Upstart Holdings, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates a cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) lending platform in the United States. The company operates through three segments: Personal Lending, Auto Lending, and Other. Its platform includes unsecured personal loans, small dollar loans, auto refinance, auto retail loans, and auto secured personal loan, and home equity lines of credit. Upstart Holdings, Inc. was …
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Competitive advantage assessment
Key risks
Returns Squeezed by Funding CostsReturns are weak for a debt-funded lender (profitability score 0.35).
Thin Equity CushionEquity cushion is thin (score 0.39).
The dashed ring is the peer median. Defense scores are percentile ranks
against peers, so 50 is roughly the typical company in this group.
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Upstart Holdings, Inc. ranks #37 of 48
scored companies in Credit Services by moat score — the top 77%.
The widest moat in the group is Qifu Technology, Inc (QFIN)
at 77/100.
Moat scores for companies ranked near UPST in Credit Services
How UPST scores on the Lender Specialized defenses
Funding & Return Stability
Score 31
· 22% of the moat score
A lender without deposits buys all of its funding, so its first test is whether the business still earns a decent return when that funding gets dearer.
Lending Advantage
Score 42
· 18% of the moat score
Outside banking, a lending advantage usually comes from origination: a channel or a data edge that finds good borrowers more cheaply than rivals, or a niche such as subprime auto, student loans or agency mortgages where experience in underwriting and servicing is hard to copy.
Capital Strength
Score 40
· 20% of the moat score
Without deposit insurance or a central-bank backstop, equity is what keeps a lender in business when its lenders get nervous.
Cost Discipline
Score 34
· 16% of the moat score
Origination, servicing and collections are largely fixed-cost operations, so scale and automation decide how much of the spread survives to the bottom line.
Revenue Diversification
Score 10
· 14% of the moat score
A lender that earns only on the spread of one product is exposed to that product's cycle and to the market that funds it.
Risk Management
Score 49
· 10% of the moat score
Credit losses at a non-bank lender arrive late and all at once, and with borrowed funding they can turn into a liquidity problem in weeks.
Upstart Holdings, Inc. (UPST) scores 34 out of 100 on the StatsAlpha Moat Map, which rates its competitive advantage as developing. It ranks #37 of 48 scored companies in Credit Services, the top 77%. The score is a weighted composite of 6 competitive defenses, each measured against industry peers of 47 companies in Credit Services. Its strongest defense is Risk Management (49/100) and its weakest is Revenue Diversification (10/100).
How does Upstart Holdings, Inc. compare with other Credit Services companies?
Upstart Holdings, Inc. ranks #37 of 48 scored companies in Credit Services by moat score. The widest moat in Credit Services is Qifu Technology, Inc (QFIN) at 77/100. The companies ranked closest are Yiren Digital Ltd. (YRD) at 35 just above it and Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) at 29 just below it.
How is the moat score calculated?
Each company is scored with an industry-specific template — Lender Specialized in this case, chosen because the defenses that matter to a bank are not the ones that matter to a software company. Every defense combines several financial signals, and each signal is measured as a percentile against a peer group of 47 companies in Credit Services. The defenses are then weighted to produce the overall score out of 100.
Why is Upstart Holdings, Inc. scored with the Lender Specialized template?
Card and instalment lenders, mortgage originators and mortgage REITs make money the way a bank does, by earning more on what they lend than they pay for the money they lend, but they do not take deposits. They borrow in the debt markets instead: securitisations, warehouse lines, repo and bonds, money that has to be refinanced and repriced as rates move. The Lender template scores what decides whether such a business lasts: how well its returns hold up as funding costs change, what it lends against, how much equity stands behind the book, and whether it has been pricing credit honestly.
Which competitive defenses are measured for Upstart Holdings, Inc.?
The Lender Specialized template measures 6 defenses, and UPST scores: Funding & Return Stability (31), Lending Advantage (42), Capital Strength (40), Cost Discipline (34), Revenue Diversification (10), Risk Management (49). Each is scored independently as a percentile against peers, so a company can be strong on one and weak on another — the overall score reflects how those defenses are weighted for this industry.
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