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Gabriel Montoya, CEO of Dvdendo, co-founded the micro-investing platform earlier this year.
Gabriel Montoya, CEO of Dvdendo, co-founded the micro-investing platform earlier this year.

Micro-investing company caters to Hispanic market

While educating the Hispanic community about financial planning, Dvdendo also provides an easy-to-use and universally accessible investment platform. 

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Though they are not often discussed, there are cultural differences in the way people approach savings and retirement.

While investing and planning financially for life’s later years are common concepts in the U.S., Gabriel Montoya said these ideas are not as ingrained within many Hispanic communities, which can potentially be problematic.

This is one of the reasons why Montoya and Matthew Meehan co-founded Dvdendo, a micro-investing platform tailored to the Hispanic market. Montoya is CEO of the Miami-based company while Meehan serves as president.

“Hispanics have a disadvantage,” Montoya said. “No one is catering to them, which is why we wanted to get involved.”

This disadvantage, Montoya said, is symptomatic of a historic lack of access and education regarding investing, savings and financial planning in Hispanic communities.

Montoya has seen firsthand the difficulties that can be caused by this inaccessibility to knowledge. Born in Colombia and raised in Venezuela, Montoya arrived in the U.S. in 1996. Montoya said his father had the monetary means to save for retirement during his working years, but resources for this type of financial planning were unavailable, and so was education on the subject.

Today, Montoya helps to financially support his parents, and he said this type of situation is a common one among aging Latinos.

“You end up becoming dependent on your kids,” Montoya said. “And it’s hard to break the cycle.”

Montoya said one in three Hispanics today are part of the “sandwich generation,” referring to those between the ages of 30 and 50 who must financially support their aging parents while also raising children. This situation makes it a challenge for those caught in the middle to plan for retirement or reach other financial goals.

Creating solutions for this disadvantage is what Dvdendo is all about. The company describes itself as the "first bilingual, micro-investing platform, catering to first-time Latino investors.” The company launched earlier this year.

“Dvdendo aims to make investments universally accessible," Montoya said. "However, we want to focus on the Hispanic population, with the goal of changing the financial grievances that most commonly affect them.”

With its convenient investment platform, available as an app through the Apple Store and Google Play, Dvdendo aims to promote financial awareness and education within the underserved Hispanic community to encourage saving and planning. Through doing this, Montoya said, future generations will not have to face the same challenges as the "sandwich generation."

Montoya is certain Dvdendo, with its easy-to-use platform and budget-friendly services, will have a big impact in the world of Hispanic personal financing.

Prior to Dvdendo, Gabriel was the CEO of Next University, an online education institution in Latin America. For years before that, he was Senior Vice President and Chief Investment Officer for the Cisneros Group of Companies.

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