Like many entrepreneurs, Greg Keough credits a personal experience for the motivation to start his company. In Mr. Keough’s case that company is Finova Financial, which bills itself as a better digital alternative to a car title loan.
Mr. Keough said that while he was CEO of Mobile Financial Services, a joint venture between MasterCard and Telefonica that developed mobile financial services across Latin America, he became aware of a significant problem affecting many people.
“Half of people cannot come up with $400 in an emergency,” Mr. Keough said.
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Millions of Americans live outside the formal financial system, which does not serve them well, Mr. Keough said. Because it is a binary concept, small differences can hurt, such as missing a payment by one day because that is when pay day is or having a credit score of 749 instead of 750.
“We built our products to understand reality,” Mr. Keough said. “We want to get people on track, not punish them.”
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