All right. Next up, we're excited to welcome Perry Beberman. He's CFO of Bread Financial. He has more than 30 years of experience in the industry. Wow, that's a long time. He joined Bread back in 2021, and he's helped rebrand and transition Alliance Data to Bread Financial. Please welcome me in welcoming Perry. You know, I started every one of these sessions with the, you know, the looming risk of what's happening with the economy. Obviously, it's a really tumultuous time. People are trying to figure out direction. Maybe you could give us an update on sort of what you're seeing in the portfolio.
Yeah. You know, I think what, you know, what everyone wants to know is what's to come next. When we started to think about what's happening with the economy and you wind it back to the past year, we knew there was gonna be normalization with consumers as they got back to their normal spend patterns. They were able to travel again, and you started to see the wind down of some of the effects of stimulus, meaning that they had these, you know, I'll say excess savings. You start to see some of the saving rates come down, and you're starting to see consumer debt come back up as that's sort of like a reversion to the mean.
What I think is unique about this environment is, and what we've been watching, is the impact inflation is having on the broad base of the consumer. I think about middle income, moderate income, and lower income families, that's who's most impacted. It's a regressive tax. Hence that's why, you know, the Fed is so focused on trying to get inflation back under control. What's unique about this environment is it's a job full environment where unemployment has remained very low, yet inflation is creating pressure. What I, what I refer to as like, it's like the economy has a cold. You know, it's the entire portfolio has a little bit of a cold. It doesn't feel well. As soon as inflation gets under control, they'll obviously feel a lot better.
What we're watchful for is does unemployment start to creep in in the back part of the year. You know, as it relates to what we're seeing, you are seeing a deceleration of spend, not surprising as consumers are making choices to spend less to try to manage their income flow as real job growth real wage growth hasn't kept up with inflation. We're watching a little bit of a transition from discretionary spend to non-discretionary spend. You're seeing some maybe brand to off-brand spend. You know, those are things consumers are trying to be responsible. There's no question when you listen to collections, delinquencies starting to go up, leverage is coming back up with this population, they're trying to make things work, this inflation's real. It's tough.
You know, so, like, you've obviously done this for a very long time. I've covered the space for a very long time. It's always that credit follows the employment trends. Understanding that inflation's supposed not been as big a factor as it's been in the past.
Yeah.
Given that incomes are growing too, shouldn't that be helping offset some of that pain on inflation, or is there something else underneath it all?
You know, and that's what is unique about this, and I talk about this a lot when we think about what's the loss outlook for the future. When we look at past cycles, to your point, it's been unemployment-led. Unemployment's a leading indicator of future loss. When someone loses a job, that's that stress event where they run out of cash, they can no longer pay their bills, they go bad. When I refer to, you know, the portfolio has a cold, all right, everybody's feeling it. When someone loses their job, it's that extra 3% of the people that now feel that significant stress they can't pay.
Mm-hmm.
This is different. You're right. I mean, I've been at this for over 30 years, and Same with our credit models, loss models, all industry models. If anyone tells you anything different, I'm not sure they're being entirely truthful because models are calibrated on past performance, and we haven't had data and the credit card data available to us that have gone through these high periods of inflation. This is different, which is where, you know, I don't know if this is one of the things you're gonna ask me about later, is like when you think about the reserving that we do, when you're trying to figure out, "Hey, what might things look like?" Well, you don't know because it's not like the unemployment projection's that high in a baseline.
This inflation environment is what has me most concerned is, hey, how long can the consumer hold on? How long does it take, you know, for the Fed to get inflation under control to give relief to the consumers?
How are you managing the business in the backdrop of this? Like, what are you doing differently than you were doing six months ago, for example?
Just like you would in any credit environment, you've taken a number of factors as you're managing credit. We have a very seasoned credit management team, sophisticated tools. You're looking at lots of different cohorts and variables, not just existing consumer behavior. Are you seeing any change in their payment patterns? Any change in their spend patterns? Any change in their balances, both on us but also off us, when you look at bureau attributes. You take those factors into consideration, and you adjust lines. Whether it's at, when you're issuing new credit, you know, we're in the business of, you know, low and grow. You'll go with a lower initial line assignment, and as they demonstrate good behavior, you know, good payment behavior, you can grow that line over time. Now you're a little more cautious with that line.
Similarly, for existing accounts, line management, line increases I just talked about, you may not do as much of those. You also do some risk detection where perhaps you have to reduce lines based on things like that.
Mm-hmm.
To reduce exposure. It's very active, but that's in any part of the cycle. You're constantly tuning that. There's nothing that you've had to do wholesale, but it's something that, you know, certainly you watch for. You're also, you know, I'll say contracting a little bit on the edges. You know, you look at our growth outlook for the year, we pulled that back some, recognizing the environment we're in, both from a consumer demand, their spend, as well as our credit strategies.
Can you talk about how different the portfolio looks today, maybe even compared to when you joined and maybe even slightly ahead of, you know, before then? I mean, it seems like you have had an evolution in the, in the portfolio, more upmarket, given you have more co-brand, for example. Maybe you can just talk about that a little bit.
When I joined, we were in the final stage of what I'll call a business transformation to jettison or spin off the last, you know, I'll say non-core businesses as it related to our payment space. Now it was focused on the business and space that we're in, which is largely credit card payment solutions and direct-to-consumer savings. The portfolio used to be predominantly private label. There was no co-brand, general purpose card. Now over time, the portfolio today sits around a little over 50% co-brand general purpose card. That's a big shift from where it was. Now with the BJ's portfolio going out, the numbers will shift around.
That's, you think about directionally where things have gone, that should continue to then migrate back because general purpose spend, I'll say, helps you diversify your spend patterns, and you're not as reliant on, say, you know, brick-and-mortar retailers. That's a big change from where this company's been in the past. Couple that with other diversified lending instruments like installment lending. The buy now, pay later purchase of Bread had two components to it. There's an installment loan component, and there's the split pay. That completed, I'll say, the product suite for the company.
Got it. If we were to move into a period where the macro is more challenged, what kind of levers do you have at your disposal outside of just underwriting? I mean, the kind of stuff you're talking about. Maybe just on the expense side, other sort of financial levers. Maybe you can just walk us through those.
When you think about going to periods like this, you do throttle your growth, right? Because you've got to figure out you're still trying to make sure you're growing responsibly. I've seen companies over the years take different tactics through it, where some just grow right on through it, and sometimes they're right, sometimes they're really wrong. For us, it's just actively managing, like I talked about earlier, with every underwriting decision you make based on the environment you have, what we do is we take a stressed approach at the time of underwriting. We try to stress each account for about 50% increase in losses, and does it still hurdle. That's an important factor in terms of how we look at it.
You don't turn off underwriting completely, but we'll pull back on the direct-to-consumer marketing. I'll say this too, we're also conservative with the way we look at risk scores, the VantageScore.
Mm-hmm.
During COVID, you know, when the stimulus came, you saw this period of elevated inflated risk score. All the consumers' risk scores got a little bit better. We didn't take that as, you know, we knew that was a head fake because as soon as you got past that and consumers revert, reverse, I'll say reverse, the reversion to the mean, that those would come back down. That's exactly what you saw through normalization. Now, I think you're past the period of normalization for moderate middle-income Americans, and now you're starting to feel that you're a little bit of erosion on FICO scores, risk scores due to inflation impacts. You know, you just, you do, you throw up and like we're pulling back on market a little bit right now in credit strategies. We're not chasing growth.
It's interesting 'cause some of the issuers are still growing at a pretty nice rate despite sort of the choppy backdrop because they're pretty they have high conviction that the economy is still on solid footing, which is interesting to me.
It is. It's on solid footing, but it's also where do you lend, right? We're more of a full-spectrum lender. If we were focused on super-prime and the high prime, they're basically unaffected by this, right? They're feeling like the wages keep going up. They can handle inflation without a blip. It's more middle income and moderate income families that are really feeling the pain of inflation. I think you've heard economists talk about a K-shaped recovery. Well, we're past the stage of recovery. I think we're in this K-shaped economy, and we'll see how this plays out. You know, that's kind of where I can see where there's different views on it.
That makes sense. Maybe we could talk about the other topic that's sort of the elephant in the room, which is the CFPB's proposal around credit card late fees. I know you've talked about it a little bit in terms of, you know, how you can make adjustments. Maybe just walk us through where you're at right now and how you intend to sort of execute until we get to a final proposal.
Yeah. I think as we think about the CFPB proposal, you know, what I'd tell you is, as a company, we remain very compliant with all the regulations that are out there. Similarly, when we're looking at the buy now, pay later space, we operate as a bank. We make sure we're compliant with all those rules and regulations. Similarly, as it relates to late fees, today, we apply the rules that the CFPB has governed through the, you know, safe harbor fees. You know, while we don't necessarily agree with the proposal that is out there in terms of the fee structure, you know, we're gonna work through it. We'll work with them, and, you know, I'll say the other participants to come up with something that hopefully is fair to all.
When you think about late fees, the number one reason consumers pay on time is to avoid a late fee. The fee needs to be enough to be a deterrent. As it relates to if the fee is significantly different, we'll work through strategies to mitigate it. At the end of the day, there's a cost to collect, there's a cost to lend, and ultimately, you have to get the right return on capital to do that lending. You know, we'll do things like, you know, across the board pricing. More risk-based pricing, introduce, you know, fees for credit. Whatever it is that you have to do to the point of then you're trying to leave the retail partner or brand partners whole is the best you can to not impact them, but ultimately, there could be some retail share agreement changes.
The last thing is it'll re-restrict credit to customers is the ultimate, 'cause you've gotta get paid for the risk, that could be the unintended consequence of it. Consumers, you know, like we talk about for $8, if that was the proposal, that's a venti latte, right? Would you not go late if that was the case? They really gotta make sure they're not harming their credit from that either.
It is a fact that it's $8 for a venti latte, by the way.
I know that I paid that bill for my daughter's lattes plenty.
Can't believe it's $8 now. I guess like what do you think is being lost in the communication with the CFPB on deterrence? 'Cause like to me, I agree, you know, that deterrence is should be a factor in terms of, a cost input into this. I mean, you're the second person today to say that, you know, you believe this. I mean, how do you get that message across to the CFPB?
Look, I don't know what the CFPB's agenda is. I don't work for the CFPB. What I'd say is, you know, the regulation comes about for whatever reason and, you know, we'll work with it like we worked through Card Act. At the end of the day, we mitigated the financial impacts of that. We'll continue to work through that. I think, you know, it's what's the motivation? Not sure. You know, you gotta look at the studies that are done, do consumer studies, understand what late fees do and don't do, and come up with a solution that works for all. Ultimately, there's a cost to credit, and banks will find a way to, you know, call that back.
Understood. Maybe we'll shift gears, talk about the competitive backdrop, you know.
Sorry.
That's cool. A year ago, we were talking about buy now, pay later, you know, as it being the biggest competitive threat maybe two years ago, right? I think prior to that, there was a lot of dislocation among banks buying for portfolios, and that continues to some extent today. Maybe not at the same rate as we had seen two years ago. Maybe just give us the temperature of the backdrop that you operate in today, competitively.
Competitively, you know, I think as it relates to new deals, RFPs, what I do love about Bread Financial is we can compete up and down the spectrum for size of portfolios. When I say that, clearly not going after things like Apple Card or the Amazon portfolios, not those $20 billion deals. But ones that have reasonable size from could be $100 million where it's not as much competition, to ones where you looked at the AAA portfolio that we won, and that was more like $1.5 billion . You know, we like all of those. You know, we can put together a number of those $100 million-$500 million deals that add up to something really nice with nice returns.
We can compete for ones that are a little more competitive. But what we do is we try to differentiate ourselves not just on price and economics. We've won deals that are larger, where we weren't the, I'll call best economics, but there was confidence from the brand partner that we could grow the pie better than the competition. That's what you're really trying to win on. I think as long as I've been in this space from, I'll say, well, I started in the late 1980s, but, you know, starting in the mid-1990s, the competition really started to heat up in the credit card space, and it just hasn't stopped.
What I love about it is it forces innovation, and in the world we're in today, it's about coming up with good creative value propositions for the consumer, ways to market, ways to deepen. Being a full-spectrum lender is a competitive advantage. Then offering a full suite. I mean, you talked about buy now, pay later. No question. I mean, I got under the hood of that as soon as I joined Bread Financial a little over 18 months ago, and I started looking at some of the deal economics and scratched my head thinking, "Who would ever sign these?" There were big signing bonus, thin economics, and there's no way it was gonna work. We stepped away from it because the mantra was be disciplined, and we're gonna drive responsible growth.
Now what you're seeing is a bit of a pullback in that space to more rational economics. We are well positioned to, you know, lean in on some of the buy now, pay later or split pay if those economics make sense, and that is consumer preference or our brand partner's preference.
How's that gonna play out? Like, There's probably RFPs that are gonna come out because there's contracts that were signed. Is that in front of us now? Like, because it seems like we're hitting up against the time period.
I think that's exactly right, is I think a lot of the buy now, pay later contracts were shorter term in nature, right? You look at these co-brand deals, they're usually five to 10 years in term. What we're observing is, you know, the buy now, pay later were two to three year terms, so they are cycling. I can only say what I've read as well, is that a number of them are coming up for renewal. They're going back and renegotiating terms because with higher cost of funds, there's something called credit losses. You know, something called regulation may be coming. You know, it's a maturing space, and I think with that, you get rational economics, and then you'll really get good competition in there.
I guess like you've onboarded and extended your relationships with a number of partners. Maybe you could just talk about how you've won in the marketplace today, right? I have to believe that buy now, pay later and extending a product extension helped, but is there anything else that you guys are doing that's different from before?
No, it certainly does help. I think the strength of the data analytics, being a full-spectrum lender, being able to go a little deeper helps. In this space, when you're in the, I'll say, the brand partner space or with co-brands, it's a relationship space. When Ralph Andretta, our CEO, came on board, he hired Valerie Greer, who was, you know, instrumental in co-brand space and her background in this partnership space. She built out a business development team and a client partnership team that's really focused on those relations and relationships. They had deep connections into the industry. The deals that I see come across our table, we're getting looks at almost everything. Whereas, where I was before, they knew not to send those deals over because the company wasn't serious about it because of a strategy.
This place, we're getting great looks at things, and we're making serious offers for and competitive offers for these deals where we really have a chance to win. It's, it's the, it's the full package, and then also knowing that we're gonna take care of them and we're gonna grow that pie together. That's the biggest thing that they're looking for.
I mean, you worked at large banks that had the balance sheet benefit, right? This is obviously a smaller balance sheet. You don't necessarily have the scale on the balance sheet side as you did at your other shops. How do you compete with that economically? Is it just about economics, or is it about something else in terms of winning today?
It's, it's a combination. Look, you're not gonna win a brand partner without giving them strong economics. That's just the way it goes. At the same time, they have to have confidence that they're gonna get the attention, the customization, if there's customization that's required, and the attention that they want to know their brand is valued and that they matter. That's part of what the culture and philosophy of our business is to make sure we can do that. As it relates to, you know, capital, you're not wrong that this company has run itself in a very thin capital position. I remember the first time I met you, I think we had a... I don't know if we were almost like a 0 TCE-to-TA ratio , but we were just above, maybe I think we were like 2%.
Mm-hmm.
You know, my charge was to try to get us up to, we'll say, peer-level capital ratios. Where we are today, you know, you can probably see from the way I've taken a position on a conservative view of our reserve rate and building that ahead of looking around the corner of what could be coming, that we have enough financial resiliency there, coupled with building our capital levels. When we did the spin, that helped with a nice shot in the arm for our capital. Now where we will sit at the end of this first quarter, we'll be at a very nice level relative to where we were, you know, probably above where we were in the third quarter. You know, that's about running this place, building the capital, getting that resiliency, so it's less of a concern.
No, it's great. I mean, I agree. I think the direction that capital is headed is positive. Pretty healthy reserve rate. I'm just curious, like, you know, what happens if you don't see the follow-through that you're seeing on the credit metrics because the economy is still relatively good? Can you guys have that qualitative overlay, you know, for some time? Because it might take till next year before we see anything on credit.
Yeah. I think when you say that, I think we're already seeing it, right? In our portfolio, we have a 6% through the cycle loss rate is the, I'll say, the underlying target, which means you're gonna have periods in stress where you're above 6%, and you have periods then you're gonna be below 6% to average out to the 6%. Our guidance to this year says, hey, we're gonna be around 7%. Now, some portion of that is because we have some carryover effect of the conversion, where we should see, like in the month of February, a significant step-up in the loss rate compared to what it was in January of over 100 basis points, and that's from a July action.
We get through the second half of the year, then we're gonna be really kind of a, what I'll say, in the norm of what's happening in this environment, which is still above 6%. There's still the impact of inflation. Now granted, our rate's gonna be up a little bit 'cause BJ's goes out, which is in our portfolio, a lower rate. Yeah, it's. When you talk about what's to happen next year, we'll get into it more in our investor day later in the year. That's the thing, right? I don't have a crystal ball. When you talk about the overlay to my reserve rate, what I expect to happen is as the baseline. Credit quality in the portfolio deteriorates a little bit, right? Is what you're seeing is delinquencies goes up, that comes up.
The baseline economic outlook that feeds into the base model will also erode a little bit. It allows me to dial down that conservative risk overlay. Right now, it's kind of playing out as I've expected.
You have some transitory stuff there, though. You know, sort of.
I have some transitory-
That's the hard part.
for the conversion.
Yeah, for the conversion.
That makes it a little hard.
Yeah.
The fact that even without the conversion, we're a little bit above the 6% through the cycle is part of the stress that the inflation environment's creating. What I'm expecting to happen in the back part of the year, if things play out as the Fed would like, and I would like too, is that inflation starts to come down throughout the year.
Right.
I think what we're expecting is that unemployment may start to go up, and that's a leading indicator for what losses could do than in 2024. I'm not expecting a lot of impact in this year from elevated unemployment.
Got it. Okay, very helpful. Maybe just transitioning to new products, and you guys rolled out the new Bread Cashback card with American Express. You know, I know Ralph has talked about a positive reception to the product. Maybe you can just talk about how you see that product growing and becoming a bigger part of the business.
Yeah. When I think about proprietary cards, a branded product, the Bread Cashback Amex card, it's a nice product. It's a 2% cashback card. Having the Amex cachet to it is nice with those benefits. I view it more as a little bit of a niche product right now. You're not gonna see us put a billion-dollar marketing campaign out there. It's something we're using very targeted. We're testing in some places, and we're gonna make sure that we target consumers who revolve. I mean, that's the sweet spot where you make money. We're not looking to chase the super-prime customer, where you have to put out big incentives or big bonus programs, and there's really thin returns where it takes you five years to get a payback.
This is about, you know, keeping it in our sweet spot and growing it nice and steady over time. You know, one of the things that I applaud the team, it already happened before I joined, they converted almost, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of customers who didn't have a home because the, as I said, the partner, brand partner may have gone bankrupt or whatever it was, converted them into a commodity card, that one and a half cashback product. That created a branded solution. That combined with the new Amex card, we have over 1 million customers now in those products. You can build upon that.
That's something where you can throttle that up and down on a discretionary basis depending on the, you know, the environment that we're in. In an environment like this where we're throttling back a little bit on growth, we'll throttle that investment back a little.
Mm-hmm.
In periods of strong economy, you wanna lean in a little bit more, we can do that.
Like, these customers would have what type of card, but not for this card? Like, who are you taking share from with that card?
You know, it's really.
It's like a prime revolver?
Yeah. It'd be a prime revolver. That's a near prime to prime revolvers, where I would say-
Okay.
that sweet spot is.
Got it.
We can cross-sell that into our, you know, Bread direct-to-consumer savings accounts, where we now hold over $5.5 billion Of direct-to-consumer deposits.
Yeah, I wanna talk about that. Like, yeah, so maybe how much bigger can that pool of deposits become? I think that could be a really positive development for funding costs.
It absolutely is. I mean, we're up, I wanna say, over 70% year-over-year in direct-to-consumer deposits, and that has been a deliberate strategy. You know, one of the things that I'm pleased about is we did hire a new treasurer who's from financial services, deep experience in the space, and is looking at our entire debt stack and funding strategy. One of the things that Ralph put out there, I think nearly after he started that, we were looking at increasing our direct-to-consumer deposits to over 50% of our funding over time. As we continue to grow the business, not only do we want to continue to grow the deposits to keep up with that, but to actually get to be an increasing percent of our mix.
I think today we're around 26% of our funding mix, and I would expect it to exit the year at a much higher rate than that as we continue to march towards that. You're right, it is a great funding instrument for us.
How high can it theoretically go?
Theoretically?
Yeah, it can go...
Well-
Yeah.
It really depends how high you wanna take the rate table, I suppose.
You have really high-yielding assets, you know?
That's right, and mostly variable price. For us, being towards the higher end of the league table is fine.
Right.
As rates go up, we're fine passing most of that on in terms of CD rates or high-yield savings because the, you know, prime rate is going to increase the yield on our assets. You know, we're not trying to be, you know, clever with, you know, a rate arbitrage one way or another. I'm trying to be pretty neutral, you know, on net interest margin.
Absolutely. Okay. I've got a couple more questions, but I figured let me open up to the audience, see if there's any questions from the audience. If not, I can continue with my questions. Any questions? One right here. No, just one second, Eric. Go for it.
Private label credit exists in many markets around the world. Any thoughts in taking Bread overseas?
Canada, you know, would be an interesting, convenient market.
You know.
I like this question.
That is a great question, and one that, we have not really fully explored the international space right now to be candid. We've actually retrenched from the international operations to re-simplify our business, make sure we get our systems working as expected, compliant with U.S. regulations, and, you know, take care of what we've got, and go from there. We're constantly looking at, you know, what adjacencies make sense. It's something, you know, certainly, comes across the wires every once in a while as something that, we evaluate.
Okay. Any other questions in the room? There's one back there. Just one second, and we'll get the mic to you.
Hi. Firstly, thanks for the presentation. The shift from consumer to business. I'm just interested to know if Bread has plans for B2B and specifically verticals, specific verticals in?
B2B financial management.
Right now, we are solely focused on consumer, right? You get into small business commercial, it's an entirely different type of underwriting. We'd have to build out that capability. It's something that we look at, we evaluate it. Again, similar to the question of going international, you just have to If you're gonna step into that space, you have to really make sure you have the competencies in place to do that. It's not the same as underwriting consumers. Even though folks thinks they think it is, I can tell you from where I came from when I was a CFO of our small business banking, it is, it is not the same. You know, there can be missteps if you don't really go through the right process to make sure you have the competencies in order to do that.
Right now, it's not something that we do. It is something that we have talked about at different points. Again, with where we are right now in this economy and the product build-out, we're staying focused on the core. Good question. Thank you.
Thank you. Any other questions in the room? You know, along those lines, one of your competitors is doing sort of embedded finance-like products for merchants. Is that something that you've considered given you have a bank and obviously over time, there's a view that maybe, you know, those merchants and your partners could be a distribution source?
Yeah. I mean, if you think about the buy now, pay later product that we have today, we have a construct with, you know, RBC in Canada, where we kind of do that, where we're Platform as a Service. In other places, you know, we have a sales finance type of a business. Embedded finance could be a natural extension. As adjacencies, again, it's another thing that we look at to leverage the platform that we have, you know, to generate the, I'll say, the loans, the revenue, but also lean on the core competencies that we have. It is certainly something that is, you know, worth considering.
My final question is about the conversion. You know, maybe we could just talk about the learnings from the conversion and what we have to look forward to now that we're almost done. Obviously, there's gonna be a little bit of a headwind on credit as a result in the short term, and there has been, but, you know, there's probably positive things on the horizon. Maybe you just kinda walk us through all of that.
I sure hope so.
Me too.
No. You know, this is the second massive conversion like this that I've been through in my career. You know, when I went through it at the first time, there was a lot of people, a ton of costs put against it. It was a different time and era. Similarly, this was a large-scale conversion. You know, with any of these conversions, they never go off exactly as you hope. You know, I think some of it was, you know, I think everybody was hoping it was gonna go flawlessly, and I think you always do. There's some, you know, there's a long tail on some of these things. I saw it in the last one as well, and I think that's part of working through this. There's no question things could have gone better.
Throughout this, we were really keen on making sure that we took care of our partners, making sure they were whole, taking care of the consumer, and that there was no harm done to them that, you know, if something was weird with the rewards, that they were at whole on that. If there was something that, you know, if payments weren't getting through because they couldn't call in or that we were giving them accommodations. All these things are, like you said, kind of going to see their way through right now. We get on to what we expect to be the cost benefits in the next couple years, as well as increased pricing capabilities.
If there's changes, like, you know, if there's changes to regulation, well, our partner now has to code all that and test it as they would for all their other partners. We'll be the beneficiary of not having to do that ourselves. There's definitely opportunity to lean in on the new capabilities of our, of our processing partner, and we're excited about that.
Can you just like talk a little bit about the cost side of this, like how much more efficient it will be over some period of time using this platform versus having your internally sourced one. I understand there's efficiencies in terms of having a better, more modern platform, one that has more utility that can help the revenue side, right.
Yeah.
On the cost side, like are there redundant costs that at some point go away or?
So-
How should we think about that?
I think the way I think about cost is, I'll give one quick commentary on cost. You know, first quarter this year, still gonna be some elevated costs. We're looking at probably costs compared to the fourth quarter, flat to slightly down. That's probably gonna be our, I don't know if it's our probably our high watermark for the year, and then it starts to come down. We do have a little bit of some overlapping costs while you're kind of moving off certain platforms to other processes. It wasn't just the conversion to Fiserv that we did. We also went to the Azure cloud. We converted a collection system. We moved off of some other third parties.
There was a lot of things going on that should give us a nice glide path going forward into the outer years. We'll give more, again, guidance around that later in the year. A lot of the investments have some payoff in terms of, Like, I'll take the example, the digital investments that we've been making. You know, we're gonna deploy our first mobile app, which is hard to believe to say that out loud. This is how the business has been underinvested in for a long time. When Ralph and Val came in, they made a commitment to making the right investments to modernize the platform. A mobile app is how consumers wanna pay their bills. They wanna see things. Instead of them calling in or getting, you know, they can go in and check in.
That's gonna lower our cost to serve over time. Later this year, that'll deploy. Hopefully, we get that out, you know, more widespread and get that adoption. Lots of things can help drive down our cost over time.
All right. Great. Any other questions in the room before we conclude?
We should probably give some more guidance on that. That, you know, that's dependent upon the opportunities we see to invest. We talked about growing the proprietary card. It's a combination of how much you wanna invest in capabilities, your technology, what's required to compete and/or grow the business. It's really about those measures and metrics, and then what are you doing for cost to serve as that comes down to help. If you bring that down, it helps you to reinvest, to continue to grow, so long as you can find the right economics that make sense to lean into.
All right. I don't see any other hand raised, so we're gonna stop right there. Thank you, Perry.