Teetering: Why So Many Live on a Financial Tightrope and What to Do about It

Ken Rees is the Founder and CEO of Covered Holdings, a company that uses newly available data sources and analytics to disrupt traditional financial services available to underserved Americans. A leading financial technology innovator for over two decades, Ken Rees is passionate about serving the underserved. He was founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Elevate, a company he took public in 2017. Elevate is a leading provider of online credit in the U.S. and U.K., and has originated over $7 billion in credit to over 2 million non-prime consumers and saved them more than $5 billion over what they would have spent on payday loans. Prior to Elevate, Mr. Rees was the founder and CEO of CashWorks, a financial technology company acquired by GE. Earlier in his career, he ran CSC Index's West Coast financial services consulting practice. Mr. Rees is a well-known speaker and writer in the financial technology industry. He has delivered keynote speeches and other presentations at industry conferences such as Money 20/20, LendIT, Finovate, and Lend360 as well as to the Federal Reserve Bank. He has been profiled in the popular "Corner Office" column of The NY Times and his opinion pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, American Banker, and Business Insider among other publications. In 2012, Mr. Rees was selected by Ernst & Young as an Entrepreneur of the Year and was named a 2017 Innovator to Watch by Bank Innovation. Mr. Rees graduated from Reed College with a degree in Mathematics and earned his MBA in Finance and Statistics from the University of Chicago.