Suma Wealth Acquires Reel

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Suma Wealth Acquires Reel
From left, Beatriz Acevedo, Daniela Corrente and Mary Hernandez.

Suma Wealth, a downtown-based financial technology company that seeks to help Latinos improve their financial literacy, announced its acquisition of the savings and personal finance platform Reel. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

As part of the merger, Reel co-founder and chief executive Daniela Corrente will join Suma’s executive suite as chief strategy and business officer. Corrente will join Suma’s co-founder and chief executive Beatriz Acevedo and co-founder and chief operating officer Mary Hernandez, making this trio one of the first solely Latina executive teams to lead a fintech company. The two companies will merge without making any staffing cuts.

“I’ve been a fan of (Corrente) and of everything she’s built at Reel for many years, so I’m incredibly excited about this acquisition,” Acevedo said in a statement.

“It not only expands Suma’s capabilities, it adds a visionary executive to our team,” she added.

Originally from Venezuela, Corrente moved to the U.S. to attend college. She said she became interested in financial psychology after being exposed to credit card debt.

“That’s when I started to become fascinated with how people make decisions about money, because we all like to think that we’re rational, but when it comes to finance, emotions drive a lot of the decisions that we make,” Corrente said. “(I spent) many years in advertising, and then a couple of years back decided to start a company called Reel.”

Reel helps people save money by categorizing their goals to prioritize where their money goes. Suma helps its users manage their finances and uses digital technology to make topics such as investment and debt management easier to understand. The acquisition will further expand Suma’s product.

By merging with Reel, Suma gains access to the company’s technology, its consumers that will grow Suma’s collective usership by 80% and data from Reel’s user base. It will also double Suma’s offerings to include financial management tools The app is free to download, but there are additional features that come with an $8.99 per month subscription.

“By bringing Reel’s technology, user data and industry-leading knowledge of consumer psychology to Suma’s platform, we’ll significantly accelerate our product roadmap, giving our consumers new financial products and opportunities more quickly and more efficiently,” Acevedo said in a release.

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