If you’ve ever tried to explain wire fraud to your parents, you already know: elder financial safety isn’t a niche issue, it’s a five-alarm fire dressed in a cable-knit sweater. And while most fintechs are still trying to gamify checking accounts, Carefull has been quietly building the AI-powered fireproof vault for aging adults and the 45 million Americans who care for them. Now, with a fresh injection of growth capital from CIBC Innovation Banking, the company’s not just expanding, it’s fortifying the front lines of financial protection for the generation holding 83% of U.S. household wealth.
Todd Rovak and Max Goldman aren’t your typical co-founders. This isn’t two guys stumbling into fintech over IPAs, Todd cut his teeth running Fahrenheit 212, then steered Capgemini Consulting North America after an acquisition most innovation firms only dream about. Max built and sold Directr to Google, then launched YouTube Director before most people knew what a pre-roll was. Together, they’ve engineered a platform that runs on proprietary AI, digs into over $50 billion in financial activity, and flags the subtle behavioral shifts, money mistakes, unusual transfers, even early signs of cognitive decline, that traditional fraud tools completely miss.
The problem they’re solving is enormous, and wildly under-discussed. Seniors lost over $3.4 billion to scams in 2023, AARP pegs actual losses at $28.3 billion annually. And that’s just the stuff we know about. Underreporting is the villain no one’s writing origin stories for, Carefull isn’t chasing headlines, they’re chasing the silent crisis and building the infrastructure to stop it cold.
Carefull’s growth hasn’t been theoretical. They’re already powering fraud prevention and trust-building at Synovus, American Riviera Bank, MEFCU, and Integrated Partners, a $21.3B RIA. With features like ScamCheck (think ChatGPT meets “Catch Me If You Can”) and a Trusted Contacts system that gives read-only visibility without transferring power, the product isn’t just smart. It’s built for reality.
This growth capital from CIBC is more than just gas in the tank. It’s validation that financial institutions are ready, finally, to move beyond checkbox compliance and start protecting their clients like family. Because when the wealth transfer hits $24 trillion, the winners won’t be the ones chasing the next generation, they’ll be the ones who earned their trust by protecting the one before them.
So yeah, Carefull is expanding. But this isn’t about scale for scale’s sake. This is a war on financial exploitation, and Todd Rovak and Max Goldman just leveled up the artillery.
Tag your favorite wealth advisor. Tell your credit union. And if your bank doesn’t offer Carefull yet, ask them why they’re leaving Grandma in the wind.
