Quovo
Data infrastructure for the future of consumer finance
Industry:
Wealth Management
CEO:
Lowell Putnam
Investor Since:
Seed
Visit:
https://fintech.frb.io/articles/p1?tags=511
We were introduced to Quovo CEO, Lowell Putnam, through our network in late 2012. Lowell and his co-founder, Niko Karvounis, had been classmates at Harvard. Their technical co-founder, Michael DeSantis, was a self-trained programmer.
Lowell’s vision for Quovo was inspired by his experience in institutional finance, where sophisticated investors had high-fidelity views of holdings, positions, and activity data across multiple “books” and multiple trading counterparties. Following the financial crisis, Lowell surveyed the personal wealth space and saw that no holistic data solution existed for custodied, held-away, liquid and illiquid financial assets. Lowell realized that clean, aggregated data – at an atomic level – was a predicate to an emerging generation of financial applications that promised consumers a single view, simplified access, and portability of their financial assets.
At the time of the acquisition, Quovo had processed over $1 trillion in assets across millions of accounts and with support for over 14,000 banking, insurance and wealth institutions.
The broader market context at the time supported Lowell and his co-founders’ perspective:
- Consumers increasingly expected instant access to their financial accounts.
- Regulators would push towards a fiduciary standard for advice.
- Institutions struggled under the weight of legacy tech.
- NPS scores for banks were in the teens.
- Emerging challengers across banking, wealth management, and insurance promised a natively digital experience that traversed financial accounts and providers.
- A global debate was brewing on data ownership.
With aggregation at its core, the Quovo suite of tools extends today to authentication APIs, which help lending, payments, and wealth management companies verify that accounts are valid; data-driven insights on cash flow modeling for lenders; dashboards which enable advisors to review, assess, and analyze their clients' finances; and alerts providing personalized financial recommendations.
In January 2019, Quovo was acquired by Plaid, in a bid to create the definitive data infrastructure platform for the future of consumer finance, providing consumers with convenience and control across all of their financial assets.
Plaid had just completed a December financing of $250 million, led by Kleiner Perkins with first-time participation from Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures and return investors Goldman Sachs, NEA, and Spark Capital. Mary Meeker joined the Plaid board.
At the time of the acquisition, Quovo had processed over a trillion dollars in assets across millions of accounts and provided support for over 14,000 banking, insurance and wealth institutions.
FinTech Collective has served on the board of Quovo since its initial investment in April 2014.
Current Status: Exited (January 2019)