All right, everybody. Welcome again. We have our second presentation, but certainly not second. First, in my heart, we have Synchrony Financial; and CFO, Brian Wenzel. Welcome, Brian.
Thanks, Erika. Appreciate being here today in Florida. Much warmer and a lot less snow than Connecticut.
Yes, much, much warmer. So it feels like your earnings call just ended yesterday. It was quite a long earnings call. And you and the other Brian, were fielding a lot of questions on revenue and growth.
Maybe to start, can we kick off with your view on 2025 and how you see the story evolving as we come into the year?
Yes, listen. We believe, as we look back on 2024 for 1 second Erika, the company executed at a high level. We navigated a difficult macro environment. We most certainly took actions in order to curtail net credit losses to stay within the rate margin. We put on assets that at a lower margin is not effective. And most certainly, we got ahead of the pending late fee rule. So it's a lot of really positive things. So as we exited 2024, we felt we were in a position of strength. And there's a lot of focus on growth and where growth was going. And I think Brian and I said, we're actually happy with the growth. That's what we wanted to do. We wanted to make sure that we got the charge-off and the margin position in the right place.
I think as we think about 2025, most certainly, the first half of the year is going to be substantially similar, I think, to the end of 2024, I think the progress against inflation is going to be a little bit more muted. We've been more pessimistic on Fed rate actions. We only had 1 in the back half of the year in September.
So we kind of think, listen, the first half is a little tougher, but I think the charge-off position will get in the right place. And that positions us well as we look to the back half of the year exiting out of 2025. So we're excited about that, we're going to continue the expense discipline that we showed in the last couple of years. So all in all, we feel positive about 2025, coming off of what it was, in theory, we think, a very good execution year for us as a company.
Great. So primary adamant message you had on the call was that the PPPCs or the mitigants are not the factors that caused the slowdown in growth. Could we impact that more and maybe give us a little bit more examples about or data about application data and some of the control groups that you've tested in order to come to this conclusion?
Yes. Again, we stated it on the call, I stated on the call, the majority of the slowdown in sales, purchase volume and new accounts was driven by our credit actions. And that was intended, and we are okay with that. I think when people try to sit back and say the PPPCs caused some of this, the positive thing about putting the PPPCs in early in order to mitigate that cliff effect of a potential late fee drop was we were able to have a control room. And each portfolio had a control group that was held out so that we can compare activity along a number of different levels, whether it was purchase volume, closure rate, and voluntary closure rate, complaint rate, down to finance charge actives to see if people are rotating from a revolver to a transactor, et cetera.
When we look at the groups on average, when I look at the accounts that we mailed a change in terms to versus that control group, on a sales basis, it was $1 lower per month, $1 sales. So it was not significant when it comes to purchase volume. When you look at another metric that you look at is the payment rate on those accounts, the payment rate was less than 10 basis points of difference between that mail population and the control room.
So when we look at those 2 measures, we don't really see in theory, a reduction of purchase volume or a switch in consumer behavior as a result of the pricing changes. When you go to new accounts, right, the theory could have been, listen, your new accounts are down, your applications are down, people don't want the product because it's priced high, right? And you say, okay, where would people pull back from that, if you view the price is too high? When we look at credit grades and through to our population in that same kind of period, while applications were down generally, which is consistent with what consumer behavior was, it was down more in the nonprime population than the super prime.
So I think you pull all that back, we're not seeing a material difference on purchase volume. You're not seeing any change really statistically significant change on revolver transactor and you're not seeing what people would say is the higher-end consumer pulling away from the product. Our products, while the price may be high in some people's view, the value proposition generally are richer than general-purpose credits cards. And that's why people take up the product as that as well as the affinity for the brands in which we serve.
Speaking of credit, you did put out an 8-K this morning with pretty solid credit numbers. For investors, either in the room or online that haven't opened it yet or read it yet, maybe tell us a little bit about the highlights of what the 8-K said and then let's go into how -- what that says about the health of the Synchrony consumer?
Yes. So I'm surprised people wouldn't look at it at 6:00 this morning when you published it. And thank you for having your conference early, so we can get that out early, but our 30-plus delinquency rate was 4.7%. Our charge-off rate was 6.2%. When you look at the 4.7% delinquency rate, that's 19 basis points better than seasonality from 17 to 19. That's the sixth consecutive month of seasonality and actually accelerated in January versus other months. I think while we didn't disclose the 90-plus rate, I believe it's 7 basis points better than historical average, again, accelerating for where it has been.
Again, the sixth consecutive month of positive performance versus seasonality. So we feel good about that direction of credit. The 6.2% rate on charge-off, obviously, we feel positive about that. What we said to folks back, it seems like 2 weeks ago on our earnings call is, we're going to outperform seasonality. We get a little bit of benefit in January because you have a higher balance that will bleed down over the next couple of months, but again, we will outperform seasonality for the first quarter of this year.
And I think as we pull up and think about those, that first month of the year being in, that gives us some reaffirmation with regard to what we said was our guidance of being in the 5.8% to 6.1% net charge-off for the full year. So we feel good about that. We feel good about the credit actions that have taken place.
The second part of your question is how do we feel about the consumer. I mean the consumer, very much in January, acted like the fourth quarter last year. They continue to be somewhat diligent with regard to their spending and discretionary spending. They seem disciplined. We don't see them doing things that, again, would worry us about to help the consumer, but just deal with effects of affordability, which is a big problem for not only the nonprime, but even the prime customer in Middle America, that's trying to get by with high grocery prices, higher gas prices, higher insurance prices, et cetera. So the consumer is kind of hanging in there. We hope they continue to hang in there and the credit actions are having the effect that we want.
That being said, you are coming off the second-highest growth year in terms of purchase volume. So you mentioned the phrase hanging in there, but it seems a little incongruous with that purchase volume, right? So that -- how do we circle the square, so to speak, in terms of consumer confidence heading into '25?
Yes. I think, Erika, to be honest with you, I think consumer confidence is going to be a little bit shaky in the first half of the year. The consumer confidence index, whether you look at University of Michigan or the Conference Board, they lag a little bit. I think we're going to see consumers continue to be on the sidelines here for the first half. And to a large degree until prices start to check up, affordability starts to come in, there's a whole bunch of questions with regard to the administration and what they're going to do and the effects on the consumer, and goods pricing.
So I think the first half is going to be much -- very similar to, I think, the back half of 2024. Well, for us, the front half of 2024 was strong. So we're comping against that. I think the comps get a little bit easier as we move through the year. But again, it's interesting when you're in this business, Erika. We sat here a year ago and people like don't grow, because the charge-offs were high and you go through this now like why aren't you going faster? And like, well, we want to grow at the right margin. And we're willing to be patient about that.
We are with some of the most iconic brands in retailing and distribution and the consumer will be there. Just -- you can't force them into spending. We're not big into travel and some of the high-end stuff. That's not -- we're middle market America that serves the full spectrum, which makes us different when you compare us to some of the terrific companies you're going to talk to over the next couple of days, we are middle of America, and we're in full spectrum America. And so the consumer itself, they're hanging in there. They're not showing stress, they're being diligent, which I think is tremendous because a lot of times, they just -- they lose their own discipline and that creates a whole separate problem.
Going back to the credit actions that you mentioned, there's clearly a timing effect. Number one, could you remind everybody when those credit actions are initiated? And is the impact on growth now at a steady state, so to speak?
Yes. So we took 2 ways, so I'd say, broader-based actions. We consistently look idiosyncratic basis at partners, channels, products and we'll make changes. But if you think about it, the first wave of those impact started in the middle of '23 and the second wave we're in, the first and early into the second part of 2024. The 2024 actions were all around ability to pay, right? If we saw you not paying a student loan, even though it wasn't being reported to the bureau's delinquent, we could see the balance is not changing, okay? You're not paying it.
Now, there's 2 theories of why you wouldn't pay your student loans. Number one, you believe that the Biden administration was going to forgive the debt, so why should I pay it down if it's going to get forgiven? Or two, you came through the pandemic not paying it, now you couldn't pay it. And so we view that as an ability-to-pay potential problem. That was 1 piece.
The second piece was around debt consolidation loans. If you're taking out debt consolidation loans, which lowered your average monthly payment, great, but left you with more, in theory, exposure because those unsecured current lines were there. That's an ability-to-pay issue we thought. So we said, okay, if we see those types of characteristics, we're going to take some type of action against those accounts. And so it was all about protecting the portfolio and stopping an acceleration of delinquency and net charge-offs. And again, they take about 9 to 12 months to bake in.
So I think when we look at the actions now, when we get through this quarter, I think they're going to be fully effective, which is why we see this acceleration, I think, in positive delinquency in that charge-off performance, it gives us confidence as we think about our profile for 2025. So that's the right thing to be doing at this point in time. We believe, maybe differently than other issuers, I'm wondering a lower margin is not the right answer. I'd rather say, okay, let's not grow as much, let's sit on the sidelines a little bit when we see the right margin, we'll step in and that's what we're going to do as a company.
You talked during the earnings call about the potential of reopening the credit box in the second half of 2025. We've just talked about pretty solid credit metrics for the month. What is the mosaic that you would need to see in terms of your own data set for credit and macro in order to make that decision?
Yes. Well, first of all, I never like to say I'm open in the credit box. I'm in a restrictive credit position today. So what will we need to see to be less restrictive?
Untightened.
Untightened. That's restrictive. What we have to see is the performance in delinquency. And what we see today, we see entry rate that's better than the pre-pandemic period. We're starting to see our 4 to 7 due delinquency, late stage delinquency, performance improve. We're seeing stability in that front side of the delinquency buckets. Once we get comfort that, that has taken a hold and it firmly in grasp, then I think we start thinking about, okay, what are things that we can do to would become less restrictive. And I laid out, if there is a scenario where in the back half of this year, we do some things that loosen or lighten some of the restrictions that we put in place. We would not -- I would be pretty confident we will not fully unwind what we did last couple of years this year, we'll have to think about that in 2026, but I think what you'll start to see, Erika, is what I would say, pro-growth credit actions, right?
So you will think about credit line increases where we have not necessarily been doing them today for customers that we know, you'll start to see more upgrades from private label Dual Card because we forced more people into private label because of the lower line structure. So we'll see positive things. The positivity with that is when you do a credit line increase or you do an upgrade, where you do some of these pro, I'd say, pro-growth measures, they generally come with their offer from the merchant, and that stimulates growth in the short term.
So -- and again, they're on existing accounts, so you get great operating leverage right, relative to that. So if we see delinquency continue to improve through the first part of the year, then I think we start doing some of those positive things. And then we assess in the back part of the year under this scenario, whether or not we want to do more in 2026. And I think that becomes a tailwind for us and for us and our partners.
So let's talk a little bit more about the PPPCs what's coming better than expectations? And what's been less effective? And are there any more incremental changes in the pipeline to make for 2025?
Yes, let me unpack that a little bit. The second part of your question is there incremental things that we're going to do. The answer is no. We came in, and if you think about the way the CFPB was going to attack late fees, there was a cliff effect. There's a cliff effect on late fees. So you had this drop because you lose revenue, PPPCs take some time to bleed in. So we went in advance because we want to narrow that trough. There was a combination of actions that had some shorter-term benefits and ones that take a little bit longer to come through.
If you put them in right categories, I think when we look at the APRs, which we indicated, generally, it takes about 50% of the book over 12 months, leads into new APRs, 75% over 2 years, and then it tails out from there. So when I look at that first bucket, we've actually seen a slightly better lead-in. Now, we have a lot of history for that, and it's overperforming. So we feel good about the APR increases, I think when some people look at our APRs, and I just want to hit this 1 point, people are confusing some of the prime rate increases with the changes we made because our APR increase is only 200 to 300 basis points.
So the prime rates had actually had a bigger impact than on the cards that are variable than, I'd say, our action. So -- but again, APRs have outperformed us. When I look at paper statement fees, slightly below expectations, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. First of all, in the first quarter, we were probably a little bit more generous with regard to waivers because it was a very unique fee in the industry that we led with, and we didn't want to create as much alarm with consumers. So I think number one, we're a little bit more generous with the softeners.
Two, we saw a bigger-than-expected conversion to e-bill, which is great because the more we can get people to go into e-service, whether that's statements, other issues that they have to do, it's better for us. So the benefit shows up probably more so in OpEx than in other income. So that performed a little bit less than our expectations. I think the other thing we instituted was promotional financing fee. That's been a little bit noise, right, because based on some of the bigger tickets. And for those individuals who potentially didn't need the financing, they're like, "Hey, why are we going to pay the fee if I'm just going to pay off anyway."
So there's a little bit of noise there. I think all in all, when you tick that all together, and then when you look at the big one, we have not seen on a voluntary basis, we've seen less attrition, which is better for us. So all in all, when we look at that, in theory, they're performing better than our expectations. We're in line with our expectations. But it's one, again, we prefer not to take, but again, we had to protect the company from what we view was a very unfair, and poorly analyzed rule change. And so we'll continue to monitor this. It's great having test first control because we can see the impacts at the portfolio level, the platform level and at the company level.
So I wanted to unpack the APR trajectory and the attrition, some of the APR trajectory based on what you said about 75% of the portfolios where that supply to should reflect that in 2 years. So we should see in the second half of 2026, a nicer impact to your net interest margin.
Yes. Listen, I think you've got a lot of moving pieces on NII, right? The first, as you -- we do see the impact of the PPCCs, they are significant. They are hitting positively NII. What's really offsetting that a little bit is lower late fees, right? So when you go from a rate that's in the 6-plus percent net charge off going down, you're losing your late fee incident rate, which creates a headwind. And that's unfortunately a higher-yielding item. So you have a little bit of give and take between those 2 things. You are right because in June of 2026, you're going to be at that roughly 75%. So you should continue to feel that.
I think the other thing this business and our targets, our long-term targets on net interest margin, et cetera, weren't built around a Fed funds rate of 4.5%. It was built around something that was more like 2.5%. So it depends on the trajectory to get there. And right now, there's not a very good trajectory to get to 2.5% or 3% or 3.25% by the end of next year. I mean, you probably have better insight than I do. It just -- unfortunately, the Fed is moving at a slower pace rightfully so because they're not getting inflation down and you don't see the effects on the labor market.
Let's unpack that. There's clearly a lot of conversation about deregulatory momentum in Washington. You said the other offset is the reduction of late fees. Given that the PPPCs don't appear to be impacting application volume that much like you said, and clearly, there is a chance that we may not see a change in the late fee rule. Will you be able to retain these changes? Let's say, we keep the economics of the late fees. And of course, the second toughest question is what's the risk that these PPPCs get competed away?
Yes. So great question. That is the question we face with a lot of investors. They want to know what happens. And I think, to a large degree, if we learn nothing in the last 3 weeks is things move quickly, things happen and things get unwound and everyone needs to unfortunately take a deep breath and wait here. The late fee piece is going through a process. The next step to the process is a submission by the plaintiffs on the 22nd, I believe, of February. And then response by the government. And we'll have greater clarity, I think, in the first half of this year with regard to late fees.
In any event, if you wanted to say, okay, let's assume that late fee change does not happen. The first thing we have to have certainty because you can't put things in, roll them back, put things back in. It just doesn't work that way. The consumer behavior and consumer sentiment will -- is not really conducive, put aside the rules. So you have to have certainty right relative to rule not going in, number one. Once that certainty is there, I think what we do, what we did at the start of this, which is go sit down with our partners, the ones that share economics and have transparent open discussion, okay, here's what we've seen today. Here's the data on test versus control.
Our experience has been, particularly on the APR side, you don't really pick up volume when it comes to rate reductions and have that discussion with the partners and let them participate in where they want to be from a brand perspective, a competitor perspective, et cetera. And then we'll do the same evaluation for the properties in which we control the brand. So we'll go through those different pieces.
When you talk about being competed away, one of the barriers in this business, good or bad, is that our portfolio is generally convey a fair market value. So if someone wants to come in and say, okay, we're going to price this thing down. They have to pay me fair market value for the prices that are in today and the economics are in today, which doesn't allow them to pass that economics really on to the partner. So it does create a little bit of a competitive scenario where, someone can't just come in and say I'm going a lower price. They're going to compete it. And a lot of our partners are sharing these economics today. We'll continue to invest in the program. So again, we'll deal with it, it comes. But I think our economic sharing, particularly when you're over these formal rates, our partners are sharing a good bid in the economics of these PPPC. So that's where alignment of interest is so critical in our business model.
Got it. Maybe we'll pivot away from this topic and talk a little bit more about your pay leader strategy. So talk a little bit about this in terms of is this mostly a customer acquisition tool? And how are you thinking about launching the pay later product through a broader spectrum of partners?
Yes. Listen, pay later, the whole buy now, pay later space that people think is a phenomenon. We've been in this business for 90 years. I think everything we do is buy now, pay later. I don't know anyone pays us. And to be honest with you, the concept itself of the promotional financing, we used to do inside a revolving account, right, just because of the fact that our partners want that ongoing relationship with the consumer. So for us, we would open a revolving account, put an installment, whether it's equal pay or some other type of with pay deferred interest type product in there and people get to balance to that. Consumers like these, they wanted something that was potentially unique and not have a revolving account. So we created this product, and we've rolled it out now. We put it with our -- 1 of our long center partners, Lowe's, with JCPenney's.
We got other big partners ready to go with it. And it's part for us a multiproduct strategy. If you want to close an installment loan, pay later. If you want a revolving product, great. If you want to evolve a product with promotional financing, great. We have a Secured Card, Dual Card, et cetera. So we look at this, if you get a closed-end installment product, our view is, okay, how do I take that close-end one-end-done type relationship and try to migrate it to a revolving relationship. That's what our partners want.
So we're providing the consumer the flexibility to choose a financial product, and then we're going to sit back and say, okay, what think does it make sense in that revolving or in that paydown period to offer them a revolving product to maintain the relationship. That's what we think makes the most sense and we'll continue to add the strategy.
So again, it's not something new to us. Most certainly, I think when you look at the buy now, pay later, pure buy now, pay later companies, they're trying to create multiproducts because they understand that the closed-end installment is not necessarily going to survive on its own. And so they need multiple products in order to move people through the life cycle. The other thing for us in the multiproduct setting, to be honest with, Erika, is, when you look at it and if you come in and shop with that, customer get takes buy now, pay later loans, we're not immediately trying to yank them over to someone else and give them another loan. I mean, we want them to be loyal to that brand, loyal to that customer, and that's what makes us a little bit more unique in the space.
Got it. Before I turn to the next question, I just wanted a reminder for the audience that if you wanted to ask question, open up the conference site through the QR Q code and put in your questions and I'll see it through this iPad. Partnership opportunities. Remind us about how you're approaching partnerships in 2025. You've had some bigger renewals over the past year, Sam's Club, JCPenney, Verizon, what does the renewal pipeline look like over the next few years? And what does the pipeline look like away from you in terms of what could come to market?
Yes. Listen, we have a couple of other ones in the next couple of years that we need to renew. And I think we're in good positions with those. They're ones we worked hard at every day in order to renew. I think the pipeline overall, Erika, in the market, if you look at the opportunities that we had last year, we won J.Crew, smaller portfolio but really into our core. You look at BRP in the installment space sort of program for us, the books stay behind, doing very well. You had Virgin in the co-branding space. So we do see opportunities. I'd say there's probably more activity now. I think you have a little bit more clarity on the macro environment.
You have a little more clarity on the regulatory environment. But here's the thing, Erika, we will be absolutely disciplined on price. We -- in all our deals, they're 7- to 10-year deals. We price in a recession because generally speaking, over 7 to 10 years, you have a recession. We price in recession, and we sit back and say, listen, I'm not going to degrade our ROA in order to get new business. And what we like to say is, listen, I am not the highest -- I'm sorry, the lowest cost partner, but I'm going to be the best partner when it comes to capabilities.
And so you got to decide what you want as a partner. If that doesn't have a swing every time, then that's fine. We're comfortable with that, but the activity level is probably higher than we've seen in the last number of years relative to those opportunities.
So maybe talk about your funding strategy for 2025. And how are you approaching deposit growth and pricing for this year? And are you considering that some of the assist that you may be getting in asset yields through PPPCs? Would you use that as an advantage to be more of a leader in digital banking pricing?
Yes. I don't think we're going to be a leader, Erika, in digital banking pricing. Here's a simple thing. We don't do as much brand work, right? I don't spend as much. I don't have to race cars. I don't have stadiums. I don't have tournaments. We; don't do a lot of stuff, which allows us to put more money back into the products itself. So our price is generally going to be 20 basis points higher than, I would say, a direct competitive set. When you think about the allies, the Marcus, the American Expresses of the world, we're going to be in a zone around there.
We did lower our high-yield savings last week. I guess some encouragement on the earnings call to do that. There a lot of folks. We didn't do it because of that, but we're at 4% now. Again, what I'd say to people is the beta, and the way we talk about beta is from the start of a rate up to right before the rate goes down, what's that beta, was about 75%, 74% and 76% between the high-yield savings and CDs. You will see that on the way down, to be honest with you. We're probably in the 50% to 60% range right now coming down.
We moved again right before the first cut down, but we're not in a position where we feel like we have to really just lower the price, right? We're going to grow at some point here. It's a -- put aside an interest margin, which is an output measure. It's a positive economics rate. If I can lend to somewhere 4% and go give it to the government, you get 4.5% back, that's not a bad deal, not the best use of money. But I'm not losing money where if you look at pre-pandemic, I was borrowing at 1%, that's getting 9 basis points back. It was a negative economic carry. So we're going to be a little bit heavier on liquidity now. I think, to be honest with you, we've seen a little bit, some positive flows here in January for bonuses. So I guess a lot of companies have done well. So that's great, and we'll continue to do that.
We are facing the first 2 quarters of this year, some of the more significant maturity towers in CDs than we've seen. And that was by design, we tried to set those maturities up, assuming the rates will be a little bit lower than they are here. But again, we're seeing very good retention rates right now. So it won't be a leader, we'll stay with the back a little bit. And we're not going to spend a lot of dollars on brand and stadiums and tournaments and race cars.
Those are expensive.
They are very expensive.
So I wanted to zoom back out and revisit the deregulatory momentum topic. So the broad question is, how might the new administration impact future capital and liquidity requirements and supervisory practices? But very clearly, there has been 2 very recent headlines that are directly impacting you. One would be over the weekend headlines in the CFPB. And the second would be dFast, which you would be participating in next year. There's a lot going on, so respond to how you'd like in terms of those 2 facets.
Yes. Let me go where you ended. dFast and the stress testing. We're a category 4 bank, right? So we participated last year. We get our first stress capital buffer next year.
I don't remember your stress capital buffer.
Yes. But I don't get out of the process. I still have to go through the process, still give them the data, I still give them the capital plan. So there's no real impact to us. So we're in the process and we feel good about where we are as a company with regard to that. The positive things, I think that the Fed has said, and we'll see where they come through is transparency. And I think for us, it's going to be really important to understand transparency.
We are pretty unique when it comes to the RSA impact and making sure that when they model the RSA impact that it's modeled in the way it's appropriate. I also hope by when we get a stress capital buffer next year that the Fed actually recognizes CECL, which is the benefit to everyone's, not necessarily us, but everyone's really impact on the financials because it is reality. I understand they haven't modeled it, but hopefully, that happens.
So I think transparency there, closing of CECL and we'll continue to play the long game here. Who knows on Basel III, you need a new Vice Chair supervision. We are encouraged about the tailoring perspective that they talk about. When you talk about the CFPB, and this has been one of the more debated topics about what happens with the CFPB, obviously, it's created through the legislative branch and these legislative branches take action if they're going to do anything. That, to us, again, the last 3 weeks have been interesting. If you look at on and off and what happens, our view is we're keeping our head down. We have a lot of respect for the CFPB. We'll continue to deal with the CFPB and as business, as usual, until something definitive happens.
And that's okay with us. And the litigation with regard to late fees, that's going to continue. And obviously, we'll see over the course of the coming months with the new administration or the new leadership the CFPB think about that. And again, we can't control it. We just rack to it. But right now, we haven't changed anything inside our company with regard to that as well as any of our other regulators, our view is we'll see what happens, but they're going to continue to act because certainly the way they have been engaging with us. And if I pull back up when the Biden administration came through, we expected a greater regulatory impact. The first 2 years, we didn't quite feel it. The last 2 years, we felt it. I don't know when we'll feel a change in the potential deregulation or the market. So again, we're going to continue to operate our company in the way that we think and we'll respond to how the environment shifts.
And just a question on capital. Is it really the receiving your first stress capital buffer that's an important step in terms of optimizing your capital towards 11% CET1? And over the short term, should we think about buybacks as just a toggle for growth, was a seasonally slower first quarter, a little bit more buyback?
Yes. There's been a lot of questions on our capital, we had at one of our lowest quarters in the fourth quarter last year. And people are trying to read through was it the environment where we're saving capital for something, et cetera. And it was more simply, listen, we expected a lot of volatility around the election. We expect a lot of volatility after election. And we said, listen, I don't want to play a game. So we said, "Let's just sit on the sidelines and you can go out." We had $600 million remaining in our share repurchase, the current authorization. We're going to complete that. We completed the final transition phase under our CECL this quarter. So that's behind us. And we're going to continue to do that. The short answer is no. We feel comfortable the way we model and the way we project that stress capital buffer that as we look at our target that we're going to be able to achieve that.
And so more -- it's more about, for us, how do we think about that trajectory to get there? Most certainly, I'm not sure people fully appreciate this. You're taking all your constituencies for a ride. I got to get the Fed to go along with me. I had the rating agencies to go along with me. Well, certainly, I hope investors going along with us. But we understand it's a position of strength for us and most certainly, we're going to deploy that in a way that shareholders really appreciate.
One last question before we run out of time, one last to the end zone. Going back to the delinquency data from this morning. Is it too early to call the peak and charge-offs for this normalization cycle?
Erika, I don't -- everyone says like, peak, we're -- if you look back at the lost charge-off rate, we posted last year, we're going to be significantly below that this year. There's seasonality. We feel great about the rate. So I'm not in to call them peaks or valleys or troughs. We feel good about credit.
Great. Well, I think that's a good place to end our chat. Brian, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you.
Thank you.
