Goldman Hands Out $10 Billion in Credit Lines for Apple Card

(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. leaders have been coy about backing up their recent assertion that the Apple Inc. card is the industry’s most successful credit card launch ever. Regulatory filings this week offer a first glimpse into the numbers that had the bank gushing.

• After a full roll-out of the card last quarter, credit lines the bank has extended to Apple customers totaled about $10 billion as of Sept. 30.

Key Insights

• Customers who’ve signed up for the credit card had $736 million in loan balances at the end of September. It’s hard to draw comparisons with other launches as most banks don’t break out performance by individual cards.
• The credit card is part of Goldman’s recent foray to turn its attention to Main Street consumers after more than a century of catering to large corporations and big investors. Its partner in the venture -- Apple Inc. -- has tried to minimize the investment bank’s role as it markets the product with a tagline that reads: “A new kind of credit card. Created by Apple, not a bank.”
• With the Apple Card launch, Goldman hit the brakes on unsecured personal loans under its online-focused Marcus brand, which barely budged for the quarter at about $4.8 billion. Chief Financial Officer Stephen Scherr said last month the firm was intentionally slowing that growth because of the exposure the firm was taking on with Apple Card.

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• Goldman set aside reserves representing 2.7% of its credit card loans. That figure may change as the bank gets more information about borrower behavior.
• The consumer push part of an effort initiated by former CEO Lloyd Blankfein seeking to diversify the firm’s revenue base as it becomes harder to pocket outsized gains from its core Wall Street-focused business lines of trading and investment banking.

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