SMBs don't have access to the same level of sophisticated lending options as consumers.There is one fundamental problem that prevents this class of product from pushing forward: lenders juggle multiple data vendors, wrestle with disconnected point solutions, and these tools lack the ability to paint a full picture of the SMB customer and their needs.

The result is an ecosystem where a majority of time is spent on solving operational blockades rather than building solutions that cater to the whole lending lifecycle of a SMB customer.

“We need something that covers everything. There can't just be a bunch of point solutions," says Jon Fry, founder and CEO of Lendflow.

Lendflow has tackled this challenge by building a unified embedded lending infrastructure that works with over 200 companies to streamline three critical pillars in the lending lifecycle: distribution, decisioning, and workflow automation.

The firm is not a lender today, nor are they interested in becoming an embedded lender in the future; instead it has positioned itself as the technology backbone that enables existing lenders to become embedded lenders themselves.

Lendflow’s approach is paying off for clients like BHG Financial, which uses the firm's entire platform suite and has seen dramatic improvements in operational efficiency and approval rates through the partnership.

Listen to this podcast to learn how Lendflow is helping lenders break out of the fragmentation quagmire and access a full agentic AI toolbox that helps re-engage borrowers, as well as improve efficiencies for internal processes.

Welcome to the Tearsheet podcast, where we explore financial services together with an eye on technology, innovation, emerging models and changing expectations. I'm Tearsheet Editor in Chief, Zack Miller.

There's an old theory in lending that you can only master two or three things: growth, credit performance and profitability. For decades, this has been accepted wisdom, until AI started changing the fundamentals of how we assess credit risk.

Today, I'm joined by Paul Gu, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Upstart. Paul's journey reads like a modern Silicon Valley story—from Chinese immigrant to Yale dropout. He became part of the inaugural class of Thiel Fellows before co-founding Upstart in 2012. Under his leadership, Upstart has gone from zero model training data points in 2013 to processing 91 million data points today. Their AI predicts both default and prepayment likelihood for every month of a loan's term, and Paul believes Upstart's AI is bringing them closer to achieving all three pillars of lending—an approach that could redefine consumer lending across the entire credit lifecycle.

We'll explore how this evolution is playing out, dive into Upstart's 2025 roadmap, including their push for 10x AI leadership and GAAP profitability, and discuss what this means for the future of credit.

In a sector where AI is promising a significant leap forward, financial institutions demand speed — with safety. Temenos has a track record of innovation and the customer trust to bring AI into the core of banking.

Chief Product Officer Sai Rangachari is just nine months into his role at Temenos, but his mandate is sweeping: simplify product experience, co-create with banks, and embed AI across the entire platform.

“There are three things that you hear from leadership and customers. Number one is product experience, resiliency, availability — investing more in making it easier to consume,” he said. “The second one is co-creation. Customers want to give us more advice. They want to be in the room. They want to help shape the products. Ultimately, they are the users so we welcome it.”

The third undertaking is layering AI across Temenos’ entire product suite. With Product Manager Copilot, FCM AI Agent and AI Studio, Temenos is helping clients simplify workflows and enhance decision-making, and giving them the flexibility to build and scale their own AI use cases within a trusted, regulated environment.

In this episode, Rangachari discusses why traditional technology providers are in a better position to help banks integrate AI than fintechs, how Temenos’ AI strategy could change the way we experience retail banking, and where he sees traditional providers’ competitive advantage.

Today, we're joined by Camila Vieira, a Partner at QED Investors focused on Latin America. Camila brings a wealth of experience to our conversation, having established herself as one of the region's most influential fintech investors.

Camila joined QED in 2022 as the company's first employee based in São Paulo, Brazil, where she focuses on early stage investments. As an investor and operator with experience working across different regions, she brings a well-rounded perspective to the table, connecting founders and startups to valuable resources while leveraging QED's deep fintech expertise.

Prior to joining QED, Camila built her career at the intersection of technology and financial services. She started at Moody's, a credit rating agency, before joining Goldman Sachs to focus on corporate credit and economic risk. Later, as part of Goldman's investment banking division, she helped fintech, software, and e-commerce companies raise capital and navigate the transition from private to public markets.

She went on to join the global strategy and corporate development teams at Ceridian, a global software company servicing more than 160 countries. More recently, Camila spent time at Hotmart, a Brazilian tech unicorn whose platform facilitates sales of digital products, enabling creators to build, monetize, manage, and grow globally. There, she led strategy and operations, ESG, and investor relations.

Today, we'll explore the dynamic Brazilian fintech ecosystem, discuss cross-border investment opportunities, and uncover lessons that US investors and financial professionals can apply when looking to diversify their portfolios into these high-growth regions.

Before we jump in, I just want to tell you about a new initiative we’re running at Tearsheet. 

4dFI is an exclusive group of out-of-the-box builders and investors knitting together a community to invest in the next wave of fintech startups.

We’re bringing together current and former banking executives interested in investing in and learning about emerging market fintech startups. 4dFI’s network will be able to both help new companies reach maturity faster, while startups can provide new ways of thinking to our community members.

At 4dFI Capital Partners, I'm joined by Russell Weiss, experienced product and startup builder and Josh Liggett, who has led fintech and blockchain diligence, investments, and strategic partnerships at OurCrowd.

If you are interested in learning how emerging market fintechs are changing the financial services landscape around the globe and would like to play a part in crafting this new future, signup on https://tearsheet.co/4dFI.

The payments landscape is experiencing regulatory upheaval, forcing financial institutions to rethink their approach to money movement modernization. With ISO message format changes, Swift updates, and evolving fraud requirements hitting simultaneously, banks are facing a complex web of compliance demands that require immediate attention.

"The regulatory agenda for money movement is probably one of the most aggressive we have," said Elaine Duff, SVP and Head of Money Movement at FIS. "It's across the globe. We're seeing the ISO message intended to help firms standardize their messaging, become more efficient, and make their operations much more standardized."

Yet the scale of change extends far beyond simple messaging updates. The oncoming change affects fraud tools, digital channels, reporting formats, and entire operational workflows. For many institutions, the traditional rip-and-replace approach to modernization has become both financially and operationally untenable.

Nick Dovaras, Global Account Manager at AWS, emphasized the broader pressures driving urgency: "There's customer expectations as well. Customers are expecting 24/7, instant, and customer-friendly mobile applications that are connected to online systems.”

Dive into this episode to hear about how financial institutions are navigating regulatory pressures through modular modernization strategies. FIS’ Duff and AWS’ Dovaras break down the critical role embedded fraud protection is playing in real-time payments, and why cloud-based solutions are enabling banks to modernize their money movement capabilities without the risks of traditional rip-and-replace approaches.

Today on the Tearsheet Podcast, we're diving into a story that captures the evolution of modern finance — where professional athletes aren't just endorsing products, but building the infrastructure that empowers the next generation of wealth creators.

I'm joined by Sheldon Day, Co-Founder and President of The Player's Company, a collective of over 500 professional athletes and accredited investors who are rewriting the playbook on financial empowerment. As a NFL defensive tackle with the Washington Commanders and eight-year veteran, Sheldon understands firsthand the financial realities that athletes face both during and after their careers.

The Players Company isn't just another investment club — it's a platform democratizing access to wealth-building tools once reserved for the ultra-wealthy, while providing financial education many athletes never received. Since 2019, TPC has facilitated investments in startups like ZenWTR, Teamworks, and Public.com, proving athletes can be sophisticated capital allocators when given the right resources.

We'll explore how Sheldon went from reading defensive formations to reading investment prospectuses, and how The Players Company is scaling to empower athletes across all sports to build generational wealth.

From streamlining complex onboarding flows to surfacing the right information at the right time, design thinking encourages product design teams to bring empathy and intentionality into every layer of product development, creating experiences that are intuitive, responsive, and centered around real human needs.

Temenos is leading the charge to bring that mindset back to banking innovation, with Erik Johnson, Head of Product Design, at the helm. For Johnson, creativity and collaboration go hand in hand with functionality.

On this episode of the Tearsheet podcast, Johnson talks about structuring his design team in a “centralized, hybrid” model, solving design challenges with data and empathy, and how Temenos’ Innovation Hub in Orlando is structured to be a “we space” for exploring and co-creating new banking products.

More than half of Americans report that they will run out of money when they stop earning a paycheck and millions haven't saved enough to maintain their standard of living in retirement, There is an urgent need to re-imagine the role record keepers play in financial wellness, and it starts by leveraging technology to close the gap between capabilities and customer expectations.

“When I look at things like automatic enrollment and automatic increase, that's where it starts,“ explains Will Hicks, Head of FIS Global Retirement Products and Services. “Then it bleeds into the technology phase in terms of how you deliver that. How do you actually let participants know how that impacts their financial future?“.

The sector is in transition, where traditional retirement record keeping is expanding into comprehensive financial wellness platforms. Scott Parker, Partner at Deloitte Consulting and leader of their wealth retirement practice, notes that the industry is “at the cusp of taking it to the next level and getting outside of what we've always done in the past, which is more and more communication.“

The change is driven by both technological capabilities and changing expectations which center around integrated solutions: “Our clients are asking us to bring those solutions together, because they want a clear picture of not just their retirement, but what are they doing in the banking space?“ said Sherry Baker, SVP and Head of Global Wealth Products and Services at FIS.

Listen to the podcast to discover how retirement industry leaders are breaking down traditional silos to deliver integrated financial wellness solutions that go far beyond the 401(k). Learn the role that modernization, data, personalization, and cybersecurity play in pushing record keepers forward. It's a conversation on record keeping organizations can meet regulatory requirements while meeting the daily engagement expectations of younger participants.

As fintech companies transition from scrappy startups to scaled operations, traditional leadership models often hit their limits. The demands of managing complex partnerships, navigating regulatory requirements, and driving sustainable growth require a different kind of executive structure than the founder-led approach that got many companies off the ground.

Today, I'm joined by Prashant Fuloria, CEO of Fundbox, and Anchit Singh, the company's Chief Business Officer, to explore how they've developed a collaborative leadership model that's helped drive Fundbox's evolution in the embedded finance space. We'll dig into the CEO-CBO dynamic, how they divide responsibilities, and what other growing fintechs can learn about building leadership structures that scale.

Americans give nearly half a trillion dollars to charity each year—over 2% of GDP. Yet despite this massive scale, charitable giving remains stuck in the past, dominated by donor-advised funds marketed exclusively to the wealthy and clunky processes that make generosity harder than it should be.

Today I'm joined by Adam Nash, co-founder and CEO of Daffy, a modern platform that's democratizing charitable giving through technology. Adam brings decades of experience building consumer fintech products as the former CEO of Wealthfront and in leadership roles at LinkedIn, Dropbox, and eBay. During the pandemic, he recognized that while fintech had revolutionized how we save and invest, charitable giving had been largely untouched by innovation.

We'll explore why Adam left Wealthfront to tackle charitable giving, how Daffy's membership-based model differs from traditional approaches, and why he believes donor-advised funds will soon be as common as 401ks. Adam will share insights on tax-advantaged giving as more people hold appreciated assets like stock and crypto, how Daffy is incorporating AI, and why they've opened their APIs to partners like Betterment and Robinhood.