SoFi at Mizuho Technology Conference: Diversified Growth Strategy

On Tuesday, 10 June 2025, SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ:SOFI) presented at the Mizuho Technology Conference 2025, showcasing a robust strategic outlook. The company highlighted its diversified business model, emphasizing record growth in members and products, while navigating macroeconomic challenges. Despite facing interest rate fluctuations, SoFi remains optimistic about its future prospects.

Key Takeaways

• SoFi reported its best quarter ever in Q1 2024, with significant member and product growth.
• The Loan Platform Business is a major growth driver, expected to reach $1 billion in annualized revenue.
• SoFi is experiencing strong demand in student loan refinancing and home lending, with significant year-over-year growth.
• The company is confident in its ability to navigate different interest rate environments.

Financial Results

• Q1 2024 marked a record quarter with accelerated revenue and strong credit performance.
• Personal loans and student loan refinancing both saw declining net charge-off rates.
• Annualized spending across debit and credit card programs rose to $16 billion in Q1, up from $14 billion in Q4 2023.
• Originations increased by 66% year-over-year, reaching $7.2 billion in Q1.
• EBITDA margins improved from zero to 25% over the past four years.

Operational Updates

• The Loan Platform Business secured significant contracts, with over $8 billion in volume year-to-date.
• The cross-buy rate remained strong at around 30-35%.
• Student loan refinancing originations rose 60% year-over-year to $1.2 billion in Q1.
• Home lending originations grew by 54% year-over-year in Q1.
• The tech platform business signed deals with Direct Express, Wyndham Hotels, and Mercantile Banco, expecting contributions in 2026.

Future Outlook

• SoFi anticipates modest balance sheet growth in the single-digit billions for 2025.
• The student loan refinancing market is estimated to have a $280 billion total addressable market.
• Interest rate expectations align with consensus, with two rate cuts anticipated this year.
• The tech platform business has momentum, with 10 deals set to contribute in 2026.

Conclusion

For a detailed understanding of SoFi’s strategic insights and financial performance, refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - Mizuho Technology Conference 2025:

Dan, Host: Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for coming to our technology conference, the Museo Technology Conference. I have the pleasure of hosting Chris my friend Chris Lapointe today, CFO of SoFi. Thank you.

Thank you having me, Dan. Of course. Give you a little background. Chris joined from Uber Technologies where he was global head of FP and A, corporate finance and fintech prior to Uber. Chris was VP of TNT Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs just across the street.

He holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a BA and a BA degree in math and economics from Dartmouth College. So thank you, Chris, for being here. Really great to have have me. Of course. So yeah.

Maybe let’s start a little bit with the macro. The macro is top of mind these days for many investors. Can you maybe talk to us a little bit about the health of your members and how you’re feeling about credit these days?

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: Absolutely. So we’re continuing to see really positive trends with our member base. Overall, we’ve built a business that’s diversified and durable that has enabled us to withstand all the headwinds that we’ve faced over the years and despite all the macro volatility that we have right now, we’ve never felt better about our business than we we have today and our member base remains extremely extremely healthy. Looking back at Q1, we just posted really strong results, probably our best quarter ever. We had record member and product growth.

We had record revenue with growth accelerating. We had record originations, really strong and improving credit, really robust capital ratios, and solid product innovation across the board, and we’re continuing to see really good momentum here in q two. When thinking about some of the key metrics that underpin the the health of our consumer and what we track, Looking back at Q1 in terms of the overall credit, in our personal loans business, we saw our consecutive quarter of declining NCO rates and similarly in our student loan refinancing business, we saw two consecutive quarters of declining declining NCO rates. That’s a function of having a really high quality member with high FICO scores and high average income. The average FICO score for our for our borrower base is right in the 750 range and the average income is anywhere in between a 135,000 and 160,000 depending on the the loan product.

Going a bit further, if you look at, you know, where loss curves are are trending right now, they’re meaningfully below where our life alone loss tolerance is of seven to 8%. And more broadly, if you look at recent vintages, the delta between that seven to 8% loss curve, which is the last time we approached that was back in 2017 And what we’re seeing in recent vintages, that gap has continued to widen. We’ve had two consecutive quarters in a row where that gap has widened. And then the key indicator that we look at is spend behavior for our member base across both our debit and our credit card. In q one, we ended up doing about $16,000,000,000 of annualized spend across our debit and credit program.

That was up from $14,000,000,000 in Q4 of twenty twenty four and growth continues to increase here as we’re sitting in Q2. Notwithstanding all of that, we’re constantly monitoring underlying credit internal trends that we’re seeing as well as broader macro trends and we make changes as necessary when things deteriorate. But we’ve been successful in navigating in these types of macro uncertain times, and today is no different than that.

Dan, Host: Thank you. And let’s maybe touch a little bit on the LBP growth initiative. So it’s been a big emphasis for you guys to expand there. Can you maybe walk us through the potential benefits of LBP in terms of the P and L capital ratios and the balance sheet more broadly?

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: Sure. The loan platform business has been an absolute game changer for us. You know within just a few quarters of expanding that business, we’ve generated in Q1 $380,000,000 of annualized high quality, margin revenue. As a reminder for folks with our loan platform business, we’re originating loans on behalf of other parties and in exchange for that activity, we receive an upfront fee And that’s a high that’s fee based revenue that’s high quality, low risk associated with it and very little capital intensity. We expect that business to be a $1,000,000,000 business on an annualized basis over time, and we’re well on our way.

Just in Q1 alone, we’ve signed significant contracts with over $8,000,000,000 of volume year to date, and that’s going to help us accelerate here in Q2. In addition to being a really good source of fee based revenue for us, it’s also really good from a credit perspective because we’re only we’re originating on behalf of others. We’re originating a loan putting on our balance sheet for a very short period of time before transferring it, so we aren’t taking any credit risk associated with that. It’s also capital light for the exact same reasons, which helps accelerate our our higher ROE businesses and further reinvest back into the business. And then the other important element of this is that we retain the servicing associated with all of these loans that are originated, which allows us to serve more members and have them cross buy into other financial services products.

Thank you. And and maybe can we touch on the demand on the borrower side but also on the capital market side? Yes. Demand is the best that we’ve seen up until this point, both from a borrower perspective as well as from an investor perspective. On the borrower side, in Q1, we just did $7,200,000,000 of originations across the business.

That was up 66% year over year. And we also had about $3,000,000,000 of capital markets activity inclusive of the loan platform business. At the time of the last earnings call, as I just mentioned, we had signed over $8,000,000,000 of loan partnership agreements just year to date, which is going to help us accelerate that business from an originations perspective here heading into Q2. We just did $1,600,000,000 of originations in Q1 and about $1,100,000,000 in Q4 of last year, and we expect to see another acceleration here in Q2, which really excited about. I think the other thing to point out is that up until this point, the vast majority of loans that have gone through the loan platform business have been strictly within our strict credit policy or underwriting criteria.

And that’s you know, currently we’re underwriting, call it, about $20,000,000,000 of unsecured personal loans within our strict stringent credit criteria. There’s also about a $100,000,000,000 of applications that we get each year that we do not underwrite because it doesn’t fall within our credit criteria, and we’re starting to see meaningful investor demand for that collateral in addition to stuff that we would otherwise hold on our balance sheet. So capturing even a small portion of that $100,000,000,000 would further propel this business looking forward. In addition to that, one of the best things about this business is that we give investors a customized pool of collateral based on their yield desire or their credit desire or certain characteristics of that loan. But that’s been purely focused on our unsecured personal loans business up until this point.

Looking forward in an ideal world, what we do is we would not only give investors access to customize portfolios based on their yield characteristics or loss profiles across a certain asset class, but be able to expand that across different asset classes. So instead of just doing unsecured personal loans, we’d love to be able to offer pools that include in school loans, student loan refinancings, mortgages, home equity loans, etcetera. So we’re we’re really optimistic about that business and and the fact that it’s high fee based, low low risk, and high returns for us. The only other thing I would call out as it relates to demand from a capital markets perspective is that we just closed on our securitization of the year this past Friday. It was a $700,000,000 deal.

This was collateral that was originally transferred through the loan platform business and we executed at really favorable spreads and reset the market once again. So we’re really excited about the progress that we’re making with our SELP program and being able to execute two very strong transactions in a short period of time, which further exemplifies the demand we’re seeing for our collateral.

Dan, Host: Thank you. And as we think about SoFi over time, like how do you think about the balance between holding loans on your balance sheet versus the evolution of LBP? What I would say

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: there is we’ve built and expanding on our lending capabilities in order to meet the demands both from a borrower perspective, so potential members, but also a capital markets perspective. And by doing so, it’s provided us with the ability to not only hold loans on the balance sheet at meaningful scale and generate a consistent recurring set of net interest income that we can predict and it comes back every single year, But it also allows us to generate meaningful fee based revenue streams because all excess demand that we don’t want to hold on our balance sheet, we can put through the loan platform business. This flexibility has really provided us with incremental diversification as well as durability and has allowed us to be able to grow in all types of macro environments. In terms of how we’re thinking about the balance sheet and this mix going forward, In the near term, we expect modest balance sheet growth in the single digit billions for 2025, and all excess demand that we’re seeing from borrowers would go through the loan platform business. Now that can change depending on demand and scale of the loan platform business over time, but we’re really proud of the diversification that we’ve built within our overall lending capabilities.

And

Dan, Host: can we ask about how’s the cross buy trended recently and how has that impacted business performance for SoFi?

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: Yeah. The flywheel effect is is certainly working for us. We have more and more members taking out additional products once they get into our ecosystem and build that trust and loyalty. Overall, our cross buy rate has been hovering around 30 to 35% over the course of the last several years and that’s critically important because it helps drive our overall growth as well as expand our margins. Just to put this into perspective with a real life example because it really helps paint paint the picture.

Assume for a someone comes into our ecosystem and and takes out a personal loan. And for that member and on that personal loan, we generate about $2,000 of revenue from them through net interest income, over time. Now assume for a that it costs about $800 to acquire that member and about $200 in operational costs to to originate that loan. That translates to about a thousand dollars of variable profit or 50% margin for that individual with that that specific product. Now take us a different member who may come in through our relay product and it costs us 10 to $12 to acquire that member and the likelihood once they join the Relay product and start using it, the likelihood for them to take out a or product is really high.

Assume for a they take out a personal loan that’s similar to the to the characteristics that that person just took out. We would still generate $2,000 of revenue in that personal loan, but we wouldn’t have to pay that acquisition cost of $800 and that variable profit of a thousand dollars goes to $1,800 or 90% margins. This is critically important because 30% of all products that are taken out on our platform right now are coming from existing members on the platform where we don’t have to pay that customer acquisition cost. This flywheel effect, which we call the financial services productivity loop, is what’s really driving momentum in overall growth and margin expansion. If you look back over the course of the last four years or so, we’ve grown our members and products on average 50% per year and at the same time margins have expanded EBITDA margins have expanded from zero to 25% over that same period of time and that’s all a function of the financial services productivity loop in action.

Dan, Host: Thank you. And maybe shift gears to student loans. So big business for you. The administration is exploring the privatization of various student lending programs. You know, how is SoFi positioned?

Should that occur? And how are you thinking about student lending more broadly?

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: Yeah. So the vast majority of our student loan business is in the form of student loan refinancings right now, but we do have a a very healthy in school program as well. In terms of the overall privatization of student loans, we’re constantly monitoring, you know, legislation. And at the end of the day or or overall, we believe that more competition in the student loan space is better for both the borrower, the student, as well as their families. And we think that given our experience in this space that we’re extremely well positioned to be able to help serve those borrowers and students, not only for student loans but for the broader financial services industry large.

As it relates to the broader opportunity that we have within student loans, we estimate there to be about a $280,000,000,000 total addressable market of student loan refinancings given where we can price the assets today and where our credit profile is. Right now, we have about a 60% to 70% market share that’s been growing over time and we expect it to continue to improve. So we have a really good opportunity there. We as rates have started to come down and federal borrowers have started to go back into repayment, we’re starting to see some really good momentum. This past quarter, we did $1,200,000,000 of originations.

That was up about 60% year over year. And as rates continue to come down, that $280,000,000,000 total addressable market will continue to expand, and we’ll have our fair share of it. So we’re excited about the opportunity. We’re continuing to monitor legislation, and we’ll be there for members as they need us.

Dan, Host: Thank you. And maybe let’s talk about another big opportunity, which is home lending. So home lending products have been a smaller part of your business, but you’ve recently expressed optimism about prospects here. Can you maybe help us understand the opportunity of that product?

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: Yes. We’re excited about the home loans business given the changes that we’ve made to the product as well as the opportunity set that’s in front of us. Just to put things into perspective, if you were to rewind back to when we went public, interest rates were were zero Fed funds was 0%. The economy was in in a good spot and we were originating about $700,000,000 of mortgages and and generating $30,000,000 of revenue at the time. And the refi market was booming and that was predominantly what we were originating.

Then fast forward over the course of the next few years, interest rates increased from zero to 500 basis points. The refi market basically went away. We moved into a purchase market, which is a much different animal when it comes to back end operations and fulfillment capabilities. So we realized that we needed to reengineer the product both from a product, like, offering perspective, but also from a fulfillment and servicing perspective. So in 2023, we ended up acquiring a business called Wyndham Capital Mortgage.

It’s got a great technology. We’ve integrated the business. That’s shored up our back end fulfillment capabilities as well as servicing capabilities and really set us up to be able to scale this business. In addition to that, in 2024, we ended up launching new products, one of which was home equity loans, which has been a really good growth driver for that business over the course of the last several quarters. In Q1 alone, about a of our overall originations in home lending came from these home equity loans and that was a product that we didn’t even have a year ago.

But overall, originations are starting to pick up steam. We ended up growing them about 54% year over year in q one, and we’re really excited about the opportunity given that we have a full product suite now as well as our our fulfillment capabilities all all shirred up. The other thing I would say is in addition to the massive addressable market that we have now that we have the product full product suite with people who are not our members today, there’s a huge opportunity with our existing installed base. One of my favorite stats in in where we push the team often is less than 2% of all SoFi members who actually have some type of mortgage product has it with SoFi. So imagine if we were to scale that to three, five, 15%, there’s a huge opportunity to generate meaningful revenue and meaningful returns from our existing member base where we don’t have to pay that large customer acquisition cost.

So overall, we’re really excited and and we’re making good momentum in that business.

Dan, Host: Thanks. And and then you mentioned interest rates, so maybe that’s a good segue for that. So what is your interest rate expectations and how might lower rates impact SoFi’s business?

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: Yeah. Overall interest rate expectations are in line with where consensus is today. Right now there’s about two rate cuts priced in for the rest of the year. In terms of how it’s going to impact the business, we’ve built a diversified business that tends to succeed in different rate environments. You saw us navigate, you know, going from zero to 500 basis point of rate increases.

Our personal loans business did extremely well as people are looking to refi out of variable rate interest rate debt into fixed rate terms. You saw our money business do extremely well because we were able to offer a really competitive APY and scale that business as well as our deposit base, which really helped with interest expense. In a just generally speaking, though, we think that a down rate environment is really favorable for our business. One, it’s going to further propel demand for our student loan refinancing business as well as our home loan refinancing business. And we’ve also demonstrated in down rate environments that we have really good pricing power, particularly in our personal loans where there have been several quarters where rates have come down and we’ve been able to maintain pricing and actually increase the weighted average coupon of our portfolio.

And on the flip side of that, on the liability side of the equation, the betas on our deposit base are in the 65% to 70% range, which has helped us generate expanding NIM margins in the 6% range. So overall, given the accelerated demand that we would expect to see in a down rate environment as well as the pricing power that we have on the asset side, particularly with our personal loans, gives us really good excitement in a down

Dan, Host: rate environment. Thank you. And maybe let’s talk about another great business, the tech platform business has had some nice wins. And you’ve alluded to some opportunities in the pipeline. What is driving those wins and how should investors be thinking about growth in that business?

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: Yeah. So we’ve seen really good uptick in demand in the tech platform business over the last several quarters. Just to put things into perspective, if you were to rewind back to when we acquired the Galileo business, interest rates were really low and we’re in a good spot. As interest rates started to increase, it put meaningful pressure on demand for our tech platform products. And at the same time, we’re in the process of reengineering our strategy to focus on larger, more durable customers with large installed bases, particularly financial services firms as well as consumer brands.

So we’ve made meaningful progress there. We’re proud to say that over the course of the last several quarters, we’ve had good momentum and signed a number of different deals. You saw our Direct Express announcement where we’re working with the government and the treasury and 3,500,000 consumers. That will be a great business for us. That’s predictable and will start generating meaningful revenue for us in 2026.

We recently launched a unique debit rewards program with Wyndham Hotels. We have a deal down in Latin America with Mercantile Banco, which does both personal and business banking services. And we expect to announce a few deals across the hospitality and travel space throughout the course of this year. So overall, really good momentum that we’re seeing. We also have about 10 deals right now that did not contribute to revenue in Q1 of twenty twenty five, but we do expect to contribute in 2026.

But overall, really good momentum.

Dan, Host: Great. Yes, we’re about five minutes to the end. So I’ve got two more questions here. So let’s talk about crypto. Crypto is a hot topic given the OCC’s imperative letter.

What is what are the ambitions of SoFi here? And how do you see this in terms of the market? Is it a winner takes it all environment? And what can happen in crypto for SoFi?

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: Yeah. Overall, there’s a lot of demand from our members for for digital assets and and crypto products, and we’re excited to to get back into that business. One of our goals is to help our members achieve financial independence in order to realize their ambitions. And in order to do that, we need to be there for them along their financial journey between and offer them products that they demand and will help them get their money right. We used to be in the crypto business and offered members the ability to buy and sell coins.

We got out of that business once we got the bank charter. Given the change in the regulatory environment, we’re going to take the opportunity to get back in that business, particularly in buying and selling coins. But we also expect to be able to expand our offerings, whether that’s through secured against crypto or other activities through our tech platform business. But we’re evaluating a lot of things right now and are excited about the opportunity and the growth that that could provide our business and the opportunity it could provide our members. Thank you.

And maybe my final question here, macro. So given where we stand today, how are

Dan, Host: you thinking about the remainder of the year? You were very confident in April. What is your expectation of the macro right now?

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: We feel great about the business. We haven’t felt as good as we have and as we do today. The strength of the consumer is extremely healthy, particularly our member base. Credit is holding in there, and we’re continuing to bend the curve. Overall spend behavior is really strong.

We posted strong Q1 results and ended up increasing our guidance for the remainder of the year, and we still expect to meet that guidance. So overall, we feel really opportunistic. We’re proud of what we’ve built up into this point. The momentum is certainly starting to shift. We have a lot of tailwinds at our back and we couldn’t

Dan, Host: be more excited. Great. And I think we might have another three minutes, so if there’s an opportunity to take a question from the audience. Well, I think we’ve addressed all the important topics. Wonderful.

Well, really appreciate you

Chris Lapointe, CFO, SoFi: having me, Dan, and thanks for everyone for joining. Thank you. Thank

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