Company strengthens business development team with industry veterans as it continues to revolutionize customer engagement in financial services through hyper-personalized, digital solutions
ABAKA, the global leader in digital saving and retirement enterprise SaaS solutions, has announced three new senior hires in the U.S. as it continues to build its client roster in North America. Tracy Puleo, Adam Bilmes, and Kevin McNee will be responsible for growing ABAKA’s network in the region, as the company continues to revolutionize how financial services firms help customers plan for the future through its Artificial Financial Intelligence technology platform.
“I’m delighted to welcome Tracy, Adam and Kevin to the team and we’re looking forward to our continued growth,” said Fahd Rachidy, founder and CEO of ABAKA. “The U.S., like many other countries, is facing a perfect storm when it comes to retirement and wealth planning. 2019 research from the U.S. GAO has shown that about half of older Americans have ‘no retirement savings’. Both the current global pandemic and secular macro trends are putting even greater pressure on the Retirement & Wealth and Asset Management eco-system, with compliance, costs and margin compression issues placing greater importance on retaining and expanding fee income revenue streams, and building efficiencies through agile innovation.”
Rachidy continued, “There is limited ability to implement change in-house and many traditional FIs are turning to technology to address their revenue challenge efficiently.”
The three new team members together bring over six decades of industry experience:
Tracy Puleo is in charge of covering Recordkeepers, TPA and Insurance and brings her relationships across the Retirement Plan Services space. Tracy has over two decades of experience both in SaaS and 401K management, including wholesale distribution at John Hancock and Lincoln Financial. She has a passion for helping businesses leverage technology to drive ROI and manage KPIs.
Adam Bilmes has over 15 years of experience in financial services and asset management and will be responsible for leading sales and partnership efforts for ABAKA in North America with Broker dealers, Asset and Wealth managers. Prior to ABAKA, he served as Vice President, Senior Strategic Account Manager at OppenheimerFunds.
Kevin McNee joins from New York-based fintech firm SmartAsset where he was one of the very first hires that helped take the firm to a multi-million revenue generating business. McNee will focus on business development initiatives across North America, covering the RIA and advisor space.
“The ABAKA modular platform, leveraging new technology (Artificial Intelligence, open banking APIs, omni-channel engagement) is a great tool kit to help legacy FIs to keep up. With our cloud-based platform and library of modular applications, we help our clients build highly differentiated digital solutions and truly personalized customer experience,” Rachidy added. “ABAKA is building the economy applications and seamless exchange of data enabling FIs to access their data to build insights and intelligence.”
ABAKA closed its Series A funding round in December last year and has secured $10 million in funding to date.
