Tag Archives: American Express

Credit Card Issuers Continue to Pursue Spend-Centric Model

First quarter 2012 results of the leading U.S. credit card issuers reveal that they are continuing to drive spending growth by cardholders. Four of the seven leading issuers reported double-digit year-on-year growth rates, led by Chase and Capital One at 15%, followed by U.S. Bank at 14% and American Express at 12% (American Express also reported that small business card volume rose 16% y/y, its highest growth rate since before the financial crisis.  In contrast, Bank of America and Citi had anemic – albeit positive – growth rates.

The situation with regard to lending growth is more mixed. With the return to economic growth, and the significant improvement in credit quality, issuers have been looking to increase outstandings. However, consumers still bear the scars of the financial crisis and remain reluctant to increase their card borrowing. In addition, many issuers have not yet significantly relaxed the stricter underwriting standards that came into place in 2008 and 2009. The three largest issuers (in terms of outstandings) all reported y/y declines, with Bank of America’s average loans falling 11%. Bank of America’s average U.S. credit card outstandings have declined almost 22% over the past two years, and fell below $100 billion in the most recent quarter.  (It should be noted that this decline is partly attributable to card portfolio sales, with the bank selling portfolios over the past year to Regions, Sovereign and Barclaycard.)  Bank of America and Citi were the two issuers with declines in both volumes and outstandings. Chase also reported a y/y decline in average outstandings, but this was due to the sale of the Kohl’s private label portfolio in the first quarter of 2011.

So, at first viewing, we see some credit card portfolio retrenchment among those banks like Bank of America and Citi that were hardest hit by the financial crisis, while other leading issuers are now growing their portfolios. However, at closer inspection, Bank of America and Citi are also positioning themselves for future card growth. Citi had credit card account growth for the fourth consecutive quarter. And Bank of America reported that new accounts in 1Q12 were up 19% y/y.

In addition, it is notable that Bank of America is changing the composition of its card portfolio by selling off some private-label card portfolios and changing how cards are originated. (It reported that half of the 800,000 cards originated in the first quarter came through its branch channel.)

Role of social media in growing bank revenues

At last month’s Financial Services Marketing Symposium, a question posted by Tim Spence of Oliver Wyman to kick off the conference reflected an issue on attendees’ minds: where does the financial services industry find revenue growth?  This is top of mind in the industry, as the lower loan-loss provisions, which boosted bank profitability in 2011, are expected to tail off in 2012, so financial institutions are now looking to the revenue side of the ledger to maintain and grow profits.

According to the top 25 banks’ recent forecasts, all 25 plan to increase revenue by growing their market share – which means that some of these institutions will fail do to so.

In an environment characterized by increased competitive intensity, technological advances and renewed focus on customer relationship optimization, banks are investing in a range of new service and sales channels, with social media prominent among these emerging channels. A survey of the FSM conference audience revealed that 67% of attendees’ banks have a presence on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. A recent report by FIS Global shows that many top banks have a social media presence on these three main social media platforms:

What was notable about the social media discourse at the conference is that none of the speakers explained how participation in social media channels improves revenue for their organization:

  •  Paul Kadin of Citibank focused on the fact that Citibank’s social media presence has helped to improve its Net Promoter Scores
  • Julie Berkun Fajgenbaum of American Express OPEN discussed the organization’s social media goal: active participation by message recipients
  • Tim Collins of Wells Fargo emphasized that social media is not the right channel for pushing products; rather, it is a forum for authentic, relevant messages to customers

Given the current environment, what is it about social media that allows financial institutions to justify spending resources on developing a presence in this channel? Many speakers emphasized the value of using social media in a genuine way to add value to customers’ lives; some pointed out the opportunity to make customer service more effective through social media. Perhaps the biggest opportunity of all is to differentiate a company from the pack, since no one has really figured out the “secret sauce” to financial services social media strategy – differentiation that will be crucial in the fight for market share during 2012.

For now, financial institutions see social media as an increasingly important customer service channel, and are now focusing attention on addining new social media functionality, as well as integrating social media with other channels in order to optimize relationships.  Over time, as customers become more comfortable with using social media to interact with their financial institutions, opportunities to leverage social media for new customer acquisition, as well as customer cross-sell and upsell, should begin to emerge.

Credit quality continues to improve for leading U.S. card issuers

The leading U.S. credit card issuers continue to report strong improvements in their net charge-off rates.

  • Of the 11 issuers analyzed, eight had 3Q11 net charge-off rates below 5%.  Four had rates below 4%, with American Express leading the industry, at 2.6%
  • Over the past 12 months, eight issuers reduced rates by more than three percentage points (300 basis points)
  • Seven issuers reported rate declines of more than 100 bps between 2Q11 and 3Q11

Issuers also reported strong year-on-year improvements in 30+ day delinquency rates, although the quarterly trend indicates that these declines may be bottoming out. 

  • Five of the seven issuers analyzed had 30+ day delinquency rates below 3%
  • Six of the seven issuers reported triple-digit y/y declines in delinquency rates. The largest decline was reported by Bank of America (178 bps), which still has the highest delinquency rate among these seven issuers
  • Between 2Q11 and 3Q11, delinquency rates for two issuers (American Express U.S. Card and U.S. Bank) were unchanged.  Capital One’s 30+ day delinquency rate rose 32 bps in the most recent quarter

The strong declines in charge-off and delinquency rates have enabled issuers to significantly reduce their provisions for credit losses, which have boosted profitability.  However, with delinquency rate declines leveling off, it is expected that reductions in charge-off rates and loss provisions will also abate in the coming quarter.

Therefore, issuers will increasingly look towards revenue growth drivers to maintain and grow profitability.  On the one hand, they will seek to continue to encourage cardholders to increase spending on their cards, which drives up noninterest income.  In addition, with charge-off rates now at relatively low levels, and with revenue growth remaining anemic, credit card issuers may be more inclined in the coming quarters to seek to build card outstandings and drive net interest income, perhaps through a combination of easing underwriting standards, offering strong introductory offers on balance transfers, and even reducing APRs.