Industry shifts view on where value comes from
The financial industry is shifting its focus from the products themselves to the workflows surrounding them. Zack Miller, Editor-in-Chief of Tearsheet, recently hosted three conversations on his podcast that highlight this pivot. Guests from Slash, Figure, and Method discussed business banking and lending, and they consistently avoided talking about the financial instruments. Instead, the discussions focused on decision-making processes, information verification, and how artificial intelligence can automate tasks rather than just answer questions.
Victor Cardenas, CEO and co-founder of business banking platform Slash, argues that the traditional separation between banks and software companies is a flaw. He believes these two entities should operate as a single layer. “For the longest time, there were two categories of companies operating in the SMB finance space,” Cardenas told Miller. “There were companies that actually bank and move money… and then there were companies that build financial software. Our view is these should not be two kinds of companies.”
By combining banking and software, Slash can ingest data and act on it. The platform can move money, issue cards, and approve payments because it controls the bank account. For performance marketing agencies, this replaces manual reconciliation with client accounts and automated advertising-spend tracking. The bank account becomes the infrastructure that powers the business, rather than just a place to hold funds.
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Figure, which uses blockchain and AI to modernize lending, and Method, which builds lending infrastructure for financial institutions, are approaching debt consolidation with a similar strategy. Traditional consolidation relies on borrowers paying off credit card balances, a process that creates uncertainty until credit bureau data updates weeks later. These companies verify liabilities in real time and pay creditors directly when the loan is originated. “It’s a closed-loop system,” Method co-founder and COO Mit Shah explained to Miller. “The money goes directly to the creditor. It never touches the consumer’s bank account.”
That operational change has meaningful implications for the borrower. By using verified liability data, Figure can underwrite against current obligations rather than a weeks-old credit report. The companies report that borrowers using the platform were 50% less likely to become seriously delinquent, improved their FICO scores by an average of 21 points within 30 days, and saved ro
Where Value Resides in the Age of AI
Mike Packer, a partner at QED Investors, says that generative AI is compressing the lifecycle of financial products. When software can be built faster and at lower cost, products become easier to replicate and harder to defend. He argues that in this new environment, trust and distribution are the only sustainable advantages. “We’ve been trying to figure out what a moat even means in the age of generative AI,” Packer told Miller. “Trust and distribution become much more valuable.”
Max Flötotto, a senior partner at McKinsey, sees the same dynamic playing out in banking. “The simplest form of banking is collecting deposits and making loans,” Flötotto said. “If customers let their own agents optimize deposit pricing and move money to whichever bank offers the best rate, banks risk becoming dumb product providers in the background.”
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This perspective extends to stablecoins. While much of the current volume comes from trading and crypto markets, both executives argue that stablecoins are changing expectations around how money should move. They should move instantly, globally, and as programmable infrastructure. The broader shift is toward financial workflows that require less manual effort and more intelligent automation.
As these conversations show, the industry is moving away from obsessing over the bank account, the loan, or the payment itself. The attention has shifted to everything adjacent to those products: gathering better context, verifying information in real time, removing manual work, and ensuring the intended outcome actually happens.
