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Fintech One-On-One
Fintech is eating the world. Join Peter Renton, Co-Founder of Fintech Nexus and now an independent fintech media and events consultant, every week as he interviews the fintech leaders who are leading the transformation of financial services. If you want to understand what the future will look like for lending, payments, digital banking and more, tune in to Fintech One-On-One.
Fintech One-On-One
How Figure Is Cutting Mortgage Costs from $12,000 to $1,000, with CEO Michael Tannenbaum
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Michael Tannenbaum became CEO of Figure in early 2024, taking over from founder Mike Cagney and leading the company through its September 2025 IPO. In this conversation, we get into the mechanics of how Figure's blockchain-based platform competes with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, what it actually takes to cut mortgage origination costs from $12,000 to $1,000, and where the real opportunities in tokenization lie.
What We Covered
- Taking over as CEO from Mike Cagney and the Big Rocks framework
- How Figure describes itself: building the future of capital markets on blockchain
- The B2B partner network and how it compares to Fannie Mae's function
- Cutting mortgage origination costs from $12,000 to $1,000 and 45 days to five
- Why Figure competes directly with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
- How blockchain eliminates third-party diligence and prevents loan double-pledging
- The Figure Connect marketplace and its rapid growth since June 2024
- Where tokenization adds real value — and where it doesn't
- YLDS: Figure's SEC-registered yield-bearing stablecoin and its role in capital markets
- The timing and mechanics of Figure's September 2025 IPO
- Building a rate-agnostic business across different macro environments
- Three growth areas: consumer mortgages, Democratized Prime, and on-chain equities
Key Takeaways
Figure's origination platform and its capital market are the same system — you can't separate them, and that's the competitive moat. Tokenization only creates liquidity when the underlying assets are standardized and fungible; putting unique assets on a blockchain doesn't conjure buyers. The recent fraud cases involving double-pledged loans (Tricolor, First Brands, MFS) have turned blockchain's immutability from a skeptic's objection into a selling point. And Figure is running at what Michael calls the rule of 150 — 100% year-over-year growth at 50% margins — in one of the most rate-sensitive and entrenched markets on earth.
About Michael Tannenbaum
Michael Tannenbaum is the CEO of Figure, a blockchain-based capital markets company he took public on Nasdaq in September 2025. Before Figure, he was an early executive at both SoFi (Chief Revenue Officer) and Brex (COO), and sat on the Brex board when it was acquired by Capital One. He began his career in investment banking at J.P. Morgan.
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