Margaret Keane, CEO of Synchrony
Source: Synchrony Financial
Synchrony Financial CEO Margaret Keane will step down after nearly a decade running the shared brand card lender.
Sixty-one-year-old Keane, one of the few women who runs a Wall Street financial company, will remain with the company as executive chairman of the board, while Synchrony chairman Brian Doubles takes over. position of CEO. Keane said the measure was part of a long-planned succession and will take effect on April 1.
Keane helped make Synchrony public seven years ago as part of his separation from General Electric. He oversaw dozens of high-profile partnerships for the lender, including the Venmo credit card this year, as well as shared branded card offerings with Amazon and Verizon.
“My legacy is really about the company I built: it’s not just about financial resources,” Keane told CNBC in a phone interview. “GE had such a strong culture and way of doing things and we had to create our own identity.”
The lender is best known for its shared brand offerings with partners such as Lowe’s, Sam’s Club and Amazon.com. It has recently added more technology-focused companies like PayPal. Synchrony has also doubled in health financing with Care Credit and in pet health with the acquisition of insurance company Pets Best.
Over the past decade, under Keane’s leadership, Synchrony shares have gained about 60%. The shares emerged in March as fears over consumer credit during the pandemic. Synchronization shares have returned 6% in the last 12 months, compared to an 18% return on the S&P 500.
Keane has also dealt with controversy over the break-up of high-profile partnerships. Walmart and Synchrony ended their nearly two-decade card relationship in 2018, which led to a lawsuit from Walmart for the sale of this loan portfolio.
Doubles, forty-five, previously served as Synchrony’s executive vice president and chief financial officer and was chief financial officer of GE’s U.S. retail finance business from 2009 to 2014. His focus on the role of executive director will be guiding Synchrony and its 16,000 employees through the pandemic and navigating toward an online economy that accelerated this year, he said.
Synchrony’s investments in digital and data analytics to “anticipate how customers want to buy” are helping to attract those technology-focused partners like Amazon, according to Doubles. He also highlighted U.S. consumer resilience, Synchrony’s loan portfolio during the pandemic, and lower-than-expected credit card delinquencies over the past quarter.
“Certainly there are people who don’t have it and it’s clearly not uniform across the consumer base, but overall the consumer is in good shape,” Doubles said.