Who owns Axos Bank? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Axos Bank is one of the largest digital-only banks in the United States, and it reaches customers through a website and apps rather than a branch network. It offers checking and savings accounts, mortgages, commercial real estate lending, auto loans, and securities services, all run from a low-cost, technology-first platform.

The bank is not an independent company. It is the core operating subsidiary of Axos Financial, Inc., a bank holding company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker AX. When people ask who owns Axos Bank, the accurate answer is Axos Financial, and because that parent is public, ownership ultimately traces to the shareholders who hold AX stock.

Understanding that structure matters because it separates two different things. Axos Bank has one owner, its parent. Axos Financial has thousands of owners, from index funds to retail traders to the executives who run it. This article follows the chain from the bank up to the people and institutions who actually control the enterprise.

Axos Financial traces its start to July 1999, when Jerry Englert, the founder of Bank of Del Mar, and Gary Lewis Evans, a former president of La Jolla Bank, incorporated BofI Holding, Inc. in Delaware with about $14 million in startup capital. The bank opened for business on July 4, 2000, as Bank of Internet USA, a date chosen to signal independence from traditional branch banking.

The company went public on the NASDAQ in March 2005 under the ticker BOFI. On October 1, 2018, it rebranded from BofI Holding to Axos Financial, renamed its bank subsidiary Axos Bank, and moved its listing to the NYSE under the ticker AX. Management is split between Las Vegas, Nevada, where the holding company is based, and San Diego, California, where much of the operation grew up.

Axos runs a diversified banking model rather than a single consumer app. It lends against commercial real estate, single-family mortgages, and auto loans, gathers low-cost deposits through digital channels, and operates securities and clearing businesses through Axos Clearing and Axos Advisor Services. For fiscal 2025, Axos Financial reported net income of about $432 million on total assets of roughly $24.8 billion, with total equity near $2.68 billion and close to 2,000 employees. That scale, valued in the market at around $5.7 billion, is the kind of figure a business valuation calculator helps put in context.

Axos Bank does not have its own shareholders. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Axos Financial, Inc., which holds 100% of the bank. Axos Financial is the entity that trades publicly, so all of the meaningful ownership analysis happens one level up at the holding company.

Axos Financial is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker AX. Its shares trade freely, and no single shareholder controls the company. Ownership is spread across institutional asset managers, company insiders, and retail investors, which is typical of a mid-cap US bank holding company. This makes Axos very different from a founder-controlled private bank or a neobank still backed by venture capital, such as Chime before its own public listing.

Neither of the founders controls Axos today. Jerry Englert and Gary Lewis Evans launched the bank in 1999 and 2000, but the company has since gone public, issued stock for acquisitions and compensation, and turned over its leadership. There is no founder-held control block or special class of founder shares. Axos Financial has a single class of common stock, so voting power tracks economic ownership share for share, with no dual-class structure protecting insiders.

The most significant individual stake today belongs to management rather than the founders. That reflects nearly two decades of equity compensation and open-market buying by the executive team, above all the CEO.

Because Axos Financial is public, its largest owners are institutional asset managers that hold the stock on behalf of index funds, pension plans, and mutual funds. Exact percentages shift every quarter as funds file updated 13F disclosures, so the figures below are approximate and reflect 2026 filings.

Taken together, institutional investors hold roughly two-thirds of Axos Financial's shares, with insiders and retail investors owning the rest. The precise split varies by data provider and reporting date, so treat these as directional rather than exact.

BlackRock and The Vanguard Group are the two largest holders, a pattern common to nearly every US-listed company. Their stakes are held mostly through passive index and exchange-traded funds that own AX because it is a component of the indexes they track, not because of an active bet on the bank. These holders rarely intervene in strategy, but their combined weight gives them real influence in shareholder votes.

Dimensional Fund Advisors applies a quantitative, factor-based approach and tends to hold small and mid-cap value stocks like Axos across broad portfolios. State Street and FMR LLC, the parent of Fidelity, round out the top institutional block through their own index and managed funds. None of these firms plays an operational role; they are financial owners seeking returns.

As an NYSE-listed bank holding company, Axos Financial is regulated by federal banking supervisors and files quarterly and annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its board is elected by shareholders, and its single-class share structure means control follows ownership. Axos has also used its public currency to return capital, repurchasing stock and, more recently, paying a dividend, both of which shift the ownership base over time as shares are bought back or new holders come in.

Gregory Garrabrants is the central figure in Axos's control. He joined the bank as president and CEO in 2007, when it was still BofI Holding, and led its transformation from a niche internet-only mortgage lender into a diversified bank holding company. He also serves as chairman of the board, concentrating both executive and board leadership in one person. With an ownership stake of roughly 3%, he is the largest individual holder and the most influential single decision-maker at the company.

Axos Financial is governed by a board elected by shareholders, with Garrabrants as chairman alongside independent directors who chair the audit, compensation, and governance committees. Because no outside investor holds a controlling block, the board answers to a dispersed shareholder base rather than to a single owner. This is a standard public-company governance model, though the combined chairman and CEO role concentrates more authority in Garrabrants than a split structure would.

Day-to-day control sits with Garrabrants and a senior management team overseeing the bank, the securities and clearing businesses, lending, technology, and risk. These executives hold equity through compensation plans, which aligns them with shareholders and, over time, has made insiders a meaningful ownership bloc rather than a token one.

Between 2015 and 2016, the research firm Marcus Aurelius Value published a series of reports attacking what was then BofI Holding, alleging weak underwriting, exposure to high-risk foreign borrowers and payday lenders, and questions about the bank's disclosures. The stock fell sharply as the reports circulated. Axos has consistently rejected the allegations, and years later the firm publicly noted that it had not been fined or subject to an enforcement action over the claims. Short-seller scrutiny returned periodically, including a 2023 report from the Bear Cave newsletter that revisited related concerns.

In 2015, a former internal auditor named Charles Matthew Erhart sued the bank, alleging he was fired in retaliation for reporting suspected misconduct to regulators and the SEC. His claims included allegations about executive accounts and the bank's responses to a regulatory subpoena. The case went to trial, and in 2022 a federal jury found in Erhart's favor on several counts, awarding him damages for retaliation and defamation. The bank disputed the findings and continued to litigate aspects of the case. An independent investigation commissioned by the audit committee earlier found no support for claims of fraud by the bank or management.

The controversies drew regulatory attention, including inquiries from the SEC and other agencies during the 2015 to 2017 period. The company has stated that it was not fined or subject to an enforcement action, and no SEC enforcement case was brought against it over these matters. A related securities class action worked through the courts for years, with the Ninth Circuit reversing a dismissal in 2020 and allowing claims to proceed, illustrating how long the legal aftermath ran even without a regulatory penalty.

Axos has also drawn attention for specific lending relationships, including loans tied to high-profile borrowers, and for the reputational sensitivity that comes with a digital bank operating in commercial real estate and specialty lending. These are business and reputational risks rather than confirmed wrongdoing, but they factor into how investors weigh the stock.

Ownership shapes accountability at Axos in a way that is easy to miss because the brand most people see is the bank, not the holding company. Axos Bank answers to a single owner, Axos Financial, and Axos Financial answers to public shareholders. That means the bank's strategy, from how aggressively it lends to how much capital it returns, is ultimately set by decisions that must satisfy institutional investors and the market, not a private founder or a parent conglomerate.

The dominance of passive institutional holders like BlackRock and Vanguard gives Axos a stable, dispersed shareholder base. No activist owns enough to force a sale or a strategic overhaul on their own, which gives management room to run the business over a longer horizon. It also means that broad market forces, index inclusion, and sector sentiment move the stock as much as company-specific news, a dynamic that differs from venture-backed digital banks like SoFi in their earlier private years.

The size of the CEO's stake is the other lever that matters. With roughly 3% of the company and both the chairman and CEO titles, Gregory Garrabrants has more concentrated influence than any outside investor. That alignment can be a strength, tying his wealth to shareholder returns and to the bank's efficiency, which has consistently ranked among the best in US banking. It is also a governance concentration risk, since combining the roles reduces the independent check a separate chairman would provide.

For customers, the public structure is mostly reassuring. It means Axos is transparent about its finances, regulated as a public bank holding company, and answerable to the disclosure rules of the SEC and its banking supervisors. The stock's profitability and low cost base, measurable with tools like an EBITDA calculator adapted for banks, are what let it fund competitive deposit rates and keep expanding through acquisitions rather than branches.

Axos Bank is wholly owned by Axos Financial, Inc., a publicly traded holding company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker AX. The bank has no separate shareholders of its own. Axos Financial, in turn, is owned by public shareholders, led by large institutional investors such as BlackRock and The Vanguard Group.

Axos Bank itself is not separately traded, but its parent company, Axos Financial, is. Axos Financial trades on the NYSE under the ticker AX, so investors buy the parent rather than the bank directly. This is the same pattern seen at many other listed financial firms, including online brokers like Robinhood.

The company was founded in 1999 as BofI Holding, Inc. by Jerry Englert, founder of Bank of Del Mar, and Gary Lewis Evans, a former president of La Jolla Bank. It began operating as Bank of Internet USA in July 2000 and rebranded to Axos in 2018. Neither founder controls the company today.

Gregory Garrabrants has been president and CEO since 2007 and also serves as chairman of the board. He is the largest individual shareholder, holding roughly 3% of Axos Financial, and is the company's most influential single decision-maker.

The largest holders are institutional asset managers, led by BlackRock and The Vanguard Group, followed by Dimensional Fund Advisors, State Street, and FMR (Fidelity). Institutions together own roughly two-thirds of the stock. Among individuals, CEO Gregory Garrabrants holds the largest stake. Exact percentages change each quarter as funds update their filings.

Axos Financial carried a market capitalization of roughly $5.7 billion in August 2026. The company reported net income of about $432 million and total assets near $24.8 billion for fiscal 2025. As a public bank, its value fluctuates daily with its share price, unlike the private valuations of venture-backed digital brokers such as Webull.