Digitizing Grief and Wealth: How Startup Prismm is Revolutionizing Estate Transitions for Modern Banks

Main Facts

Dealing with the death of a loved one is universally recognized as one of life’s most emotionally devastating experiences. Yet, compounding that grief is a notoriously opaque, highly fragmented, and overwhelmingly manual administrative hurdle: navigating the deceased’s financial affairs. Enter Prismm, an innovative fintech startup that is taking the stage at the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.

Prismm addresses a massive, underserved gap in financial infrastructure: the generational transfer of wealth. By embedding beneficiary designation and estate planning capabilities directly into banking core systems from day one, Prismm enables financial institutions to streamline asset transfers, eliminate red tape, and dramatically simplify what is usually an agonizing process for grieving heirs.

Founded in 2020 by industry veterans and sisters Martha Underwood and Shella Sylla, Prismm offers a B2B2C suite of software solutions designed to combat "estate attrition"—a phenomenon where traditional banks lose billions of dollars in deposits annually as heirs pull inherited funds out to move them to competitor institutions. By modernizing and digitizing the transfer pipeline, Prismm helps banks retain these crucial assets while capturing the loyalty of the next generation of account holders.

Chronology: From Personal Crisis to Fintech Innovation

The seeds of Prismm were planted long before the company was officially incorporated in 2020. The foundational narrative of the startup stems from a pair of distinct, highly stressful personal and professional milestones experienced by its co-founders.

The 2017 Hurricane Irma Catalyst

In 2017, Hurricane Irma battered Miami, leaving widespread destruction in its wake. While helping a neighbor clear a fallen tree from a roof, Martha and Shella’s father suffered a severe fall, leading to an emergency hospitalization.

In the immediate panic, the family confronted a terrifying reality familiar to millions of households: their mother, who relied entirely on her husband to manage the household’s finances, investments, and critical paperwork, had no idea where important documents or account credentials were kept. Neither did Martha nor Shella. Fortunately, their father eventually made a full recovery, but the psychological impact of being completely locked out of vital financial information during an emergency left a permanent impression on the sisters.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Industry Realization

The idea transformed from a personal cautionary tale into a viable business concept three years later, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. While working inside a retail bank, co-founder Martha Underwood witnessed a disheartening pattern on a daily basis. Grieving families—often heavily burdened spouses and children—would walk into the branch scrambling to locate hidden accounts, decipher complex bills, and figure out how the surviving family members would make ends meet.

Realizing that the financial sector had spent decades building sophisticated platforms for wealth growth and tracking, but virtually nothing for wealth transition, the sisters identified a massive structural flaw. They officially incorporated Prismm in 2020, dedicating themselves to digitizing and humanizing the estate transfer process.

Supporting Data & Product Architecture

Financial institutions have long suffered from "estate attrition," a silent leak that drains billions of dollars from legacy banking systems every year. When an account holder passes away without a clear, seamless digital pipeline for asset transfer, heirs are forced to jump through physical hoops—notarized documents, branch visits, and months of administrative purgatory. Frustrated by the friction, families frequently liquidate these accounts and consolidate their wealth elsewhere.

Prismm’s infrastructure-first approach solves this by plugging directly into bank core systems, dividing its offerings into three core pillars:

1. Prismm Designate

A tool built specifically to allow banks to offer their customers a frictionless, digital interface to update and manage their beneficiaries. By making beneficiary management as easy as updating a profile picture, banks ensure that their data remains accurate and legally actionable before a crisis ever strikes.

2. Prismm Anchor

Designed for the account holder, Prismm Anchor provides a secure digital vault embedded within the financial institution’s existing ecosystem—meaning users do not have to download a separate, third-party consumer app. Users can track accounts, physical property, legal documents, and other assets across multiple institutions while granting controlled, pre-authorized access to trusted family members ahead of time.

3. Prismm Continuity (Coming Soon)

The upcoming third product acts as a guided roadmap for both bank staff and grieving families. It automates the step-by-step transfer process, keeping the heaviest administrative burdens housed securely within the financial institution rather than forcing exhausted families to shoulder the detective work.

Official Responses and Perspectives

Unlike standalone consumer apps that rely heavily on everyday people remembering to log in and upload their documents—a behavior prone to procrastination—Prismm takes a systemic approach. Co-founder Martha Underwood emphasizes that relying on the end consumer to manage estate planning independently is a losing battle, particularly given societal demographics.

"What’s on the market is consumer-based," Underwood noted in an interview with TechCrunch. "What we found is when you’re asking the consumer to do something with everything else on their list, that’s going to be the last thing they do, especially women. Women are the ones that are typically going to be handling these issues when there’s a death. We’re typically the caregivers, and so asking me to manage the documents for my mom and dad while I take care of my kids, my husband, everyone else, it just becomes too much."

Because of this sociological reality, Underwood argues that estate transition cannot be treated as an optional consumer chore. It must be woven into the core infrastructure of banking.

"It needs to be built as infrastructure, and there needs to be as little friction as possible to allow people to get to the information that they need to execute on a decision, and so that’s why we integrate directly into bank cores," Underwood explained.

By baking compliance, digital consent, and identity verification directly into the account architecture, designated family members can log in remotely—even if they live across the country—to view assets and initiate eligible beneficiary transfers digitally.

Furthermore, Prismm views estate transitions not merely as an operational headache to be minimized, but as a critical customer acquisition and retention channel.

"We will be the infrastructure that financial institutions use to move money to the next generation, because we don’t only understand that you execute on the back end," Underwood added. "We understand that you need to be proactive and build relationships with the next generation of consumers on the front end."

Implications for the Future of Banking

Prismm’s presence at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Startup Battlefield marks a watershed moment for the intersection of fintech and legacy wealth management. As the "Great Wealth Transfer"—the projected trillion-dollar inheritance shift from Baby Boomers to Millennials and Gen Z—accelerates over the next decade, banks are facing unprecedented pressure to modernize their back-end and front-end legacy operations.

If successful, Prismm could fundamentally redefine how financial institutions handle mortality. By replacing paper-heavy, emotionally draining bureaucracy with streamlined, secure digital workflows, the startup not only preserves billions of dollars in deposits for banks but also spares families from compounding emotional distress with administrative chaos during their darkest hours. As the competition heats up in San Francisco this week, all eyes will be on startups like Prismm that are proving innovation isn’t just about making money grow—it’s about ensuring it safely reaches the people who need it most.