“In fact, depending on credit trends and the pace at which our balance sheet grows, it's possible we may need to build some modest level of reserves.”

In context

“move up over time, but we expect them to remain below pre-pandemic levels in 2022. This strong credit performance combined with continued improvement in the macroeconomic outlook throughout 2021 drove a $1.4 billion provision expense benefit for the full-year, as the low write-offs were fully offset by the reserve releases as shown on Slide 12. As you see on Slide 13, we ended 2021 with $3.4 billion of reserves, representing 3.7% of our loan balances and 0.1% of our card member receivable balances respectively. This is well below the reserve levels we had pre-pandemic given the strong credit performance we've seen. In 2022, we will be growing over the $2.5 billion reserve release benefit we saw in 2021, since I would not expect to see reserve releases of the same magnitude going forward. In fact, depending on credit trends and the pace at which our balance sheet grows, it's possible we may need to build some modest level of reserves. Moving next to revenues on Slide 14. Total revenues were up 30% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, up 17% for the full-year. This is well above our original expectations for the year, driven by the successful execution of our investment strategy and it is part of what emboldens us to launch our new growth plan. Before I get into more details about our largest revenue drivers in the next few slides, I would note that other fees and commissions and other revenue were both up year-over-year in the fourth quarter and for the full-year, primarily driven by the uptick in travel-related revenues we began to see in the second half of 2021. These travel-related revenue still remain well below 2019 levels, however and their complete recovery will likely lag and be a tailwind into 2023 along with”