Old Money

While the braying pack of fintech startups chase Millennial money, former JPMorgan exec Rhian Horgan has her eyes on her parents’ cash.

- Ashlea Ebeling

Ken Henderson, a travel-ing Pickleball pro, has taped out two 22-by-40-foot courts on an East Harlem gym floor. Today, instead of the usual Florida retirees, he’s teaching a crew of youngish engineers, Web designers and financial planners who have taken the subway up from the Chelsea offices of their fintech startup to play the paddle sport many Baby Boomers favor because it requires less running than tennis and is easier on aging joints. One of the older players today is 41-year-old Rhian Horgan, the founder and CEO of Kindur. She has arranged the outing as a tongue-in-cheek way for her staff to get in touch with their inner Boomers—and their clientele.

In 2016, after 17 years with JPMorgan, Horgan ditched her business suits for jeans and reinvented herself as a fintech entrepreneur. She pitched Kindur as a one-stop digital financial advisor for those nearing or in retirement. It would manage clients’ investment portfolios using a basket of low-cost index ETFs (from Vanguard, BlackRock and Schwab); offer them advice on when to take Social Security; determine which of their retirement accounts to draw down first; and, in many cases, sell them a fixed annuity —all with the goal of making sure they didn’t run out of money or pay more taxes than necessary during retirement. For simplicity, Kindur would even consolidate a client’s income sources into a monthly “retirement paycheck.”

But venture capitalists who have thrown hundreds of millions at a slew of robo-advisors and personal finance apps targeting Millennials were not wowed by Horgan or her pitchbook. “There was nothing in their portfolio targeting people ages 55 to 70,” she says. “It was a demographic they didn’t understand.”