Good morning and welcome to our 13th annual Fintech & Payments Conference. I'm Sanjay Sakhrani. I lead the equity research efforts at KBW for payments and consumer finance. I think this is 1 of our best conferences yet, of the ones that we've done over the last 13 years. We have 150 companies presenting.
We have 1,200 meetings that we've set up and 950 attendees at this event. It sort of morphed into significantly more than a cards and payments conference, which is what we started 13 years ago. I think the intent has been to make this more broad in terms of a financial technology conference, and I think we've accomplished that goal today.
We're obviously excited to bring you the views from leading industry executives, both from public and private companies, along with experts on a variety of different themes and topics that we'll cover over the next few days.
So let me just get started with our first session. I guess I'm gonna need this mic here. Joining us from Synchrony Financial are Brian Doubles, he's the President and CEO, as well as Brian Wenzel, who's the CFO. Brian Doubles has been CEO for about 2 years now, and Brian Wenzel's been CFO since 2019. They obviously have been at the company for much longer than that. I'm not gonna count the years. You guys can.
Please don't.
Thank you, guys, for attending and supporting us at this conference. Maybe we start with the elephant in the room, in my opinion, because I think everyone's worried about what your views are on the state of the economy and the health of the consumer.
You know, we're getting a whole bunch of mixed data points, and obviously, it's had an effect on the way the market's trading and your stock is trading. Maybe we could get some updated views. Brian Doubles, you wanna start, and then Brian Wenzel continue?
First, thanks for having us. I think we've been at this conference for about 10 years now, I think since we went public. It's a great conference that you and the team put on, Sanjay, thanks for having us. Look, I would say everything that we look at right now when we look at the consumer, the trends, everything looks still very strong.
I think that's what people are wrestling with a little bit right now as you look at current state, you see really good spending patterns, a lot of demand for our products. You know, balance growth, at least through January, was up 15%, that trend's continuing.
When we look at credit, you know, we're starting to normalize like we expected, but very much in line with the outlook that we put out in January. No matter, you know, what you're looking at, things today seem pretty strong. We look at deposit balances for the consumer, they're still very healthy. Consumers still have some stimulus left.
I think we are gonna see a K-shaped recovery. I think there's growing consensus around that. You know, I think inflation at the higher income levels and higher credit levels is. It's an annoyance. They're frustrated by it, but it hasn't deterred their behaviors or how they're spending. I think that's, you know, those are all positive indicators. I think in the lower income levels, lower credit bands, you're starting to see more of that normalization, not surprisingly.
When you add it all up, everything that we've seen so far kind of 1/4 to date lines up with the outlook that we put out in January. I don't know, Brian, if you'd add anything to that.
I'd just add a little color. On the K-shaped recovery, we do see below prime actually normalize back to 2019 levels, spending, payments, delinquency. The upper bands are performing much better still than 2019, which is really giving us the positive belief. You know, Brian talked about, you know, assets are up 15%, really sales driven, so our purchase volume's up mid-teens.
Payment rate's still up. Payment rate's up actually in the low teens, so it's still hanging in there, which tells you the consumer's continuing to weather the storm fairly well, and that's really a build-up between savings at the higher end as well as wage growth at all levels of the spectrum. You know, the consumer is robust right now and continues to be in as we watch them.
Last 3 weekends have been our strongest 3 weekends of the year.
I guess, you know, you gotta look at the unemployment data, and it's so strong across the spectrum. In fact, it might be even stronger lower down, you know, in some of the service-related jobs. How do we foot that with some of the normalization you're seeing down market? You know, I'm just trying to figure that part out.
1 of the interesting... When I talk to our collections folks, I go like, "What are you hearing on the calls? What's coming through?" We do not hear at all people have lost their jobs. What we hear a little bit now that we had never heard before is, "My hours have been reduced." I think people have jobs.
It may be that second or third job where the hours in the first job may be a little bit, you know, for some of the lower end folks that are in that space. You know, listen, there's a structural change in the employment market, that it's gonna be really difficult to get the unemployment rate up significantly, even though the Fed wants it to. It's gonna be a challenge. I do think the...
You know, when you came through the progress with, you know, triple P and the like, hours are being reduced for some.
Okay. I guess, to the extent that we're looking out and thinking there's more volatility on the economic front, how are you guys adjusting the way you're underwriting loans? Are you making adjustments? Are there certain verticals that you're more cautious of? I mean, how are you guys behaving with this K-shaped recovery assumption?
Maybe I'll start on this 1 and then turn to Brian. 'Cause I think 1 thing that's a little different about our business is just how important consistency is in how we underwrite to our partners. As you see us go through cycles, you don't see dramatic pullbacks. Like when we entered the pandemic, you didn't see us really start to cut like some others did.
When times got really good, we didn't dig a lot deeper, we didn't underwrite a lot deeper. We tried to stay as consistent as possible. I think that's really important because if you look at our portfolio right now, everything that we're seeing is in line with the normalization trends that we expected, so we don't see a need to really pull back. With that said, our credit teams are all over it, right?
They're looking at this 1,000 different ways, ingesting data points, and they're always making little modifications, little tweaks, could be by program, could be by geography. You know, we look at it a lot of different ways in terms of, you know, the trends that we're seeing, but they're really modest tweaks at this point.
You know, go back to what we said in January. If credit goes, which we think it will, charge-offs to 4.75% to 5% this year, that's still below our long-term target of 5.5% to 6%.
You know, if that plays out the way we think it will, we don't see anything right now that says, "Oh, we really got to go dramatically pull back." Part of that is because we tried not to really dig deeper in the last couple of years that were, you know, best ever credit trends.
Mm-hmm.
Go ahead.
The 1 data point I'd add on to that to just you know, illustrate Brian's point is, if you looked at our new account origination, you know, '19 through, you know, '22, it's been between 20 million and 25 million accounts. We have not gone up or down.
If you look at the industry, right, the 9 months in 2021 from April through December, highest ever originations in 9 months, '22 highest originations and beat '21. What people did, they try to make up for lost interest. They added a whole bunch, they dug deeper, they did things, which is why I think you're hearing for some, "Hey, we're making adjustments to the margin." Because we didn't do that. We played through the, you know, the strike zone. We didn't have to do that.
I feel really good about our credit box. Listen, you know, we have to, because the origination model bring more data into our decision account management process, which I think gives us a competitive advantage versus a lot of other folks.
I'd say that's 1 of the biggest surprises, I think, over the last 3 years, is we've been heavily investing in data analytics and data share with our partners. It's something that I frankly underestimated how impactful it can be when a partner shares data with you about their customer. Simple things like just matching a ship to address for 1 of their longtime customers to who they put on the, on the credit application. Like, okay, that's a great way to eliminate fraud.
Mm-hmm
... and really know, a lot more about that customer as you're approving them. It allows us to give bigger line sizes, allows us to approve more with the same or actually less credit risk. I think that's also a big advantage.
That's great. Have you guys updated that stat as to how much information you get? I know you used to give us some statistics around, you know, SKU-level data and such. I mean, is there an updated number on that or?
Yeah, it's funny. That used to be all we talked about.
Yeah.
You know, I forget what it is now, Brian.
It's north of eight.
Eighty.
It's north of 80%. I'm not sure I want to update it 'cause it hasn't moved that much, but it's over 80%.
Yeah. What's, you know, that always helped us with kind of what they were buying. Now what we really wanna understand, we wanna understand that individual. How do they shop? How often do they go in store? What do they buy online? What are they buying through the app versus what do they go into the store to try on?
Like that, putting that kind of mosaic together is really impactful, both from a marketing and growth perspective, which is how we thought about it originally. Now it's really become more than that. It's also, how do you, how do you approve more? How do you give bigger lines to meet what they're gonna buy in that calendar year? How do you do it at an equal amount or less credit risk?
Got it. I guess if we were to think about a scenario where things do go bad or worse than what we, what we think they might do, how are you guys positioned in terms of making adjustments if necessary? Like, how should we think about expenses? Where are levers that you have? What levers do you have at your disposal?
Well, I'd start with the credit levers that we have, and we've been, again, investing a ton over the past 5 years. You know, if I go back, way back, you know, past 5 years ago, it took us, like, a month to get a new credit model in production. Now it takes us, like, a couple minutes, right? Like, the tools and the information we have are just a lot more reactive, a lot more responsive. If you look at what we had to do in the great financial crisis, I mean, that was just a hatchet.
Mm-hmm.
It was a very blunt instrument. Now what we're doing is a lot more surgical. You can go in and just tweak a dial here or there based on the performance that you're seeing and the data that you're ingesting. Just a lot more responsive, a lot more reactive, which is also a better way to operate, frankly, with our partners, because you're not going in just saying,
"Hey, we're gonna just have to take off the bottom chunk, right, that we were approving." You're going in saying, "Hey, this is the data that we're seeing. This is the dial we're gonna tweak to get the result that we need to get." Then, I don't know, anything to add on credit?
Yeah. On the credit side, the 1 important thing I'd need to go back to is the fact that we're less volatile, right? Our line structure-
Yeah.
What Brian talked about, the actions we can do because we have low lines relative to our peers. You're able to control that Exposure at Default better than some because we don't give out $25,000 lines. It helps us manage through that. The actions you could take, whether it's reducing people to balance, whether it's reducing authorization on certain transactions, really helps to mitigate so you don't get that situation where you're a long way through your targeted loss rate.
It's really helpful, and that means. That's the kinda key for us to manage. As soon as we start to see it, you know, Brian said earlier, you know, we're doing refinements in certain places where we see performance maybe deteriorate a little bit, but it's not across the board.
Once we start to see that, we can most certainly make changes very quickly.
1 of the, I think, misconceptions of when you think of kind of managing credit, you think about at first is, okay, you know, this individual with this credit profile, we're no longer gonna approve, right? That's really not where you go first.
You go to line size. You go to, you know, if we needed to see 6 months of consistent payments before we upgraded somebody from a private label to a co-brand with a bigger line, maybe we push that out to 12 months.
Mm-hmm
...or 18 months. That's still a very Customer-Friendly way to do it. You're not taking something away. You're just making them, you know, you're getting more comfortable with them before you give them the bigger line. There's, you know, a lot of different tools in the kit. It's not just, okay, anybody with this credit profile that we were approving yesterday, we no longer can because of what we're seeing in the economy.
You know, the second part of your question, you know, we can control expenses and bring that down, whether it's, you know, obviously employment's 1 of our bigger ones. We can flex that. I think our plans for this year is we're continuing to grow headcount. We can most certainly slow that down if needed, and there's other expenses we can take out.
We have a tremendous team that understands the cost base and can really attack that cost base if we're hit a patch where, you know, we need to take other actions. Listen, we've demonstrated that, hopefully, through the pandemic and before.
Great. 2 years ago, you guys shifted your focus to 5 segments, and I'm just curious if you could talk about the impacts of the reorganization, what impacts it had on business, you know, going forward, you know, how you might look at things differently.
Yeah. I think, look, the reorg has been a big success from our perspective. You know, as you know, Sanjay Sakhrani, 1 of the things that was really important is to get that kinda deep industry domain, and it really, it really was more of an observation that we had around health and wellness.
Like, that was always a business where we were so deep in terms of relationships and how we understood the market and our ability to anticipate what those providers wanted from us. What we had in the rest of the business was not always similarly aligned, so we'd have a, we had Lowe's with PayPal. Well, what those 2 partners want from us tends to be very different, right? And Amazon and JCPenney.
We had kind of big partners grouped together, but what they were coming to us for in terms of products and capabilities and solutions tended to be very different. How we were integrating with them was also very different.
Think about what we do with PayPal and Venmo inside the app is really kinda cutting edge, where if you're in the Venmo app, you don't know what we built, and you don't know what Venmo does. It's just completely seamless to the customer, and that leverages our API platform. You know, we have really small merchants as well who just wanna plug and play something very simple. That industry alignment is really helping us kinda get out in front of what our partners want.
'Cause if we're hearing it from 1, we're gonna hear it from another, and we're building the products now in a way that they're very scalable. In the past, we had too much customization. We would go in and a partner would say, "This is what we want," and we'd, "Yeah. Let's go do it," 'cause we, you know, we're always a yes-first organization. We say, "Yep, we're gonna go build that for you."
We would build it very customized, and we couldn't translate it across the enterprise. We're not doing that now because that we're aligned by industry. We're building the things that we know they're gonna need ahead of when they're telling us they need them. We take it to them, they say, "Yep, that's great," and we scale it across the enterprise. That's what's really resonated.
The second thing that we did in the reorganization, though, is we built a growth organization and a product organization. That really underpins everything I just talked about because the product organization, 1, their goal is to anticipate what our partners need from us but also build it in a scalable way.
They're that control function to make sure that we're not out here customizing something and spending money and investment dollars on something that we're not gonna be able to transport to the rest of the organization. Those were really the 2 big tenets, and I think it's really resonating with our partners. You know, they're highly engaged with the multiproduct strategy. You know, they're looking at their point of sale and saying, "Okay, is there a way to rationalize this?
Is there a way to kinda both the growth for them but also the economic impact of that growth through how they're financing.
That tactical change on the platform, was that a technology change, or was that a strategy change?
It was really led by a strategy, right? The strategy was to replicate what we were doing in health and wellness, which really was, I think, best in class. It's a fantastic business. You know, if you see how that, how our front end team, the sales leaders and the business leaders, they've known these providers forever.
They know exactly what they need. They're able to connect the dots across the CareCredit network and anticipate what they need. We said we don't really have that in the rest of the business to the same extent.
Mm-hmm.
We certainly have the relationships, but what we weren't doing, because we had big partners with small partners in digital, with, you know, multi-channel, it wasn't as strong as it was in health and wellness. It really was a strategy shift led by strategy.
The product you have for PayPal, which is sort of embedded finance type stuff, are other merchants asking for that type of product? Is that something that's gonna be used for other partners?
Well, they're a different, you know, they're just a different partner. They're not a merchant in the same sense that, you know, our other partners are. You know, I can tell you that what all of our partners are looking for is a very seamless financing experience, and 1 in which they don't have to do any work to integrate.
You know, we're trying to take, where we can, take them out of it and put all of the development and the build on ourselves so that it really is plug and play for them. You know, 1 of the things when we acquired a company called GPShopper, you know, way back when, we launched or we integrated SyPI, which is our financing products inside of the partner's app.
Mm-hmm.
We could do that in like 30 minutes for them. They could be up and running, and you could service your account, you could do all of the kind of credit functionality inside of their inside of their app. They loved it. They're like, "Great. Okay, wait. I don't have to get you into my IT prioritization backlog. You just give me this thing, I plug it in, and I have all the credit functionality there." That's now what we're trying to do kind of everywhere.
Mm-hmm. Makes a lot of sense. Another question from a couple of years ago. You guys provided a long-term financial framework back then. As we sit here a year and a 1/2 later, has anything changed around those targets? What are you most optimistic or pessimistic about over the next couple of years?
Yeah. Nothing has changed, you know, in our view. We're very, Brian and I are very bullish on the platforms and the growth of the platforms. You know, listen, it's a different environment than it was 18 months ago with losses lower, interest costs a little bit higher. I think when you get back to what we think will be a mean interest rate environment, mean loss environment, everything should be generally in line.
You know, we'll see efficiency you know, continue to come down as we evolve, right? We're very pleased with that framework. We're very focused on the return on tangible common equity and the return of this business. We think that's a really compelling value for our company as investors look at it.
You know, we're still on those goals and those, you know, that framework longer term.
Maybe we shift gears and talk about another sort of elephant in the room in terms of the CFPB's recent proposal on card late fees. I guess it definitely goes at the private label model a little bit more because of the lower lines. I'm just curious, I know you've spoken a little bit about it at previous conferences, but maybe just walk us through how you're thinking about it and, you know, what are the next steps?
I think I'll start and Brian can add. I think the, you know, what we're talking a lot about internally is just the unintended consequences of the proposal as it's written today. I feel like maybe that wasn't all as kind of well understood as it could have been. You know, we immediately went to, well, a late fee is a deterrent. Without the deterrent, $8 is not a deterrent.
What I worry about is consumers are just gonna roll delinquent. That's gonna impact their credit, and that'll make things like auto loans and mortgages and things like that more expensive for them. I also think that, you know, this could restrict credit to a chunk of the population that needs it, you know, without any offsets, obviously.
I just I don't feel like those things were maybe fully understood or contemplated. I don't think they were studied. I do think, you know, the industry does view the late fee as a deterrent. I think as we look at it, and there is some data out there, $8 is not a deterrent. What kind of behavior change does that drive in the consumer?
You know, obviously, we're talking to our partners about this. We wanna try and minimize the impact to them, you know, so they're engaged with us. It's still early. I think there's, you know, the comment letters and things like that.
I think the industry, through the trade groups, will put their arguments forth on why, you know, something should change in the proposal as it's written. You know, we've also had a team that has been looking at this since, you know, probably back in April. You know, they're focused on looking at, okay, what kind of behavior is this gonna change.
We still wanna approve all the people that we're approving today. We think that's good for the economy, we think that's good for our partners, and we wanna do that. In order to do that, there may have to be offsets in other areas. I don't know.
Yeah. I would just echo Brian's point. You know, the unintended consequences, you know, credit will be constrained to certain populations of people. The cost of credit for other individuals will have to go up in order to support some of that, per se. You know, there is a ripple effect in every other form of consumer finance. It's gonna be in autos, it's gonna be in mortgages, because everyone's risk models will get impacted when you have that higher delinquency.
Now people are gonna have to price through, in these other forms of credit, the uncertainty of that. Unfortunately, that those unintended consequences will impact actually everyone, or a good chunk of folks, not just, you know, what they're trying to create literally for is a certain, you know, subset of individuals potentially.
Again, this is the most transparent fee in all of banking and has been for over a decade. It's, you know, it's disappointing, but, you know, we'll work through it.
I guess you mentioned the trade groups. I mean, what steps is the industry taking to, you know, convey this to the CFPB so that, you know, maybe there's some consensus that's arrived at?
Yeah. I think everybody in the industry is working largely through the trade groups so that we're kind of a collective voice. I think there's some good arguments that we'll pull together. It'll be part of the comment period, there's a lot more to come, I think there's good cooperation is my guess.
Anything else that you guys think should be on the radar from a regulatory standpoint, like capital? I mean, Brian Wenzel, I'm looking at you. Maybe is there anything that we need to think about that, you know, we're not touching on that front?
Yeah. Listen, we're very pleased with our capital position. You know, Sanjay, when we started this, you know, conference Brian talked about 10 years ago, our CET1 was 18%. We're, you know, we're sub 13. We're on our journey.
Good job.
Thank you.
I remember how many questions we asked about that.
Yeah. I think that was the only topic at first here.
It was question number 1, like 9 out of the 10 years.
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, for now, it's really about, you know, there's 1 final piece of legislation that comes through, you know, that we expect in the summer. We'll see how that impacts us. You know, we're gonna enter back into the CCAR world later this year. You know, so we'll go in that process. That's the greatest uncertainty.
To be honest with you know, when we look at you know, potential outcomes, it shouldn't be that bad for us. We're very pleased with our capital. You know, Sanjay, you know in February, we completed a subordinated debt offering to maximize our Tier 2 and get a risk-based capital. We have a little bit more work on our preferred structure. We feel good from a capital perspective.
From an overall regulatory perspective, you know, what we encourage when we talk to the Federal Reserve and others is just level the playing field, right? We want a level playing field with our competitors, both in transparency and, you know, simple things like ability to pay.
Like, everyone should ask, you know. That shouldn't be, I have a bank charter, I have to ask you. You don't have a bank charter, you don't have to ask you. Just level the playing field, so the consumer is treated equally in all settings.
Great. I'm gonna move on to another topic from some years ago, which is the competitive dynamics, which was pretty, you know, it was very intense some years ago, and it seems like things have leveled out some. Is that a good characterization of sort of where we're at right now? Or do you... I know it's always competitive.
Yeah.
I'm just curious, you know, what the opportunities are at this point in time.
Look, I think it's always competitive. What surprised me a little bit is I think the industry stayed pretty disciplined throughout the pandemic. I kept waiting for that deal to kind of cross our desks that just looked ridiculous. Like everybody's pricing in, you know, losses that are 1/2 of what they would be through the cycle.
We didn't see as much of that, which I think is good, 'cause we still, we renewed a ton of deals, we won a ton of deals last year. That was something that I was on the lookout for. I was like, okay, it's a frothy environment, best ever credit, and there's always a tendency for the industry to price that in, and we didn't see that to the extent we thought we would.
I think now what I would expect to see, and we're seeing it in some of the new deal flow, is continued discipline, but for kind of different reasons. I think the uncertainty actually helps in this regard, right? In an uncertain environment, people are gonna be a little more cautious if you're pricing a 7 or a 10-Year deal. We're seeing that.
We pride ourselves on our discipline. We price everything through the cycle. We stress the P&L 19 different ways. We look at, you know, a lot of different risks both on, you know, we don't grow as fast as we think we're going to. If we grow faster than we think we're going to.
We try to make sure, and I think we do a pretty good job of this, making sure that our interests are aligned with the partner, so that there's never a period of time where 1 of us doesn't like the deal, right? That's so important, and it's easy to overlook that.
When, you know, I always look at a stress period when we're looking at a Pro- forma, and I say, "Okay, do we still like this deal?" Yes. Are they still gonna like this deal, or are we gonna be, you know, up against each other? That alignment in this business, in our space, is super important. I think, you know, competitively, it's still competitive, but good discipline, and I would expect that to continue.
You know, we didn't see it when I thought we might go astray, and I think the uncertainty is keeping people pretty reasonable right now.
The 1 thing I'd add, Brian, and we go back over time, as you look back over the last, you know, 15, 20 years, when the economy gets tough, where you started, Sanjay, about the economy, if it gets tough, a lot of people, because it's not necessarily the main part of their business, pull back and reevaluate. This is our business, so we're gonna stay in here. That actually may be an opportunity.
Yeah
... if things get a little tougher, cause we're committed to the space, we're committed to, you know, a distribution model that resonates. Our partners, merchants, providers know we'll be there. You know, there could be opportunity down the road.
I'm gonna roll in a buy now, pay later question as well to this.
That's so 2 years ago.
I know. It's so 2 years ago. I'm just curious, you know, inside of the products your customers are demanding, inside of this competitive dynamic that you were talking about, how prevalent is buy now, pay later today? Like, are people requesting that? Do you feel like there's an opportunity to take share now that, you know, some of the fintechs are, you know, have been marginalized some?
Yeah. Look, I think the product itself is not going away. I mean, the product, though, has been around for, like, 100 years. I mean, it's an installment loan for the most part. There's different tenors and things. I, the product will be part of our Multi-Product suite, and it does serve a purpose.
I would tell you that the partners that we're talking to are taking kind of a pause to reevaluate what has become a complicated point of sale, you know, where you've got some buy now, pay later, you might have multiple providers all at different costs, and they're looking at, okay, am I really, you know, for the cost of whatever this product is, buy now, pay later, am I getting the incremental growth to offset the cost of it? 2 years ago, that wasn't even a discussion.
They're just like, "Hey, I'm putting logos on my website 'cause I need sales, and I'm in the middle of a pandemic, and I'm just gonna grow." They're taking a step back now because some of those products in a rising interest rate environment have gotten really expensive. Now they're saying, "Okay, you know, when it wasn't that bad, I was just willing to take the extra growth.
Now that growth comes at a real cost. I gotta figure out how to rationalize that." I think that's where our multi-product strategy really pays off because in the context of a broader program, we can offer a pay-in-4 as an acquisition tool, right? We're not getting that customer to keep them in a pay-in-4.
We're getting that customer to get them in a pay-in-4, a longer term installment, upgrade to a private label card, dual card down the road. I think that strategy wins over the long term because it's not just a... You can't just be a One-Product company, right?
Because depending on what you're buying and depending on where you're buying it, you need different financing options. You know, 2 years ago at Investor Day, we talked about exactly that. You know, we saw that. We started to hear our partners say, "Okay, Everything just got too complicated.
How do I rationalize?" Well, the best way to rationalize is to go, we think, to a provider who can offer you all of those products and balance the economic equation, to the partner and to us, frankly, in a way that, you know, we're both winning.
You talked about getting more information on the customer and having that marketing angle to some extent. It seemed like that was 1 of the value props that the fintech buy now, pay later companies provided. Has that proved to be successful to the merchants from your discussions with them?
I don't think they know. I don't think they know. That was certainly the belief. We're having a lot of conversations around our marketplace. We're investing in our marketplace. There is something to it that, hey, look, if you can bring them net new customers, right, and more growth, that's a positive. Where they get a little uneasy in some cases is, "Okay, of course, I want you to bring me new customers.
I don't wanna give you any of mine to go to your marketplace and go somewhere else." I think that's always the rub. We have to do it in a way where we make sure that the partner is getting more than they're giving up. We do plan to continue to invest in our marketplace.
We've seen really good growth just over the last year since we've been investing, and we're having really productive discussions with our partners about what it can do for them over the long term. It is fundamentally different than how we ran the business for 80 years. You know, we ran it, you know, program by program.
We didn't necessarily look across the Synchrony enterprise, and that was done for good reasons. That's how our partners wanted to interact. Now they've started to see some of the benefits that Synchrony can bring to them outside of just what we're doing for them in their program. "Hey, can we bring you Synchrony Mastercard customers? Could we do a val prop on the Synchrony Mastercard that benefits the partners" There's certainly something there, but it's...
You gotta almost go have individual discussions with the partner. It's not a One-Size-Fits-All.
While we're on the topic of fintechs, I mean, obviously valuations have come down quite significantly. You still have a decent amount of excess capital. Are there acquisition opportunities, capability type deals, or do you feel like you've built most of what you need?
I think we've built most of what we need. With that said, there's always things that we're looking at, a buy versus build. To your point, valuations have finally gotten attractive in that sense. We've got a very active M&A screen. We've got a team that looks at that every day evaluating opportunities, that's usually the decision.
You know, can we buy it, does that get us to market faster than if we build it? What's that at a present value of that timing advantage that you get if you just go out and buy something? The thing that we never underestimate though is you gotta buy it, and you gotta integrate it, right? It's not just...
I always remind the team, like, you can't just buy it, and all of a sudden you're in market with it, you know, tomorrow. You gotta integrate it into our platform because we want all these things to kind of tie together and be seamless to our partners.
The other thing I would say is just we're very disciplined around M&A. You know, we look at the EPS impact of that. We want it to be accretive. We, 2 of the best acquisitions we've ever done are Pets Best, the pet insurance company. Bought that back in 2019. We've grown it 5x since we bought it. Allegro in health and wellness, great acquisition. We've doubled the size of that business since February of 2021, I think we bought it.
I mean, those are the types of acquisitions that we love. Really small capital outlay, but we can leverage our scale to grow them and do it in a, you know, EPS accretive way.
The 1 thing, Brian, we talk about this all the time when we look at deals is the scalability.
Yeah.
A lot of times you look at these fintechs, and it can be great price, great product, but you say, you know, take our company. We actually are the largest credit card issuer in the United States by number of accounts. Now if you want to put it on and try to bring it to scale, sometimes it doesn't work.
Yeah
... where our teams do a great job of trying to you know, analyze on the buy versus build. Does it have the scalability to meet our needs across the spectrum?
Seems like you would have monetization opportunities with all these or additional monetization opportunities with all these accounts. Like, do you guys even look at that, like revenue per account or how to optimize that?
Like actually selling some of the
Selling some of your installment products in other verticals. Like, you know, we don't talk enough about.
Oh
... non-private label products, but do you guys think about it in those terms?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we look at number of products per customer. We look at, you know, revenue per customer, lifetime value of the customer. Absolutely. 1 of the things, though, back to how we used to run the business, you know, 5, 7 years ago, it was very program by program, right? I mean, here's a good example. Up until a few years ago, you couldn't go to 1 place and service all of your Synchrony accounts. That was done, again, for good reason, because we go to market as our partner's brand. You can do that now.
Mm-hmm.
As you start to do that, you can think about things like, okay, how do I promote other partners? How do I promote some Synchrony products? How do you tie in savings and the Mastercard? There's definitely an ecosystem there that we're investing in and nurturing.
That's great. That's great. We got, like, 1 minute left. I figure I'll see if the audience has any questions.
How generous. You left them a whole-.
You know.
A whole minute.
There's 1 right there. Sorry, right there.
It's 55 seconds by the time.
Sorry, audience.
Thanks. You talked earlier just there may need to be offsets with regards to the late fees and just how much of the late fee decline, if it was to go through, how much of that do you think you can mitigate and sort of how would the process be for that mitigation?
Hang on.
Yeah, you know, listen, what I would point you back to is when the CARD Act went into place back in, you know, 2010, 2011, we were able to mitigate the whole impact to that. You know, that's our goal will be as we start here. You know, it's unclear with how the proposed rule will come into effect. There are a number of levers that you can do.
I mean, the biggest thing for us is deterrence, and whether or not you can weave deterrence in there either through pricing, credit bureau reporting, et cetera. There are pieces. It will force, I think, unfortunately, a lot of folks potentially into a cost-based model, which will give the consumer very different experiences across credit card providers, which I think is unfortunate for the consumer.
Why it's, you know, late fees, you know, X dollars here versus Y dollars there, but that will be a big piece as well. Our goal is to try to mitigate. The biggest thing is deterrence, right? We just want people to pay us back, and I think, you know, Sanjay talked about it.
You know, there are a lot of models out there. If you ask the consumer, at various levels, the consumer will tell you know, it has a deterrent effect to certain levels. That's what we'll try to do. Again, Brian said we had a team on this since April last year. It's a little bit broader now and, you know, we'll continue to work through it with our stakeholders.
Do you see yourself as a participant in sort of fighting the, the late fee decrease, or do you see yourself as more as a spectator?
Well, I would hope it didn't turn into a fight. We would hope for a very constructive dialogue with the industry around, you know, what's the right answer. We're preparing for that with the rest of the industry through the trade groups like ABA and BPI.
I think there are some compelling arguments to be made. I do think that a more thorough study of the unintended consequences is important. I just do. I think it's the individuals who are gonna get a benefit here are the individuals who have paid late. I would hate to see that cost transfer to the consumers in the same credit bracket who pay on time. You can easily see how that could result from this.
I think that's just a good discussion for us to have in a very transparent way with the CFPB and the industry, frankly.
Any other questions in the room? We have time for 1 more. No? All right. Cool. Thank you, guys. Really appreciate it.
Thanks, Sanjay.
Sanjay, thank you.
Good to be back.