Richard D. Fairbank - Capital One Financial Corp.
Management
Yeah, Sanjay, I feel like we're kind of in the credit cycle, sort of middle of the cycle. And I mean, you can – there are things that are locally relevant about the Credit Card business that are different from the auto business, but kind of pulling way up on the consumer. While we're very obsessive about indebtedness and competitive intensity, I think that we're in a relatively stable part of the cycle. The economic indicators continue to look pretty benign. We saw trends actually flagging over the last year-and-a-half, with more alarmed trends in the auto and the Credit Card business related to – well, in the Credit Card, on the supply side; the auto, on the underlying side. But just going back to Credit Card, the surge of credit card supply in the second half of 2015 and especially in 2016, we were concerned by that, and especially, if you extrapolate that. Since then, we've subsequently seen some pullbacks, which may be a response to the recent credit results of the card players. So, it feels like it's settled out a little bit and something that would be consistent more with the middle of the cycle; still moving forward as the cycle progresses there. Then, you look on the supply side, mail volumes, marketing levels, new originations, they're still intense, but they're settling out I guess a little bit here. Then, we look at the revolving debt data from the Fed, and that's down a little bit to 5.8% growth year-over-year. Now, obviously, that's well above the rate of income growth, but at least within the sort of middle of the cycle you feel things a little bit more settling out. We can't help but point out, though, the sustained growth in the other non-mortgaged debts: student lending, auto lending, installment lending, which have recently been growing at about a 6% rate. But if you look at the total level of that debt, it's significantly above the pre-Great Recession peak. And that's especially true of student lending. And then, the other factor on the consumer, of course, is the tremendously low sustained interest rates that they have enjoyed and, therefore, at this point, the debt servicing burdens and other measure of financial obligations are pretty stable, and they're lower than they were pre-Great Recession. So, if I pull way up on all of this, it feels kind of mid cycle. We spoke with a little more alarm over the 18 months and 12 months ago. But I think we'll obviously be very obsessive about this. But within this context, I think there are growth opportunities in our credit businesses.