Bread Financial Holdings KBW Fintech Ecosystem Conference 2026

Yeah, I appreciate it. You and I think, met the first week I joined Bread Financial, and you kind of laid out a little bit of a roadmap of what we had to do to regain investor support. I would like to think we have done that over the years, but not by hyping up the company, but being very honest and transparent about what had to be done to run our company like a pure play financial services company with discipline and focus. You used the word grind, and I use that word often myself, because honestly, to transform a company, it does not happen overnight. It is a grind, and it takes the focus of the entire organization in everything we do, from risk management. Look, risk management isn't sexy, but it is foundational to running a company well.

I think the evidence of that is in us being able to merge our two banks together with, I will say, a clean bill of health with no conditions, which is fantastic. It sets us up well for what may be the next chapter if we decide to pursue a national bank charter.

When we want to do something like that, it will not be about aspirations and trying to convince the regulators of what we would like to do, what we will do around compliance and how we run the company. It is how we do it. I think the investors probably do not understand as much of what is under the hood.

Yeah. But that is also what has driven our ratings improvements over the past year or two.

When you look at technology transformation, the finance balance sheet, the stuff I have had my personal responsibility for, delevering the company, paying down over 70% of our debt obligations. I mean, you can see that in the evidence of our senior notes had a 300 basis point improvement of the rate we paid compared to the initial rate we paid. We have optimized around, we are doing everything right. Right now, I think maybe what investors, even when we go out on the road and we meet with certain investors who are not as familiar with us, of who we are today, they think of us as the old Alliance Data and the way the company was run back then, and it is not how it is run today.

Today, I would say we are probably one of the best in class in terms of how we run from that, I will say, big bank financial discipline, but being a far more nimble company as we are today.

Yeah, I think when you are talking about the business development opportunities and what that pipeline looks like, it is kind of what you said. There are only certain partners that are, or potential partners that are in market at any point in time. You have a few years that you look out to see what is coming to market and what would make sense for Bread Financial, and use the word large partners. I think the ones we focus on are more that medium size that fit our wheelhouse of where we know we can offer customized solutions, help them grow their products, and be there for them the way they want a partner to be. Whereas, we are not a behemoth where that 500 to billion-sized partner might get lost and may not get prioritized with the tech investments and things that are required.

I don't think we have. We don't pursue the large partners that are $10 billion and above. When you say large, I don't- Yeah, yeah.

You're not talking mega, but large. You're talking like good-sized ones. When you look at the furniture vertical that's now grown nicely for us, we were opportunistic. We saw an opportunity when one of our peers out there were changing focus, and they came to market, and we won more than our fair share of those furniture deals. They do come with a larger ticket. What's going forward might look different because different types of partners come to the market.

Yeah, that's an excellent question, and kind of what I open up with. Every year, it looks a little different.

Some years you have some new brand or retailers or people coming to market that are de novo, who've not had a program before. We have some of those. Others, we've got some signings that are winning, that you're winning from other existing partnerships that are out there. So it's a blend. Got it.