Discover CEO David Nelms Reinvents His Credit Card Firm

David Nelms今年冬天正在非洲野生动物园。一位享有电力划船，水肺潜水和试点的冒险家，Nelms应该发现这次旅行比运营消费者信贷和支付公司更具预测。探索金融服务的主席和首席执行官面临着自金融危机震撼行业以来的许多挑战。

发现资本化130亿美元，发现是第六大美国信用卡发卡机构;四分之一的美国家庭使用它的塑料。It’s also the No. 2 U.S. card company with its own network, after American Express Co. But Riverwoods, Illinois–based Discover almost didn’t make it after spinning out from Morgan Stanley in the third quarter of 2007, just ahead of the Bear Stearns Cos. collapse.

最近，由于2009年的信用卡责任责任和披露（卡）法案，11,000员工公司争议的规定增加，旨在保护消费者免受掠夺性贷款实践。

但是那里提取,在2004年被任命为首席执行官和董事长in 2009, has much to celebrate. The Discover card is turning 25 with the highest sales and lowest delinquency rates since its 1986 launch by Dean Witter Financial Services Group, then a division of Sears, Roebuck and Co. In the third quarter of 2011, card sales volume reached a record $26.3 billion, up 9 percent from the same period in 2010. Meanwhile, credit card loans more than 30 days past due hit an all-time low of 2.43 percent.

Nelms，50，1998年加入了现在发现的总统和COO，迪恩·斯坦利集团合并了Dean Witter，Discover＆Co.来自哈佛商学院的MBA的佛罗里达州圣彼得堡，此前曾一直是信用卡公司MBNA美国银行的副主席。

NELMS通过扩展到其他银行领域，如个人和学生贷款，预付卡和存款产品，有助于多元化发现的业务。他还在2005年收购了2005年的脉搏借记和ATM网络，当花旗集团于2008年旋转时，Diners Club International信用卡网络。Diners Club在185个国家和地区发现了持卡人Rentée到数百万商人。

发现来自万事达卡和签证的明显不同的商业模式，消费者使用在银行网络上运行的银行发行的卡片的消费者进行的流程付款。网络和直接银行都发现自己的卡片。就像美国快递一样，另一个主要的垂直集成卡公司，它拥有所有客户债务本身。如果该债务提供更大的盈利潜力，它也会发现对经济冲击更敏感。

Before the financial crisis, Nelms took a conservative approach to the subprime credit card market, then a key source of growth for banks affiliated with MasterCard and Visa. During the meltdown, the industry’s account write-offs peaked at 12 percent in August 2009; Discover’s high was between 9 and 10 percent. In 2008, Discover won a $2.75 billion settlement from a 2004 antitrust lawsuit against MasterCard and Visa for blocking banks from issuing cards on the Discover network.

发现签署商家到其网络，而不是将任务留给银行或其他实体。具有讽刺意味的是，信贷紧缩使这项工作更容易。在过去的几年里，由于发现努力增加所谓的商家接受，竞争卡发行人员封闭了比提高利率的账户多于它的账户。2006年，发现的商家接受只有76％的万事达卡和签证;今天它几乎是平等的。

收入随之而来。2011年第三季度，发现赢得了6.49亿美元，而在2010年同期期间，每年净收入为7.65亿美元。信贷损失条款的收入为2010年的67亿美元，而2009年与48亿美元。

Jason Arnold, a consumer finance analyst at RBC Capital Markets in San Francisco, is impressed with Nelms’s leadership skills and calls Discover a strong buy. “David manages the business like a long-term investor,” Arnold says. After dropping to $4.73 in March 2009, the company’s stock regained 2007 levels this past July by climbing above $27; in early December it was about $24 a share.

As he looks ahead, Nelms must boost card member spending. Discover’s transaction volume, which includes purchases and cash advances, totaled only $114 billion in 2010, compared with $852 billion for Visa, the No. 1 credit card company. To meet this challenge, Nelms has ventured into mobile apps through Discover’s Zip and Google Wallet. “We think that the phone will increasingly become the access device for the credit card account,” he says.

Senior Writer Frances Denmark recently spoke with Nelms about the Morgan Stanley spin-off, the credit crisis and new regulations.

亚博赞助欧冠机构投资者: What was it like to spin off Discover just before the financial meltdown?

NELMS：我们几乎在金融股票价格上的高峰时出来，所以我们的价格高于我们预期的贸易。我们没有筹集资金。我们是股东的股息，但它很快就业。之后，所有的哈克都会用雷曼兄弟，全国范围，AIG和其余的休息。我们经历过一艘过山车。

您在新独立公司运行的最大挑战是什么？

前两只熊斯坦斯资金在我们成为一家公共公司的两个月内失败。然后事情很快就会恶化了。如果我们在我们所做的时候没有公开，我们就无法获得资金并完成分拆。我们没有站在我们身后的大资产负债表。另一个挑战是建立库房，人力资源和一些法律职能等职责。另一方面，我们能够在母公司在我们离开后不得不处理的其他问题的情况下发现正确的事情，而不会分散注意力。

What helped get Discover through the financial crisis?

First, we had a very experienced and stable management team. I had been running the company for more than a decade before the spin-off, and most of my team had been with us during that entire period. Second, we had been pretty conservative on credit going into the crisis. We had actually given up some market share because we didn’t participate in some of what we considered at the time to be too-aggressive lending, so our credit customer base was very sound as we entered. Third, we had been fairly conservative in how we capitalized the company, how we funded it and the amount of leverage we had. We were starting from a solid foundation. Interestingly, some of the biggest challenges for us were changes that happened at the same time as the crisis or came out of it.

那些挑战是什么？

每个人都谈到了Dodd-Frank或医疗保健法案，但卡法案的纸牌行为更为重要。从其流动的行为和法规具有数百页的新规则，要求信用卡行业对其许多商业实践进行基本变化，包括营销，定价和计费。

遵守这些法规的一些成本是什么？

To some degree, we went back to how credit cards used to work in the 1990s, before risk-based pricing and promotional rates. So it wasn’t the end of the world, but it was a huge adjustment, and there are some things that are gone. As an example, we can’t charge over-limit fees anymore, so maybe we have to be a little more careful about who we allow in to take a card. There was a lot coming at us. But the good news is, we reinvented our strategy.

你是怎么做到的？

A lot of people recommended that we buy a bank and have branches and stable deposits. We considered and rejected that. We came to the conclusion that direct banking is the future, not going backward and getting branches. When you get branches, you do pick up a good source of deposits, but you also pick up a lot of expense. You also have to be in all the products. The direct model is less expensive. My feeling is that ATMs essentially are the branches we needed, so during the process we built a global ATM network; it’s got about 800,000 ATMs around the world. You don’t have to have a branch. We can offer a better value to consumers. We’re open 24 hours a day, moving to the Internet.

那个牌照怎么样？

我们表示，我们将专注于直接银行和付款。关于我们模型的伟大事物之一是我们可以选择我们认为将盈利和服务的产品。我们进入学生贷款，就像其他人离开他们一样。我们进入个人贷款来帮助消费者巩固其债务并支付它，利用如此许多消费者重点的折扣。我们的直接存款真的很大。我们有30亿美元的存款和金钱市场证书，因为我们逃出摩根士丹利。我们现在有250亿美元;这是我们最大的资金来源。证券化是我们资助的小额部分。

这一切都在直接银行方面。在付款方面，我们六年前购买了脉搏，借记和信贷。当危机打击时，Diners Club可以从花旗银行中获得，我们买了它。它是原始的卡网络和我们获得国际验收的方式。因此，我们现在拥有广泛的付款产品，我们不仅可以为我们的发现卡提供服务，还可以服务于服务金融服务，利用一些新的移动机会，并在银行的更高增长领域，这是付款。

什么代表您行业的良好客户服务？

我们查看我们与客户交谈时的时间，作为加强现金返还奖金的方式，并建立更多的忠诚度。我们将其视为一个收入增强机会，而不是成本。与我们的许多竞争对手一起，客户陷入计算机IVR [交互式语音响应]炼狱。在屏幕上的帐户信息，我们将使用我们的数据来说，“好吧，他们最有兴趣的是什么？他们没有在餐馆使用他们的发现卡吗？“也许我们会告诉他们在未来两个月内使用Distain的伟大5％的计划。这是更好的培训，试图雇用并保留该领域的合适人士，但坦率地说，只需将它们在盐湖城中工作在印度的探索，即分包是一个真正的竞争优势。我走到呼叫中心。这就是我学到最重要的地方。

What’s next?

我们的目标是在美国的签证和万事达卡中愿意，与美国其他地区的美国快递一样好。我们认为拥有网络是一个很大的竞争优势。增长最重要的方式之一是不要丢失当前的客户。我们处于历史上低的磨损率。我们专注于保留客户，并通过价值和服务和奖励吸引新人。