Prismm Targets Billions in 'Estate Attrition' Banks Lose Each Year

U.S. banks bleed billions in deposits every year to what Prismm's founders call "estate attrition" — and the Miami-based startup has built software to stop the leak before it starts.

Prismm, founded in 2020 by sisters Martha Underwood and Shella Sylla, is presenting its pitch today on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. The pair, each with decades of banking and finance experience, want to wire beneficiary and estate planning into accounts on day one.

What's the problem with how banks handle deaths today?

When an account holder dies, heirs often pull the inherited money and move it. Prismm's co-founders frame that outflow as a structural gap, not a customer-loyalty problem.

"Estate attrition" happens because banks have no system for managing the transition of accounts after a death. Prismm's pitch is simple: digitize the transition inside the bank, and the deposits stay put.

Where did the idea come from?

It started in 2017, when their father fell from a neighbor's roof while clearing storm debris after Hurricane Irma in Miami. The fall hospitalized him, and the family discovered that their mother — who had always relied on him to handle the family's finances and paperwork — had no map to the critical documents.

He recovered. The lesson didn't. Three years later, while working at a bank during the COVID-19 pandemic, Underwood watched the same scramble repeat itself in branch lobbies.

"That's when it hit us that this is an infrastructure problem," Underwood told TechCrunch. "We've created all of these platforms for wealth growth and tracking, but almost nothing for transition. It's still very much all manual."

Why build it for banks, not consumers?

Plenty of apps let families store estate documents. Underwood says that's the wrong layer.

"What's on the market is consumer-based," she said. "Asking the consumer to do something with everything else on their list, that's going to be the last thing they do — especially women, who are typically the caregivers. This needs to be built as infrastructure, and there needs to be as little friction as possible."

Prismm integrates into bank cores. Account holders name a designated person who can log in, see assets and documents in one place, and start eligible beneficiary transfers digitally. Identity, consent, and supporting documents are already on file, so the process runs remotely — even when heirs live in different states.

What does Prismm actually sell?

Three products, with two live and a third in the pipeline:

• Prismm Designate — lets banks offer customers a simple, digital way to update their own beneficiaries.
• Prismm Anchor — gives account holders a secure, multi-institution vault for accounts, documents, property, and other assets, with controlled access for designated people.
• Prismm Continuity — coming soon, this product will walk bank staff and families through the transfer process step by step, keeping the hardest part of the workflow inside the institution.

What does Prismm want from Disrupt?

A win, validation, and — more practically — bank customers. The Startup Battlefield winner will be announced on Thursday, October 15, in San Francisco.

Underwood framed the company's ambition in one sentence: "We will be the infrastructure that financial institutions use to move money to the next generation."

If Prismm can shift even a slice of the billions banks lose each year back into their own balance sheets, the pitch won't just win a stage in San Francisco. It could redraw the cost math on every U.S. retail banking relationship that ends in probate.

By Grace Kim