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The United States is an immigrant-heavy country. What was true more than 200 years ago is still true now. In 2019, about 45 million immigrants lived in the United States, according to the Migration Policy Institute. According to the Pew Research Center, this is by far the biggest number in the globe, accounting for nearly one-fifth of all migrants. Moreover, unlike what some media outlets may lead you to believe, the vast majority (almost 77 percent) are classified as legal immigrants.

Getting a silhouette of a refugee family with children
Throughout history, waves of immigrants from various countries have characterized centuries of cultural and industrial progress. Immigrants from Latin America have dominated these migration flows in the United States for the past quarter-century. Despite the fact that immigrants continue to make up a significant portion of the population, they are disproportionately underrepresented in the types of financial goods and services that are offered and created.
Between 2010 and 2019, Latinos accounted for more than half of the population growth in the United States, and they are among the country’s youngest racial or ethnic groupings. Despite their considerable purchasing power, this group continues to encounter barriers to financial inclusion. Almost half of Latino households do not have access to financial services. As a result, individuals are more likely to use alternative financial services, which are frequently connected with high interest rates. Large banks also tend to neglect and underserve them, compounding the problem.
This predicament created an opportunity for Amir Hemmat.
“Companies have done a bad job of creating access to this customer,” he added, “which is the beginning of the waterfall as to why you don’t see investment in this consumer market.”
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Welcome Tech’s founder, Amir Hemmat.
Putney, Bing

Hemmat saw this untapped potential and decided to develop a company dedicated to reaching out to this group. Hemmat is the son of immigrants, so he knows firsthand the difficulties his parents encountered navigating the financial system in the United States. He used his personal experience to create Welcome Technologies (or Welcome Tech for short), a digital platform aimed at enhancing immigrant populations’ access to banking services. The company recently announced that it will offer a monthly subscription service that will provide consumers with access to a number of discount insurance options, following a $35 million funding round.
“As a firm, we consider the possibility of improving the immigration system. That is our compass. We believe that a digital wallet would be a good place to start in terms of influencing transactional decisions more effectively “In a recent interview, he revealed.

Welcome Tech aims to better serve the needs of the Latino immigrant community, which is typically disregarded.
WelcomeTech
Why, if this customer group has so much potential, haven’t huge financial institutions been able to meet their needs?
“It’s not rocket science: if you treat a customer badly, they won’t do business with you in the long run,” Hemmat reasoned. “Companies have developed services and built teams only to reach the acquisition ceiling again and time again, either running out of funds or burying this consumer in numerous levels of debt.”
Welcome Tech, according to Hemmat, will be different. “Building trust with this customer and using data are two areas where we’ve concentrated our efforts. Financial services, by far, have the greatest possibility to make an effect among the categories of requirements.”
Welcome Tech isn’t the only company spotting prospects in this market. Crediverso, a personal finance platform aimed at serving the Latino community in the United States as “Credit Karma,” just raised $3.1 million in a seed round. The presence of VC heavyweights like Bessemer and Clocktower in the round reflects the growing confidence that investors have in this demographic.
“What’s still amazing is that we’re focusing on the country’s greatest underbanked population and the fastest-growing population, and it’s a very lonely sector,” Hemmat said.
That space may not stay lonely for much longer if startups like Welcome Tech and Crediverso continue to emerge from the shadows./nRead More

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