There’s no bank that has a more provocative mission statement than ours, and that’s intentional.
Quontic’s mission is to break the system for financial empowerment.
When you hear it, it sounds different – like Apple in the early days, when they invited each of us to “think different.”
The financial system is set up for big money. And the system leaves no room for choice—“I have to do it their way, or I don’t have a play.” The system doesn’t empower you at all—you’re shut out if you can’t follow their rules.
Well, we say—f that.
We want to fight the system, take it on, do it differently and do it in a way that creates financial empowerment for EVERYONE. If today’s status quo doesn’t empower you, whether you’re a low-income earner, a gig-economy worker, a bitcoin enthusiast, or a self-made millionaire, we’re going to fight for you. If the system says you don’t come first—we don’t care who you are—we want to help you. If the current rules don’t leave you with any choices, Quontic is here to give you a choice.
Our strategic anchors help illustrate how we make it happen. For example, we’ve used Adaptive Lending to help the Chinese-American communities we’ve historically catered to in Queens, NY and beyond. Oftentimes people in these social and family-driven communities purchase properties by pooling resources from many individuals to buy a property. The catch? Your typical bank won’t allow that. The status quo system isn’t empowering, and this person is shut out. Quontic has figured out a different way to allow individuals to pool cash or use gifts toward a downpayment on a mortgage with our flexible underwriting.
Our views on cryptocurrency align with our Innovative Deposit anchor. The numbers, and thousands of email inquiries after this piece ran last August, show that people are using Bitcoin, but their financial life is completely segregated from cryptocurrency. Other banks haven’t figured it out, and they don’t want to. We’re working on approaching it differently, and empowering these people that the system doesn’t serve.
Of course, we understand as a bank that we’re regulated and the government is providing insurance on our behalf to our customer’s money. We don’t take that lightly. But we do think that there’s an opportunity for a bank like us to push the envelope, while playing within the rules and operate safely while still putting our customers’ financial empowerment above the system’s.
As a CDFI we are, by nature, a mission-driven bank. We want to serve the underbanked population, in particular entrepreneurs and self-employed people, immigrants and low-income families, but that doesn’t mean that’s exclusively who we serve. It just means that the majority of our efforts are focused on serving those people. CDFI is an expression of our mission.
And on the other end of the spectrum is perhaps the greatest example of how we’re breaking the system: QuonticMax. Every bank today can offer a product like QuonticMax, but they don’t because doing what’s best for the customer sometimes is not in the bank’s best interest. Anyone who has the means can get up to $250,000 insured by the FDIC at one bank. And if you’ve got more than that? Tough. You can deposit the money, you have to make a bet, based on the bank, to decide if your money is safe, and 2009 taught us that there’s no one who’s too safe to fail. The best thing for the customer is to have 100% of their money insured. Other banks aren’t doing that because it involves taking a customer’s money out of their bank and putting it into other banks, where the money would be insured. Quontic is breaking this selfish status quo by insuring up to $160 million per customer with the FDIC, and streamlining the process and keeping the customer’s funds liquid and readily available.
From day one, Quontic’s goal was to give our customers the best thing for them. And yeah, we’re probably pissing off other banks by marketing our mission this way, by creating products that fly in the face of the status quo—but it’s just who we are.
We are not looking to be like every other bank… but a bank that fights for the underdog, a bank that takes on the establishment, and a bank that empowers YOU.
