SoFi Technologies, Inc. , short for Social Finance, is an internet-based financial institution headquartered in San Francisco, California. The founder's intent was to create a more affordable means for students to use debt to finance their educations. The founders, including Mike Cagney, are all Stanford alumni and leveraged their college connections to get the business going.
SoFi Technologies was founded in 2011 and launched with an initial investment of roughly $200 million, provided by Stanford alums. By 2012 the company had raised another $77.2 million; by 2013 more than $500 million in equity, debt and credit financing was available for lending. At the end of 2013, the company had serviced more than 2,500 students and the figure is still growing.
Once launched, the company continued to grow and to expand both the institutions it served and the services it had to offer. By 2015 the company was offering personal loans on top of student loans and by 2016 it had received the 1st ever AAA rating given by Moody’s to a digital financial institution. The company will continue to grow until 2020 when it went public via SPAC merger. The merger valued the company at over $9 billion and the growth is not yet over
In 2022 Sofi Technologies received a national bank charter when it purchased Golden Pacific Bancorp. The move allows the company to hold its own loans rather than selling them to outside investors as it had done in the past. Today, SoFi Technologies operates as a digital banking institution with three primary segments. These are Lending, Technology Platforms and Financial Services. Consumers are able to access the platforms via mobile and desktop.
The Lending and Financial Services segments provide a range of traditional banking and lending services. These include deposit accounts and investment services along with student loans, personal loans, and mortgages. Among the many offerings are credit score monitoring, insurance products, and access to the cryptocurrency markets.
The Technology Platform segment provides technology platforms and services to businesses and institutions. Among the company’s technology platforms is Galileo, a payment processing service. This addition allows SoFi to process payments for merchants and consumers. SoFi Technologies also operates Apex, a clearing house service for investment and financial institutions, and Technisys, a cloud-based banking application.
As of 2022, the company had over 4 million active members and had paid out more than $35 million in rewards. SoFi Technologies has issued more than $73 billion in loans with roughly half that amount already repaid.