SoFi is certainly one of the more interesting companies in fintech. They started life focused on student loan refinancing, a category they invented back in 2011, but have morphed into what is the most diversified company in all of fintech. They have not just moved into other areas of lending, they have moved quite aggressively into many completely different areas of finance whether it is saving, investing, cryptocurrencies, stock trading, personal financial management and more.

Much has been written about machine learning and the impact it will have on the future of finance. But when it comes to credit one of the challenges with implementing machine learning models has been explainability. You have to be able to explain to a rejected borrower why they were denied credit.

The gig economy workforce is becoming larger all the time and is expected to become 50% of all workers by 2027. Yet the traditional financial system works best for the W-2 worker, someone who has a full time job. That obviously needs to change.

Small businesses are the backbone of this country and no one has done more to support them than our next guest on the Lend Academy Podcast. Karen Mills has been a venture capitalist for many years and was the head of the Small Business Administration in the Obama Administration from 2009-2013. So, she had a first hand view on how the financial crisis deeply impacted small business. She is now a Senior Fellow at Harvard where she has become one of the leading authorities on small business lending and its impact on the nation’s economy.

The credit card space is ultra competitive. There are literally thousands of different card offerings for consumers today. It is a mature space but also one where that has not been a great deal of innovation, particularly when it comes to the non-prime consumer.

Artificial intelligence is one of the most hyped areas of technology today particularly when it comes to finance. But there are some companies using AI to really improve financial services today and our next guest on the Lend Academy Podcast is one such company.

For many people the mortgage application process is the most stressful of all financial transactions. It is fraught with challenges and obstacles as lenders often require a huge amount of documentation before approving a loan. But this cumbersome process is slowly changing as fintech companies address mortgage lending head on.

The student loan refinancing space didn’t exist 10 years ago. Now, with the outstanding total of student loans reaching $1.5 trillion, tens of billions of student loans have been refinanced in the past decade saving students hundreds of millions of dollars in interest.

The marketplace lending industry began with personal loans and it is still our biggest vertical when it comes to loan volume. Much of this volume has actually gone to consolidate credit card debt. Which is one of the reasons why many companies look to the credit card industry for expertise.

We often discuss banks and how they are partnering with fintechs and incorporating new technology into all areas of their operations. But credit unions are interested in many of the same initiatives. And because they often have very tight communities credit unions provide a really interesting use case for fintech.