Underserved and Underestimated

I was talking with one of my advisors last week about how the financial industry views the neurodivergent community, and we realized we need to expand our vocabulary.

We hear the word "underserved" a lot in fintech. And it is true, this community is severely and sorely underserved. But we are also something else.

We are underestimated.

Here is what I mean by that. The traditional financial system treats neurodivergent adults like square pegs being forced into round holes. The message has always been to just carve off your edges. Just jump into this round hole. Just learn how to budget this specific way, because that is what "financial literacy" means.

I reject all of that.

I believe that some of us are simply wired differently, and honestly, I like being a square peg. 😊 🟩

We live in an era where technology allows us to create hyper-personalized products that adapt to the human, not the other way around. When you remove the friction of forced compliance, people are finally free to focus on the things they are actually gifted in. And that makes the whole world better.

But this is not just a philosophical argument. It is a mathematical one.

The CDC estimates there are 15.5 million adults in the US diagnosed with ADHD alone. When you include autism, dyslexia, and related cognitive profiles, you are looking at a massive segment of the population.

Yet, traditional banking models completely misread them.

Adults with ADHD lose thousands of dollars a year to the "ADHD tax." This includes late fees, overdrafts, and forgotten subscriptions. When a traditional bank algorithm sees those missed payments, it flags that user as high risk. It assumes a lack of earning potential or financial instability.

That is a profound misreading of the data. For a neurodivergent adult, an overdraft is rarely a lack of income. It is executive dysfunction. Traditional underwriting mistakes nervous system overwhelm for financial instability.

In the venture capital world, this is called mispriced risk.

The big banks are leaving billions of dollars on the table because they are punishing highly lucrative, high potential professionals whose brains simply do not wire with traditional financial tools.

This is why we are building Pistachio Pay. We are capturing the exact high value customers the legacy banking system is too rigid to understand.