Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Roger Hochschild: Yeah. So it has slowed down further so far in July, so probably closer to 1%. Not necessarily as bad as it sounds in terms of the health of the consumer because you’ve got some very challenging comps compared to last year’s growth as well as the very, very high level of new accounts we put on last year. And I think overall in terms of payment side, delinquencies and losses as John said are sort of normalizing right on the path we thought they were. And here I think that the strength of the job market is very constructive for our sort of prime consumer base.

Jeff Adelson: Got it. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator: Thank you. We’ll take our next question from Ryan Nash with Goldman Sachs.

Ryan Nash: Hey, good morning guys.

Roger Hochschild: Good morning.

Ryan Nash: Roger, again, I know that we’re probably limiting what we could say here on the compliance side, but I guess just a broader question. Can you maybe just help us understand, what are the areas that you feel that the company has underinvested in? And maybe just give us a framework for what you guys are doing in internally to fix these. I understand that John had talked about raising costs, but you — can you give us a little bit more color in terms of what the investments you’re making and what you think the timeline is to get these done?

Roger Hochschild: Sure. John can maybe provide more color on the timeline. I would say it’s a multi-year, but it’s also something that we have been investing in over the last couple of years. So as you think about your compliance management system, it’s everything from risk identification, sort of process mapping, building controls or change management processes, the resources you have around risk management in the first line, the resources you have in the second line in terms of the compliance function, testing, the internal audit, your governance processes. And so we are determined to be as strong on the compliance side and it’s excellent there as we are around customer experience, data and analytic, every other aspect of our business model. So this is our top priority and the investment is both on the technology side, outside consultants, but also in terms of headcount here at Discover. John?

John Greene: And then, Ryan, on the trajectory, and so I made this comment publicly about 1.5 months ago. 2019 to 2023, we increased our spend in compliance and I’ll say some gentle items to ensure compliance works as we wish it to work. I indicated it was about an increase of $250 million as we relooked at it. We were going to accelerate that spend to probably $300 million increase from 2019 and a $200 million increase ‘22 to ’23. Now the implications for that on ’24, where we sit today, we expect once we achieve that level in ‘23 to be relatively consistent into ’24. And then as we kind of shape this piece of our business into something that we desire, our regulators desire and our shareholders deserve, we expect that expense burn to reduce.

Ryan Nash: Really appreciate all that color. And then maybe just on credit, I think Roger might have talked about the normalization of the front book as well as expectations for the back book to continue to normalize. But you took the credit loss range down a bit. So can you maybe just talk about one where you’re seeing the improved performance in, John? As you look out, maybe just talk about your confidence in the curve on losses bending as we approach sort of the midpoint of next year? Thanks.

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