“We do not expect any material near term changes to our capital management approach.”

In context

“et range of 10% to 11%. We also returned $2.3 billion of capital to our shareholders, including $1.8 billion of share repurchase. This is the highest level in over two years. And the recent CCAR results further demonstrate the strength of our portfolio and the resilience of our business model. The stress test results show that under a severely adverse scenario, our portfolio remains profitable. In fact, we are the most profitable financial institution as a percentage of asset growth across all the banks subject to CCAR and have the lowest credit card loss rate under stress as well. These results in our stress capital buffer remaining at 2.5%, the lowest prescribed level. We plan to continue to return to shareholders the excess capital we generate while supporting our balance sheet growth. We do not expect any material near term changes to our capital management approach. This brings me to our 2024 guidance on Slide 18. Let me step back and make a few observations about the growth in the business and the way we see the balance of the year unfolding. First, we have a core business that is comfortably generating mid-teens EPS growth, even in a slower growth environment and before the gain from the Accertify sale. Second, the pace of earnings generation in the core business, combined with the strong demand we are seeing in the market for our products, is enabling us to invest around 15% more in marketing compared to last year. As a result, we are able to fund significantly more investments from our core business than our expectation at the start of the year without relying on the one-off gain from Accertify. With that, as Steve mentioned, we are raising our g”