Todd H. Baker

Fintechs can get what they need from a traditional bank charter with the FDIC, as long as the agency is willing to play ball and step up its approach to innovation.

Evidence that the credit characteristics of online installment borrowers at the time of repayment are consistently worse than at the time of borrowing should be a sobering thought for lenders that have not been fully tested in a credit downturn.

Fintech still has a ways to go to change the financial world, but it already offers solutions to income insecurity that can be truly transformational right now.

Many bank overdraft-related practices favor profits over customer financial health, but those practices are driven in part by lost revenue from an ill-advised Dodd-Frank Act provision.

The deal marks a milestone in SoFi’s evolution into a private bank for millennials, but it won’t solve the challenges of the alternative lender’s funding model.

If stories like the Wells Fargo scandal are repeated at other institutions, U.S. banks could soon experience the same reputational and regulatory fate of their cousins in the United Kingdom.

The alleged practices at the heart of Well Fargo's settlement were fueled by a short-term incentive system that is detached from broader goals.

Companies like Prosper have revolutionized the front end of the consumer lending experience, but they have not proven able to handle even minor financial bumps without running off the road.

The idea that restricted access to loans for poor-credit borrowers is unequivocally a bad thing is based on industry talking points that don't stand up to real-world scrutiny.

We should all understand now that pure gain-on-sale marketplace lending businesses, like LendingClub, are inherently unstable.

The hits that alternative lenders like OnDeck Capital are taking shouldn't be a surprise for an industry built on unsustainable business models.

A leading alternative lender has admitted that balance sheets and liquidity matter, and that it is a problem that such lenders need to keep growing lending volumes to prosper.

Disruption in credit scoring is healthy, but the new models touted by marketplace and other alternative lenders are still untested, especially about how loans will perform in a downturn.

Many emerging innovators want to incorporate digital advances into the incumbent financial services sphere, not necessarily leapfrog banks.