Prelim

About Prelim

Prelim, founded in July 2017, offers a specialized platform for U.S. banks and financial institutions to digitize and automate their customer-facing processes. The company was co-founded by CEO Heang Chan and CTO Chris Blaser. Chan's background provides a unique perspective, having immigrated to the U.S. from a refugee camp in Thailand and grown up in low-income housing, which informed his understanding of the importance of accessible financial services. His career path included roles at Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs before he transitioned into technology, working on product development at Blend, a digital lending platform. This blend of banking and tech experience was instrumental in shaping Prelim's mission. Blaser, a UC Berkeley graduate in Math and English, is a self-taught software engineer who also worked at Blend after gaining experience on UC Berkeley's solar vehicle team.

The company's core offering is a no-code, white-labeled platform that enables financial institutions to streamline and automate the entire customer journey, from onboarding and account opening to servicing. It is designed to work for banks of all sizes and across any device, supporting over 100 financial products including deposit accounts, treasury services, and business loans. The platform functions as a web application that both customers and bank employees can use. For employees, it provides an enterprise dashboard to review, process, and underwrite applications, improving back-office operational efficiency. For end-customers, it simplifies applications, such as opening checking accounts or applying for credit cards, by pre-filling information for existing users and reducing repetitive data entry.

Prelim's business model is B2B, selling directly to financial institutions and through other fintech platforms. Revenue is generated through this enterprise software offering. The platform is built with an open, flexible architecture hosted on Amazon Web Services and features a UX builder with drag-and-drop tools, allowing banks to customize applications to fit their brand. It integrates with existing core banking systems and third-party services like Alloy, Middesk, and Persona to facilitate real-time Know Your Customer (KYC), Know Your Business (KYB), and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks, ensuring compliance with regulations such as SOC 2, HIPAA, and GLBA. After participating in the Y Combinator accelerator in 2017, Prelim secured $120K in a seed round. Subsequent funding brought its total raised to at least $4.1 million from investors including EJF Capital and Liquid 2 Ventures.