San Francisco, CA – Prismm, a pioneering startup dedicated to modernizing the archaic processes of estate and beneficiary planning within the banking sector, made a significant splash today on the esteemed Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. The company’s mission is to fundamentally alter how financial institutions manage the transfer of assets following an account holder’s death, aiming to keep families’ wealth within their existing banking relationships while drastically simplifying a traditionally complex and emotionally fraught experience for heirs. By integrating robust beneficiary and estate planning tools directly into bank accounts from their inception, Prismm is positioned to streamline asset transfers, making the transition less burdensome for surviving family members and more efficient for financial institutions.
Addressing a Critical Gap in Financial Infrastructure
Founded in 2020 by sisters Martha Underwood and Shella Sylla, both veterans with decades of collective experience across banking and finance, Prismm emerged from a deeply personal understanding of a systemic flaw. Their journey began with a harrowing incident in 2017 when their father was hospitalized after a fall during Hurricane Irma relief efforts in Miami. His sudden incapacitation revealed a profound vulnerability: their mother, who had historically relied on him for managing family finances and critical paperwork, found herself without immediate access to vital documents and financial information. The sisters, despite their professional backgrounds, also faced similar challenges in navigating their family’s affairs during this emergency. While their father ultimately recovered, the experience underscored the critical need for accessible, organized financial information during times of crisis.
This personal revelation coalesced into a tangible business concept three years later, as Martha Underwood witnessed firsthand the exacerbated challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Working within a bank, she observed countless families grappling with the aftermath of a loved one’s passing – a frantic search for accounts, an arduous attempt to comprehend bills, and the overwhelming task of supporting surviving spouses. The pandemic, with its sudden and widespread loss, exposed the fragility of existing manual systems and the immense emotional and logistical toll on grieving families.
"That’s when it hit us that this is an infrastructure problem," Underwood shared in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. "We’ve created all of these sophisticated platforms for wealth growth and tracking, but almost nothing for transition. It’s still very much all manual. We realized we could digitize this process, offering a solution to a problem that so many families, including our own, were facing. That’s when we truly doubled down on Prismm."
Prismm’s Innovative Approach: Seamless Digital Transition
Prismm’s platform is designed to pre-emptively address the chaos and complexity of post-death financial management. It allows account holders to designate trusted family members with controlled access to their accounts and essential documents long before an emergency arises. In the event of an account holder’s death, the designated individual can securely log into a centralized portal, gaining immediate visibility into assets and necessary documentation. Crucially, eligible beneficiary transfers can be initiated digitally, removing significant friction. Because identity verification, consent forms, and supporting documents are already securely on file, the entire process can be completed remotely, a significant advantage for families spread across different states or even countries.
This proactive, digital-first strategy stands in stark contrast to the prevalent consumer-based solutions, which often place the burden of organization squarely on individuals. "What’s on the market is largely consumer-based," Underwood explained. "But when you’re asking a consumer to add yet another task to their already overwhelming list – especially women, who typically bear the brunt of caregiving and administrative tasks during a death – it becomes the last thing they do. Asking someone to manage documents for their parents while simultaneously caring for their own children and household is simply too much. This needs to be built as infrastructure, with as little friction as possible, to empower people to access the information needed to make critical decisions. That’s precisely why we integrate directly into bank cores." This strategic decision ensures that estate planning isn’t an afterthought but an intrinsic part of the banking relationship, deeply embedded within the institution’s operational framework.
A Suite of Products for Comprehensive Estate Management
Prismm offers a growing suite of products tailored to both financial institutions and their customers:
- Prismm Designate: This core product empowers banks to offer their customers a straightforward, digital pathway to update and manage their beneficiaries. It transforms what can often be a cumbersome, paper-based task into a quick, intuitive online process, benefiting both customers by simplifying compliance and banks by reducing administrative overhead and ensuring accuracy.
- Prismm Anchor: Acting as a secure, centralized digital vault, Prismm Anchor allows account holders to track and organize all their financial accounts, critical documents, property deeds, and other assets across various financial institutions. This consolidated view, accessible to designated individuals with controlled permissions, eliminates the need for families to piece together financial puzzle pieces during a crisis. Importantly, it is offered through financial institutions, ensuring users can manage their comprehensive financial picture without requiring yet another standalone consumer application.
- Prismm Continuity (Coming Soon): The third product in development, Prismm Continuity, is designed to guide bank staff and grieving families step-by-step through the intricate asset transfer process. This forthcoming solution promises to automate and standardize much of the internal workflow, ensuring that the most challenging aspects of post-death financial management remain within the institution’s capable hands, thereby alleviating significant burden from already distressed families.
The Financial Imperative for Banks: Combating Estate Attrition
Beyond the undeniable humanitarian benefit, Prismm presents a compelling business case for financial institutions. Underwood and Sylla highlight that banks collectively lose billions in deposits annually due to what they term "estate attrition." This phenomenon occurs when heirs, faced with the complexity and lack of transparency in traditional inheritance processes, opt to move inherited funds to other institutions that appear more accommodating or simply because their existing bank failed to facilitate a smooth transition. Without a structured system to manage the transfer of accounts after a death, banks risk not only losing the inherited assets but also the opportunity to cultivate relationships with the next generation of potential customers.
By adopting Prismm’s technology, banks can convert a potential liability into a strategic advantage. Seamless beneficiary information management and simplified inheritance processes can help institutions retain assets and, crucially, onboard the heirs as new, loyal customers. In an increasingly competitive financial landscape, providing a compassionate and efficient solution during a sensitive life event can significantly enhance customer loyalty and brand reputation.
"We envision ourselves as the essential infrastructure that financial institutions will utilize to seamlessly transfer money to the next generation," Underwood articulated. "We understand that effective execution isn’t just about backend processing; it’s about being proactive and building meaningful relationships with the next generation of consumers on the front end. Our platform empowers banks to do exactly that."
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: A Launchpad for Innovation
Prismm’s presentation at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 marks a pivotal moment for the startup. TechCrunch Disrupt is globally recognized as one of the most prestigious platforms for emerging technology companies, where startups present their innovations to a panel of venture capitalists, industry experts, and a global audience. The "Startup Battlefield" is the highlight of the event, an intense competition where a select group of startups vie for the coveted Disrupt Cup, significant media exposure, and a substantial, no-equity cash prize, often serving as a powerful springboard for future growth and investment. For Prismm, this exposure provides an unparalleled opportunity to showcase its transformative technology and vision to a wide array of potential partners, investors, and industry influencers. The competition culminates on Thursday, October 15, with the announcement of the lucky winner, a moment that could significantly accelerate Prismm’s trajectory in the FinTech landscape.
Broader Implications for the Financial Industry
The emergence of solutions like Prismm signifies a broader trend in the financial services industry: the application of technology to solve deeply entrenched, human-centric problems. As demographics shift and wealth continues to transfer across generations, the demand for more intuitive, empathetic, and efficient estate planning tools will only grow. Prismm’s focus on integrating directly with bank cores rather than creating another standalone consumer app is a testament to its understanding of systemic change. This approach has the potential to elevate industry standards, pushing financial institutions to rethink their customer lifecycle management beyond active account holders to encompass the full journey of generational wealth transfer.
The successful implementation of Prismm could lead to a paradigm shift, where proactive estate planning becomes a standard, expected feature of modern banking, much like online bill pay or mobile check deposit. This not only benefits consumers by reducing stress during periods of grief but also strengthens the financial health and competitive positioning of banks willing to embrace this critical infrastructure innovation. As the financial world gathers in San Francisco this week, all eyes will be on companies like Prismm, which are not just building new products, but forging the future of how we manage our most sensitive financial transitions.
