If you want a look into marketing-geek anxiety, go grab a coffee with a fintech lending CMO and ask about their distribution channels. Listen long enough, and many will quietly admit their growth is closely tied to the affiliate marketplace category. They mean sites like Credit Karma, Experian, NerdWallet, Bankrate, and a few others.

These channels have been great for growth, but concentration has been an unintended side-effect.

Our informal convos with U.S. fintech lenders suggest that anywhere from 30% to 70% of their new customer volume comes from affiliate marketplaces, with the remainder coming through direct mail, paid search, paid social, and some first party channels. 

The global affiliate marketing industry (all categories, not just lending) is expected to reach $18.5B in 2025, while global affiliate revenues are set to hit nearly $32B by 2031. In U.S. consumer lending specifically, we estimate brands spent $4B-$6B per year on affiliate marketing.

As the category grows, lenders are left hoping they remain in good standing as marketplace platforms tinker with rankings, increase product/competitive density, and perfect their algorithms.

In parallel, lender innovation is accelerating.

Take Yendo’s vehicle-secured credit card, which lets subprime consumers unlock up to $10,000 in credit, by backing the card with an auto title. Or consider the upcoming Coinbase One Credit Card, which plans to pay a full 4% on every purchase for consumers that hold enough assets in their Coinbase accounts.

Product innovation will lead to more competition. And more competition will put increasing pressure on consumer lending brands to find new (and growing) sources of customer acquisition.

The Setup: Finfluencers Are Under-Monetizing

The global creator economy—spanning from YouTube to TikTok—has minted its own crop of “Finfluencers” who have established a level of trust with their audiences that lenders would kill for.

In 2024, the influencer marketing industry hit an estimated $24B, almost doubling since 2019. Influencers over-index on audience trust and engagement, yet only about 13% of them (across all categories) earn more than $100,000 per year in 2023.

With more than 400,000 followers and posts that average 100,000 views, Clint Brantley is a big creator. But he only made $58,084 in 2023 (less than the U.S. median pay for full-time workers).

Huge financial creators like Vivian Tu (aka Your Rich BFF) had an audience of over 5MM viewers in 2022, and pulled in over $3MM in revenue that year (paying herself $300,000).

Influencers have mastered getting attention, but are still in the infancy of monetization.

Social platforms own the rails, fintechs own the product, and creators are monetizing with one-off sponsorships or course sales rather than ongoing affiliate partnerships that pay them a percentage of the value they create for their brands. 

How Much Money Could Vivian Tu (Your Rich BFF) Be Making?

Let’s study the $3MM in revenue Vivian made in 2022 from her 5MM audience. That’s 60 cents per audience member per year.

To make the analysis simple, we’ll look at Credit Karma and NerdWallet, two publishers who report their revenues and audience sizes publicly.

Credit Karma made $1.6B in revenue in fiscal 2023, with a member base of 130MM. That’s $12.31 per audience member per year—20X better monetization than Vivian.