SoFi CEO: ‘We’re Not Just a Lender Anymore’

SoFi Technologies’ drive toward cementing its financial services ecosystem status continues — with gains across consumer-focused lending and direct deposits. The data also showed notable momentum in its tech platform, which is geared toward linking banks and FinTechs to various digital banking services.

Within the supplementals offered up in tandem with SoFi’s fourth-quarter results on Monday (Jan. 27), the financials show that technology platform accounts were up 15% year on year to 168 million. The technologies and API connectivity offered across the platform enable payments processing and financial crime mitigation, among other services.

CEO Anthony Noto said on the conference call with analysts that the company’s current membership roster of more than 10 million individuals is up 34% year over year and a multiple of 10x through the past five years. Fourth-quarter new additions were 785,000 members. And net additions of 1.1 million new products represented 32% year-over-year growth.

Moving Even Further Beyond Lending

“Financial services products drove over 89% of our total product growth. This reflects the deliberate diversification of our business towards more capital light fee based revenue sources, which we expect to continue in 2025,” said the CEO.  He added that “it’s safe to say that SoFi is not just a lender anymore  and we continue to see significant growth opportunity across our financial services and technology platform segments.” Financial services revenue per product increased from $59 in the fourth quarter of 2023 to $81 in the fourth quarter of last year.

Lending continues to be strong, as in all of 2024, originations topped $23 billion, up 33% from the previous year.

“Looking ahead, our opportunity to scale remains massive and it feels like it’s day 1 of our journey. People want innovative solutions delivered seamlessly and digitally. Yet most traditional financial services firms are encumbered by physical locations, internal bureaucracy, and outdated technology. They’ve struggled to evolve,” said Noto, who added that “our members often come to us for a specific product, then adopt others over time.” Through the past year, 30% of new products were opened by existing SoFi members, Noto said, and 40% of new members opened a second product in the first 30 days of establishing their relationships with SoFi.

CFO Chris Lapointe said on the call that the total loan originations of $7.2 billion were up 66% year on year, and personal loan originations were $5.3 billion; student loan originations surged 71%.

“The health of our consumer remains strong. Our personal loan borrowers have a weighted average income of $158,000 and a weighted average FICO score of 744,” said Lapointe. Credit trends continue to improve, as for personal loans, the 90-day delinquency rate was 0.55%, slightly lower than the third quarter.

The company expects to see 2.8 million member additions in the current year, which would represent 28% growth, according to Lapointe. Net revenue growth should be at least 28%.

Against the backdrop of a broad tech stock decline at the beginning of trading Monday, shares were down 10%.

During the question-and-answer session, Lapoint said that, in reference to SoFi Money, “it’s the tip of the sword, so to speak, and the first product many of our members take, and then they gain that trust and reliability with SoFi. And then they take on other products. So the lifetime value from a money member grows over time as they use more products and services.” SoFi Money products, according to the company supplementals, gathered 51% year over year to 5 million.