“And I would remind you that, for our business model, we would not expect to see a meaningful impact from a lower interest rate environment this year.”

In context

“as you can see on Slide 13. We are pleased with this growth and continue to expect to exit the year with some further momentum reflecting our cycle of product refreshes. In the quarter, we acquired 3.4 million new cards, demonstrating the demand we are seeing for our products and the investments we've made. Importantly, acquisition of our premium fee-based products accounted for around 70% of new accounts and the spend revenue and credit profiles of our new card members continue to look strong. Moving on to Slide 14. You can see that net interest income was up 26% year-over-year in Q1. This growth is driven by the increase in our revolving loan balances and also by continued net yield expansion versus last year. We do expect this growth to continue to moderate as we move through the year. And I would remind you that, for our business model, we would not expect to see a meaningful impact from a lower interest rate environment this year. To sum up, revenues on Slide 15. The power of our diversified model continues to drive strong revenue growth momentum. I would note, as you think about the CFPB late fee rule, that late fees from our U.S. consumer segment make up a small portion, less than 1% of our overall revenue. While we have no specific plans to mitigate as of now, we are always looking at our pricing and policies in the ordinary course of business. Moving to expenses on Slide 16. Starting at the top of the page, variable customer engagement expenses came in at 40% of total revenues for the first quarter. As you look at these costs, I would note that Card Member rewards included a $196 million benefit as a result of enhancements to our remodels for estimating future membership rewards redemptions, some of which we re”