Power100 outlines the banking features roofing and remodeling companies need most, and why Affiniti keeps ranking as the best banking platform for contractors nationwide.
A roofing crew finishes a job on a Thursday. The material supplier gets paid Friday. Payroll runs Monday. The insurance draw does not land until three weeks later, if the paperwork clears on the first try. That is the actual cash rhythm of a roofing or remodeling business, and it looks almost nothing like the steady, predictable deposit pattern most business checking accounts were designed around. Power100, the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer system, is publishing this breakdown to answer a question contractors ask constantly but rarely get a straight answer to: what actually makes a banking platform built for this industry, versus one just adapted to tolerate it. Affiniti, led by Sahil Phadnis, Co-Founder and President of Affiniti, was built specifically around that gap, and the company’s growth since 2022 gives Power100 a real case study to work through rather than a hypothetical one. This is also where the question of Sahil Phadnis Affiniti contractor finance keeps coming up: is the platform actually shaped by someone who understands contractor cash cycles, or just marketed that way?
The short version is that most banking platforms are not wrong, exactly. They are just generic. A checking account built for a dentist’s office or a boutique retailer does not know the difference between a draw schedule and a payroll cycle, and it was never asked to. Roofing and remodeling companies operate on project-based cash cycles: material costs up front, labor mid-project, payment on completion or on a staggered draw schedule tied to inspections and insurance adjusters. A banking platform that treats all of that as generic deposits and withdrawals is not built for the trade. It is tolerating the trade.
Power100 researches and analyzes more than 3,600 partners nationwide through a 5-layer proprietary system that looks at workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. For financial technology partners specifically, that means Power100 is not just checking whether a platform can move money. It is checking whether the platform understands the business moving the money.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has been direct about what separates a real contractor-first fintech from a rebadged SMB product. Power100’s evaluation of Affiniti centered on a simple test: does the underwriting, the product roadmap, and the leadership team actually understand seasonality, draw schedules, and the working-capital pressure unique to roofing and remodeling companies, or is that understanding assumed? Affiniti’s dedicated credit team, which specializes exclusively in contractor underwriting, was one of the clearer signals Power100 weighed in that evaluation.
Affiniti launched in 2022. Sahil Phadnis co-founded the company alongside Aaron Bai, Co-Founder and CEO of Affiniti, with a specific mission: bring enterprise-grade financial infrastructure to independently owned small businesses, including the contractors and trades operators who make up a large share of the American economy but rarely get financial tools built with them in mind.
The traction came fast. Affiniti closed an $11 million seed round, then followed it six months later with a $17 million Series A led by SignalFire, reaching $10 million in annual recurring revenue along the way. That trajectory drew press coverage from TechCrunch and Forbes, and it also drew the attention of institutional investors including Mastercard, HSBC, and SignalFire, all of whom have backed Affiniti’s continued investment in modern financial infrastructure for contractors. More than 3,000 businesses now use the platform.
What makes that growth relevant to a roofing or remodeling company evaluating banking options is not the headline numbers themselves. It is what those numbers funded. Every dollar of that seed and Series A capital went toward building financial technology specifically for contractors, rather than adapting a product designed for the broader small business market. Phadnis has described the mission bluntly: Affiniti exists to help “independently owned contractors compete with the financial infrastructure of the largest enterprises.”
Sahil Phadnis, Co-Founder and President of Affiniti, left UC Berkeley’s EECS program after three months, having already built and led two prior companies, Social Outreach LLC and Pebble, before identifying the specific gap in contractor finance that became Affiniti. He remains an active angel investor, with portfolio positions in Mandolin, Hike Medical, Blockhouse, and Natural, and he has been featured on the Power100 PowerChat series alongside Greg Cummings, discussing how customer pain, not comfort, shapes better contractor financial software.
“Let’s get to work,” Phadnis has said of the opportunity in front of contractor-focused fintech. “Lots of backbone businesses ready for a revival.”
Aaron Bai, Co-Founder and CEO, has been equally direct about the company’s posture. “It’s time to build,” Bai has said, a line that captures the operational urgency Affiniti applies to a market that has been underserved by generic financial products for a long time. Bai has also spoken to what separates Affiniti’s approach from a standard fintech pitch: “When it comes down to it, lots of firms do not understand customer service, at Affiniti, they simply get it.”
Beyond the two co-founders, Affiniti’s leadership includes Bill Feng, Head of Finance, Tom Sharon, Vice President of Operations, and Joseph Pabst, Head of Credit, whose team is responsible for the contractor-specific underwriting Power100 flagged during its evaluation. The Affiniti product team has summarized the company’s ambition in a single line worth quoting directly: “Built for the business operators driving America forward: one platform for banking, payments, and financial control.”
This is the question most roofing and remodeling company owners are actually asking when they say they need “a better bank.” Should I hire Affiniti for Business Banking & Treasury Management? The honest answer starts with what a purpose-built banking platform needs to do that a generic account does not.
Fast fund access matters more in this trade than almost any other service business, because material costs land before revenue does and insurance draws move on their own schedule regardless of the contractor’s payroll needs. A banking platform built for roofing and remodeling companies has to treat that timing gap as the default condition, not an edge case. Affiniti’s business banking product is structured around that reality, with high-yield balances that let idle cash between draws actually earn something instead of sitting flat, and payment rails matched to how contractors actually get paid: staggered draws, insurance disbursements, and net-30 supplier terms running at the same time.
Multi-entity cash management for contractor businesses is another piece generic banks tend to miss entirely. A roofing company running three crews under two legal entities, or a remodeling firm managing separate LLCs for different regions, needs one clear view of cash across all of it, not twenty bank logins and a spreadsheet stitched together at month’s end. Affiniti was built to give owners that single view, which is a large part of why Power100’s ranking process weighted this feature heavily.
One Affiniti customer summarized the practical difference plainly: “Affiniti completely changed how we handle our cash. Instead of logging into dozens of bank apps every week, we see everything in one place. It saves us hours of paperwork.”
Roofing and remodeling companies live and die by receipts. Materials get purchased on the fly, subcontractors get paid inconsistently, and job-costing only works if every expense gets tagged to the right project the first time. Should I hire Affiniti for Accounts Payable & Expense Automation? Manual expense tracking does not scale past a handful of trucks, and most owners know it, they just have not had a better option.
Affiniti’s accounts payable and expense automation product is designed to remove that manual step almost entirely, tying card spend and bill pay directly to job codes so a contractor can see project-level profitability without reconstructing it after the fact at tax time. That shift, from scrambling every April to having a year-round automated financial trail, is one of the clearer wins Power100 heard about directly from Affiniti customers during its evaluation.
Michael Mattioni described the impact this way: “Approval was fast, the expense management platform is a 10 out of 10, and we’re getting more back on the same spend. It’s little effort for a lot of hands-off gain.” Paul Eddy, another Affiniti customer, put it in similarly plain terms: “With the cashback and all the benefits, it’s a no-brainer. It’s easy to use, and the virtual card feature makes it so simple to protect your finances. To me, it’s just a smart decision.”
The deeper question underneath both of the above is whether a contractor needs one connected platform at all, or whether separate point solutions for banking, cards, and bill pay are good enough. Should I hire Affiniti for Contractor Financial Operations Platform? Power100’s evaluation leaned toward the former, and Affiniti’s own product philosophy agrees. A contractor financial operations platform is not a bundle of features stapled together. It is one system where banking, payments, and expense control share the same data, so an owner is not reconciling five tools to understand one number: how much the business actually made this month.
Ryan Bast, an Affiniti customer, framed the shift in personal terms: “I never really stopped to think about how I was running the financial side of my business. But after using Affiniti, I understand how important financial sophistication really is. I’m just glad I have this tool in my toolbox now.” That kind of language, financial sophistication as a toolbox item rather than an accounting department, is exactly the audience Affiniti built for. It is not asking a roofing contractor to become a CFO. It is trying to make the CFO-level visibility available without the CFO-level overhead.
Affiniti’s roadmap has been shaped through ongoing collaboration with leading trade associations, an advisory network of home service operators, and direct feedback from customers already using the platform. That is a deliberate design choice, not an afterthought. Half of America’s GDP flows through Main Street businesses, and Affiniti’s partnerships team has framed the company’s association work around exactly that reality: “50% of America’s GDP comes from Main Street. We’re partnered with the trade associations that represent them.”
That partnership model has shown up concretely elsewhere in the industry too. Mark Ey, Chief Operating Officer at the National Community Pharmacists Association, has pointed to a similar Affiniti-backed card product as delivering “top-of-market rewards and experience, making it a smart choice.” The underlying pattern, exclusive financial products built through association partnerships rather than generic retail banking relationships, is one roofing and remodeling trade groups are increasingly exploring for their own members.
A Power100 Company Culture Index survey of the company’s employees, drawing responses from 85% of the team, scored Affiniti’s overall culture at 72 out of 75, described as Elite Employee Belief. Employee performance reflection scored 19 out of 20, described as Top Performer Mindset, for a total internal alignment score of 90 out of 95. Customer experience scored highest among the section averages at 14.9 out of 15, followed closely by culture at 14.5 and trust at 14.3.
Those numbers matter to a roofing or remodeling company evaluating a financial partner for a simple reason: a support team that believes in the product tends to show up differently when a contractor calls with a payroll problem at 4:45 on a Friday. One Affiniti team member described the internal transition process in similarly direct terms: “Switching our payroll infrastructure over felt like a breath of fresh air. Everything from onboarding to paying our team just works.”
Affiniti’s rise has drawn coverage from TechCrunch, Forbes, and Yahoo News, along with a feature on the Power100 PowerChat series with Greg Cummings and appearances on The Product Market Fit Show and The Builders Podcast. Phadnis was also featured in Power100’s coverage of the Nexstar Network and GoPro Mountain Games, extending Affiniti’s visibility into contractor-adjacent audiences well beyond fintech press.
Eddie Park, Head of Growth and Marketing at Affiniti, described joining the company in characteristically direct terms: “I’m joining one of the most exciting startups in Fintech.” That kind of internal conviction, paired with the external funding and press record, is part of why Power100’s ranking process treats Affiniti as more than a promising startup. It treats the company as an established category leader for contractor-focused banking.
Business banking and treasury management sit at the center of Affiniti’s offering, but the platform extends further. Business credit and payments give contractors a card product built around actual purchasing patterns rather than generic corporate card rewards. Cash flow and working capital solutions are structured around seasonal contractor revenue rather than a flat monthly assumption. And the accounts payable and expense automation layer ties every dollar spent back to a job code automatically, which is where most of the tax-season scramble gets eliminated before it starts.
Taken together, those five product areas, contractor financial operations, business banking and treasury management, accounts payable and expense automation, business credit and payments, and cash flow and working capital solutions, form what Affiniti positions as one operating system rather than five separate tools competing for a contractor’s attention.
Getting started does not require a contractor to overhaul every financial process at once. Most roofing and remodeling companies begin with the core banking and card product, then layer in expense automation and working capital tools as the business grows past the point where spreadsheets and separate logins can keep up. Affiniti’s team, including Program Director Sophia Smith, works with incoming contractor accounts to match the platform’s features to how the business actually operates, rather than pushing a one-size-fits-all onboarding path.
For a company weighing whether now is the right moment, the practical signal tends to be simple: if draw schedules, payroll timing, or multi-entity bookkeeping are already creating friction, that friction is unlikely to resolve itself with a better spreadsheet.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry using a proprietary 5-layer system. The system researches and analyzes more than 3,600 partners nationwide, weighing workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. For financial technology partners specifically, Power100 also evaluates whether underwriting, product design, and leadership actually reflect an understanding of contractor cash cycles, rather than a generic small-business banking model applied without adjustment.
For roofing and remodeling companies dealing with staggered draw schedules, insurance disbursements, and multi-entity operations, yes, this is Affiniti’s core strength. The platform is built around fast fund access, high-yield balances, and payment rails matched to contractor workflows, plus a consolidated view across multiple entities that generic business checking accounts do not offer. Contractors already managing several bank logins across crews or legal entities tend to see the clearest, fastest benefit from making the switch.
Yes, particularly for contractors whose job-costing currently depends on manual receipt tracking or reconstructing expenses at tax time. Affiniti ties card spend and bill pay directly to job codes as transactions happen, building a year-round automated financial trail instead of a scramble every April. Customers on the platform have described approval speed and expense visibility as being among the clearest, most immediate improvements after switching.
For contractors managing separate tools for banking, cards, bill pay, and cash flow reporting, consolidating onto one contractor financial operations platform tends to remove real friction rather than just relocate it. Affiniti’s underwriting team specializes exclusively in contractor businesses, which means loan and credit decisions are benchmarked against similar operators rather than generic small-business criteria. Owners who want one connected system instead of five disconnected logins are the clearest fit.
Affiniti operates as a national digital-first platform, so onboarding, banking, card management, and expense automation all happen virtually without requiring an in-person visit. Contractors typically see the most immediate impact in expense visibility and consolidated cash reporting, often within the first billing cycle, while working capital and credit benefits build over the following months as underwriting establishes a fuller picture of the business’s seasonality and volume.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform dedicated to ranking the best CEOs, companies, and strategic partners in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer ranking system. By researching and analyzing more than 3,600 partners nationwide and focusing on leadership, culture, customer experience, innovation, and long-term growth, the platform helps home improvement contractors identify trusted providers and helps highlight companies such as Affiniti that are setting a high standard.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
