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FORBES.COMTHETRENDFINTECH50NOVEMBER 30, 20 19ment banking, where he remained for the next decade.
From an insider’s vantage point, he saw that traditional
banks were excruciatingly slow to respond to the preferenc-
es of their customers and exploit the power of smartphones.
That, plus a never-ending series of bank scandals, convinced
him that there was an opening for a digital “private banker.”
In 2013 he walked away from his near-seven-fi gure salary to
start MoneyLion.
Choubey raised $1 million in seed funding and started out
off ering free credit scores and micro-loans. But he struggled
to raise more money. Forty venture investors turned him
down, deeming his vision impractical and unfocused. “I was
laughed out of a lot of VC rooms in our early days,” he recalls.
While Choubey banged unsuccessfully on VC doors, Mon-
eyLion putt-putted along, bringing in a little revenue from
loan interest and credit card ads and collecting a bunch of
data on consumer behavior. Finally, in 2016, he persuaded
Edison Partners to lead a $23 million investment. That en-
abled MoneyLion to add a robo-advisor service allowing
users to invest as little as $50 in portfolios of stocks and
bonds. In 2018, it added a free checking account and debit
card issued through Iowa-based Lincoln Savings Bank.
Managing rapid growth, while striving to keep costs low,
has proved tricky. MoneyLion was hit with a deluge of Better
Business Bureau complaints over the past spring and sum-
mer. Some customers experienced long delays transferring
their money into or out of MoneyLion accounts and, when
they reached out for help, got only computer-generated re-
sponses. Choubey says the software glitches have been fi xed,
and he has bumped up the number of customer-service reps
from 140 to 230.
Other neobanks have had operational growing pains too.
In October, San Francisco-based Chime, with 5 million ac-
counts, had technical problems that stretched over threedays. Customers were unable to see their balances, and
some were intermittently unable to use their debit cards.
Chime blamed the failure on a partner, Galileo Financial
Technologies, a platform used by many fi ntech startups to
process transactions.O
n a warm fall day Tim Spence speed-
walks his 6-foot-3 frame through the
towering, 31-story Cincinnati head-
quarters of his employer, Fifth Third, a
161-year-old regional bank with $171 bil-
lion in assets. Clad in a plaid sport jacket with no tie, Spen-
ce doesn’t look like a traditional banker. And he’s not.
A Colgate University English literature and economics
major, Spence, now 40, spent the fi rst seven years of his
career at digital advertising startups. He then moved into
consulting at Oliver Wyman in New York, advising banks
on digital transformation. In 2015, Fifth Third lured him
to Ohio as its chief strategy offi cer and then expanded his
mandate. He now also oversees consumer banking and pay-
ments, putting him in charge of $3 billion worth of Fifth
Third’s $6.9 billion in revenue. Last year, he brought home
$3 million in total compensation, making him the bank’s
fourth-highest-paid executive.
Fifth Third has 1,143 branches, but today Spence is fo-
cused on Dobot, a mobile app the bank acquired in 2018 and
relaunched this year. Dobot helps users set personalized sav-
ings goals and automatically shifts money from checking to
savings accounts. “We reached 80,000 downloads in a mat-
ter of six months, without having to spend hardly anything
on marketing,” he says.
Scooping up new products is one part of a three-pronged
“buy-partner-build” strategy that Spence has helped devise
to combat the neobank challenge. Partnering means bothLEADING THE NEOBANK PACK
IN 20 YEARS, THESE VENTURE CAPITAL-BACKED STARTUPS COULD DOMINATE CONSUMER
BANKING, BUT THEY’LL FACE PLENTY OF COMPETITION ALONG THE WAY. FINTECH COMPANIES
THAT ORIGINALLY OFFERED INVESTING ARE RUSHING TO ADD BANK SERVICES, WHILE THE FALLING
COST OF LAUNCHING A NEOBANK IS ATTRACTING AN ARMY OF ENTIRELY NEW ENTRANTS.VALUATION FUNDING USERS YEAR BANKING FEATURES
COMPANY (BIL) RAISED (MIL) (MIL) LOCATION FOUNDED (IN ADDITION TO CHECKING ACCOUNTS)
Nubank $10.4 $818 15.0 São Paulo 2013 Savings accounts, personal loans, credit cards
SoFi $4.3 $2,300 8.5 San Francisco 2011 Student loans, personal loans, mortgages,
savings accounts, investing, insurance
N26 $3.5 $670 3.5 Berlin 2013 Personal loans, money transfers, insurance,
overdraft protection
Monzo $2.6 $400 3.3 London 2015 Savings accounts, personal loans, overdraft
protection
Revolut $1.7 $345 8.0 London 2015 Money transfers, investing, insurance
Chime $1.5 $307 3.3^1 San Francisco 2012 Savings accounts, money transfers,
overdraft protection
Atom Bank $1.3 $372 0.1 Durham, U.K. 2014 Savings accounts, mortgages
Dave $1.0 $186 4.5 Los Angeles 2016 Overdraft protection
MoneyLion $0.7 $200 5.7 New York 2013 Personal loans, investing, credit monitoring(^1) FORBES ESTIMATE BASED ON 5 MILLION TOTAL ACCOUNTS AND AN AVERAGE OF 1.5 ACCOUNTS PER USER. SOURCES: THE COMPANIES; PITCHBOOK; CB INSIGHTS.
SoFi $4.3 $2,300 8.5 San Francisco 2011 Student loans, personal loans, mortgages,
savings accounts, investing, insurance
Monzo $2.6 $400 3.3 London 2015 Savings accounts, personal loans, overdraft
protection
Chime $1.5 $307 3.3^1 San Francisco 2012 Savings accounts, money transfers,
overdraft protection
Dave $1.0 $186 4.5 Los Angeles 2016 Overdraft protection