Vram Ismailyan spent nearly 14 years at Wells Fargo selling payment infrastructure strategies to Fortune 500 companies. Despite being a top performer in payments, he always felt stuck in the bank’s outdated technology.
“I spent at least five to 10 hours preparing for customer meetings,” he told TechCrunch. “We had to use 10 to 15 different systems to gather the information, make sense of it, and put it into PowerPoint.”
Like his colleagues, Kevin Miyamoto struggled with Wells Fargo’s technology. Despite managing $900 billion in customer payments annually, he managed his entire portfolio of accounts using Excel spreadsheets rather than a proper CRM.
Frustrated with Wells Fargo’s inefficient technology tools, Ismailian and Miyamoto teamed up in 2021 to build Identifee, a software platform designed specifically for commercial bankers with all the features a commercial banker could want. The company was selected as a top 20 finalist in TechCrunch Disrupt 2025’s Startup Battlefield competition.
Having personally worked on outdated technology at one of the country’s largest banks, Ismailyan and Miyamoto recognized that technology inefficiencies were even more acute at smaller financial institutions.
“If you want to get information about your customers, you might have to log into 10 separate systems, download all different data into Excel, and start analyzing it,” says Miyamoto. “It takes forever.”
Identifee is designed to improve banker productivity by consolidating the functionality of multiple fragmented internal systems into a single platform.
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The startup’s platform is built on several modular systems that clients can purchase individually or as a complete suite. These systems include CRMs, business intelligence tools to track customer data, and sales enablement modules to create reports and presentations.
“If you’re a community bank, you could do what Identifee does, but you’d have to get Salesforce, seismic, Power BI, and Tableau,” Miyamoto says. “Or you can use our tool, which has all this in one easy platform.”
Some of Identifee’s modules are also powered by AI. For example, the startup’s AI agent can help fill out request for proposal (RFP) forms in accordance with each bank’s compliance and risk policies.
Ismailian and Miyamoto claim that Identifee is the only platform built specifically for commercial banks and credit unions, with these U.S. market segments estimated to total more than 8,800 institutions.
Identifee has already earned the trust of the banking industry, with over 170 customers including major corporations such as Silicon Valley Bank, First Fidelity Bank, and Comerica.
The company has raised approximately $5 million in seed funding from investors including Ocean Azul Partners, 10X Capital, and Gainels.
When asked why other startups aren’t tackling the inefficiencies in commercial banking technology, Miyamoto said: “There are a lot of people who know a lot about[this issue]but they don’t start companies like Vram, and neither did I.”
If you want to learn more about Identifee from the company itself, check out dozens of other companies, hear their pitches, and hear from guest speakers on four different stages, join us at Disrupt in San Francisco from October 27th to 29th. Click here for more information.
