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The official CEO.com podcast featuring unfiltered conversations with the leaders shaping our world.
Clint Betts: Gina, thank you so much for coming on the show. You’re the CEO and co-founder of Savvi Financial. Tell us what it is.
Gina Mourtzinou: Thank you so much for having me, Clint.
Savvi Financial is a financial technology company focused on helping employees optimize their financial journey, from early benefits decisions all the way to creating a reliable paycheck in retirement.
At our core, we’re an analytics company. We use analytics to create personalized guidance that meets the unique needs of each employee while helping them build financial confidence. Our tools also help employers, especially when integrated into their HR systems, increase benefits utilization, optimize costs, and improve employee well-being.
The problems we solve are especially relevant this time of year. Most employees are either in the middle of annual enrollment or have recently completed it. They’re trying to figure out things like:
What’s the best medical plan for me?
Do I need vision coverage for my family?
Should I choose an HSA or an FSA?
How much should I contribute?
Do I need supplemental coverage?
After all of those decisions, they still need to think about emergency savings, retirement contributions, and long-term financial planning.
It’s a very complex problem that people have to solve at least once a year and often throughout the year. That’s what we help them do.
Clint Betts: How has AI changed your workflow and the company? How are you thinking about it?
Gina Mourtzinou: AI is everywhere. Every conversation eventually turns to AI.
I’m very excited about it because it can help us become more innovative, more efficient, and more creative. It removes a lot of manual work and allows people to focus on higher-value activities.
I think it’s incredibly important for our industry, and we need to embrace it or risk being left behind.
At the same time, we need to be very careful.
There are issues around ethics, privacy, transparency, fairness, and equitable access. We need robust frameworks and guidelines that allow us to benefit from AI while minimizing the risks.
For our industry specifically, AI is not a cure-all. It can retrieve information and surface insights very effectively, and it can help us communicate with users in a more personalized way. But it can’t actually solve many of the optimization problems we’re addressing.
For example, AI can’t determine the best benefits plan for your family or exactly how much you should contribute to retirement. Those are optimization problems that require additional techniques.
At Savvi, we use AI to help onboard employers, assist with coding, and explain complex financial concepts to clients. But we have to be careful.
We should never trade privacy for convenience. Finances are deeply personal, and we need to be empathetic and act more like fiduciaries by putting users’ interests first.
AI is amazing. We just need to use it thoughtfully.
Clint Betts: What are some of the drawbacks you worry about?
Gina Mourtzinou: One example is people asking AI systems highly personal financial questions.
If you ask ChatGPT what financial decision you should make, it doesn’t actually know your household situation or your complete financial picture.
You also have to be careful about how much information you share with AI systems.
And AI makes mistakes.
Even in simple situations, it sometimes gives incorrect answers. The funny thing is that when you point out the mistake, it’s much nicer than my kids. It apologizes and tells me I’m right.
But it’s still a mistake.
People need to double-check and triple-check important financial information.
Clint Betts: Before Savvi, you spent many years in financial services. What inspired you to start the company?
Gina Mourtzinou: I was actually at Ameriprise before founding Savvi.
I was a senior portfolio manager, and my experiences there really shaped the idea.
I was fortunate to manage money during both strong and difficult market environments. I saw markets rise dramatically, and I saw markets collapse.
Our mutual funds often performed well relative to benchmarks. I even received a bonus in 2008.
But many of our clients didn’t do well because they hadn’t thought carefully about their asset allocation. Some didn’t have enough liquidity when markets declined. Others panicked and exited the market, which meant they missed the recovery in 2009 and 2010.
What we realized is that people don’t necessarily need investment alpha as much as they need sound financial planning and advice.
The challenge is that most Americans don’t have access to high-quality financial guidance.
So we asked ourselves: If we want to have a meaningful impact, what should we do?
Our answer was to help people make better financial decisions using math, analytics, transparency, and efficiency.
As we explored the problem, we realized that most Americans make their biggest financial decisions through their workplace. Benefits are often one of the most important tools available to help people achieve their goals.
That’s really how Savvi was born.
Clint Betts: What advice would you give CEOs and leaders about their own personal financial planning?
Gina Mourtzinou: CEOs are human too, and they’re extremely busy.
One mistake I see—and honestly, I do this myself sometimes—is not spending enough time thinking intentionally about personal finances.
Many households never actually sit down and define their goals.
When do we want to retire?
Do we want to travel?
Do we want to leave a legacy?
How important is philanthropy?
People need to establish those goals first.
Then they need a long-term financial plan that’s robust enough to handle both market volatility and life changes.
For CEOs especially, uncertainty is part of life. That means they need plans that can withstand different scenarios.
The biggest thing is slowing down long enough to think about it.
Clint Betts: What does a typical day look like for you?
Gina Mourtzinou: It’s a startup, so there’s really no typical day.
I still have kids at home, so I start by making breakfast and getting everyone out the door.
Then I try to read the news.
We go into the office two or three days a week, and the rest of the time we work remotely. Once the day starts, it’s really Slack, meetings, collaboration, and working with my colleagues.
That’s pretty much the day.
Clint Betts: What are you reading these days?
Gina Mourtzinou: I read a lot.
Lately I’ve been reading more history.
I recently read a book about the Greek Revolution, which I think is incredibly important because it helped shape modern Europe.
I also read a book about the Minutemen because I live in Lincoln, Massachusetts, near Concord. My walking trail follows part of the Minuteman Trail and crosses the North Bridge.
I love history because you learn from both people’s successes and their mistakes. You see how close events came to disaster and how leadership influenced outcomes.
I also read fiction, but when I start a novel I can’t stop, so history is usually the safer choice.
Clint Betts: Privacy and data security have always been important in financial services. How are you thinking about those issues today?
Gina Mourtzinou: They’re becoming even more important.
Some people are sharing more information than ever before, while others are becoming much more protective.
We need to respect both perspectives.
In some of our work, we use claims data and other highly sensitive information. If people share information without understanding how it may be used, that can create significant risks.
I think privacy is more important today than it was before, and organizations need to take that responsibility very seriously.
Clint Betts: How have you thought about culture and your hybrid work model?
Gina Mourtzinou: Personally, I enjoy being in the office.
I’m actually more of an introvert, but I enjoy talking with my colleagues and exchanging ideas.
Especially for our analytics and engineering teams, collaboration is often easier in person.
That said, I live in Boston, and traffic can be terrible. Sometimes people would spend an hour and a half commuting each way, and I don’t think that’s fair.
We’re also a startup, and talent isn’t always located nearby.
So we’ve adopted a hybrid approach that gives people flexibility while still allowing us to spend meaningful time together.
I do think it’s harder for younger employees because mentoring over Zoom isn’t as effective as mentoring in person.
But we try to strike a balance between collaboration, flexibility, and respect for people’s time.
Clint Betts: How are you feeling about the macroeconomic environment heading into 2026?
Gina Mourtzinou: I try to remain cautiously optimistic.
There’s a lot happening right now, and it’s honestly difficult to keep up with all the news.
As a quant, I’ll admit that markets haven’t always behaved the way traditional models would predict recently.
When we talk to clients, our message is pretty simple:
Stay diversified.
Maintain adequate reserves.
Prepare for uncertainty.
Then we’ll see how things unfold.
Clint Betts: Finally, we end every interview the same way.
At CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives are just as important as the chances one takes.
When you hear that, who gave you a chance that helped get you where you are today?
Gina Mourtzinou: My MIT advisor.
It’s actually a funny story.
I grew up in Greece and studied engineering there. Getting into MIT was a dream.
At the time, there were no cell phones—only landlines. My sister and I convinced our parents to get a second phone line just for us, and that was the number I gave to MIT.
Unfortunately, that phone number had previously belonged to an OB-GYN practice.
People called it constantly.
One day the phone rang. I answered. Nobody said anything. I hung up.
It rang again. Same thing.
The third time, it was someone from MIT offering me a position in the Operations Research Center.
Later he told me that was essentially my last chance because he wasn’t planning to keep calling.
That advisor brought me from Greece to MIT, and I ended up building my life here.
I’ll always be grateful for that opportunity.
Clint Betts: That’s incredible.
Gina, thank you so much for coming on the show. What an incredible career you’ve had and what an incredible company you’ve built with Savvi. It’s truly been an honor.
Gina Mourtzinou: Thank you so much for having me, Clint.