Eko is a white-label digital investment and robo-advisor platform for banks and credit unions. Their flexible, customizable portfolios allow users to tailor their investments to fit a broad range of strategies.

Eko integrates into any institution’s existing digital banking platform. It provides a simple, clean dashboard on users’ desktop and mobile screens, giving them an experience comparable to other leading digital investment apps and platforms.

Eko features two popular investment style options:

First, it can act as a flexible robo-advisor, automatically choosing balanced portfolios according to each investor’s appetite for risk and desired investment strategy. In this way, it allows financial institutions to compete against Acorns, Betterment, Wealthfront, and others.

Second, it can act as a digital brokerage, allowing investors to buy and sell individual stocks, ETFs, and other securities. In this way, it competes against Robinhood, E*TRADE, Webull, TD Ameritrade, and others.

However, by far Eko’s most popular option is the hybrid that combines these two options. Eko creates a portfolio based on members’ risk appetite and investment preferences, but still allows members to make their own decisions by adding/deleting companies from their portfolio.

Given the increased appetite for investing, especially digital-first investing, and particularly among younger generations, Eko allows credit unions to offer a competitive digital investing product without having to build anything or hire anyone.

Beyond that, Eko offers 4 primary benefits:

1. Improve product offering: attract younger clients to your platform by offering a digital investment solution.
2. Enhance client engagement: when offering digital investments, members log in 3x as often, thus increasing the number of touchpoints.
3. Increase deposits: funding of investment accounts can be done via 3rd party bank, while deposits go into the FI’s bank account.
4. Increase revenue: open a significant additional revenue stream by charging clients a AUM investment fee.

Here’s how it works:

To increase usership at an institution, Eko automatically shows members’ investment account balance alongside checking, savings, and any other accounts. Checking the investment balance prompts account setup, onboarding, and funding, and the account can be funded with a minimal deposit.

Most credit union investment services and wealth management offerings charge high account fees or require in-branch visits. Eko is fully-digital, resulting in lower account fees for users and zero overhead for the credit union. Additionally, Eko makes its money based on user count, so they make money only if the credit union or bank makes money, and they’re incentivized to help with marketing and user adoption.

On a rare editorial note, CU 2.0 wholeheartedly recommends looking at Eko for your credit union. It’s an attractive, intuitive, and absolutely necessary product for credit unions. Stop losing deposits and investment money to competing fintechs like Acorns and Robinhood!