Financial Venture Studio accepts fintech Copilot into accelerator program

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Contxto – Financial Venture Studio (FVS) announced its latest cohort of seed-stage fintech startups for its accelerator program yesterday (28). All of them are based in the United States—but one has a Chilean founder, Copilot.

For being accepted into the program, Copilot raised an investment. And while the exact amount wasn’t disclosed, according to FVS’ website, its initial check size is normally small (ranging from US$50,000 to US$200,000). And during the program and the following months it invests somewhere between US$50,000 and US$1 million.

Copilot, alongside five other fintechs will partake in FVS’ non-residential, six month program.

Tell me something I don’t know

The market isn’t filled with user-oriented fintech apps. It’s overloaded with them. And in broad terms, the free versions offer similar services:

“Track your expenses,” “set goals,” “budget everything,” “receive tips to save money,” and so on and so forth. And as a user of one of these applications, the advice they offer me is often rather obvious: “spend less on coffee” or “don’t disburse so much on online shopping.”

It’s not really telling me anything new. I know I have a caffeine addiction and like to (occasionally) splurge online.

In that sense, Copilot wants to make a difference.

Copilot and its automated, user-friendly fintech app

Andrés Ugarte is from Chile and he founded Copilot in 2018, after having worked at Google for five years. In 2019, fellow-Chilean Gabriel Diéguez joined Ugarte as the fintech’s Founding Engineer. And now they’re bringing that user-centered experience and tech to the startup.

According to Copilot’s website, its system uses machine learning to offer users “hyper-personalized” insights. That way they can better understand their own financial behavior; whether in terms of spending, saving, or investing.

Perhaps one of its most attractive features is its level of automation. Because the problem with most financial apps, is they require the user to manually enter their expenses to track them. But Copilot’s program does it for you.

To that end, users can connect monthly charges like the water bill or Netflix subscription. Copilot then automatically subtracts that from the person’s budget.

Of course, this tech isn’t easily developed, so it isn’t free. Correspondingly, using Copilot’s app costs around US$3 a month, according to its website.

If it were simple to build everyone would offer free, AI-powered financial advice now wouldn’t they?

AI and machine learning are definitely changing the financial world as we know it. But but don’t take my word for it. Ask Morgan Stanley’s Managing Director, Jeff McMillan: