Albert, a financial service startup, raised $5 million in Series A funding from investors including QED, American Express Ventures, and Portag3. This brings its total funding to approximately $7.5 million. Read the full story here.
Here’s how it works: It’s an app that tracks finances and makes personalized recommendations to help users take action. It’s similar to other personal finance apps like Mint or Digit in that it aggregates financial data into a single portal.
It differs in that users have access to a human “financial concierge” who dole out personalized advice. “People ask questions about their financial life,” said Albert CEO Yinon Ravid. “It’s typically about paying down debt, saving more money, or even something as simple as, ‘Where do I buy cheap diapers?’”
This is a “pay what you want” feature, in which customers can pay what they think is fair based on their usage. The minimum is $4 a month.
The financial app market has become saturated over the last few years. My question to Ravid was: Can’t a competitor like Mint just add its own team of financial advisers, and suddenly, they have tens of millions of existing users ready to open their wallets for financial advice?
“Can other people replicate what you’re doing in the scheme things? Of course,” Ravid said. “The difference is we sell customer service. We have our own proprietary software, we have people in-house, and we’re able to identify things about the customer in real-time.”