nbkc bank announced its investment in two Bay-area fintech companies. The announcement comes on the heels of the bank’s launch of Fountain City Fintech, an accelerator providing financial technology startups with an agile bank partner, compliance expertise and infrastructure for scale during its 75-day curriculum.
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ProPair uses artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize the distribution and prioritization of mortgage leads to individual loan officers, rather than distribution based on seniority or guesswork. As the first customer of ProPair, nbkc piloted the software in the bank’s home loans division. “We have tremendous confidence and respect for ProPair’s founders and experienced first-hand how its smart pairing improves customer experience and loan officers’ success,” said Eric Garretson, CFO & Fintech Strategy Leader with nbkc.
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“nbkc has a forward-thinking culture along with an uncommon ability to promote innovation and support aggressive product development goals. Having them as our first customer enabled us to develop and test our product before launching at scale” said Devon Johnson, Co-Founder and Chief Data Officer of ProPair. The investment further solidifies the joint partnership.
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Track, also based in San Francisco, uses machine learning to estimate and auto-remit quarterly taxes to the IRS for the self-employed. Track is one of six companies in nbkc’s fintech accelerator, Fountain City Fintech, and the two companies have a mutual focus on serving the needs of gig economy entrepreneurs and small business owners.
“Our goal at Track is to make the growing numbers of the self-employed more independent and focused on their core business, not the headaches of learning tax code. The investment by nbkc will help us in our next chapter of scaling our business so we can better serve the 50 million self-employed Americans seeking greater financial security,” said Trent Bigelow, Co-founder and CEO of Track.
Investments in fintech companies are part of nbkc’s strategic growth plan to bring innovative products and experiences to customers leveraging technology, often removing pain points or making interactions more efficient and customer-focused.
nbkc is a modern, FDIC-insured bank driven to make banking simple and transparent unlike any other bank. Leveraging technology, customer feedback and innovation, nbkc helps people and small businesses nationwide safely save, move and borrow money—whenever, wherever they are.
Co-founded in 2016 by a former mortgage industry executive and a seasoned data scientist, ProPair is a Silicon Valley innovator built on the principle that artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how lead assignments, actions and prioritizations are made. Designed with the everyday needs of sales organizations in mind, and optimized in conjunction with mortgage industry leaders, the ProPair platform replaces outdated manual processes with predictive, automated lead assignments to convert more prospects and reduce lead cost per funded loan for all loan officers.
Track Technologies, Inc., founded in 2015, is a San Francisco-based company that handles self-employed taxes for users on a daily basis, giving them a clear picture of what they have earned and what they owe by automatically keeping track of their income and expenses, withholding the proper amount when users get paid, and submitting their estimated quarterly tax payments to the Internal Revenue Service.