Eko Partners with Candescent to Bring Embedded Investing to More Than 1,300 Banks and Credit Unions

Eko's embedded investing platform will be available to Candescent's financial institutions, letting them meet customers and members' investing needs inside their own digital banking apps

New York, NY (October 8, 2026): Eko Investments, the embedded investing platform built for banks and credit unions, today announced a partnership with Candescent, the cloud-native Intelligent Banking platform serving more than 1,300 financial institutions and over 30 million registered users. The partnership makes Eko's embedded investing available to institutions on the Candescent platform, giving them a native way to offer investment accounts inside their own digital banking apps, so customers and members can open, fund, and manage a portfolio without ever leaving their institution's brand.

For both Eko and Candescent, the partnership advances a straightforward goal: keeping customers’ and members' investing lives inside the institutions they already bank with. Retail investing has become a daily habit, and most of it happens in standalone fintech apps rather than at a consumer’s bank or member’s credit union. Every dollar that funds one of those outside accounts usually starts as a balance at the users’ institution, and it rarely comes back.

"Members and customers are already investing. The real question for a bank or credit union is whose app they open to do it," said Mart Vos, Chief Executive Officer of Eko. "Partnering with Candescent puts embedded investing within reach of more than 1,300 institutions and tens of millions of people. We help those institutions serve the investing side of their customers' and members’ financial lives and keep that relationship where it started."

Built to Live Inside Digital Banking

Designed to integrate directly within the banking experience, Eko becomes a seamless extension of the Candescent Intelligent Banking platform rather than a separate destination. An investment account tile appears natively within online and mobile banking, complemented by AI-driven education that helps customers get started with confidence. Customers and members can fund accounts instantly using an external account, their existing checking account, or by transferring an outside brokerage account in full, creating a frictionless path from banking to investing

As a result, assets flow back into the institution's ecosystem instead of out to fintech apps. Because those balances become invested assets held under the institution's brand, the economics show up as non-interest income rather than feeding another fintech's balance sheet. Institutions earn on engagement and assets under management, and consumers get a modern investing experience inside an app they already trust. Early results from Eko deployments point to the size of the opportunity: customers and members who adopt investing log in about four times as often, attrition among those customers and members runs roughly six times lower, and first-year deposit growth has reached 11% (Eko).

Reaching Institutions at Scale

Candescent provides Eko reach across one of the largest digital banking footprints in the country, on a platform built to add capabilities like this quickly. Through its cloud-native, API-first architecture and curated Marketplace of pre-integrated fintech partners, Candescent lets institutions extend what their apps can do without replacing core systems. "Intelligent Banking is about serving the entire financial relationship, including the parts that have historically lived outside the app," said David Ness, Head of Fintech Partnerships at Candescent. "Bringing Eko onto our platform lets our banks and credit unions meet that need natively, inside the experience they own, and keep the engagement and the assets where they belong."

Availability

Eko's embedded investing is  available to Candescent clients through the Candescent Marketplace as of September 2026. Financial institutions interested in offering investing to their customers and members can learn more at eko.investments or contact their Candescent representative.

About Eko

Eko is the embedded investing platform built for banks and credit unions. Eko lets institutions offer investment accounts inside their own digital banking apps, under their own brand, with instant account funding, AI-driven customer education, and an experience designed to keep engagement and assets in the institution's Ekosystem*. Providing financial institutions a way to satisfy consumers' complete financial needs from their first checking account to retirement. Learn more at eko.investments

About Candescent

Candescent is defining the era of Intelligent Banking for banks and credit unions. Through its cloud-native, API-first Intelligent Banking platform, Candescent helps financial institutions bring together data, channels, and real-time intelligence to deliver differentiated experiences across account opening, consumer and business banking, and digital and branch service. Candescent serves more than 1,300 banks and credit unions representing over 30 million registered users. Learn more at candescent.com.