For years, banks and credit unions in the US have offered products covering banking, loans, and investments. However, Mart Vos, noticed that when it came to investing, it often meant working with financial advisors and high minimums. This left wealth-building opportunities reserved primarily for high-net-worth individuals.
That’s exactly why Mart Vos started Eko, a financial services company that helps lower the barrier to investing for everybody. We recently spoke with Mart, the Founder and CEO of Eko, about how they’re enabling banks and credit unions to embed modern investing features directly into their existing digital banking environments.
Making Investing More Simple, Inclusive and Accessible
Founded in 2020, Eko’s mission is to make investing simple, accessible, and inclusive for everyone. The vision was to introduce a modern business model where banks could offer low-threshold investment solutions within their mobile platforms, providing a suite of products that increase customer loyalty.
To achieve their mission, Eko enables banks and credit unions to embed a wide range of investment services into their digital platforms with a white-label solution, starting from as little as $1. By providing plug-and-play integration, banks and credit unions can integrate investing services with minimal build. This creates wider access to sophisticated investing for users while making it affordable for institutions to offer without having to build the infrastructure from scratch.
“Banks and credit unions are looking for ways to stay competitive with fintechs and big-name brokers who are pulling deposits and loyalty away from traditional institutions. By offering digital investing, financial institutions can build loyalty, keep assets in-house, and provide their clients with services they have come to expect,” explained Mart.
What Makes Eko Different
Eko’s business model addresses several pain points and drives measurable benefits for financial institutions, including:
- Broader investment access: Banks and credit unions can now offer investing to anyone from just $1.
- Competitive edge: With Eko’s simple and sophisticated investment offering, banks and credit unions can keep pace with modern fintechs and big-name brokers that are attracting deposits and loyalty away from traditional institutions.
- Recurring revenue: Institutions benefit from recurring revenue through Eko’s revenue share model, scaling with assets under management.
- Client loyalty and growth: Offering integrated investment opportunities strengthens member engagement, leading to cross-sell opportunities and long-term loyalty.
“The key differentiator is that Eko already works with the major digital banking providers. This way, we don’t need to integrate with every bank and credit union individually, drastically lowering the barrier to launch,” says Mart.
Bridging Regulated Finance and User-Friendly Investing with Alpaca
To build their offering, Eko looked for a technology and infrastructure partner that would help them scale operations. In their search they found Alpaca, a global leader in brokerage infrastructure APIs providing access to crypto, stocks, ETFs, options, and fixed income, that empowered them to build quickly.
With Alpaca’s Broker API, Eko enables businesses to offer self-directed investing, pre-built portfolios, hybrid investing, IRAs, Roth IRAs, and even crypto. Additionally, Eko offers advanced tools, including direct indexing, tax-loss harvesting, and automated rebalancing. Other features, including instant money movement, automated rollovers, and AI-assisted guidance, help reduce friction for institutions and the end user.
“Together, Eko and Alpaca allow financial institutions to serve their users holistically, helping them save, borrow, and now also invest! All within one trusted platform. For banks and credit unions, it’s plug-and-play. For their members, it feels like investing was always part of their digital banking,” says Mart.
One of the core offerings for Eko has been IRA accounts, incentivising their partner’s users to continually deposit and retain funds in their accounts. This results in higher customer retention and consistent AUM growth for their clients.
Alpaca’s Broker API helps simplify the complexities often associated with IRA accounts, offering a fully IRS-compliant solution handling all tax and regulatory reporting considerations. The integration also streamlines onboarding, helping reduce operational costs while enhancing the onboarding experience.
“Working with the Alpaca team has been a highly collaborative experience. They’ve been responsive, open to feedback, and quick to iterate when we need adjustments. Building a platform that bridges regulated financial services and user-friendly digital experiences is complex, but Alpaca’s support and technical expertise made it possible for us to move fast while staying compliant,” said Mart. “We have been an Alpaca partner for years, and all those years I feel like we did it together, which is a great feeling.”
“Eko is building a solution that reduces the barriers to wealth for US-based investors. By integrating with Eko, banks and credit unions can provide modern investing solutions to their users and we’re honored to be their infrastructure partner in increasing access to financial services,” says Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO and Co-Founder of Alpaca.
What’s Next for Eko
Eko currently supports over 25 banks and credit unions across the US, including Lake City Bank, Mercantile Bank, Union Bank, Bank of New Hampshire, Central National Bank, Eagle Community Credit Union, Carter Credit Union, and more. These financial institutions range from $75 million to $20 billion in assets.
The company aims to expand their partnerships to 50 financial institutions by the end of the year, and are looking to add high-interest savings accounts, 529s, and business accounts to their services, furthering its mission to make investing as simple and inclusive for everyone.
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About Alpaca
Alpaca is a US-headquartered, self-clearing broker-dealer and a global leader in brokerage infrastructure APIs providing access to stocks, ETFs, options, fixed income, and crypto. Alpaca delivers embeddable finance solutions for tokenization, fully paid securities lending, high-yield cash, 24/5 trading, Shariah-compliant investing and more. Today, Alpaca powers over 8 million brokerage accounts across hundreds of fintechs and institutions in 40+ countries with over $170M in funding.
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