Tearsheet

This analysis tracks the top company developments and how markets absorbed them through Thursday’s close, focusing on where shifting narratives translate into price action. It is part of Tearsheet PRO’s weekly 10-Q Newsletter, where strategy meets market reaction. I track how leading banks and fintechs are evolving in public markets and how investors are pricing those moves.

Banks have long focused on competing for small business accounts through interest rates, fees, and rewards programs, treating the relationship as transactional from the outset. Relying on this approach alone is now losing ground. New research from Grasshopper Bank reveals that only 7% of small business owners see their bank as a true strategic partner. This gap points to a deeper disconnect between what banks offer and what business owners actually need from them today.

Most banks seem to chase small business customers as one segment among many. Live Oak Bank was built around a bet that specializing beats generalizing — and it started about as narrow as a bank can start, lending only to veterinarians. Today, Live Oak has grown that thesis into 40 verticals, holds the top spot among all SBA 7(a) lenders by dollar volume, and has done it all without a single branch. My guest is BJ Losch, president of Live Oak Bank.

Amy Avery, Managing Director, Analytics, Modeling and Insights, took her job at Bank of America because of a number. When she interviewed at Bank of America, she was told that the bank interfaced with, at the time, 67 million clients. “Gosh, that’s so much information,” she remembers thinking. “Think about what you could do with that.” She started in January 2020.

The weekly 10-Q newsletter is part of the Tearsheet Pro subscription, where I unpack the recent moves and strategies of leading banks and fintechs in the public space, coupled with stock market analysis. In your inbox every Friday! Message Sara Citi delivered its best quarterly revenue in a decade. Revenue reached $24.8 billion, up 14% year over year, while net income jumped 45% to $5.8 billion and investment banking revenue rose 44%. Yet the stock fell 4.2% after earnings.

The ‘Letter from the Editor’ series features exclusive insight and opinion-driven analysis from Tearsheet editor Sara Khairi. The focus is on linking ideas, questioning assumptions, and tracking shifts across both mature and emerging trends in financial services. This is now PRO-only content. Subscribe to PRO so you never miss a Letter from the Editor exclusive. Issue # 12 Does revenue double while costs, headcount, and operational complexity rise with it?

This analysis tracks the top company developments and how markets absorbed them through Thursday’s close, focusing on where shifting narratives translate into price action. It is part of Tearsheet PRO’s weekly 10-Q Newsletter, where strategy meets market reaction. I track how leading banks and fintechs are evolving in public markets and how investors are pricing those moves.

Figure [FIGR] released its second-quarter earnings, showing that $1 billion in loan applications were flowing through its platform every week by early July. It’s a milestone that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago, when Figure was still largely viewed as a digital lender using blockchain to make HELOCs (Home Equity Lines of Credit) faster. The business looks different now. In Q2’26, Consumer Loan Marketplace volume jumped 132% to $4.3 billion.

Welcome to The Editors’ Room, a new Tearsheet Podcast series where Editor-in-Chief Zack Miller and Managing Editor Sara Khairi take the conversations that usually happen behind the scenes about our biggest stories and put them on the record. This isn’t a rehearsed interview or carefully choreographed panel answers. It’s just two editors comparing notes, challenging each other’s takes and trying to make sense of what is actually happening in financial services.

Two borrowers can have the same income, the same account balance, and even the same overdraft history, yet represent very different credit risks. Traditional models often struggle to tell them apart. Plaid believes foundation models can. This year, the company introduced a two-layer foundation model architecture for financial data.