Outlier Briefing: The emerging use cases for AI in financial services with Emerj’s Dan Faggella

5 questions, Banking, Member Exclusive, SMB Finance

‘Traditional banks have equated advising with cross-selling’: Grasshopper’s Danielle Kane on why just 7% of SMBs see banks as trusted advisors

• Only 7% of SMB owners see their banks as trusted advisors, exposing a gap between transactional services and the strategic support they need.
• Grasshopper’s Danielle Kane says the SMB-bank relationship needs to shift from more tools to proactive guidance that helps businesses navigate complexity and scale.

Banking, Lending, Member Exclusive, Podcasts, SMB Finance

Live Oak Bank’s BJ Losch on why AI is an accelerant, not a strategy

• Live Oak Bank grew from lending only to veterinarians into 40 verticals without ever opening a branch.
• President BJ Losch explains how AI is helping cut SBA loan approval-to-close times from over 100 days toward a two-week target, while keeping the credit decision itself with a human underwriter.

10-Q, Member Exclusive

Citi is done getting smaller. Now it has to get better.

• Citi spent years simplifying the bank by shedding businesses and reducing complexity. Now comes the part of making the streamlined bank work better.
• The pieces are largely in place. The question is whether Citi can connect them into a stronger growth engine without recreating the complexity it just spent years removing.

Member Exclusive, Opinion

The new fintech moat is ‘boring’

• What does a fintech moat look like today?
• The new measure of a fintech moat is the capability to handle complexity without pushing the burden onto customers or costs. It isn’t only about keeping competitors out but it's also about getting better as the system gets more complicated.

Lending, Member Exclusive

How Figure turned a lending business into a financial network

• Figure reported second-quarter results, showing that its platform had reached a $1 billion weekly run rate for loan applications by early July.
• The firm has come a long way since it was founded in 2018, building a more structured lending and capital markets system while increasingly making it intelligent and programmable.