The wealth gap remains a persistent issue, disproportionately affecting women worldwide. Despite advancements in education and workforce participation, women continue to face significant barriers to wealth accumulation. Factors such as gender pay disparities, interrupted careers due to caregiving responsibilities, and limited access to financial resources and investment opportunities all contribute to this disparity. Through collective action and strategic leadership, women leaders have the power to drive systemic change and create a more equitable financial future for all.
Women leaders play a crucial role in addressing and narrowing the wealth gap. Crissi Cole (Founder & CEO of Penny Finance) is dedicated to helping more women move from debt to investing using an accessible and affordable financial app specifically designed for women at the early stages of wealth accumulation.
Crissi is a Wall Street veteran with a strong financial background. She spent a decade at Goldman Sachs in New York City managing wealth, and developing trading and technology platforms. She contributes to the Forbes Finance Council, holds Series 7 and 66 trading licences, and is working towards becoming a Certified Financial Planner (CFP).
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
Crissi’s Italian grandmother came to America in her 20s with only a 6th-grade education and without knowing any English. Despite these challenges, she built a seamstress business out of her basement, which she successfully ran until she was 75 years old. Crissi’s mother followed in her entrepreneurial footsteps, acquiring an ice cream shop when Crissi was in high school. They have run the shop together for nearly 20 years.
Throughout her life, Crissi witnessed women working incredibly hard without seeing the extra effort pay off. After working in this field and making significant efforts, she is slowly chipping away at her student debt with every cent she made, she realized the need for change. During that time, she constantly helped her female friends and colleagues get out of debt and start investing. None of them could get a financial advisor because they didn’t meet the $100k minimum requirement.
Recognizing an enormous opportunity, Crissi was inspired to help the 70% of women who lacked access to a financial advisor but were eager to build a better future for themselves and their families. This led to the creation of Penny Finance.
Championing Customers
For Penny Finance, the customer is the boss.The company is dedicated to building tech that truly serves the every-day person who is living paycheck to paycheck. Crissi’s role is to take feedback from 30,000+ customers, and map out the perfect product for them. This makes her the cheerleader, encourager, visionary, and supporter, ensuring the scaling of the business.
Crissi is not always democratic in her role; she feels very strongly about Penny Finance’s position within the financial ecosystem and the functionality of its product for competitive advantage. When it comes to Product Design and Overall Strategy, she is extremely directive and operates with intense focus and determination.
When it comes to balancing the need to innovate and take risks to maintain stability and profitability, Crissi finds this to be a tough challenge. Raised by a mother who runs a small business, she has an ingrained need to create a practical and capital-efficient business. However, she recognizes that creating a profitable startup in its early days is not ideal; upfront investments are necessary for long-term payoff. Crissi believes there is a significant difference between investing frivolously and investing in a data-driven manner. At Penny Finance, they always invest in a data-driven way, cutting anything that does not serve them or show potential for growth.
From Debt to Wealth
Women are retiring with only half of the wealth that men accumulate—half. Despite being more educated, making up most of the workforce, and having excellent credit scores, women are burdened with debt and often enter the investment game too late, if at all. Penny Finance offers a digital-first financial planning platform designed to help close the wealth gap for women. They assist women in stretching their money further, maximizing participation in 401Ks, IRAs, HSAs, and other financial benefits, and growing their wealth within a community of like-minded women.
While there are many innovative financial apps available, they often either stop at budgeting or don’t start until investing. Penny Finance addresses all the tricky financial situations in between—getting married, having kids, buying a home, paying down credit cards and student loans, covering fertility costs, taking care of a sick parent, switching jobs, and more. They take each woman’s money goals and current financial situation to create a custom, calculated plan without the need to talk to a financial advisor.
The founding team at Penny Finance boasts extensive experience in finance, engineering, and marketing. Each member has personally experienced living paycheck to paycheck at some stage in their lives, making them intimately familiar with the problem they are solving—they are their own target market.
Effortless Financial Planning
Penny Finance offers custom financial plans that create a sense of control, combined with automated email nudges that provide personalized insights and a money to-do list to increase cash flow today and build wealth for tomorrow. Their predictive technology helps users plan their financial future without the need for Excel spreadsheets or complicated calculations. The technology allows users to visualize their future net worth, provides debt payoff planning timelines, and offers an easy-to-use digital platform for managing complex financial tasks such as setting up a 529 plan or checking if a 401k is properly invested. On average, members save an extra $600 a month, which is significant for those previously living paycheck to paycheck.
For Crissi, funding was one of the initial challenges. She dislikes discussing this topic because she is tired of the media narrative about women not getting their fair share of VC funding. However, Penny Finance has been VC-backed twice, which is a significant achievement. Securing institutional investment is immensely difficult for anyone, especially for a solo female founder like Crissi. Raising funds in a post-COVID era, where deals are down almost 40% two years in a row, adds an external challenge that even the fastest-growing or revenue-generating businesses struggle to overcome.
Small But Mighty
Penny Finance found their stride the moment they connected with Credit Unions. 140 million people bank through Credit Unions across America, predominantly serving everyday people—not the wealthy. Many of these individuals are women facing the challenges of the retirement crisis and embracing technological advancements. Penny Finance is thrilled to partner with Credit Unions to provide scalable financial planning tailored specifically for women.
Last year, Penny Finance submitted its story to Real Simple Magazine for its Smart Money Awards. This prestigious annual award cannot be purchased like many others; instead, a council evaluates products firsthand. Penny Finance emerged victorious, sharing the spotlight with financial giants like JPMorgan, Sofi, Ally, and Goldman Sachs. Despite having only a few million in funding and a short operational history, they made their mark. This achievement underscores how focusing on solving genuine problems for real people can lead to success.
Women at Work
Crissi has witnessed firsthand the relentless work ethic of women throughout her life, from her Nonna to her single mother who logged 70-hour weeks and often brought Crissi to the office on weekends. Seeking a different path, Crissi pursued a career in finance at Goldman Sachs. However, during her decade there, she found herself living paycheck due to student loans. Moreover, she repeatedly encountered female friends and colleagues seeking her financial guidance, desperate to escape debt and start investing.
“There were no accessible resources I could direct them to,” Crissi recalls. “Financial advisors wouldn’t even entertain their calls because they lacked the required $100,000 in assets.” Today, as Crissi prepares to welcome her second child, the bigger vision of Penny is coming to life. Can we create a world where women, moms and moms-to-be can have the freedom to choose among all the sacrifices?
