“I believe what takes finance leaders from ‘good’ to ‘great’ are—counterintuitively—their non-financial skills,” says Matt Newcomb, Chime’s CFO. “Good finance leaders create strong analysis; great finance leaders use strong analysis to develop sound business strategy, improve operational performance, and drive commercial outcomes.”
When Matt joined Chime, he wasn’t thinking about becoming a CFO. “I joined Chime as a business generalist. I'm not a CPA, I wasn’t an investment banker—I'm not even traditionally trained in FP&A,” he says. “But I did have depth in analytics, capital markets, and business development in roles that required combining rigorous quantitative analysis with persuasive communication.” He’s leaned on this combination of skills and experience time and again in his role as CFO at Chime, be that through making sure we make member-centric, high-ROI business decisions, negotiating many of our commercial partnerships, or using data to articulate Chime’s story.
Matt also uses his philosophy on what makes a great finance leader to lead his team at Chime: “I encourage my team to obsess about knowing our business inside and out, and to be able to speak about it at multiple altitudes—it's about connecting business metrics to member experience, linking financial performance to product decisions, and driving business decisions that support our long term company vision,” he says.
At Chime, we get to see Matt in action—in meetings, at all hands, and in the hallways. One thing he does better than anyone we know is explain deeply technical and quantitative details behind Chime to tell a story—a measure he also holds his entire team to. We wanted to hear more about his journey to Chime and the work his team does, so we sat down with him—here’s what we walked away with.
Matt’s Career Journey
“To be honest, I kind of fell into a career in finance,” Matt says of his career journey. As a liberal arts major, he spent his college years writing long papers—and not doing much math. But when he joined BlackRock in a quantitative role, he realized that finance was where he wanted to be. “I discovered I loved working with data and using insights from data to make sense of the world.”
“And it turned out the world needed a lot of sense-making at that time.” Matt joined BlackRock in 2008, at the onset of the Great Recession. After a few years helping build BlackRock’s fintech platform, he joined the firm’s Financial Markets Advisory practice—a special situations group that advised large financial institutions, central banks, and governments on complex capital markets issues—where he got a taste of the client service, strategy, and business development side of things, too.
“These early career experiences have played a critical role in how I’ve built teams and my career since,” he says. “Nowadays, when I’m hiring and growing teams, I look for people who are analytically savvy and detail-oriented, but who can also communicate clearly and effectively, and ‘see the forest for the trees.’”
After BlackRock, Matt attended business school and founded an EdTech startup. Through his studies—and experience in the world of finance—he became interested in several themes in consumer fintech, including the strategy of developing primary consumer financial relationships in retail banking. This interest led him to Chime’s founders and, well, the rest is history. Matt joined Chime in 2016.
On joining Chime
“What got me so excited about Chime was the authenticity of our mission and the ability to make a big impact on the lives of our members,” Matt says. "In contrast to an industry that remains addicted to punitive fees, Chime sets itself apart with a business model that is deeply aligned with our members' success—allowing us to be authentically focused on our mission of uniting everyday people to Unlock Financial Progress™.”
Chime has had to do two things to make our mission-aligned model work. First, we’ve built a unique, end-to-end technology platform that’s enabled cost, speed, and flexibility advantages relative to incumbents. "Our platform allows us to serve our members with truly innovative products at a low cost," Matt says.
Second, we’ve been laser-focused on earning the right to serve our members in a primary financial account capacity, which leads to deeply engaged, long-lasting relationships with our members. It also gives us a top-of-wallet card relationship. "Fundamentally, we are successful when we earn our members’ trust," explains Matt. "Our primary account relationships also provide an extremely rich proprietary data set that we can use to improve our products in ways that others just can't, creating the best possible banking experience for our members—over and over again."
“It’s a powerful wave to ride when mission and business align; it provides a decision-making framework that scales and helps us deliver real value for our members and build our company at the same time,” Matt says. “But trust is hard to earn and easy to lose—that's why we obsess every day about getting the details right.”
Growing his team and growing Chime’s business
Matt leads Chime’s Finance organization along with his leadership team which includes Amine Asmerom, Chime’s Chief Accounting Officer; Sofia Fatakhova, Chime’s VP of Finance; David Pearce, Chime’s VP of Investor Relations and Capital Markets; and Stefanie Reynolds, Chime’s Controller.
When it comes to leading his team, Matt expects that every person in his organization knows Chime’s business well, can articulate things simply and clearly, and will share their ideas openly.
“I believe that the best ideas can come from anywhere, and I hope to have an organization where anybody feels they can chime in, point out issues, propose solutions, and push ideas forward,” he says. “I learn from my colleagues every day—most of them can run circles around me in their domains. What an incredible gift that is, to be constantly learning and growing—that curiosity and openness is something I hope we all embody at Chime.”
Continuing to grow—as a CFO and as a company
To Matt, growing a constantly evolving team is why working at Chime has been so rewarding. “It feels like I’ve had 10-15 jobs here; our company has continued to change, our team has grown, and I’ve learned so much from other leaders at Chime and my team,” he says.
Matt has also been a Chimer for long enough that he’s seen it evolve on the broader stage, too. “Things that we used to talk about as distant ‘maybe one-day’ dreams in slide decks are becoming a reality,” he says. “We’ve now built a platform that is serving millions of members across multiple product categories.”
Just as most things at Chime start and end with our members, so does Matt’s story today. “What unites Chime above all else is our mission to Unlock Financial Progress for everyday people,” he says. “And the importance of realizing this mission is as critical as it’s ever been.”
Interested in joining Matt’s team? Check out our open roles here.