Synchrony Financial (SYF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Bank of America Banking and Financials Conference. I'm Mihir Bhatia. I'm a research analyst here at Bank of America. I cover consumer finance companies primarily. It's my pleasure this morning to welcome Brian from Synchrony Financial, which a lot of you obviously are familiar with and have met. So what we'll do is I'll start off asking a few questions. During the time, there is a drop -- there's a box, I believe, on your screens where you can ask questions that you may have, and then we can take it from that. Great. So Brian, welcome to the conference.

And why don't I just dive right in. To start, one of your -- 2 of your big partners, PayPal and Amazon, announced -- had an announcement yesterday. And we've had a few questions on this, so I thought I'd just get started, get it out of the way right up front. Any implications for Synchrony from their announcement yesterday of pay with Venmo being accepted on Amazon starting next year?

Yes. First of all, Mihir, thank you for the invitation. Good to be with you this morning and -- as well as your guests. First of all, let me start with -- we have 2 amazing partners with PayPal and with Venmo and Amazon. They are tremendous partners with us. We've been long-standing partners with us, so we're always excited when they collaborate either exclusively or together. So it's always beneficial for us. They are incredibly focused on customer experience and customers, which I think fits with our values and where we want to go. As you think about this particular opportunity, obviously, the Venmo has a terrific set of customers, a very attractive demographic for Amazon. So I think there's a lot of power behind the Venmo pay. The same way with the Amazon Pay, it just broadens that acceptance. Now if you think about it a little deeper, today, our Venmo card is accepted at Amazon because of the utility, the same way our PayPal Dual Card is accepted there as well. What this allows is just -- it facilitates just a cleaner customer transaction by using Venmo pay. So to the extent that our products are in the Venmo wallet, our credit card, even our PayPal are to be in Venmo wallet, it's just a different way where it can be accepted there. So it does open the doors a little bit. Again, the same way I think Amazon Pay works as well where our card is accepted. So for us, it's exciting. It just provides another avenue for consumers to use our product, and they are just, again, tremendous partners and really focus on customer experience. So we're excited in that announcement. We look forward to it in 2022.

Great. That's great, definitely exciting for you all. So maybe just in terms of the quarter, maybe you can give us an update on quarter-to-date recent spending, lending trends, maybe touch on what you're hearing from retailers and your expectations for spending this holiday season, just in terms of how the quarter is trending?

Yes. Listen, I think as we exited the third quarter, Mihir, and we talked about this in October, we were very excited about the progress of the business. All of the platforms were doing extremely well. I think when you looked at the comps in the third quarter, they were 16% versus last year, 16% versus 2019. And we still are really across all the different platforms and all the different industries, so there wasn't one particular piece. The most difficult one or most challenging one was lifestyle, which just had a tremendous comp last year, but was up tremendously versus '19. So the business is in great shape. I think as you think through a couple of questions we get as we think about the fourth quarter for a second, I just want to frame it before we talk about where we are is when you think about supply chain, when you think about the environment is there a disruption. And I'd say, in our business, today, we've been facing a little bit of the supply chain issues for several quarters now. When you think about furniture, electronics, appliances, if you're trying to buy an appliance, so certain appliances are 6 months out. Some of the outdoor power equipment and power sports, they've been on supply chain. So that's not going to be new for us, and those are things that are not necessarily driving holiday. I think when you think about supply chain inside, more soft goods, there will be some, I think, inventory shortages. But I think what you're going to see there is a shift in the promotional counter, a shift in holiday shopping, a little less promotional. So I think your transactions may be down, but frequency may be up. I think before I talk more specifically, the other thing I think you need to think about as you think about the fourth quarter, so the way we're thinking about it is you're probably going to see a shift. So you may be a little bit stronger earlier in the quarter. It's a pull-forward effect as people want to make sure that they have the right gifts for the holiday. As you think about our performance through October, it's continued. It's exceeded our expectations, and I think we've continued to see strengthened purchase volume in that mid- to upper teens area. Again, we'll have to see how it develops here because there may be a little bit of a pull-forward effect, but it continues to be strong, and we expect that for the quarter. But again, ahead of our expectations for I'd call it the first 6 weeks.

Great. Great. What about payment rates? I think on the third quarter, you said there were 260 basis points above normal, but some cohorts were starting to normalize. Maybe provide some color on that. What are the -- which are these cohorts normalizing a little faster? And just how have they trended?

Yes. Obviously, the shift in wealth from the government, individuals have clearly impacted payment. It's a phenomenon across all of the lenders. As we look at it, again, we see the savings rate both inside our digital bank, when we look across either the -- our direct peers in digital banking or the 29 largest banks, that savings rate continuing to decline. Still up, but continue to decline, which is an indication that people are spending probably more than they're taking in now. I think as we looked at it, you're correct, we were 260 basis points higher versus the average. Again, I think if you looked at the 3 months, we did trail down towards the end of the quarter. I think as we exited the quarter, one thing we look at is how our consumer behavior pattern is changing, right? So if you break it into 4 buckets, statement pays between min pay and statement, min pay and low min pay, the statement -- the full statement balance and the between min pay and statement balance, they both declined. So you did see min pay is kind of ticking up very slightly as we look at that trend. I think when you look at credit grade a little bit, you are seeing the lower credit quality individuals tick up, again, all-time high, I would say, but moved down slightly. So I think we see green shoots as we move forward. And again, we're looking at all sorts of things inside the pay rate. We always get the question, is there some new normal for the consumer? We do not believe so. There's no analysis that we have done internally or commissioned externally leads us to believe that there is something fundamental with regard to payment rate and that you will migrate to the min. Now the question is the slope of that migration. And we obviously are modeling different scenarios around that.

Got it. So that makes sense. Now one of the [indiscernible] of the high payment rate has been this exceptional credit that everyone has enjoyed. So the cohorts that are normalizing on the payment rate. Are you seeing them normalize faster on the credit side, too? Maybe just talk a little bit about credit overall. How fast do you expect normalization of charge-off rates? You're thinking back half of next year or later than that?

Yes. So as you think about delinquency for a second, you go back and look at where we ended the quarter, 25 basis points better on 30 plus 19 basis points better on 90 plus. Again, I think you have to factor out the GAAP held-for-sale portfolio there. So it's actually a little bit better than that, which we disclosed. So we're really at a tremendous point. I'm not necessarily sure from here, you see improvement or getting better other than a little bit of seasonality [indiscernible], but we have not seen deterioration. So I think the rate of improvement year-over-year is kind of starting to flatline a little bit. As we talked about 2022 and 2023, we really have a couple of different miles of bookends, right? The first bookend is as people come off forbearance, as people come off rent or forbearance, as the government assistance stops, what you're going to see potentially in this one scenario is a faster flow into delinquency. It's almost as if there's a bubble coming through where you see delinquencies peak third quarter next year and then really go to loss in the first part of '23. That's one scenario. The second scenario says, okay, I put that conservatism or the optimistic scenario says, that the stimulus worked, the forbearance worked and there wasn't permanent scarring and there is a more gradual run-up to back, what I would call, mean delinquencies in '23. So that's what we're looking for. We have not seen anything today where we've seen any migration of any cohorts or deterioration inside the book. I would say we probably are a little bit more advanced looking at people who have forbearance. So you could tell me here, if you had forbearance, how many forbearances you had with lenders, what type of forbearance you had with lenders, where you are with that, we've encompassed that into our underwriting. So we are monitoring that population probably more closely than any other one. So again, credit remains good, and we'll see which scenario kind of plays out more closely.

Sure. So that's great. Maybe just staying with credit for a second, just thinking about reserve levels, right? So you are about CECL day 1 today, but credit metrics are better. Maybe the macro has a little bit more uncertainty today, but yes, the flip side of it, it is still pretty good on the macro side, too. So maybe just talk about some of the puts and takes on reserving from here? Is day 1 a good way to think about the normal reserve levels? And as we think about your migration towards that normal reserve level, is it going to be loan growth-driven where you're just going to kind of grow into the normal? Or we could see a lot more volatility, if you will. Because I think that was one of the fears when CECL first came into being was you'd see a lot more volatility.

Yes. Unfortunately, no issuer had a one clean quarter of CECL. In the first quarter, we adopted it, we actually went into a pandemic. So what I would tell you, Mihir, is I would think about the CECL day 1 right now as a kind of anchor point until we kind of get there and see what the environment looks like. And that is a very fair, I think, starting point to the discussion. So that says we do have a little bit more room. But again, I think if you think about the cases we outlined, we do -- we are being a little bit more conservative with regard to -- is there going to be some forbearance related accounts not on us but flow through to us. So -- but I think you're going to migrate back to that day 1 level. So if you put that off to the side, your question with regard to is there greater volatility, the first thing that's really important is what's the growth rate of the company? So if you're kind of consistent growth rate, you're not going to see as much volatility then it's really going to come back to the macro and how your book is performing. If you are going to be very volatile from a growth perspective, you will see more ups and downs. I think if you look back at us historically, we have been probably more consistent grower at a level. So I don't think you'll see quite as much volatility. So as long as you're being consistent with the growth and your credit is -- remains relatively consistent, you shouldn't see volatility. That being said, CECL will provide a higher charge than ALLL would under the old model. But again, it's not -- we've heard a lot of people say, "Okay, well, now you have these enormous reserve headwinds as you can grow." I'm not necessarily sure I would say that. There is room on the rate, and we will grow into the reserve balance.

Okay. That's helpful. Just switching gears a little bit, maybe. I wanted to ask you about the environment for card acquisitions. We've heard from most issuers, it's a very favorable environment. And I was curious, what does that mean for Synchrony? Because the way I would think about it, if some consumers now have general purpose cards, are they more inclined to say, "Hey, I have something else. I don't need a private label card here." How should we be thinking about that?

Yes. This is what's the, I think, a really attractive aspect of our business model here, right? It is we're not going to go fight with a large money center bank in New York or a bank in Charlotte or a bank in Virginia. They're comparing what those rewards are making a choice about what fits their needs whether they want cash back, travel, et cetera, status. Our cards are really geared around engagement with the brand and engagement with a retailer or a PayPal or Venmo, where you're highly engaged. So there, it's about the brand that's pulling it through. That's why we don't have to spend as you see this arms race rate on reward, you see this arms race on marketing. That's not our model. So we don't have to spend a ton of marketing to get new accounts. I mean we've opened $17.5 million -- 17.5 million new accounts this year, and we haven't had a ratcheted up marketing. Our value prop costs haven't gone up dramatically. That's not our model. So people are coming to us based upon the industries we participate in, based upon the brand. So they are not comparing us to general purpose of making do I need this card or I need that card. They're saying, "Hey, I love Venmo. Hey, I love Lowe's. I love Sam's Club. I love TJX, and I like going to shop there. And therefore, I want the cards because I like the rewards back into those individual places." So our cards are complementary to those and really fits in either of the consumers. And again, I think as we're one that has the widest breadth of products across that. So we can meet the customer any point they want, whether it's an installment product or promotional financing product, their revolving product. We're there to kind of meet the customer journey in that, which is unique versus these peers. And again, this all brings me back to this is a competitive advantage for us, our ability to originate new accounts of less than $20 per account with a high lifetime value, so it's really a competitive advantage.

Maybe just staying on the topic of alternatives for consumers to spend money a little bit, we'll get to be NPL right? And I'm talking specifically of Pay in 4 here, not like the longer term, but just the Pay in 4. Investors really worry about Pay in 4 being a long-term threat to your business. Now you do have a Pay in 4 product that you have recently rolled out to retailers. I guess maybe first, just give us an update on that? Are you seeing consumers -- are consumers able to use it today? Or are you still working through it with retailers just to get that live? And just what are your overall views? How are you viewing the threat from Pay in 4 to your overall business?

Yes. So let me start with the latter first, Mihir. I think when we think about any competition, we take it very seriously. And most certainly, we watch what consumers want and what consumers need and how their behavior changes. We studied the product. We studied consumer behavior for customers of ours that have "buy now, pay later" accounts with other institutions or other companies. And we don't see it really impacting our business yet. But we do have a healthy level of, I think, like any good company, healthy level of paranoia about the product and what it can do. Our view is that we want to have a multiproduct set. We're not going to be a one-and-done type lender. So a lot of these products that offer buy now, pay later, was to Pay in 4 or installment, I think. Unfortunately, it's all gotten comingled now. But we have an installment business. We just happen to tuck the installment business historically on a revolving account so that the customers come back and it's always there for them. But we have rolled out a closed-end installment product that's out in the marketplace. We do have -- the Pay in 4 is available to customers, and we're going through one partner right now that's going to put it in. And we're having the dialogue. And I think what the retailers are trying to sit back and say, okay, what is the product set that I want to kind of go to? What are the economics of where you want it -- where do you want to spend the dollars, so to speak. And I think they look at what we offer and say, "Okay, how does it fit in?" And I think they come to us because of the multiproduct suite. Because of the ability to say, "Okay, you may open a Pay in 4, but that's not the end game for me. My end game is to take you, to migrate you from a Pay in 4 to a private label or to a Dual Card if you qualify. So we view it as an attractive opportunity for us. And again, we're ongoing with discussions with partners to be really transparent about what we think makes the most sense and where it works and where it may not be as effective. So it's here, it will continue to migrate. I don't think we've seen the end game, whether it's either pricing or the product itself, but we'll continue to develop our product set. And that's when you attract the pieces of our realignment we did it a little bit earlier this year.

Great. Maybe I'll stay on that topic for a second, more just because it is very, very topical for investors. Just specific again to the Pay in 4. What are you hearing from retailers? Are you starting to hear any pushback on the MDR, the merchant discount rates being offered there? And your own views of it. Is it more of a customer acquisition tool from Synchrony? Or do you feel that this can be a profitable product in itself if the customer never graduates to a revolving card or something else?

The dialogue that the merchants are having, they're trying to really understand whether or not they are getting incremental sales or this tender shift, right? And are they really just shifting from a debit product because they don't necessarily see cannibalizing at least our products. Are we seeing a tender shift from debit? Or is it truly incremental? And as you get an incremental customer, is that customer a loyal customer to you? So how much are you paying for that? I think they're trying to go through that equation now to try to figure out the math. I think they're also trying to figure out, hey, listen, if I give you a customer, you get a customer through my channels. Do I want that customer marketed to, to go to a competitor. And I think they're sorting through that a little bit. So I think it's the early days of people really kind of evaluating merchants evaluating that. Again, our strategy with this is we want to have multiproduct. That's why we're differentiated. And to the extent that Pay in 4 or SetPay installment product makes sense. We also want to migrate that person up into a different product where we create recurring sales with the acquirer. And again, I think if you look at our history, we have a track record of doing this, whether it's a secured card to a private label, private label with Dual Card, we have a track record. And I think back at Investor Day, we showed the value we've driven by moving people, migrate people to the product suite. So we view it as an opportunity. It's not something we're going to rush into. I think the last part of your question, which is what's the economic model, that's unclear. I do think that there's going to be some rationalization here both in the number of issuers, pricing as you move forward. Today, obviously, it's not a profitable product because there's not enough scale for the product. And again, you're at a time now where interest costs are low as they have been, credit costs are low as they have ever been. And when you get to a normalized environment, it puts greater pressure on that economic model, to be honest with you. So I think you're early innings.

Sure. I'll just remind listeners, if you have questions, please put them in, and they will show up here, and then I can start sprinkling them in. But I'll go on with my questioning. Just maybe staying with on this idea of competitive threats and competitive nature. Like right now, we've seen a lot of other issuers refocus on their private label business. So at least made comments that they're not thinking about getting bigger in private labels. You're also seeing a lot of fintechs, and this is maybe a little bit more pertinent to your SetPay, the old payment solutions or the SetPay business, really focusing on those larger consumer installment loans type products. So I was curious if you're hearing more back from retailers who are asking for more, whether it is monitoring, whether it's other areas like lower interest rates for their customers, higher approval rates in your contracts. I guess what I'm trying to understand is, has the market changed in any way in terms of your discussions with retailers?

So Mihir, let me take out on -- back a little bit of time. If you go back probably 8 or 10 years ago, the discussion you started talking about capabilities then it went to economics, right? It went to economics into approval rates. It was more about terms of conditions and money. I think today, there's been a shifting of the landscape, which is now, the conversation will have a very important piece on economics. They're starting with, "Hey, what capabilities can you bring me? Where are your digital assets? How can you either help me with digitally or how do you integrate with me digitally?" I think that's where our investments over the last 5 years as we separate from our former parent, allowed us to really reconfigure our tech stack. So we don't have to invest. A lot of folks are having to invest tons of money now on a digital, to go digital. We've done over the last 5 years, so lot of that's behind us. And we have some what we think best-in-class digital capabilities. So the focus of the conversation is how do you bring those capabilities to me. It's a very, very different conversation. I think if you bring that forward into competitors, I'm not sure the intensity level of shift. You see different people at different time based on the opportunity. The market has been generally rationalized, say, inside the portfolio space here. I think if you think about fintechs and some of the valuations on some M&A, that probably has not checked up in value through the pandemic. But you are right. There is a little bit of a race towards large opportunities with customers, but we haven't seen things that are rational in the marketplace. And I think if anything, over the last several years, you've seen us really maintain our pricing discipline in the ROA of this business, and we're not afraid if something doesn't have the right risk-adjusted returns, we're not going to go and pursue it just for the sake of pursuing it. So again, I think the market is probably rational, but the real focus is who has the best technology, who is the best way to help these [ retailers ] because they are in a fierce fight right now, and they want someone who's going to be a partner for them and invest over time and not kind of be in and out of this marketplace. So that, I think, sets us up well to win competitively in the marketplace. And the pipeline is fairly robust.

Great. Well, and you had more than your share of wins, I would say. You had some 3 large wins over the past few years, Venmo, Verizon and Walgreens, right? Maybe just talk about where you are in terms of the full rollout of those various programs? How much are they contributing to overall growth today? And when do they start making a real meaningful impact?

Yes. First of all, we are incredibly excited about all 3 of these rollouts. Obviously, the oldest one is Verizon. It's a new space, but you have a highly engaged customer base. Clearly, as you look at the landscape with 5G phones coming out, it plays an important part. And I think when you look at that value prop, whether it's the acquisition incentive and then the recurring if you put your bill on the card, the recurring line reduction that you'd get, it really has been compelling for consumers. We rolled that out in the start of the pandemic, so June last year. So I'd say that the first even month is now kind of reaching a vintage level. So very early stages there. I think it's exceeded our spend expectations and the card has really resonated with cardholders, so we're excited about that. The next was Venmo, which launched in February this year [indiscernible]. It is probably the most dynamic card and value prop. I mean you can appreciate being a Bank of America. You don't have to go in and select what category you want to the highest [ ROI ]. It does it automatically. It does it in the app. The card has QR code. You can see you're spending a reward in the app itself. It feels like you're being right at Venmo, but it's a technology that we have to be integrated with that. So that is resonating quite well. And again, from a buy-in perspective, exceeding expectations. And then the last one is Walgreens, right, which started out in August of this year, 9,000 locations, over 90 million myWalgreens customers, very loyal. When you take the value prop on that card and combine it with Walgreens, myWalgreens is really compelling. And people are excited about the product. So I think those 3 opportunities really can set us up, and we've talked about this and everyone asks me, "Well, how big can they be?" Like, listen, they could all be top 10. And most certainly, the first 2, if you think about them because they are the oldest ones out, they can be $3 billion or $4 billion in 3 years, it'd be top 10 programs. So we're excited about that. There's a lot of opportunity. There's -- I use the industrial term, there's an installed base of customers, where you can really market to them. And so we're excited. If you think about our balance sheet today, we're $80 billion in receivables is not going to move the lever right now, but I think as it continues to grow in the future years, it will be a meaningful part of the growth story. So we're really excited, and they, all 3, are tremendous partners. So again, we're excited about the performance and look forward to them continuing to grow.

Great. Another area, obviously, that you've had a recent announcement in is Clover, and maybe just provide some additional color on that. I think you've talked about distributing and being available within the Clover marketplace for merchants. Is this just your short- and long-term installment products that are being offered there? Or are you also -- like once you're on there, you talk to them about doing cards and things like that? And to be clear, I just want to make sure I understand whether Pay in 4 is included or not. Also, I think one of the questions we've had is how does this actually work? Do you actually have to go back and then negotiate with the merchant? It's just available and it's an easier implementation? Or is it more of a -- the merchant sees it on this and say, "Hey, I want to offer installment, lending, let me click -- double-click this app and now I'm able to offer it?"

Yes. So start the highest point, right, which is the multiproduct strategy. We believe multiproduct is the way to go and you have to have it. And again, we have a model where we go direct to integration with our partner state, which is the core business we've done for 80-plus years. So we integrate directly to the partner, transaction flows with us, excluding, I'd say, our general purpose type cards that have that utility in the world. What Clover allows us to do is go to these merchants that we don't directly integrate with and say, through the app, we can provide, and we get to determine what products we want to provide and where they're priced. So it could be a card product, it could be installment product, it could be 2 side by side. I'm not necessarily sure, we're around just hanging up Pay in 4 out there by itself. Again, because we think their migration up makes a lot of sense. So we will distribute multiple products to that. And what this just allows us to do is reach smaller merchants at a quicker pace. So again, we have the direct integration route. We had that. It really deepens our ecosystem with regard to distribution of the products. And that's where our growth organization is really focused around products and distribution. This is another way to do it, our Mastercard announcement call it, 1.5 months ago, same concept, right? Just allowing us to get our product out in a different way and different distribution. And I think we'll work with the team to figure out what the right product set is to offer it through the app.

So we have a question coming in on buy now, pay later. Specifically, is there any interest in Synchrony building its own brand? I think what they asked -- basically the question is asking, are you trying to build -- is SetPay going to be a brand? Or is it -- are you just white labeling it? And the idea is the merchant is offering it kind of like your credit retail?

So SetPay is a brand that stands by itself, but we are most certainly willing with our partners to use the SetPay brand or to use their brand. That's the uniqueness of our model. And I think that's what separates out here. We don't come with our brand first. Our logo doesn't have to be in the front of our cards. We work through the partners, and that's why we're attractive to folks. And again, if it's the SetPay because you want the differentiation of what we're going to do white label, we're open to either one, to be honest with you, and that's really a discussion with the merchant.

Great. I realize I have not asked a NIM question yet. And so maybe let's talk about the NIM outlook. Specifically, one question I did have was it looks like you've been working through a lot of your excess liquidity over the -- for the last -- but you are going to and that helped with the NIM, frankly, large portfolios coming up. So is that going to again start pressuring NIM because that will increase your liquidity? How should we think about that? Maybe just talk about your outlook.

Yes. The -- if I say it's a positive thing to hear is you have enough advanced warning when this happens. So we will take actions inside the portfolio, whether it's on maturities of debt, how we manage liquidity stack, how we fund certain things in order to optimize that cash flow. So we don't have this big chunk and you just have to bleed it down. So we'll do work in advance of the conveyance in order to try to minimize that. So that's part of that. Again, having advanced warning is really the key part, and I do think we have multiple levers to do that in order to manage it. So it can pressure the NIM, but hopefully, we will take care of that with our -- with their actions.

Understood. And then in terms -- another question that's come in is just in terms of renewals. Do you have any -- I think I know the answer to this, but I'll let you -- in terms of do you have any near-term renewals coming up? And maybe just share some of the statistics you previously shared and how much of your book is signed up?

If I use the old nomenclature, 95% of the retail card, which is -- it was the large partner business, 95% of that revenue and receivables were locked up through 2025 and beyond. And some are longer, much longer term than that. So we look -- as we look at the short term, there's not as much renewal risk, obviously, as you get past the one portfolio is leaving next year. So we feel good about the renewals. Well, certainly, we're always trying to strategically think about when to renew certain things. A lot of times it comes about when someone says, "Hey, we want to make an investment. We want to change the value prop." That gives us the opportunity really to say, "Hey, listen, we'd love to do that, but let's talk about that in combination with an extension." So it's not just -- back to your point about competition not just say, "Hey, listen, I need greater economics," is you want to do a value prop, you want to relaunch, you want to rebrand, great, let's coinvest, let's extend the contract, and that's how we're able to maintain the attractive economics and return profile of the company.

Great. Maybe just staying on it. You mentioned the old nomenclature, so maybe let's talk about the resegmentation for a second. What is something we can look at, like, well, I think people understand the idea of it was to accelerate your growth. But as from the outside, what are things we can look at to see you're making progress towards that?

Yes. So the first thing here -- what's funny, when people thought about this business, people thought it's all private label, it's all department store, right? We had this whole retail -- it actually using the cards, which card is only a portion. We have digital cards now. You have lots of different ways, digital payments and kind of [indiscernible], it didn't show the full diversity we had. So I think the first thing is when you're breaking it and look at the tremendous diversity we have in the business, that's why the growth rate is pretty more consistent than a lot of others because we have such a wide breadth of partners and industries that we participate in. And then when you see people who get up every day and say, "Okay, this is really working in home." And I'm thinking about it for a Crate and Barrel, I'm thinking about it for an at home. I'm thinking about it for Lowe's. The ideas can move across our partners more quickly. We're developing things that work across that. Before, when you had large businesses and crossing different platforms, that idea maybe was a little slower. So I think speed to market is really going to help to focus on the different industries. I think if you demonstrate that, if you go back and look at the growth rates, I think when we did the realization we provided back some of the segments, you will see the growth rates of the business, hopefully accelerate here a little bit as we move forward. I think we highlighted for folks on Investor Day, the overall company growth rate is going to accelerate as we move forward. This is a key part of that strategy. So we're excited about it. I think it does highlight the depth of the business and diversification in the platform as it sells even within the platform, which is terrific.

Great. Great. So maybe just staying on the topic of change with it at Synchrony. Brian Doubles became -- has been CEO for a few months now. I know he's been part of the leadership team for a while. But maybe just talk a little bit about what's different compared to when Margaret was CEO?

Yes. It's a fascinating question here because I've been around here 20 -- over 23 years. I probably spent half my time working with Margaret directly, I had my time working for Brian directly, so I've seen both very closely. We all worked together for a long period of time. I'd sit there and say, a lot of people are concerned, is the culture going to change in the company. What's going to -- nothing has changed with regard to culture. Brian is very focused on growth and how do we focus on speed. That's not to say it wasn't on under Margaret. So I do think having a transition -- I had a year of transition before I took my job. Brian in a couple of years as President, it has been incredibly smooth. And they both lead with values. They both lead with focused on diversity inclusion. They both lead with focus on the customer. So in all those respects, when you're leading with that same type of values and principles, there's not a big shift for us, and there's not a big radical change. You can most certainly view that the change we made organizationally in June, we focused on that for a long period of time with Brian and Margaret about what the right way to focus the business. And I think those two, myself, our HR leader, this is the right direction for the company. So it has been tremendous. He obviously is incredibly energized. It was Margaret's stewardship at the Board is always a great asset, and we're really pleased to have her continue on with the company in a different capacity, providing her insights because she -- her domain expertise is phenomenal -- really successful.

So why don't I just end on this one. Just in terms of -- you talked to a lot of investors, you've done these meetings for a while. Maybe just talk a little bit about what is maybe a little bit less understood from outsiders or by investors underappreciated maybe about Synchrony that maybe you feel you don't get enough credit for?

Yes, we'll probably spent 40 minutes on this one, but I'll try to keep it within 2. I think when people thought about our business, they thought about it as it's private label and it's department store. And that's not really what we are in a large partner concentration. I think when you look at it, we have the widest breadth of products, right? So installment products, secure products, closed-end products, a private label product, a Dual Card, which essentially is a co-branded type of product. We're on general purpose card. So we have a lot more products than people have thought. Everyone used to predict the death of private label. Then you look at the breadth of which we have, we're not just department stores. If you think about our digital platform. When you think about the depth, you have, Verizon, Venmo, Amazon, that's in there. You go out into others, eBay is in there. When you think about health and wellness, you got pet and dental. You have -- when you think about all the other specialties we have in there, now we have pet insurance in there. So it's very broad and diverse. You look inside home and auto, you look at old furnishings, home and apparel, furniture, do it yourself, you think about the general contracting business and things like that. So it's very diverse that's in there. So I think when you look at that diversity, when you look about the ability to sustain that, it is very different. It's not a private label product. It's not a one-and-done product. It's not just a department store. We're highly digital. I think we've shown that. And then I bring it home with -- we didn't talk about it in this 40 minutes, and I appreciate is the RSA. It's one where it protects your downside. Yes, you get away on the upside, but he really has engagement with the partner. So it is more resilient. And when you look at the depth of expertise we had here, we're less volatile than our people when you look at loss rates in cycles. So I think we should get a premium [indiscernible]. We shouldn't really trade at a discount. And I just think it's a broader company than people give credit for it. I think this reorganization will help do that.

Great. RSA, it was the one topic that, you are right, we did skip on. But thank you so much for your time. I think we're at the mark. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Mihir, and have a great day.