The Free Toaster
Insights and interviews at the intersection of consumer lending, marketing, and technology. Hosted by Carlos Caro, co-founder at The Free Toaster and Managing Partner at New Market Growth, a growth agency for consumer lenders.
Episodes
Capital One recently shared their Q2 earnings.
Their marketing spend was $1.7B, up 23% year over year. Today, we dive into how Capital One used that budget and the implications for marketers in lending.
Carlos & Nick expand on the coverage in this week's Newsletter Edition.
https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/5-things-marketers-should-draw-from
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Are you a leader at a consumer lender or publisher!? If so, we have an ev...
Recently, Carlos sat on the LendAPI Podcast with Tim Li to discuss the Summit he's organizing on September 23rd in San Francisco.
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The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders & Publishers
Sponsored by Experian, Engine by Gen, Prism Data, Tare.io, and EXL
San Francisco - September 23rd & 24th
The Exploratorium
150-person, curated room
Samsung & Barclays just shipped a co-brand card. The economics (3% on everything you buy through the Samsung Wallet) are rich. Even better than the Apple Card! Plus, our predictions on whether Claude or ChatGPT will launch credit cards!
Today, Carlos & Nick expand on the coverage in this week's Newsletter Edition. https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/samsungs-new-galaxy-card-and-its *****
Are you a leader at a consumer le...
Carlos & Nick discuss this week’s story - “Oportun and Column Announce New Lending Partnership to Expand Access to Responsible Credit.”
At first glance, not that exciting. Just a new partner bank.
Then we dug into the filings and found something strange: for the past nine months, Oportun had a bank partner that wouldn’t hold a single one of its new loans. Pa...
Search is often just 10% of a lender's marketing mix — but Ross Cohen makes the case that it's the most powerful channel for experimentation and the best "shock absorber" when direct mail or affiliates come up short.
Ross, an advisory partner at Arica Consulting with 20+ years running search across Capital One, New York Life, FrontPoint, and Greenlight, has evaluated search agencies from every ang...
On July 13th 2026, Carlos spoke on a panel moderated by Danielle Lauzon (Fintel Connect) with Amanda Share (Pagaya), and John Hanley (Idaho First Bank). Big ideas Carlos discusses: 1. The dangers of blindly optimizing for CPA in affiliate channels based on executive mandate 2. Why marketing at a lending company is one of the hardest jobs out there 3. A time he saw a huge spike in lead volume that was toxic for t...
Klarna just filed to become a bank. They're the ninth major fintech since December, joining Affirm, PayPal, Upstart, Revolut, Bunq, Mission Lane, and OppFi. The OCC saw 18 de novo applications in 2025, nearly matching the previous four years combined.
Carlos and Nick break down why everyone is running for the regulatory door: cheaper funding through insured deposits, control without a sponsor bank in the...
In this solo News Pod episode, Carlos unpacks the story underneath Lending Club’s recent rebrand to Happen Bank. The story was covered in this week’s Newsletter: https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/happen-bank-is-running-chime-in-reverse
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The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders San Francisco - September 23rd & 24th
The Exploratorium
150-...
Carlos sits with Megan Bauer, Head Of Customer Success at Spinwheel, to discuss affiliate marketing & business lessons learned playing poker. ****** This episode is reposted from Spinwheel's Video Podcast - "What's Your Wheelhouse." Check out the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXcLSTMLAK4
Nick and Carlos discuss an Editorial piece recently published in The Free Toaster Newsletter https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/how-lenders-win-when-ai-calls-the
The premise of the conversation -- an LLM-based personal finance tool is going to be the most effective/useful way for consumers to shop for cards and lending products. Given that future, how should CMOs at lending companies be thinking about their long-term strategy? **...
Most lenders underestimate how long it takes to get onto a major affiliate platform. The honest answer is 6 to 12 months. Sometimes 18. If one of these channels is on your 2027 roadmap, you need to start now.
In this solo episode, Carlos breaks down the five phases that explain the timeline:
Pagaya filed a lawsuit against Klarna for (allegedly) stealing is underwriting. Carlos & Nick discuss the implications for fintech marketers that share their underwriting policies with affiliate marketing platforms. Today's episode expands on coverage from this week's Newsletter.
https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/pagaya-sues-klarna-for-allegedly
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The Affiliate Marke...
JD Power sued Chime in the Southern District of New York over its "America's #1 choice for banking" campaign, alleging breach of contract, trademark infringement, and false advertising. Carlos and Nick discuss, expanding on the coverage in this week’s Edition of The Free Toaster Newsletter.
Carlos & Nick discuss the Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders, September 23, sponsored by Experian an...
We've been writing about Cash Flow Underwriting lately. This week we continue the conversation. We expand on what we wrote this week in The Free Toaster Newsletter: https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/will-llms-solve-distribution-for
***** The Free Toaster is hosting the Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders on September 23rd & 24th in San Francisco.
Learn more: https://events.thefreetoaster.com/
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In an October 2024 article in The Free Toaster, Carlos laid out 3 things that would unlock distribution for Cash Flow Based Lenders. In today's episode, he shares the progress we've made on all 3 fronts over the last 18 months.
https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/where-is-the-demand-for-cash-flow-underwriting
***** The Free Toaster is hosting the Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders on September 23rd & 24th in San Francisco.&n...
ChatGPT just integrated Plaid, giving 200 million monthly users a personalized finance experience built on real account data.
Carlos and Nick break down what that means for affiliate marketing. Credit Karma's approval odds models (and Experian's) become foundational infrastructure. Intuit's $100M OpenAI deal puts TurboTax and Credit Karma inside the chat. Generic content sites ranking for "best travel credit cards" lose ground to r...
Jeff Keltner was the first non-founder employee at Upstart. He spent over a decade there running consumer acquisition, building the bank partnership business from zero to ten banks, and managing both sides of the affiliate marketplace. Today he hosts What the AI, a weekly podcast covering the top stories in AI with co-host Annie Delgado.
Carlos and Nick break down NerdWallet's Q1 2026 earnings, the first full read on the company since the stock dropped 32% post-print. Headline numbers look fine on the surface. $222M in revenue, 6% YoY growth, $34M in non-GAAP operating income at a 15% margin. Look one layer down and the story turns. A major insurance carrier pulled back. Small business was down 15% YoY and got zero analyst questions. And the cards business, which N...
Wall St. sold off what seemed to us like a killer performance from SoFi in Q1 2026. Carlos, Nick, and special guests Rachel Lauren react to the earnings report.
This news Pod expands on our reporting from this week's Newsletter.
https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/sofis-best-quarter-yet-disappoints *****
Zak Ali runs the US business at Finder, the financial comparison site that started in Australia in 2006 and launched stateside in 2015. Lending now drives roughly 40–50% of Finder US revenue across personal loans, business loans, and earned wage access. In this conversation, Zak pulls back the curtain on how a major comparison publisher actually ...
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