Martha Underwood, founder and CEO of Prismm, pitched Silicon Valley investors on keeping family wealth inside the institutions that hold it, as $124 trillion begins to change hands
Nationwide — Martha Underwood, founder and CEO of Prismm, made history as a Black female entrepreneur when she recently pitched and demonstrated her company’s platform live on the Disrupt Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 as one of 20 finalists in Startup Battlefield, the competition that launched Dropbox, Discord and Cloudflare. Her company helps banks and credit unions build relationships with account holders’ heirs years before an inheritance moves. Underwood presented on Oct. 14 in the Enterprise and Security semifinal session and took questions from venture investors. TechCrunch published a profile of the company the same day.
The Top 20 were drawn from the Startup Battlefield 200, which TechCrunch selected from thousands of applications. Each finalist had six minutes to pitch and demo. Five advanced to the Oct. 15 final, where Intero Biosystems won the $100,000 equity-free prize. “I looked out at that room and understood exactly who I was standing there for,” Underwood said. “Black families lose more than money when an account holder dies without the institution knowing the heirs. They lose the relationship, the history, and sometimes the house. I built Prismm so the bank is in the room when that transfer happens, and I took it to Disrupt so the people who fund the future of banking would hear it from me.”
Underwood came to the problem twice. The first time was personal: an experience in her own family showed her how quickly a household can lose track of its financial life when the person who manages it suddenly cannot. The second time was professional. As an executive at a global bank, she saw the same gap at scale. Institutions held the accounts but rarely knew the people who would inherit them, and when an account holder died, the relationship often left with the money. The stakes are not evenly shared. The Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances put the median wealth of Black families at $44,900, against $285,000 for white families. When a family’s main asset is a home or a single account, losing track of it at a death is not an inconvenience. It can erase the inheritance.
The great wealth transfer is already underway. Cerulli Associates projects that $124 trillion in U.S. wealth will change hands through 2048, with $105 trillion going to heirs. Cerulli estimated in 2021 that more than 70% of heirs are likely to fire or change financial advisors after inheriting their parents’ wealth. No comparable measure existed for bank and credit union deposits. So Prismm built one. Its Deposit Mortality Index scores all 8,365 federally insured U.S. banks and credit unions on how exposed they are to deposits leaving as account holders die, using public data from the FDIC, the Census Bureau, the Federal Reserve and the Social Security Administration. The October edition estimates that $1.46 trillion in deposits could leave U.S. institutions over the next 10 years and finds that nearly two-thirds of banks score Elevated or higher. The same report finds the exposure is heaviest at community institutions, the banks and credit unions that serve the neighborhoods most large banks left.
Prismm is live in market and has several credit unions lined up to onboard. The company joined the Jack Henry Fintech Integration Network in May 2026, and is now in conversations with banks and credit unions nationwide about adopting the platform ahead of the largest wealth transfer in U.S. history.
About Prismm
Prismm builds estate orchestration infrastructure for banks and credit unions. Its platform helps financial institutions engage heirs, retain deposits and preserve trust as wealth moves between generations. Learn more at GetPrismm.com
About Martha Underwood
Martha Sylla Underwood is founder and CEO of Prismm, the fintech company defining Inheritance Infrastructure for financial institutions. Her career spans enterprise technology and global banking, giving her a rare cross-functional view of what it takes to keep financial relationships intact when wealth changes hands. Martha also advises financial institutions on digital identity, infrastructure and generational trust. She was named to Parity’s Top 100 Women in Tech 2026, is the author of “The Death of Deposits” and is a sought-after speaker on sustaining financial relationships across generations.
About TechCrunch Startup Battlefield
Startup Battlefield is TechCrunch’s startup competition, held at TechCrunch Disrupt. Its alumni community includes more than 1,700 companies, among them Dropbox, Discord and Cloudflare, which have collectively raised $32 billion, according to TechCrunch.
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MEDIA NOTE: High-resolution photos of Martha Underwood on the Disrupt Stage available on request.