Tearsheet announces Vision Awards winners
Innovation in financial services often begins when industry leaders question traditional practices and pursue fresh approaches. Tearsheet’s first Vision Awards highlight these forward-thinking executives, whose work reshapes how businesses and institutions deliver financial solutions, pushing beyond conventional boundaries.
Across banking, fintech, financial health, and digital infrastructure, this year’s winners are making a significant impact. The awards honor leaders who have put their vision into practice, driving progress and innovation in the industry.
Vision Awards Winners Announced
The 2026 winners of the Vision Awards include Solomon Lax, CEO of Revenued, who has been named SMB Champion of the Year. Lax challenged a financing model that often left small businesses with expensive, inflexible capital, and launched Revenued’s card and flex line in 2019.
Another winner is Scott Sanborn, who has been named Transformation Leader of the Year. Sanborn led LendingClub’s evolution into Happen Bank, a multi-product digital marketplace bank that combines the growth and innovation of a fintech with the stability and resilience of a nationally chartered bank.
Suneera Madhani, co-founder and CEO of Worth, has been named Women Shaping Finance Award winner. Madhani is building AI-powered underwriting technology that helps lenders make faster, more evidence-based decisions, and has brought a focus on access to her own organization and the wider fintech community.
Jeff Chambers, founder of Lumin Digital, has been named Visionary Leader of the Year. Chambers built Lumin as a cloud-native digital banking platform, which now serves more than 8 million users and delivers over 400 product enhancements annually.
Sam Lewis, co-founder of Fruitful, has been named Young Leader of the Year. Lewis developed a financial automation model that connects personalized guidance with the ability to act on it, and has advanced a model that measures financial services by the progress people make, not simply the accounts they open or products they use.
Paul Ricci, CEO of Best Egg, has been named Fintech Leader of the Year. Ricci has steered Best Egg through a challenging economic market for consumer lending, while continuing to expand the business and its reach, and has helped grow the company past $40 billion in loan originations and 2.3 million customers.
Leaders Driving Industry Progress
The winners of the Vision Awards have demonstrated conviction and the ability to execute, turning their vision into progress and driving innovation in the financial services industry. Solomon Lax, for example, has grown Revenued’s business past $500 million in originations and to roughly 15,000 customers, and is now expanding the company’s focus beyond access to capital.
Lax’s experience running a large merchant cash advance business informed his decision to launch Revenued’s card and flex line, which was designed to provide small businesses with more flexible capital. When COVID-19 disrupted the launch, Lax and his team pivoted the platform to support the Paycheck Protection Program with Cross River Bank.
The partnership with Cross River Bank helped underwrite hundreds of thousands of PPP loans totaling about $4 billion over the following year. This experience has informed Lax’s current focus on using data and machine learning to give SMBs greater visibility into their credit, financial costs, and how their performance compares with peers.
Scott Sanborn’s transformation of LendingClub into Happen Bank is a notable example of innovation in the financial services industry. Happen Bank’s assets stand at over $12 billion, up from Radius Bank’s $1.4 billion at acquisition. Sanborn’s leadership has facilitated more than $10 billion in personal loan sales and designed award-winning savings and checking products.
Happen Bank’s use of AI is also significant, with about 90% of employees using AI tools and AI supporting over 90% of loan automation and record efficiency in loan servicing. This transformation has enabled Happen Bank to clear the way for its more than 5 million members to achieve their goals.
Innovations in Fintech Lending
Her platform has helped institutions reduce onboarding time by more than 55% and increase approval rates by 37%. Madhani’s experience in building Stax Payments into a billion-dollar fintech has informed her approach to broadening opportunities for small businesses and women in the industry.
Lumin’s track record includes 100% successful launches, no client losses, and a client NPS of 90+. Chambers’ focus on innovation has enabled Lumin to deliver more than 400 product enhancements annually while maintaining 99.999% uptime.
Fruitful’s members automate an average of $54,000 in annual savings and $28,000 in annual debt reduction, while 90% report feeling significantly less financially stressed.
Ricci’s focus on scaling responsibly and broadening the company’s role in customers’ financial lives has resulted in a resilient organization. Employees have recognized Ricci’s leadership, voting him the ‘Top Most Loved CEO’ in 2024, and Delaware Business Times named him Top CEO of a Large For-Profit Business in 2025.
