29):

Yeah.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (11:30):

Exactly, payroll companies, small business, financial services, because small business owners especially so busy with their business don't have time to figure out their personal and business finances are all mixed together. And so, that's been in each of these conversations, the light bulb goes on for the person's head.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (11:49):

It's like, "Yes, actually, if we had financial advice here, well, we could build this relationship earlier. If we had financial advice here, we could build a relationship with them over time and find cross-selling opportunities because we've got these other products."

Jessica Chen Riolfi (12:01):

And so, the flavor may be a little bit different for each of these different verticals. But it's been really eye-opening for us in all the different ways that we can make the user experience that much better by implementing personalized advice into these platforms.

Jim Marous (12:19):

Honestly, your Uprise really builds on an AI platform, taking data and making it work from a standpoint of modeling and algorithms. That said, we have a lot going on in the AI space right now to say the least. As much as I was enthusiastic about the November 30th release of ChatGPT, the reality is on March 23rd when they came out with version five of ChatGPT, it blew my mind in the difference between the two.

Jim Marous (12:50):

I mean, anything I asked, the difference in answers was far deeper and far more thoughtful. This is actually changing the perception of the marketplace that's aware of what's going on here to what is possible.

Jim Marous (13:04):

How does this change what Uprise offers and how are you integrating some of the learnings and some of the things that are going on in this marketplace with your product?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (13:14):

Definitely, it's super exciting. I think for us, AI, Data science has always been part of our founding story and our vision. As part of this, I went back to that initial scratch work that I had in terms of the business model. And there's my model of like, one pillar is AI, one pillar is the customer experience, and one pillar is the data around tax rules and financial products and stuff like that.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (13:44):

And so, I was very much inspired in the very beginning from Stitch Fix, completely different industry. Stitch Fix is — let's use AI to make recommendations on clothing for you, and basically, democratize access to personal stylists. But they're well-known in the Silicon Valley for having the best Data science team.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (14:09):

And I was like, "Whoa, we could take that similar model even with a sort of their human and AI together, that's how they've set that up." That was very much an inspiration for us getting started. So, basically the vision was at that time, we can make wealth management or financial advice, sorry, 10x cheaper than it previously was. Now, with the open AI technology, it can be 100x cheaper.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (14:36):

Because in addition to the machine learning that we've already got going, we can now — even the responses, the typed-up responses from the advisor, we can tranche like — Caroline who leads our financial planning has now sent hundreds of emails, like thousands of emails and messages to and from customers and this kind of stuff. We can train the technology in her voice.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (15:01):

And so again, we never sent anything straight to the customer, but now, it's, "Oh, yep, send, that's correct, that's how I talk," that kind of stuff. This is what we're talking about in terms of order of magnitude time savings, and therefore, let's make it available to a lot more people.

Jim Marous (15:18):

I mean, it's got to be exciting from your perspective because it changes the finish line. And not that the finish line wasn't going to be changing as it is, but it takes what you may have thought was going to be three to five years out into the current, not just from a modeling of the portfolio, but more importantly, as you just brought up the customization of communication and engagement within a voice of what you want Uprise to be, which at the end of the day, is your brand.

Jim Marous (15:46):

Which is what really sets it apart from other options out there, is how are you viewing the consumer compared to your alternatives out there? And with OpenAI, if you can all of a sudden, have it understand your speak, have it understand what's important to you as a company and your advisors, then the portfolio is the easy part, the communication that goes with it, that gets kind of exciting.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (16:14):

Definitely, and one of the things I think is interesting too is like I know everybody's probably looking into AI and this kind of stuff right now, but I feel like the next value creation in this space, in the AI space is going to be like taking that very generalist technology and adapting it for the workflows and the use cases.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (16:40):

So, this is where we are hyper-focused on like, "Well, what are the rules? How do you give financial advice? Let's make sure that that methodology is incorporated here and that's customizable." And so, it becomes much more of a platform that you can use for wealth management in general. That is a longer vision of ours or longer-term vision of ours to actually turn this into a platform that is specific for financial advice and wealth management.

Jim Marous (17:09):

You know, it's interesting when I think about wealth management and advisors, the challenge I've always had is, number one, you mentioned earlier, "Geez, are they going to spend any time with mine? Am I worth it to them, whoever them is?" Number two, "Am I getting good advice?"

Jim Marous (17:25):

And actually, the first one overrides the second one only because if you don't get in the door, you're not goong to find out if it's worth it. But probably more importantly is how much involved are they going to be after the initial product sale?

Jim Marous (17:40):

And I've written quite a bit lately around the ability to allow customers access to products on digital channels and creating truly digital engagement as opposed to just a good experience. How is Uprise going to address the challenge of ongoing engagement and to build engagement over time as opposed to simply the point-of-sale time?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (18:03):

Definitely. I think this is the area where our product shines the most, which is I think a lot of our partners, one of the main hurdles they have is that they have very transactional relationships with their customers. Like let me make this payment, and then it's over.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (18:19):

And I think for us, our product has been about building a relationship from day zero. This is again, why we have the human in the loop and all this kind of stuff. And so, one of the things we always advise our partners is set this up as an annual subscription, not a monthly subscription.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (18:35):

And what our product entails is you onboard, we do initial financial review, we help you sort things out in that initial review, but then we're checking in with you quarterly, and there's an open chat channel for whatever question comes to mind. And to be top of mind, like you can even ask us, "Should I buy or lease a car?" All these things that come up throughout your life.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (18:59):

And then in addition, we are monitoring things in the background. So, "Hey, it's open enrollment period, you should take these actions." Oh, taxes or your stock just vested, whatever it is, to remind you to take actions and to stay on top of things. Or even like student loans, you qualify, you should be applying for the forgiveness or whatever it is.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (19:23):

And what we've been seeing, the output of that is that customers engage with us on average at least once a month. So, basically wealth management used to be, "Well, here's my money, great retention because here's my money and I never have to engage." Becomes like, "Hey, no, I'm engaging with my money on a monthly basis and checking in with it." And great results all around in terms of somebody being more deliberate with their finances.

Jim Marous (19:51):

And it's not just coming from the customer. My challenge was my bank was really receptive when I decided to take money out of the bank's loan, my mortgage loan to change it to somebody else that had a better rate as I refinanced.

Jim Marous (20:05):

And all of a sudden, they get engaged. You go, "Wait guys, this thing has happened over time, you never engaged because it was a nice annuity. You kept on making money on my interest rate that was too high." In much the same way, with my financial advisor, it's usually based on my call to them as opposed to their call to me. And you feel very underwhelmed by the amount of engagement and the experience you have.

Jim Marous (20:31):

And to your point, as I understand it, the way that Uprise is built, the dialogue itself is going to help educate the tool to do more engagement with a consumer because of consistencies in the marketplace. The market drops today significantly, and it drops in a certain sector, and all of a sudden, you start to see certain people asking the same questions that makes it so you can proactively go to these people and say, "By the way, this happened today, you may want to consider this."

Jim Marous (21:00):

And all of a sudden, you're really leveraging the power of the future of AI and the conversational AI with your model and bring them together in such a way that it's proactive in the way that consumers feel like it should be.

Jim Marous (21:16):

I get frustrated daily because I get Acorns' communication all the time on what they've done for me and why they've done it. And I don't get any communication from my two major banks on my small business and my consumer base.

Jim Marous (21:29):

So, I get frustrated, I'm going, "Why does this small interactive platform continue to communicate to me? They don't have the biggest deposit level, they're not my biggest financial institution," but they're getting there because they're proactively trying to help me save money.

Jim Marous (21:46):

They're answering the need I have that my traditional bank could easily have answered and still could easily answer, but they're not there. And the fact that you're partnering with financial institutions seems to be a no-brainer in that it gives you the ability to be the shining star within a portfolio of services that a banker or a credit union or an insurance company or anybody else may have.

Jim Marous (22:09):

From a standpoint of where you are today, and I know you probably don't want to reveal the exact specifics, but how many customers do you serve right now? And to the point that not just customers as in organizations you work with, but how many consumers are actually working with the platform today knowing that you're really new?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (22:31):

Yes, we're very early stage. So, in total, we've done about 1,000 financial plans for our customers. So, that's the data that we've been — and 1,000 has been plenty to be able to start to see a lot of patterns and to be able to give good financial advice.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (22:49):

And the partnership piece of what we do, partnering with financial institutions, we've got two going live in the next month. So, also very early on that, spent the first year and a half basically building the thing which enabled us to get to market about half a year ago.

Jim Marous (23:12):

And as I mentioned to you over dinner when we were in Las Vegas, I don't usually have guests on that are at the super early stage of their journey. But the reality is your model was so different from a perspective of what I saw in the marketplace, plus you were addressing the challenge in a new way that I thought was unique. So, let's take a short breaker and recognize the sponsors of this podcast.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (23:36):

Welcome back to Banking Transformed, I'm joined today by Jessica Chen Riolfi, Co-Founder and CEO of Uprise. We have been discussing the financial management needs of the Gen Z segment and those who are most misunderstood with regard to their needs in the investment and wealth management space, and how Uprise hopes to build recognition and scale in the marketplace.

Jim Marous (24:01):

So, Jessica, how do you measure success around the customer experience, customer engagement, and delivery of services?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (24:13):

Yeah, we have a North Star metric at at Enterprise, which is NPS (Net Promoter Score). And so, we collect tons of feedback. In order for all of our machine learning and this kind of stuff to work, we collect a lot of feedback: what recommendations resonated, what recommendations didn't resonate, this kind of stuff.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (24:32):

And the number one question in that survey form is always how likely are you to recommend this to a friend or colleague? And so, we have an NPS right now of about 70. We can always push it higher as we continue to build, we constantly do user interviews to figure out where we missed the mark and how do we get better next time.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (24:51):

So, that's how we generally measure because it encapsulates everything. If you're going to refer to a friend, it encapsulates a lot of that user experience. And then from there, we dig into, "Okay, what are the engagement numbers around this? How frequently are they logging in? Did they implement the advice that we gave them?"

Jessica Chen Riolfi (25:14):

If we gave them four recommendations, we're seeing people on average implementing two. Okay, what was missing in the other two? That kind of stuff. So, digging further from there.

Jim Marous (25:22):

So, our research shows that traditional financial institutions do not feel prepared to effectively use data and analytics for the personalization of communication recommendation solutions, and for just overall education of the consumer.

Jim Marous (25:38):

How is Uprise going to use data and all the information you're collecting to not only improve financial wellness, but more importantly, improve the financial education of consumers. Because at the very beginning of our discussion, we talked about the fact that your base feels like they're underequipped to deal with the market challenges. How are you going to help them in that journey?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (26:02):

So, our financial plans has a big component, which is what you could call financial education. But basically, it's like the right financial education at the right time. So, we went through your finances, you need to do these three or four things, and that's on the first slide, do these three or four things.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (26:22):

Naturally, the next question from this person is going to be, well, "Why should I do those three or four things? How did you come up with those, and why those specific numbers?" And so, then the rest of the plan is like topic by topic. Where you are today, where you need to be on that, and here's why.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (26:40):

And there's a lot of education, why Roth versus traditional or why — all those kinds of questions embedded within that financial plan. And so, every single time we do that, every single time we make a recommendation, it's the recommendation supported by why.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (26:53):

And so, as you can imagine, as you're going through that journey, the amount of knowledge you have specific to your situation gets quite large.

Jim Marous (27:05):

You've generated a lot of interest in the marketplace, not only when I met you, but you've gotten some good funding. You've also had a lot of individual investors that are like who's who in the financial services marketplace. Some leaders of organizations, SoFi, Cash and other organizations.

Jim Marous (27:23):

Obviously, not only do these people that are investment, the people that have joined your organization to help you achieve your mission, really see something special here. What do they see?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (27:37):

That it hasn't been done yet. Like everybody who joins us in our mission, generally speaking, the first thing that we hear is like, "Gosh, I struggled with this, I tried different solutions, it didn't work for me, I really see this." And so, I think it's just a lot.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (27:59):

The thing about FinTech in general, Uprise aside is like, it's a lot of incredibly mission-driven people who see different challenges and want to dedicate their lives to building better solutions and making a positive impact on people's lives. And so, I think this is one key component that a lot of us have struggled with, and want to build that solution.

Jim Marous (28:27):

Now, to that point, the mission and the vision is so strong but it is also so big. So, on a day-to-day basis, you're a smaller organization, you have to get the next thing done. How do you keep focused on what comes next as opposed to getting overwhelmed by what you want to achieve in the future?

Jim Marous (28:52):

I just think about what you're doing today, and it would be very hard for me to wake up every day and not be somewhat overwhelmed by all that needs to be done. Knowing that every day when you think about it, even during this conversation with you — I brought up things that I didn't even think of that go, "Geez, is this making it even better?" And you go, "I got to stick to my meaning." How do you do that as a founder?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (29:17):

Not easy, that is the hardest thing. That is the hardest thing that — actually, in all my experience building product, it's like what you could be doing is this large set and trying to figure out, "Okay, well, this is the most important one, and we should start here."

Jessica Chen Riolfi (29:33):

One way I think about this is like de-risking the business. So, when you start out, you've got a ton of — like everything is unproven. And then what is the most important thing to de-risk first, is like, "Is the AI possible? Okay, let's de-risk that one. Is it possible to integrate with financial institutions? Let's de-risk that one."

Jessica Chen Riolfi (29:54):

And so, piece by piece, "Oh, this other one, we know we can figure out, we know we can scale up our human workforce. We've done this before pretty easily. Okay, so that one's going to be less important right now and we're going to focus on this other thing." So, that is a lot of how we think about the prioritization.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (30:11):

We also let the market pull us in many ways. So, for example, we had not anticipated working on SMB owners, so working with SMB financial institutions to serve SMB owners.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (30:23):

But the pull from that market was just really strong. Like in all of the conversations we had, it was like, "Well, you know, I'm actually already doing the personal taxes of my SMB owners, I really would use some help on this." And so, we heard that and it's about being flexible too, to say like, "Okay, there is a really strong need here, let's make sure we prioritize that piece to work on as well.

Jim Marous (30:47):

So, the elephant in the room right now is that the FinTech marketplace has been disrupted dramatically over the last several months with the increase in interest rates, the drying up or somewhat drying up of VC money, and obviously, the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.

Jim Marous (31:02):

How has that changed your go-to-market strategy and how do you intend to be revenue positive in a part of the future that it's important to get to, which is fairly quick compared to what it was maybe two years ago?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (31:17):

I think in general, starting a company is hard regardless of what's going on in the market outside. And I would say the biggest challenge that companies have in the wealth space is how do you go to market? What is the right way to get your product in the hands of customers?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (31:37):

And there is obviously, no clear answer on this because you see a gazillion companies with a gazillion different ways to market. And so, you've got the traditional wealth advisors who are heavy on sales, but because it's so heavy on sales, then it has to be really white glove and only high net worth clients. There's a lot of companies now approaching this via employers. So, now, it's an employer benefit financial, wellness as an employer benefit.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (32:05):

So, this has been I think the biggest piece for us, which is like, why do we believe in partnerships with financial institutions? It gets at a lot of what you described, which is like, it's win-win for both sides. We operate on a revenue share model with financial institutions, so it's low risk. If no customers adopt, then there's no revenue paid.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (32:28):

But at the same time, it makes that revenue model a lot easier for us as well because they have a much larger customer base to initially go to and a trusted relationship that's already been built.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (32:39):

But even more importantly, then that model is the fact that we fundamentally believe that partnering with financial institutions makes the product better, makes this experience better for two main reasons. One is the data collection at the beginning. To even understand you well enough to give really good advice, there's a lot of information that can be streamlined.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (33:03):

And then more importantly, the second piece is now that I've told you that you should take 50,000 or $5,000 and put it into this account and open up a high yield savings or whatever, it can actually be one click done because the financial institution already has those products, versus you got to roll up your sleeves, go to this other create account — so that's the reason why we made or spend a lot of time thinking through this.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (33:35):

Do we want to go down employer, do we want to do the other paths? And coming to the conclusion that this both makes sense from a business perspective and also from a customer perspective, and from financial institution perspective in terms of the goals that they have.

Jim Marous (33:52):

So, you've already said you've met with dozens of financial institutions to present your product. What has been the biggest comment made that has been the non-starter that you've been working on to address? I wouldn't say negative because they're just ideas and reasons why they're saying, "Geez, I'm not sure if it's time yet." What has been the biggest challenge that they see in partnering with your firm?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (34:21):

Definitely, I think the main hesitation that a lot of people have with AI is data. So, basically, especially for larger institutions, it would be like, "Well, does my customer's data go into this model as well?" And so, the main thing that we're thinking through is to make sure that even within an institution, we can have additional — we have a base model, and then we can continue to train within the walls of that institution, separated from other things.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (34:53):

So, that's probably the main thing that we're thinking through as we start working with larger and larger institutions and making sure that we're being thoughtful about their needs with data.

Jim Marous (35:06):

What's been the biggest positive surprise in your journey so far?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (35:11):

Definitely, the team. I would say we were talking about this beforehand, but I would say the biggest positive surprise, the team and all the supporters. Which is initially when this was just an idea on a piece of paper and like really, it's me, like guys believe this thing, that there were people who really believed in that mission and incredible people with incredible experiences who are willing to join me on that. And that's been the most rewarding, most wonderful piece of this.

Jim Marous (35:44):

Well, it gives a lot of credit to you because I think when it really gets down to it, organizations and people want to partner with those that have a clear vision and you kind of feel like they get it and more importantly, they're going to be able to get there.

Jim Marous (36:00):

It's a little bit of both. It's kind of like number one, you have to clearly identify the problem and be able to enunciate very well how you're going to get the solution.

Jim Marous (36:09):

So, to close up the podcast, the most important question that I know you'd like to answer is how do organizations get ahold of you to kick the tires of your platform?

Jessica Chen Riolfi (36:25):

So, please feel free to reach out on our website, uprise.us. Also, happy to share my email address [email protected], very happy to chat and talk that through.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (36:38):

And one thing I would probably mention is I think a lot of financial institutions, one underlying concern is like, oh ... we probably all white-collar workers right now with the bad advent of AI is like, "Oh, how do I make sure that I don't disappear, and I become not useful anymore?"

Jessica Chen Riolfi (37:00):

And I think one of the things I've realized in this journey, working with AI and machine learning and thinking through, that has been — gosh, one thing that these traditional institutions have is like relationships, humans and relationships.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (37:14):

And it's so important, and ultimately like where does the value of wealth management come from? It comes from the fact that there's a human who says, "Jessica, push that button," you know you should push that button. But your emotional biases are saying like, "I'm too afraid to do so." So, that's the value.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (37:36):

And I think as long as we all acknowledge that, "Hey, that's the piece that we need to lean in on and how do we highlight that more, how do we bring that to more people?" That's I think the main thing that I would want to leave with financial institutions.

Jim Marous (37:51):

Well, I certainly wish you the best of luck, you and your team. This will not be the only interview we do with you, I fully intend to follow you on an ongoing basis, but also to interview as you go along because I think the beauty of what I do right now with these podcasts — we're well into our third year now, and over 250 podcasts.

Jim Marous (38:14):

We get a sense for who gets what the future's going to be and who doesn't, who will actually achieve what their goal is to some degree and who may not, even despite market headwinds. And it's interesting because as a founder, there are challenges that the normal people like myself would never be able to understand on a daily basis.

Jim Marous (38:35):

But I think you really shared great insight into what makes your day, and that people are willing to be on the ride with you, and that is very valuable.

Jim Marous (38:48):

You're in the sales business as much as anything else because you have to sell your concept to the world and have people jump on board to help you get there. So, we wish you the best of luck, I wish you the best of luck, and it was great talking to you again, and we'll visit again.

Jessica Chen Riolfi (39:07):

Thank you so much for saying those things and definitely would love to stay in touch.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (39:13):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the winner of three international awards for podcast excellence. If you enjoyed today's show, please take some time to give our show a five-star review on your favorite platform. Also, be sure to catch my articles on the financial brand and the research we're doing for the Digital Banking Report.

Jim Marous (39:30):

This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer, Leah Haslage; audio engineer, Sean Rule-Hoffman, and video producer, Will Pritts. I'm your host, Jim Marous.

Jim Marous (39:43):

Until next time, remember, more than ever, financial institutions must provide ways for consumers to manage their own finances effectively, make informed decisions, and plan for the future through digital channels.

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