To say that SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI) has shown impressive momentum in the few years since it went public would be an understatement. In the three-year period including 2022, 2023, and 2024, SoFi's membership base nearly tripled, and its bank grew from $0 in deposits (it got its banking charter in early 2022) to nearly $26 billion.
There are plenty of impressive numbers throughout SoFi's results that are important to watch. The growth in its third-party lending platform, as well as the progress made by the Galileo technology platform are two big examples.
However, there's one unconventional metric that is especially important for SoFi's success, especially when it comes to growing its bottom line.
SoFi's productivity loop
One metric that SoFi reports with its earnings is the ratio of financial services products to loans in its ecosystem. Financial services products include SoFi's bank accounts, investment accounts, and credit cards.
SoFi aims to create what it calls a "financial services productivity loop," and growth in the financial services side of its business is the main way it plans to get there.
Here's how this metric has evolved over time:
|
Year
|
Financial Services Product
Per Lending Product
|
|
2021
|
3.8
|
|
2022
|
4.9
|
|
2023
|
5.7
|
|
2024
|
6.3
|
Data source: SoFi.
Here's why this is important. SoFi's customer acquisition costs have been high for some time. It regularly offers bonuses of $300 or more for members referring someone for personal loans, for example.
However, a larger proportion of financial services customers means that SoFi has more of a natural marketing funnel to cross-sell loan products to its existing customers. Right now, with high economic uncertainty and elevated interest rates, demand for consumer loans (especially mortgages) is low. But as this changes, a high ratio of financial services customers sets the company up to take advantage of loan opportunities in a more efficient manner.
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Matt Frankel has positions in SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
