SoFi Technologies, Inc. (SOFI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thanks, everyone, for joining. This is Brennan Hawken, I'm UBS' Capital Markets Analyst and of course, our first Digital Asset Day today. I'm joined today by Chris Lapointe, CFO at SoFi and welcome, Chris. Really, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

Absolutely. So before we get started, just a couple of housekeeping items. Number one, I am a sell-side publishing analyst and therefore required to provide disclosures on any of the companies in which I express a view. You can find those disclosures at UBS.com. We'll be having a Q&A -- the possibility for Q&A today if we have some time at the end. And if -- you can either use the function on the website -- we had a little bit of technical trouble with that. So it's probably just as good of an idea to e-mail me or ping me on Bloomberg if you've got a question that you'd like me to work in. Okay. So with that being said, SoFi is a new company for me. I don't cover it at the moment, but been trying to learn more about it. So I'm particularly appreciative, Chris, of your time today. Given that, maybe we can start with an open question to help frame the discussion. So you're in several businesses at SoFi. Sometimes it can be a little hard to understand, a little intimidating. What do you think is the best way for investors to think about your business, right? I'll give a corollary, right? Like I cover Schwab, and the way I described Schwab to investors is that it's effectively a rapidly growing bank with no credit risk, as a way to understand. Is there a possible corollary that we could use for SoFi or how would you explain it?

Yes, so the way I would explain it is, maybe I start with our mission. I'll talk a little bit about our product set and then we can go any which way you want and dive deeper. But overall, our mission at SoFi is to help members achieve financial independence in order to realize their ambitions. And financial independence doesn't necessarily mean that someone is rich. It means that folks have enough money to do what they want. It means that they have enough money to have the career that they want. It means that they have enough money to pay off their student loans. It means that they have enough money to start thinking about investing in an educated way. And in order for us to help our members achieve that financial independence, what we've done at SoFi is we've built a comprehensive set of products and services that enables those members to borrow better, save better, spend better, invest better and protect better. And we've done that by putting our member first in every single thing that we do. ensuring that we are there for them at every point along their financial journey and every day in between. And the reason that, that's important is because we feel that these members have been left behind by larger financial institutions, who have chosen to maximize return on equity versus focusing on what the customer wants and needs, which in turn, really builds that loyalty and trust and eventually returns. So we've taken a bit of a different approach. So right now, we're in a number of different products. We offer 4 lending products. We offer student loan refinancing, unsecured personal loans, home loans and in-school loans. And then in financial services, we offer SoFi checkings and savings with a 1% interest rate. We offer SoFi Invest, which allows our members to invest in 4 different asset classes. So that's single stocks, those are ETFs, digital assets and most recently, IPOs. We recently launched a credit card business, which is built upon a really unique rewards platform last year, and then we also have SoFi Relay. So overall, we've made a ton of great progress against our mission in enabling our members to achieve financial independence. And we feel like we're the only company out there who's offering our members a one-stop shop experience for all their financial needs.

That's helpful. There's a lot in there, and I want to kind of dig into some of those components for sure. But before we do, maybe when we think about SoFi, and we've seen some of the other newer entrants more recently run into some growth hiccups, you guys have continued to show really impressive growth. And so kind of curious from your perspective, you obviously see it far better than I could. What do you think is driving that? Does it circle back to the resonance that you have with the customer base? How do you think that it's coming together?

Yes, what I would say in terms of what's driving the overall growth in the market is our success in executing our overall strategy, which we refer to as the financial services productivity loop. And maybe I'll talk a little bit about that to paint the picture. So overall, the strategy has 3 components. First is that we're building that one-stop shop that I just referenced, where each product that we build is best in breed, which really helps increase our ability to build that trust and reliability with the consumer so that we win the next product, the next product after that and the fourth and fifth product when folks need us. The second piece to the strategy is that we're driving superior economics in each one of our products, which, again, reinforces our ability to drive even more variable profit and a better consumer experience. And then the third piece to our strategy is that we're building the AWS of Fintech, which we talk a lot about. And we're doing that by leveraging the infrastructure that we've built into our business via Galileo, which we bought back in May of 2020, and that business has really attractive returns that we can reinvest in more innovation and more valuable products and services. So I'll hit on each one of these individually because it helps paint the picture appropriately. So first, in order to really win within our financial services productivity loop strategy, each and every one of our products needs to be best of breed. So we work really hard with all of our GMs and product managers to differentiate across 4 different dimensions. We define those as fast, selection, content and convenience. And that basically translates to we want to be the fastest place where you can take out money. We want to be the fastest place that you can transfer money. We want to offer our members the best selection within our products and the best content and education, and we want everything to be really easy. So we try to force our GMs and product managers to differentiate the products across each and every 1 of those dimensions. On top of that, we want each of our products to work better when they're used together. And the reason that that's important is because when a member chooses a SoFi product, we need to build that trust and loyalty, such that when they need their next product, they're going to choose us. And when that happens, the revenue per member increases significantly, and we don't have that large second acquisition cost, which then puts us in a position and puts us closer to achieving our overall goal of having the highest LTV in the industry, which is a huge competitive advantage for us as it allows us to offer the best rates on loans, the best rates on checking and savings and the best services overall. The second element is all around driving superior unit economics. And one of the keys to that is vertical integration, which really helps. We've seen that in our lending segment where we've been able to build end-to-end processes and technologies that enable us to iterate faster, have more data and deliver overall better services to our members. And imagine this, if each and every one of our products has superior unit economics we can, again, invest in better rates, prices, products and the overall experience. And then the third element is to build the tech platform which is in line with our overall vision of building the AWS of Fintech. We ended up buying Galileo back in 2020 because we fundamentally believed that we needed to vertically integrate our checking and savings business in the same exact way that we did with lending. And it's certainly allowed us to innovate at a much faster pace than we would have otherwise been able to do and at a lower cost. But in addition to that, it's also a really great business in and of itself. So as we drive innovation with our Galileo partners, where -- well, sorry, if we're able to drive innovation at SoFi, we're better able and better equipped to drive innovation with our partners at Galileo. One of the main objectives that we have with that partner base is to be able to create more value for those partners that they can create on their own or with other partners. And by doing that, we serve all industry participants better. And our investment in this platform essentially raises the tide for all companies and consumers overall and that drives better adoption in this industry, which we participate in. So overall, all of those pieces together have driven tremendous growth for our business. We ended up growing our member base in 2021 to 3.5 million members, exiting the year, which is an 87% growth rate, and we grew our product set to 5.2 million by the end of the year in Q4, which is 105% growth rate. And the growth and the momentum is obviously a result of all the hard years of work and effort and investment that went into the company. That's things like iterating on our member home feed and the application to using data to deliver personalized recommendations to our members, to our new rewards platform, which I referenced before. And then, of course, differentiating the products themselves and then layering on top of that, the really big push that we've made in improving our overall brand awareness, which helps improve trust and loyalty. So I think all of those factors combined and pure execution against our strategy is what's driving the growth.

That was -- very comprehensive Chris. And the last point in particular on that AWS of Fintech, I think, is really interesting and makes it -- that's what makes the story sort of truly a little different and I really want to get into that. But first, this is the Digital Asset Day, right? So let's dive into that topic first. So as far as I'm -- as far as I'm aware of, you guys have now -- you're now the owner, you're now a bank holding company. So now you are the only bank holding company that offers crypto wallet and crypto trading. You guys added to your 10-K that, that activity is not admissible under the bank regulations, but you've got a little bit of a window, right? There's a 2-year conformance period and maybe some extensions. But -- and of course, the President's EO recently might end up with some regulation that gives us a little bit greater clarity before that window ends. But at least based on the existing regulation, what is going to happen at the end of the period -- and I know it's very hard to predict these sort of things, but do you guys have any expectations based on your dialogue with the regulators about how that might evolve?

Yes. What I would say as it relates to our digital asset strategy and overall outlook relative to where we were at the beginning of 2021 when we set off on this journey of becoming a public company is that our -- and becoming a bank is that our overall plan and strategy has remained unchanged. We're going to be operating our digital asset business outside of the bank. So we will continue, and we'll continue to execute against the original plan, and nothing about our strategy has changed. What I would say is, over the next several years, it's probably fair to assume that we're not going to be the only company with a banking license that operates in the digital asset space. And in that vein, we do expect, as you pointed out, there to be a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape, and we'll be sure to comply by all regulatory requirements as we do with each and every 1 of our products. So yes, we don't have a crystal ball, but things will certainly evolve like they have. [Audio Gap] That are new entrants, but our overall plan hasn't changed.

[ What did ] was sort of give some marching orders to the regulators. But are there any -- I know you -- so you might not have a view on this necessarily yet because it's so new, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. Are there any mile markers that you all will be watching for when you see the regulators start to work through? Do you think that it's going to be a regulatory answer? Or might this be one of those unusual circumstances where the legislators actually beat the regulators to the punch?

Yes. It's really tough to say at this point. The thing that's in our control is continuing to abide by everything from a compliance and regulatory perspective, and we're going to keep our heads down and keep executing against our plan. And things will obviously change, and we're going to put in the appropriate guardrails for our members. But at this point, our heads are down in terms of execution.

Fair enough. I just gave it a shot. Of course. So when you think about using -- you guys -- I believe you guys use third-party Apex to execute the crypto transactions. Does having that sort of arm's length relationship help to avoid some of the bank regulatory difficulties inherent within crypto, AML and KYC and some of those components? And what are some of the complexities that will be involved in managing those different capabilities?

What I would say here is our overall goal isn't to avoid compliance by having a third-party arm's length -- party to help execute this, but rather to help the industry build the right guardrails and protect members and consumers. We certainly have a complex business that's heavily regulated. That's whether we have the bank holding company or not. And we have a team that's dedicated and really focused on ensuring that we're in compliance at both the state and national levels at the bank holding company and OCC perspective for each and every one of our businesses. So that's, again, what we're focused on.

Sure. And I wasn't meaning to imply that, that was -- I was just more wondering whether or not the third-party distance made it easier to comply from your perspective, but fair enough. So what kind of economics do you generate on the digital assets? I believe that the digital asset trading is one of the asset classes where the economics are still attractive. So how does that line up? And generally, you guys, I'm sure get like tons of data and you go through plenty. Do you see a good deal of overlap in members that engage with the investing product, single stock or ETFs or whatever, and crypto? Is it sort of viewed along the same continuum from what you can see or not?

Yes. So I'll hit your point on the economics, and we can touch on the overlap point. So right now, we don't disclose specific unit economics within our financial services product, but just to give folks a high-level overview of how we make money within SoFi Invest specifically. So right now, we generate revenue in 6 different ways within SoFi Invest. We make money on share lending, on margin which was recently rolled out, net interest income payment for order flow. We do charge a load on some of our ETFs. And as you mentioned, we do charge a fee for our digital asset transactions. Overall, what we've seen in the Invest business is that we've been able to drive a tremendous amount of growth in number of SoFi Invest products. In Q4, we ended up reaching 1.6 million invest products, which is up 3x year-over-year. And what's more -- what's as important if not more important is that we're continuing to really drive our overall monetization rates within the Financial Services segment of our business and the Invest product specifically. So in Q4 of '21, our overall monetization, if you think of this as total revenue per product, that was up 30% sequentially when looking at our annualized revenue per product in Invest and up over 2x when looking at all of financial services products overall. So we expect to be able to continue to increase that monetization over time, particularly as we continue to scale the member base. We scale AUM and our AUM per member increases as we roll out additional products and features. We recently rolled out margin. We're going to be rolling out options as well. So in terms of your question about the overlap, we're seeing members come in, in all different avenues, whether that's in our lending product or in financial services. Specifically with Invest, we have folks who are coming in and trying out our robo product, as they're potentially first-time investors and just starting to get a hang of things. but we are seeing significant cross buy from folks coming in either via our robo business or our active Invest business into digital asset accounts. And I think that speaks to -- back to the point that I was making before of that trust and loyalty that we're building with our member base as people are starting to get accustomed to investing their money, and we are very thoughtful about the guidance and education that we're putting out there related to investing in all of our products.

Right. I know it's early days because you guys just did the bank, but is there a plan for integrating the bank with the brokerage operations? Or are those going to stay separate for a little while?

We're going to -- Invest is not going into the bank at this point, and we'll keep it up outside of the bank for the foreseeable future.

Okay. Great. Got it. The -- as a cap markets guy, the invest side is the one that's the closest to my wheelhouse. So I would like to jump into that. I'd love the transition maybe to the AWS of Fintech side, recent deal you guys did, right? You guys recently announced this Technisys deal. I'd probably get that wrong, but...

Yes, Technisys. No, you got it.

Okay. Great. So it seems to strengthen that offering, right, the B2B side, and makes sense for sure. And like the rationale provided on the call, I thought was really clear. Why do you -- can you help me understand why it would take 2 to 4 years to move the banking and credit card over to that core? And when we think about the actual B2B pitch that would be made to the AWS of Fintech clients, is that a similar time frame that you'd expect for them? Or would that be a little different? [ What are you guys thinking? ]

Yes, there's certainly longer lead times in this type of business. But what I would say is that 2 to 4 years is not representative of the overall onboarding timing that Technisys sees with its existing customers or future customers; it's significantly shorter than that. What I would say as it relates to SoFi and the migration of our credit cards and checking and savings business is that our team has been extremely busy over the last several years as it relates to enhancing our overall money technical architecture. Since joining SoFi back in 2018, we've moved from our original launch of SoFi Money that was on FIS. We moved that over to Galileo, which is what led us to believe it was such a great acquisition for us. Then after moving over to Galileo, we had to build out the bank checking and savings account. So we've actually made 2 major transitions of the SoFi Money and SoFi checking account with 2 different partners and 2 different regulatory bodies over the last 4 years. On top of that, at Galileo, we've built out a cloud environment that we're now transitioning the existing partners over to an existing 100 million accounts directly into the cloud as well as onboarding new customers. So instead of rushing into another big transition, we're going to be very methodical and have the team really focus on scaling the money and credit card businesses and executing against a really exciting product road map that we have in place and going to market jointly with Technisys. But it will happen over time, but we want to focus on growth at this point.

That sounds fair. Yes, very fair. Execution has got to be key here. So I believe that, Chris, you had laid out a mid-teens IRR when you were discussing this deal and it included an exit multiple for the calculation, maybe from just -- I -- it made me kind of curious. Like is that different than the multiple that you guys paid? And what would be the order of magnitude of that delta? And how would that impact the IRR?

Yes. So what I would say on that calculation and what we put forth in the press release and the prepared comments was that the IRR included an EBITDA exit multiple that we viewed at the time was in line with where public comparables in a similar space were generally trading. What we talked about during the Q4 earnings call is that Technisys is only going to contribute a really small amount of EBITDA in 2022 to SoFi overall, following a really significant year of -- significant investment year at the back end of 2020 and into 2021. So therefore, on an apples-to-apples basis, if you're looking at an EBITDA multiple and we use that as the exit multiple when calculating the IRR, it's not really apples-to-apples. But we used a -- it's basically -- we used benchmarking for that analysis.

Got it. Okay. And when you thought -- just another question on some of the inputs for the financials. What sort of general growth assumptions did you -- underpinned those calculations? And you talked about how it was recently a big investment year. I'm assuming that, that's going to start to roll off, and therefore, the incremental margin should be really a lot better, right?

Yes. What we've talked about is that over the course of -- through 2025 is that we're going to generate a cumulative $500 million to $800 million of revenue in the business, and it's going to be incremental margin accretive to this business over the long term and also help accelerate our revenue growth CAGR. So that's what we've talked about before, but in terms of how the overall model and that $500 million to $800 million and EBITDA expectations were built out is that we did this in a very bottoms-up way by looking at our -- by using our combined Galileo and Technisys teams. So as you know, both Galileo and Technisys have really large installed bases. So the assumptions for organic growth within those forecasts as well as synergies of their respective installed bases are relatively conservative is what I would say. Essentially, we went through customer by customer and worked with the underlying relationship manager at both Technisys and Galileo to really try to help get a better understanding of what percentage of the existing installed base would need this joint technology or the products and services that are being offered and when they would need them and the likelihood of them actually being able to get converted. So as you can imagine, a lot of the revenue synergies, as we talked about on the announcement call, will be -- won't happen in 2022 because of lead cycles, but it will certainly be materially accretive over the course of the next 3 to 5 years. So overall, we believe that the installed bases will be the primary source of the incremental revenue and synergies. But we also believe, as we see every day from all the inbound requests that we have at Galileo. There's just a substantial number of people looking to transition an existing base to an entirely new stack. And that doesn't necessarily have as much of a long lead time because they're primarily enabling new partners or new customers to come on to the new stack and then over time, we'll migrate to others.

And when you think about these 2 -- currently, they're 2 autonomous businesses, right? But yet when you think about them operating together, is there a view that there might be -- when you think about the incremental unit pricing, when you bring them together, is there an idea that you could -- there could be bundling and there could be a lower per unit price, which would make the offering even more compelling? Is that -- is that part of the logic of bringing these guys together?

Yes. So that was certainly part of it. And what I would say from a strategic perspective, Technisys we believe, is a critical step forward in positioning SoFi overall to continue to improve on all 3 of those core elements that I talked about as it relates to our financial services productivity loop. So in terms of specific synergies, though, there are a few things that I would point out. As we got into integrating Galileo and we started to consider moving to a more modern cloud-native banking architecture for our checking and savings business -- in order to really ensure that we were able to scale it, we realized the strategic importance of having a single cloud-based core integrated with processing. So we went out and we evaluated a number of different companies. We also evaluated trying to do this in-house and we ended up concluding that buying Technisys was the best strategic choice as it was uniquely extensible, is a customizable platform and it supports multiple products in a single core and then similar to Galileo, what I talked about earlier, it's a great business. It's fast-growing. And prior to their big investment year, they were delivering really good mid-20s percent margins. The second main benefit is that we're going to gain synergies by selling Technisys to Galileo's existing partners. There are over 100 of them now and they have 100 million enabled accounts. So when you look at our own needs at SoFi, we ended up concluding that many Galileo partners would also need an extensible, customizable, multicore product. The vast majority of Galileo's existing partners that we've talked to, want to offer things like lending as a service, credit cards, rewards and many other products, but they can't extend their current core. However, building separate cores for new products ends up risking them going down the same path and having the same siloed issues that we see with existing legacy banks and architecturally would be a step backwards for all of them. So expanding from one to many products, these partners will be able to migrate to a multiproduct core like Technisys. And as important, they'll be able to vertically integrate their businesses and offer better products, better services as a result of having lower costs. The third strategy -- yes, go ahead.

Sorry, go ahead.

I was just going to say there's -- the other 2 strategic benefits are that Galileo is going to benefit by selling into Technisys' customer base, and it's going to appeal to a much broader array of customers there. And then the fourth is they're going to be able to -- we're going to be able to go to market jointly with Galileo and Technisys and expect to be able to realize synergies by leveraging each other's strengths in complementary geographies.

Yes. The one question that I was just going to jump in with in that is -- it sort of struck me as you ran through that. Are there competitors -- would this offering be unique? Like are there competitors who actually do combine these 2 capabilities or is that a competitive differentiator? Or will that be a competitive differentiator?

I think it will be a competitive differentiator because of the broader SoFi product set that we are able to offer. I don't think anyone has those capabilities to offer a multiproduct cloud native core with experience in lending and building out a rewards network and building out a checking and savings account in Invest. So I think it will certainly be a differentiator.

Yes, I would think so. When you guys announced the deal, the stock reaction was kind of negative. Obviously, this is a strategic deal. I mean you don't measure the success based upon a single day's reaction. But what -- how has the dialogue been with investors in discussing this deal? What do you think might have been misunderstood about the deal in that initial knee-jerk reaction?

So what I would say is feedback has been really positive from investors, from existing partners, both on the Galileo side as well as Technisys' side as well as other industry participants, that's just by the sheer volume of inbounds that we've had following the transaction. I'm not going to comment on the stock price reaction, particularly given the overall sentiment in the market today and sector volatility overall. But our main priority at SoFi is integrating the business and getting out to market with the joint set of offerings. The main thing that we have in our control is integrating as quickly as we can and continuing to execute against our mission and overall strategy, and that's what we're really focused on versus day-to-day market volatility.

Sure. Totally fair. Transitioning maybe over to some of the banking products and the growth that you guys have seen here recently. The -- there's recently been a little bit of -- and I referenced this in the beginning when I was asking about your growth there's been some divergence amongst some of the newer Fintech companies as far as the growth trajectory. SoFi's growth has been remarkably resilient. And you spoke earlier to the idea that you are resonating with more customers, you're seeing more customers choose multiple products. And so it might be the breadth of the offering. I'm not really sure, but we've seen some other firms that -- start to see slowing growth. And so do you think it's that diversity of offering? Like what do you think it is that's allowing you all to sustain when some are slowing?

Yes. I think that's certainly part of it. I can't speak to some of the peers or competitors, but I will say exactly what you just said. We're starting to see the benefits of our diversified business model, both across segments and within segments, really starting to prove itself out. We've seen this the last few quarters despite facing a number of headwinds and challenges over the course of the last several quarters and years, we've still been able to deliver on our results and drive record growth in our members and products. I think this is primarily a function of our overall financial services productivity loop strategy really working but also a result of the diversified business model and revenue streams that we have. One of the main benefits of our model is that we have a comprehensive suite of products that do well in different types of macro environments. In lower-rate environments, our refinancing businesses tend to do better. In higher rate environments as we're starting to go into right now, our personal loans business and checking and savings businesses tend to do better. So we've architected our businesses and organized ourselves internally in a way that enables us to move really quickly and adapt to any type of macro volatility or environment that we're facing. And we essentially have the flexibility and agility to allocate capital to the businesses and opportunities that end up doing best given the overall macro environment that we're facing. And this diversification really helps insulate us from market dislocations. And it also allows us to perform and grow even if 1 or 2 of our businesses are facing material headwinds.

That is fair, and that's interesting. And you touched on the fact that in different rate environments, you see products -- which makes perfect sense for different products -- wax and wane in demand. Have you -- given we're starting to transition to a more hawkish rate environment, have you already started to see that change in behavior yet? Or does it tend to more lag the rate environment?

We have. It tends to happen relatively quickly. Over the course of the last few quarters, we've seen really good growth and momentum in our personal loans business, which tends to do better in this higher rate environment as folks are refinancing out of variable rate debt into fixed rate instruments. So we're seeing really good momentum there. And overall, delinquencies for that business are remaining at really healthy levels and are actually decreasing on a sequential basis, which is great and a tribute to the phenomenal work that our team, our risk team, our product team and our lending team have done over the course of the last several years. In addition to that, we're starting to see really good momentum in our checking and savings business, and that's in the form of more spending, and we're really able to start driving balances given the 1% interest rate that we have out there.

Right Yes. Yes, yes, yes. That 1% interest rate is -- it's something I had wanted to touch on. Since you brought it up, I'm going to just dive right there. You guys currently pay out 100 bps on deposits, right -- well, what will be deposits. And you've got to set it up via direct deposit, right? So is that actually a teaser rate or is that a durable rate that you guys offer? And is -- would it -- is it generally indexed to a rate? Or would you index it to any kind of public rate that's out there? And you're -- obviously, you're not yet using the bank, your own bank. You laid out a plan for how you're going to migrate them over time. But because that offer is so attractive, do you actually lose money on the deposits when you send them to the third-party banks versus the revenue you get back? Bunch of questions there, sorry.

No, no. No, of course. What I would say is one of the benefits, and we've talked about this a bit of our financial services productivity loop, is that we're able to drive that high LTV and maintain really low unit economics, which entail -- allows us to deliver products and services at better prices and overall experience. And that's what we're able to do with our SoFi Money product. We've been fairly vocal about wanting to have an industry-leading and very competitive interest rate for our members because we have the ability to do so, given the margin profile of our overall lending segment as well as our tech platform. So while I'm not going to speak to whether it's a teaser rate or how it's going to move necessarily with interest rates over time. I will say, our financial services productivity loop and overall strategy enables us to offer a really competitive rate for our members in the same way that we're able to offer really good rates on our lending products, and we intend to continue with that approach going forward.

Got it. Got it. So I downloaded the app recently. Had to give it a try and it is -- it's a cool interface. I actually really like that a lot. One of the things, though, is you guys use Plaid. Now I'm not a millennial, I'm a Gen Xer and I -- like the idea of putting in like my login into a third party, I just -- it just makes me very hesitant. And I'm sure there are plenty who see things like I do. Do you -- will the bank holding company allow for you to open up the possibility of ACH transfers instead of using the third party? Have you heard -- I can't imagine I am the first guy, but like is that a common concern that's expressed about that Plaid interface? Or is there less apprehension than I would guess?

Yes. So currently, we are -- we do offer ACH transfers from financial institution into our bank and vice versa. In terms of the specific question about Plaid, what we've noticed is that there's been a bit of a secular trend and shift as it relates to privacy weighted with the value that consumers are actually getting. So Plaid is a very commonly used integration tool across many, many platforms, and we tend to see very little hesitation in using it as the integration, given the established brand that Plaid is today and the security parameters that they have put in place for themselves. So this all comes down to, again, trust and loyalty as a financial institution and it's not only with SoFi, but it's with also all the third parties that we use. And we have found over the course of the last several years that our members are willing to provide information as long as they trust and rely in SoFi and they're getting value and return that feels justified for having provided that level of detail. So in our case, people are willing to link their bank accounts because the return value of the things that they're seeing -- having all their financials in one place and being able to manage their money in a centralized location, really helps provide them with that value that they need. And this is back to trust and loyalty, and we're constantly striving to ensure that we are building that trust and loyalty with our members.

Sure, sure. Well, thank you for kindly confirming that I am a dinosaur and out of touch with how most people see it. And I guess I'll have to have to renavigate the app to find that ACH capability. I must have missed it. So you guys, I'm sure you got a ton of data. And you're very tech capability driven. So I'm sure you use a lot of machine learning and you analyze the patterns and the data on customer behavior. So in that analysis, are there any patterns that you see? You touched on a little bit before when you talked about the interest rate environment, different products coming in and out of favor, depending on the rate environment. But do you -- taking a step back from just environmental factors, when you think about like what member life cycles and the evolution of a member and their engagement with SoFi as a platform, are there certain products that compel members initially when they're trying out the product and then you see them migrate and evolve and expand into other products -- what's the normal cadence there? And is there a way to adjust marketing based upon what you're learning from that engagement?

Yes. So we certainly use machine learning, and as you can imagine, our ability to offer our members personalized offers and information has continued to improve significantly each and every day, which is really helping to drive the overall financial services productivity loop and drive efficiencies in our overall marketing efforts. In terms of specific customer journeys, there are definitely patterns that we observe. But we're not necessarily adjusting our marketing efforts based on high level or overall trends that we see. Our members are all unique and come to SoFi through every type of marketing channel and product and follow a journey that is specific to their individual needs. And one of our main goals and objectives is to build that trust and the loyalty and be there for them at every step of their financial journey and every day in between versus trying to direct folks into a certain customer journey. We want to be there for them when they need us, and that's part of the reason that we have the comprehensive suite of products that we do today.

Sure. That's fair. I wasn't suggesting about more of a -- of pushing product. More of that, like if you find that initially the deposit product is what people like to join first, maybe that gets a prompt or highlighted there?

Yes, what we've noticed over the course of the last several quarters and years is if you think of our business or our product set, it's kind of a funnel where the top of the funnel is our financial services products and the bottom of the funnel is our high LTV lending products. If you rewind 18 months, that funnel was almost a cylinder where the number of financial services products to lending products was almost one to one. Fast forward to this past quarter, the size of the top of the funnel has expanded dramatically and the number of financial services products is now 4x the size of our lending products, and these are lower customer acquisition products that are really helping to drive cross buy and improve our overall marketing efficiencies.

Yes, that makes great -- that makes a lot of sense, and it's a great point to end on because we've hit our time here. Chris, really, really appreciate your time today. Thanks a lot for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

And everybody listening. Thank you. Have a good day.

Thanks all.