Axos Financial is a bank holding company based in San Diego, California and is the parent of Axos Bank, a direct bank. Approximately 72.2% of the company's loans are secured by properties in California, 9.47% are secured by properties in New York, and 5.11% are secured by properties in Florida. Axos Bank has deposit and loan customers nationwide including consumer and business checking, savings and time deposit accounts and financing for single family and multifamily residential properties, small-to-medium size businesses in target sectors, and selected specialty finance receivables. The bank has made larger loans to wealthy individuals that other banks have turned down, albeit at higher interest rates.
History
The company was founded by Jerry Englert and Gary Evans Lewis with $14 million of startup capital. It was incorporated in Delawarein 1999 as BofI Holding, Inc and began operations as Bank of Internet on July 4, 2000. The start date of July 4 was purposely chosen because it showed that the bank would be open on a day that other banks were closed due to Independence Day. On March 15, 2005, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. It offered 3,052,745 shares of common stock at a price of $11.50 per share. In October 2007, the company named Gregory Garrabrants as CEO, who was head of corporate development at IndyMac Bancorp at the time. IndyMac failed the next year as the "fourth largest bank failure in the United States." In September 2013, the company acquired $173 million in deposits from Principal Bank. In September 2015, the company acquired H&R Block Bank became the issuing bank for H&R Block-branded credit cards and lines of credit. In January 2016, the company launched a co-branded Individual Retirement Accounts program with H&R Block. In March 2016, the company acquired $140 million of equipment leases from Pacific Western Equipment Finance. On October 1, 2018, BofI Holding re-branded as Axos Financial, and switched its stock exchange from NASDAQ to the NYSE. In November 2018, the bank acquired $3 billion in assets and liabilities of Nationwide Bank, a subsidiary of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. In January 2019, Axos Financial acquired COR Clearing LLC. The unit has since been renamed Axos Clearing. In March 2019, Axos Financial acquired the robo-advisory platform WiseBanyan. The unit has since been renamed Axos Invest and as of early 2020 is keeping the "free" business model originally designed by the start-up's founders. According to the investor presentation, Axos plans to use WiseBanyan to mine more personal data about its client base. In March 2019, Axos Financial acquired approximately $173 million in deposits from MWABank. In April 2019, it was reported that the Axos CEO, Greg Garrabrants, earned $34.5 million, making him the highest paid bank CEO of 2018, despite Axos being 250x smaller than banks such as JPMorgan. In March 2020, the Axos CEO, Greg Garrabrants, emailed employees to let them know to make sure they were indeed working from home during the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic.
