Carlos Hernandez was watching Spanish-language television one day and came up with a business plan for something he wasn”™t seeing.
“I realized that there were no financial products being advertised,” he recalled. “I thought that was really strange. I come from the Spanish community, from an American family in LA, and I have plenty of credit cards. Many folks I know are spending just as much as any other community. So that didn”™t make sense to me.”
Hernandez began to take a look into how financial services marketing is aimed at the Hispanic community. He quickly found there was a very limited amount of data on the subject. What he discovered was even more puzzling.
“The typical financial institution spends less than 1% of their marketing budget on reaching Hispanics in the U.S.,” he said. “Now, that was really surprising to me because that portion of the population is comprised of about 60 million people, or 20% of the population. And the fact that most financial institutions are spending 1% of their budget on that group was crazy.”
Hernandez, who has three degrees from Harvard ”“ a B.A., M.B.A. and J.D. ”“ decided to address this void in the market by creating Crediverso, an online financial products marketplace aimed at the nation”™s Hispanic population.
“It is available in English and Spanish, which can’t be said for the other personal finance product comparison engines in the U.S. And it has content that is written in a way that is engaging and appealing to the typical U.S. Hispanics,” Hernandez said. “We have a strong social mission that I’m very passionate about and, at the same time, because of the lack of competitors in the space, it’s made for a pretty interesting business case.”
Crediverso, which launched in late 2019, offers users a series of online videos, articles and comparison tools related to credit cards, credit scoring, loans and remittance services for sending money overseas. A financial literacy section featuring original videos and articles is also included on the site.
“We offer reviews that are written from some of the top personal finance writers in the country,” Hernandez said.
Crediverso is free for anyone to use and Hernandez is monetizing his endeavor based on partnerships he is establishing with financial services providers.
“We work with banks, credit card issuers, remittance providers ”“ I think we have partnerships with most of the top 10 largest global remittance providers at this point,” he said, noting that Crediverso is helping these companies expand their Hispanic consumer marketing outreach.
“We go to a partner and we say, ”˜Hey, we know this market really well. We will bring you customers in this segment that you haven’t been able to reach before.”™ And for every customer that we bring them, they basically offer us a fee. And we are creating greater transparency in the way that our financial partners have to showcase their products, as compared to their competitors ”“ we put a little bit of pricing pressure on them such that they have to offer more competitive rates to the users.”
Hernandez declined to cite the specific financial costs in starting Crediverso, although he noted the project was primarily self-funded and is not in the process of acquiring seed fundraising. He employed several strategies to keep costs down, including the use of summer interns to help build the platform and using a development team based in Tijuana, Mexico, that could provide the bilingual skills needed for this endeavor.
“That’s not a skill-set that a lot of engineers in Silicon Valley have,” he added.
Hernandez has not seen any of the major financial information websites attempt to follow his lead, and he is confident that their lack of connection with the Hispanic community would limit any effort to duplicate Crediverso”™s focus.
“A question that I get often from investors is, ”˜Well, if it’s just a language play, why can’t one of these competitor websites just translate their site into Spanish?”™” he said. “It is much more than just a language play ”“ you can”™t just translate a site and expect it to appeal to a completely different audience the same way.
“The content is really important here,” he said. “When writing about credit cards, the focus is not ”˜What is the best credit card to save up points for your next trip to Bora Bora,”™ but ”˜What is the best credit card if I don’t have a Social Security card because I just arrived to the U.S. a couple months ago?”™ I can’t speak as to why competitors haven’t gotten into this space yet, other than to say that they’re not there and that has created a big business opportunity for us.”
