AI-powered online lending platform Upstart earned $194 million in quarterly revenue denoting a growth of 60% on a quarterly basis, according to the firm’s earnings report released Tuesday.

The Upstart Referral Network uses AI to helps match loan applicants with banks and credit unions, and has been deployed by financial institutions like the $9.9 billion Cross River Bank, First National Bank of Omaha, Ridgewood Savings Bank and KEMBA Financial Credit Union.

“We now have 25 banks and credit unions on the Upstart platform and have a robust and growing list of lenders in our pipeline for the second half of 2021,” David Girouard, chief executive at Upstart, said during an investor conference call. He added that in June more than 100,000 loans and more than $1 billion in origination volume were registered on Upstart’s platform.

Upstart’s matching process allows banks to set parameters like geography, credit score and acceptable loss rates, following which the aggregator links up applicants who match the criteria with banks or credit unions offering loans.

The firm previously told Bank Automation News that its model uses more than 1,600 variables and asks applicants for more details than a bank might — like the applicant’s occupation and highest education level. It takes lenders about 60 to 90 days to get set up on the network and start making loans.

In its quarterly earnings presentation, Upstart noted that 71% of the loans originated on its platform in the second quarter were “fully automated” and were approved instantly without a notable rise in fraud incidents. During the investor conference call, Girouard also said that following their experience of using Upstart’s matching engine, one of the firm’s banking partners has also decided to eliminate any minimum FICO requirement for their borrowers.

“While credit scores can be useful, hard cutoffs based on a three-digit number invented 30 years ago leaves far too many creditworthy Americans out in the cold,” Girouard said, adding that the company is hopeful another banking partner will follow suit in the near future.

“Our algorithm is like a belt. But if you want to put suspenders on there, make sure that you don’t get too many low FICO scores or too many people with high [debt-to-income]. So over time, you realize, say, maybe I could take the suspenders off,” Michael Lock, head of bank partnerships at Upstart, told BAN, drawing a parallel between how the FICO scores, like suspenders, could come off the lending process without spoiling the result.

Upstart has also been eyeing an expansion into the auto lending sector and began offering auto refinance starting in a single state in January and has since expanded to 47 states. “Upstart-powered banks have now originated more than 2,000 auto refinance loans in 40 different states. And these loans are beginning to provide the repayment data that is the fuel to our AI models,” Girouard said during the conference call.

While Upstart has ambitions to expand its auto lending product nationally, Locke said “Our business will grow where there’s less friction. Not so much [in] auto lending, but just the paperwork that’s associated with a car.” He added that requirements around the physical notarization of documents can slow the process, making it more difficult for a digital vendor to expand its business.

Upstart also recently decided to transition to a fully remote workplace and that decision is partly influenced by tightness in the labor market and growing demand for data science talent. Locke said that he feels it’s a very “tough” labor market right now and if Upstart needs to “double the size of the team, that just can’t be done if you’re hiring in two cities.”

Shares of Upstart [NASDAQ: UPST] ticked up sharply following its earnings report and were trading at $161.33 at 12:20 p.m. today, up 18.9% for the day. The firm has an overall market capitalization of $12.4 billion.