The different ways banks are trying to own more of the financial relationship

Banks are moving deeper into financial relationships, seeking areas where greater control, expertise, or ownership can strengthen their position with customers. This is an evolution from the playbook of the past decade, when banks and fintechs largely competed over digital experiences, customer acquisition, and product breadth.

The trend cuts across different kinds of banking models. Live Oak Bank is going deeper into specific small-business industries rather than trying to be a bank for everyone. Stifel Bank is rebuilding venture banking around relationships, capital, and advice after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. SoFi is putting a bank-issued stablecoin underneath a $25 billion card program without asking customers to change how they pay. And new U.S. entrant Nubank is considering a potential acquisition of Monzo even as it builds out its own U.S. banking footprint.

Live Oak puts the upside of specialization into practice

Live Oak Bank was founded in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis. It began with a much narrower original proposition of lending to veterinarians.

This specialization became the foundation for a very different kind of bank. Live Oak now serves customers nationally across roughly 40 industry verticals and is the largest SBA 7(a) lender in the country by dollar volume, while operating without a branch network. The bank describes itself as a digitally focused small-business bank.

Live Oak never treated digital distribution as the strategy. Its strategy was, in fact, knowing the customer better. The bank historically put veterinarians, dentists, and funeral home directors on staff so its teams could understand how those businesses actually operated. This gives the bank more context when evaluating lending opportunities. When a veterinarian applies for a loan, the bank already understands the practice’s economics, equipment needs, software stack, and what success could look like in the first 100 days. This is a very different approach from running a specialized business through a generic small-business workflow. 

Now, Live Oak is layering AI into that model through its work with Cascading AI, which is helping automate parts of the Live Oak Express loan origination process. The bank has been piloting Casca across different parts of the lending workflow, with plans to expand its use. Cascading AI also recently won the AI Product of the Year at Tearsheet’s 2026 AI Innovation Awards. 

…