NewtekOne

NewtekOne

NewtekOne was founded in 1998 by Barry Sloane, who remains Chairman, President, and CEO of the publicly traded financial holding company. The firm spent its first two decades as a business development company and diversified financial services provider before completing a landmark conversion to a bank holding company in January 2023. That conversion, approved by the Federal Reserve and the OCC, repositioned Newtek as one of the few financial institutions in the United States that operates both a national bank charter and a portfolio of internally developed technology and business-service subsidiaries aimed at independent business owners. The firm is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, with additional offices in New York and Wisconsin. Newtek deploys capital primarily through its national bank subsidiary, Newtek Bank, N.A., which focuses on SBA 7(a) lending, conventional commercial loans, and specialty receivables financing. The firm originates, underwrites, and services the loans it holds, unlike many bank competitors that rely on third-party originators. Its lending book skews heavily toward small- and medium-sized businesses — the typical borrower has fewer than 500 employees and limited access to traditional bank capital. In addition to direct lending, Newtek operates a suite of adjacent business-service divisions: Newtek Merchant Solutions (payment processing), Newtek Insurance Solutions (commercial lines brokerage), Newtek Technology Solutions (cloud hosting and managed IT), and Newtek Payroll and Benefits Solutions (payroll processing and employee benefits). These feeder businesses generate non-interest income and serve as origination channels, creating a flywheel that many bank holding companies attempt but few sustain at Newtek's scale (per the firm's public filings, 2023). The firm's conversion to a bank holding company was a multiyear regulatory undertaking finalized in January 2023. That structural change allowed Newtek to retain a larger share of its net interest margin and reduced its cost of capital compared to its prior business-development-company structure. It also expanded the firm's deposit-gathering capability, which stood at over $600 million in total deposits as of mid-2024 (per the firm's quarterly reports). Sloane has publicly described the model as an integrated platform where lending, payments, and operational software feed a centralized small-business relationship — a posture closer to a fintech-enabled community bank than to a traditional family office or private credit fund. Newtek does not manage third-party capital, and it does not operate a multi-family office arm. Newtek's structural differentiator is its dual identity as a publicly traded bank holding company and an internally built small-business technology platform. Unlike most regional banks that acquire fintech capabilities through vendor partnerships or bolt-on acquisitions, Newtek developed its payment, payroll, and cloud-services divisions organically over two decades. That integration gives it a direct line of sight into borrower cash flows and business operations, informing underwriting in ways unavailable to lenders that rely solely on credit scores and tax returns. Governance rests with an independent board of directors, and CEO succession is a standard public-company board function. The model is unusual in U.S. mid-market banking, where few institutions below $10 billion in assets operate both an in-house technology stack and a nationally diversified lending platform.