1221: Rebuilding Bread Financial’s Capital Foundation—And What It Made Possible | with Perry Beberman, CFO, Bread Financial

0:00Support for CFO Thought Leader comes from OneStream, Trusted Data, Faster Decisions, and Salesforce. Explore new research on the future of finance and AI at Salesforce.com slash CFO Report.

0:17Perry Beberman: Hi, it's David Denbor, CEO of Column 5 and Darwin Analytics, inviting you to join me and my vendors and consulting partners at the EPM Summit. November 16th through the 19th at the Bellagio in Vegas. This is the best place to make sense of finance technology that's emerging within EPM and AI. And I know you're interested in that. This is episode 1221.

0:52You know, we have some separation of duties across the company. So we have a chief revenue officer who's responsible for growing the existing partnerships and those partners you can imagine, those retailers want us to underwrite deeper, say yes to more of their customers. And then credit is responsible for making sure that we are managing towards our long term loss targets. And then finance has to play in the middle and find the sweet spot of the return to make sure we get the right return on equity for our shareholders. So that, I'd say, is every week it's colliding. And that goes back to the point I said earlier today on the healthy tension and how important it is for an organization to be successful.

1:40You can't have one area dictating what the right answer is. And that's where we come together as a group and figure out what is the right bounce. We're getting the right return. Can we take on a little more risk? Or are we not getting the right return and we have to reduce that risk, which then can reduce some of the growth?

2:02Hi, it's Jack. On today's show, we speak with Perry Biberman, CFO of Bread Financial.

2:14There's an interesting tension inside the consumer lending business. Retail partners want more customers approved for credit. Risk teams want to protect the company from losses. And finance, well, finance has to figure out whether the numbers make sense. What's interesting is that these competing interests aren't necessarily a problem to be solved. They may actually be what keeps a company making sound decisions. At Bread Financial, CFO Perry Biberman describes these disagreements as a regular part of doing business. And his perspective raises a question worth considering. when everyone around the table wants a different outcome.

3:01What does it take to arrive at the right one? Our talk with CFO Perry Biberman begins after this.

3:16AI is changing the finance function, but how much business value is it actually delivering? According to new research from Salesforce, 90 % of finance leaders using AI report a positive return on investment. And as AI agents enter the picture, finance leaders are seeing opportunities to improve productivity, reduce costs, and strengthen forecasting. But there's another side to the story. CFOs are also confronting growing revenue complexity with more subscription, consumption-based, and hybrid business models to manage. And that raises an important question. How can finance leaders gain the visibility they need to make better decisions while putting AI to work?

4:06Salesforce explores these challenges and the opportunities ahead in its latest CFO research. Discover what finance leaders are saying about AI, revenue complexity, and the evolving CFO role. Visit salesforce.com slash CFO report. That's salesforce.com slash CFO report.

4:32Hello, CFO Perry Biberman is with us. Perry's finance career spans nearly four decades, beginning at MBNA, where he moved from financial analysis into strategic planning and CFO administration. He later helped navigate the MBNA Bank of America integration, led finance through the financial crisis back then, too, and spent years shaping Bank of America's consumer lending businesses. Today, as CFO of Bread Financial, he brings that deep credit and transformation experience to a business continuing to evolve its model and growth priorities. Hey, Perry, welcome. Well, thanks for having me, Jack. I appreciate this.

5:23So take a look back for us, Perry. Where do we begin? What were those experiences you feel best prepared you for this role? What comes to mind? Yeah, what's funny is when preparing a little bit for this discussion, I thought back and things that prepare you at the time you're going through it, you don't realize it's going to prepare you for future opportunities like this. But I always had a love of science and math. It was pretty analytical. And I started at college in pre-med. It was in the honors program at the University of Delaware. And then realized I didn't love it. I didn't have a passion for it.

6:01And then trying to figure my way and then ended up taking some economics classes and then ended up pivoting to business economics and finance and was actually pretty good at it. So while working two jobs, paying for college, working 40 hours a week, taking 17 credit hours, so you can imagine the workload, I was working as a bartender and chemistry lab tech, and I realized I had to get some finance experience. So I put my degree to use and I basically randomly applied for a job but a bank called Maryland National Bank, which then became known as MBNA. It turned out it was a small credit card company in Delaware with about a thousand employees, less than two billion assets.

6:42That experience was akin to being part of a fast-paced growth company, like a fintech, what you put in today's terms, or a tech company. After just a few years, we IPO'd, where I had the unique experience of working side by side with the CFO, helping to set up new functions in treasury. Because again, at the time we were a business unit, a subsidiary of MNC Financial out of Baltimore. So I was doing that, setting up new external reporting, investor relations functions. And then over the course of 15 years, we grew from a thousand employees to 25 ,000 employees and 120 billion in assets. You can imagine the growth we saw.

7:26So again, along the way, I got promoted numerous times, took on positions with increased responsibilities from expense management, financial reporting, M &A modeling, financial planning, did things like on a leadership side where I led the CFO, what do you call it, development and education. I was an advisor to the HR executive responsible for compensation at the company, But always working on strategic projects for three different CFOs during that 15-year run. And I think those experiences really helped form who I am as a finance professional. But honestly, that company was very unique. There was a culture that was established early on, and it permeated the entire time I worked there.

8:18and it was because they basically formed a company from scratch. It's how I would frame it. And the CFO was very focused on the things that made companies great. And it was a company focused on the customer, the people of the company, and the community. They always said, if you take care of those three things, the shareholder will benefit. And I'll give you just a little bit on each of those. Like the customer focus. I mean, it was, and I tell you, it was a subliminal things that were part of your day above every door. It said, think of yourself as a customer. So every door where you walk through, think of yourself as a customer.

9:01On your paycheck, back then we used to get paper checks. It would say in the corner, brought to you by the customer. As employees, we were required to take customer calls for like eight hours a month. So we would get on the phones and take live calls like a representative would to put you close to the customer. And then as you got to more senior levels, you had to call listening. So these were things to keep you close. And then on the associate side, or as we call them at our company here, we called it folks people. And we had a servant leadership model. So our org charts were not top to bottom.

9:41They were side to side, right? Right. And at company events and celebrations, executives would serve the food to employees. Right. So and again, employees are not called employees. We're called people. And we invested a lot in people development. We paid better the market. We hired people who like people. And these are things that were really important because we always hire the person with the highest GPA or went to the best school. We hired people who are fit for the culture. And that made a huge difference. had people grit and that kind of goes to my background a little bit of how I got hired and then the community part it was a they strongly encouraged us to all give back and that started from the day you joined right you're expected to give back to United Way and then start to volunteer and they gave us a day off to go volunteer every month and honestly I've not stopped since I've been involved in giving back and serving on boards for over 30 years and to this day focus on the people and community i'd say our core values that help define how i i lead so those were very informed informative impressionable years early on and then as you noted from my background um you know nbna got acquired by bank of america where i had the opportunity to lead the function um ensuring we achieve the synergies and uh cost saves but all through that, always being thoughtful about how it's going to impact the people who I obviously consider my work family, but doing the right thing in the end.

11:16And then from there, after a couple years doing that, I went on to join the global card planning team post-merger, continue to expand responsibilities. And we'll talk about some of those defining moments where I became the business finance officer for personal loans, then added small business lending, then U.S. card. And by By the time I had left, I had responsibilities for all of U.S. wealth and consumer lending, which included card, auto, mortgage, small business and wealth lending products with over a half trillion dollars in assets. And obviously, I joined Alliance Data, now bred financial, becoming CFO, which is my first public company role.

11:55And I think that's, but all these things kind of led up to this, you know, being ready. And I can talk to you more about some of the mentors I had during that period. But it was an exciting time and a lot of change. And you obviously navigate, as you said, the great financial crisis. But there's a lot you learn through the periods like that. One of the things you brought up more than once, you had exposure to the CFOs fairly early on, just given that some of the mergers you were involved with gave you really a front row seat to see how these leaders, you know, lead. I'm wondering what belief about finance leadership have you changed most over time?

12:39Again, you were able to observe people up close fairly early in your career. And I'm wondering how that your belief in leadership evolved over time. You know, I watched a lot and I'd ask questions and I got to see how they got into the office early, work late, the volume of information they had to consume. And it's funny, one of these folks who became a good friend over the years always told me, he says, you know, you're so close to the sun, you don't realize what you're absorbing and the unique experiences you're getting, you know, young in your career. And he was exactly right. And I worked for three different CFOs.

13:22One was Scott Kaufman, another one was Vernon Wright and Ken Vecchione, who's still working today. But I got to see how they went about the work. Very focused, very disciplined. How they made decisions. It was show me the data. Be unemotional and fact-based and look at the scenarios. And honestly, be good with healthy tension in the organization. Everyone's not going to like the finance answer or recommendation, but you have to have healthy tension between areas. That's how you make the best decisions. And I can tell you, I still believe in that today. I was just telling the group last week that that's one of the things you need in an organization.

14:02Your marketing team isn't always going to agree with your finance team is always going to agree with the credit risk team and so forth, but that's how you end up in a good place. Um, I'll tell you all three of these leaders had incredibly, um, deep commitment and care for their families. And they'd impress upon me. I was younger in my career, young kids, and they would chase me out of the office to go home and have dinner with the kids. And it really left an impression on me. And they would say to me, period, I'm at a different point in my career, my life. My kids are grown, they're out of the house.

14:39You got to get home. And I got to tell you, you know, workplaces evolved over 40 years, like working parents and the flexibility, but all those things shaped me and, um, to help support people today to do the same. And honestly, the last thing I would say about them is these three gentlemen, uh, never wavered in principles or values to do the right thing, even when not popular. And, you know, that aligned to who I was and were tremendous role models in that fashion. And that with those principles, you can navigate whatever's in front of you. If you believe you're doing the right thing, if company doesn't want to because that's what your belief is, then so be it.

15:23But you can look yourself in the mirror every day and know that you try to live your life that way and bring that to work every day. I mean, you have this wonderful point of comparison as you've highlighted for us. At the same time, you also got to bring each of them, perhaps bad news from time to time. And I'm wondering, you know, who most influenced how you learned to bring bad news or even to, you know, in some way challenge them as leaders? Well, you know, it's funny you say it that way because you're right. It's sometimes I was the one who had to bring in the more difficult news and each of them had different personalities.

16:07You know, some of them could be a little more agitated. Some of them were more understanding and understand I was just the bearer of the bad news. But there was no point in avoiding it. Anybody that was avoiding bringing the CFO bad news, the number one thing, I remember Scott, the very first one is like, I just don't want surprises. So you'd rather know it sooner. The sooner you know something, the sooner you can act on it and address it. And that's honestly the best thing you can do. you know, thinking you're going to avoid something, it's going to come out. So even as a CFO today, I mean, my team all knows, if there's something I need to know, please ping me, you know, call me, shoot me a note.

16:56I'd rather know it as quickly as you know it, because then at least we can jointly try to work through it. Looking back, was there a career decision that felt kind of risky at the time? Maybe looking back at it now, you wonder why you were so nervous or anxious about it, but career decision that might have been risky. Anything? Yeah, I think when I took the role in my first business finance officer role, I mean, obviously joining the merger team, working for Bank of America executive after I'd been at MBNA for 17 years, that was risky-ish. But I would say that was if you wanted to have a job, that was the job I had to do versus losing my job.

17:42But the risky one, I think, was going to be the first time I was being a business line CFO for personal loans and taking full accountability from the finance function of that. And it was out of the corporate type job into something like that. It felt risky at the time, but it really unlocked the opportunity of where I am today. And I'll talk to you more about that, one of those defining strategic moments. Oh, wonderful. We look forward to that. And we do likely have a few more career questions for you. But right now, we'd like to find out about Bread Financial. For someone new to Bread Financial, what does the business provide today?

18:26And where do you see the opportunity headed? Yes, I'm very excited to be at Bread Financial, obviously. And I'm not saying that just because I'm here. But what this current leadership team has created is really special. It's unlocked the potential and the people who've been here. Obviously, we've hired a number of new talent to the organization. But we're a tech forward, data-driven, customer-focused organization that really, you think about it, It's a financial services company that offers co-brand, private label credit cards, pay over time products, and a number of savings offerings. We're in a variety of industry verticals from travel, entertainment, beauty, jewelry, specialty apparel.

19:11One of our newest ones is furniture. And we empower one in seven U.S. consumers who are creating values for many brand partners. think about those as retail partners and obviously our shareholders and one of the way I describe our companies we're nimble and gritty you know we'll do whatever it takes to meet our partners needs and we've got a great culture here and that's one of the things that excites me most is the people you heard me speak earlier about what I appreciated about the companies I work for prior to joining here that's this is the number one thing it's we have phenomenal people and really want to work well with our partners and customers and that's been enjoyable.

19:54And then for the future, I'd say we're really hitting our strides. We've been on a transformation journey for the past five, six years since Ralph Andretta took over as CEO, run in a lot of forward-looking leaders with a vision, and it worked everything from our tech stack. For me, it's been transforming the finance function, our capital stack, our balance see and things. And I could talk to you more about the capital journey in particular, but it's been a lot of work, but it's really paid off. Yeah. Just related to that transformation, again, you know, Brett has reshaped both its business and as you just hinted at its funding profile, you know, what's mattered most in its transformation?

20:42Well, from an investor, regulator and rating standpoint, this capital journey transformation we've been on is honestly one of the company's biggest transformations and successes over the past five years. You know, when I started, we were significantly over levered and way undercapitalized. We kind of half joke so you couldn't find the balance sheet. But through discipline and focus, so there's a theme for you. We established enterprise capital policies, plans, targets, and rigorous capital management discipline and a practice. And that's in line with best-in-class financial services companies.

21:25I came from a big financial service company. Some of our board members that were also CFOs at large financial service companies. We brought that practice to this company. And it was a grind to improve it. But I tell you, I'm proud to say we've paid down over 70 % of our parent debt. So the leverage is exactly in line with or below even where it could be. We built capital to the point where we've exceeded established targets. And those targets are in line as best practice. And not only can we fund ourselves and fund the response, what we call responsible, sustainable growth. We're able to invest in new capabilities and we've actually been able to return capital to shareholders.

22:08That's in excess of doing those things. So, you know, and then you asked a little bit about the funding model. So all the while we've been doing the transformation of the balance sheet from the parent standpoint, we increased our direct-to-consumer deposits since 2020. We grew them from less than 5 % of the company's funding to now it's over 50 % of the company funding. And we're almost at$10 billion in direct-to-consumer deposits. So that's been a major shift. And regulators and rating agencies love direct-to-consumer deposits for financial service companies. And I'd also share with you, today is what, October 5th?

22:48October 1, we actually had our legal day one for merging our two banks together. And what that does as a finance team, that allows us to deploy our capital and funding to one larger scale bank. So all the funding instruments that we had available, which we only had some in our Utah bank, some in our Delaware bank. Now we have a platform where we can put them across the entirety of our assets to fund. That allows us to continue to increase our direct to consumer deposits as a percent of total funding over the coming years. Well, when it comes to the revenue side of things, the revenue model, help us understand what drives the economics here today.

23:33Where is the more important story? Is it loan yields? Is it credit sales? Portfolio mix? What would it be? Yeah, I'd say it's all the above, Jack. So when you think about credit cards in particular or payments, it all starts with originations, right? You've got to attract new accounts, new customers, in our case, new brand partners who then there's an opportunity to help them unlock credit sales for their customers. And so we're the engine behind that. And so as we get originations, you want them to turn into loans. And that means whether it's an installment loan where a customer can pay back over three years, two years, four years, or a traditional credit card.

24:18and we then make, I'd say, money when the customer revolves a balance. And then you make sure you're assigning the right APR or getting the right yield for the risk you take. So you think about that as a risk-adjusted yield. And one of the things this company that's very good is we have some of the industry-leading risk-adjusted yields to make sure we're getting the right return on our capital, given that we take on a little more risk. for our discussion today, we were looking at Bread's 2025 filings that make a distinction particularly interesting. Co-brand cards represented about 52 % of credit sales and private label cards, about 43%.

25:02Do I have that right? That's about right. What we're wondering is what private label loans generally produce higher revenue yields? so think about um private label as often uh the highest risk customers meaning that if you if we're gonna offer so a lot of programs today uh think alt is one of our larger brands they will offer a co-brain card and they'll have a private label card and for the customers who have better income better credit scores they'll get offered the co-brain card which is it could be a master card, Visa, American Express that they can use anywhere for every day spent. And it often comes with a little bit larger line.

25:46Private label cards are only available for use at that particular retailer. So it often has a little bit lower line and often higher APRs because of a little higher risk profile. And then with a lower credit line, if for some reason the customer goes late, a late fee, say it's$30, has a higher yield impact on a, say, a$500 line than it would on a$3 ,000 balance, right? So it's just math. And that's how you end up with different yields. And you should end up with better credit quality, so lower losses for the co-brand customers than you would the private label, where people are newer to credit or building their credit.

26:30Before, let's say, the financial results arrive, we wonder which signals tell you earliest how the lending business is performing. me? Lots of data. So we have, we consume, we have probably 20, 30 million accounts worth of data. And you go back 30 years of history at this company. Now, reality is we're not keeping data for 30 years, but probably 15 years goes into our modeling. And we're able to predict at a pretty good level of scientific prediction, how vintages, how segments within vintages are expected to perform, and then we can monitor against that performance. So we're able to see early on, are there changes in customer behavior and how they're making payments?

27:24And that's the, that's the, or spending, what are they spending on and are shifts occurring? So every quarter, now it's really every month, but every quarter, I'll speak to that during earnings. Are we seeing shifts in the consumer spend and then how is that translating further into repayment patterns and that's something that gives us an early read and you can pair that with um and i'm going to say you can pair it not compare but pair it with external data points like what's consumer sentiment which is also often a psychological emotional reaction to what they're feeling or seeing and then how is it in reality working with unemployment rates or inflation, things that they've been contending with for a while.

28:10And when you see things like higher fuel prices, as you would imagine, obviously they're spending more on fuel, but then what are they spending less on? Or are they still keeping up their overall spend and just taking on more debt? And these are all the things that we watch and pair together with our internal data to make sure we're able to make the right underwriting adjustments. From what you've described and looking at this business, you've been managing credit carefully while pursuing growth. And we wonder, can you tell us about a decision where those priorities kind of collided? Yeah, they collide all the time.

28:46You can imagine that we have some separation of duties across the company. So we have a chief revenue officer who's responsible for growing the existing partnerships. And those partners, you can imagine, those retailers want us to underwrite deeper, say yes to more of their customers. And then credit is responsible for making sure that we are managing towards our long term loss targets. and then finance has to play in the middle and find the sweet spot of the return to make sure we get the right return on equity for our shareholders. So that I'd say is every week it's colliding. And that goes back to the point I said earlier today on the healthy tension and how important it is for an organization to be successful.

29:35You can't have one area dictating what the right answer is. And that's where we come together as a group and figure out what is the right bounce. We're getting the right return. Can we take on a little more risk? Or are we not getting the right return and we have to reduce that risk, which then can reduce some of the growth, which can be the right answer. Because again, we go back to our fundamental premise, responsible growth. You know, growth for growth's sake doesn't end well. Across the lending realm today, we see AI being used for customer service, fraud, and credit risk. We wonder where you're seeing the clearest value when it comes to AI.

30:20Yeah, that's an excellent question. I think it's one where we've positioned ourselves from what we call a fast follower to an informed innovator. And that means that we're evolving our AI strategy as the technology rapidly evolves. we've tried to build on momentum that we created with strong a strong foundation of governance and data and those are two things that are critically you know important because you got to responsibly and safely deploy AI of all types you know especially with immersive agentic based AI and what I share with you Jack we haven't talked about this but it's you know one of the things that I've been passionate about for as long as I've been doing things is basically, we call it a culture of operational excellence, which is looking for better ways of doing our work.

31:12It's simpler, faster, reducing risk and innovating new capabilities to drive growth. Well, the fact that our companies embrace that culture really as AI has now come about, it has really helped us surface insights into how we can more quickly automate the routine work, the mundane work or highly intellectual work, right? It frees teams to focus on higher value decisions and it's across everything we do. I mean, you mentioned underwriting, service, risk management, right? We can scan 100 % of everything we do rather than doing testing or sampling. And that gives you more confidence in what we're doing.

31:53And it's going to continue to evolve. We're pushing through technology changes or coding faster. and it's allowing yeah so that's going to mean we could bring things to market that much faster and then finance you know it's not as as uh exciting as i say you know serving the customer and and deploying new new capabilities but for us it accelerates how we can forecast do scenario planning trend analysis it automates our controls and audits so it it really is across the platform And one of the things that I look for is expectations that just on personal productivity, I think that's going to deliver five to 10 hours per associate per week of capacity.

32:40And they can then focus on, I'll say, more fun things. And so that's the goal. And again, for us, it's not replacing human judgment. AI really augments it. So we need to decisions faster, more informed, more predictive. And that's really what it's all about. Just inside your finance function then, where is AI moved beyond maybe efficiency and is actually improving decisions? What would you tell us just in that finance function where your personal attention? yeah it's it's i'm not sure it you could pinpoint it um in terms of exactly where it is i can tell you how i use copilot at work chat gpt at home the speed at which i can get at information is unbelievable i mean so i'll be talking to um you know somebody on my uh corporate development team And, you know, I have a question on how should we think about something financially, not putting in my actual model, but a concept and like, wow.

33:52And then all of a sudden they're looking at, but it, the speed of research and, um, it is really valuable to us. And now you're starting to unlock, you know, every SAS application that you have, you know, they have little AI turn-ons. So for all expense reporting and people putting their expenses every month or every week, you're able to audit it. Are they following the guidelines by which you have in there? So there's lots of places where it's starting to emerge, even in terms of having it start to write some of our variance explanations, a first pass. People are putting in, okay, you got to do a presentation.

34:35The speed at which they're able to put a presentation together is unbelievable. So everybody's learning. We've been encouraging people to really lean into the tools that we make available to them. And that's been fun to watch. and that goes back to operational excellence and everybody's trying to do it, particularly in finance, where we were the first group within the company where I introduced the concept of operational excellence. We celebrate these things. People are embracing AI. From what we've discussed, and I think you pointed out, your consumer deposits have become a much larger funding source.

35:12We wonder how that changed how you think about the business. I mean, what flexibility has that maybe created? It really hasn't done that much to change the business in that we were probably a little more reliant on brokered CDs and that type of funding, which are large CDs and viewed by a regulator could be higher flight risk. So for us, if we can get from the 50 % of our overall direct-to-consumer deposit funding up to 60 to 70 percent, which is where most of our peers are, I think that puts us right in the sweet spot. And you couple that with other funding instruments, you're in a good place because the basis point difference in funding isn't that material.

36:05It's just a stickier form of funding and a lot of smaller deposits relative to larger deposits. We always like to ask what we refer to as a finance strategic moment, which is to have our guests look back in time and think about a moment of strategic insight that they experienced. We've gotten all sorts of finance strategic moments. What comes to mind for you? Yeah, I appreciate that because, you know, you sent that one in. I had to ponder that one a bit. But, you know, there were a few times I could think about pivotal moments where I really had to demonstrate conviction, integrity and doing the right thing.

36:49And the one that I think changed the trajectory of my career is when I was the new personal loan business finance officer at Bank of America. I was only at the company for a couple of years. I was probably in that job for 60 days in about 2007. It was my first BFO job. and uh you know so i quickly got in there was rebuilding the profitability models with my team like for the new accounts the new vintages we were putting on and i determined that we needed to cut out about 30 to 40 percent of the new account volume that we were bringing in and because it just didn't meet profitability thresholds once i remodeled it that was a very unpopular recommendation with the business executives, right?

37:38He's got growth goals. It's not good. And I'm like, what are you going to do? I mean, the data showed what it showed. And eventually he agreed to let us reduce the volume, but it helped establish credibility with the business and even more so my new Bank of America finance leadership team. and you know so again kind of new to the overall broader bank based out of charlotte and we're up there in delaware so those early days um we didn't know we were entering the great financial crisis right as you're as you're kind of seeing okay you have unemployment starting to creep up but each month in subsequent quarters that unemployment was rising um you know you're kind of chasing the unemployment outlooks because nobody knew it was going to get so high.

38:30It was just this month was up 25, 50 basis points more. But I was very disciplined in letting the data and process drive the recommendations, which included further contractions of that personal loan business. And each revision unemployment recommended more cuts. And I had to convince the business executive, eventually I said, look, this is going to be really good for you, even if it meant we miss our growth targets. And he finally bought into it. And eventually, I recommend it was time to stop all originations at that time. Because the effect of personal loans at the time was basically consolidating credit card debt from other competitors' balance sheets onto ours.

39:17And it was one of the smartest decisions I had made in terms of having that conviction. And I'd say that what got me accolades back up the finance leadership team and others was my swift and consistent actions. It was appreciated, saved the company, could have been a billion dollars, and I gained respect of the Finance Leadership Bank of America and became a trusted resource. And then quickly after that, they then expanded my responsibility to go over all small business lending and then rebuild the finance capabilities there and help transform that business. So, you know, it's one of those things that had I not, you know, had that conviction to do the right thing, I'm not sure I would have gotten that opportunity when they needed a change in leadership to lead the 800 pound gorilla, which was the$150 billion US card business, they would have called on me, but they did.

40:12And that was a big deal. So I think that's kind of the thing where you use your instinct. There's a little bit of adversity. I can't say that I'm pretty good at looking around the corner, but even I didn't see how bad it was going to get from a macro standpoint.

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42:01We now want you to think back in to your first 60 days in your first CFO role. And again, you had, you know, observed CFOs up close for many years, but there had to be something as you got into that role that you shook your head and were surprised, I didn't expect this, or I wish someone had told me this was part of the job. What is it that maybe surprised you? Yeah, I think it was probably the bigger surprise is when I took this role here, you know, Brad Financials Alliance Day at the time, the true public company CFO role, you know, because like you said, I had lots of experience working side by side.

42:46had those three CFOs early in my career. So I had a good sense of the commitment. At times, I'll say it's the thankless work, the loneliness of being on an island, standing for a different point of view, and the relentless work required to socialize those views and to collaborate with others to get to the right answer. But what I probably didn't fully appreciate were the demands of being on the road with investors and the relationships you form with investor analysts, nor did I fully understand the inner workings of board governance and those relationships and the additional complexity added to their jobs.

43:23Yeah. Great, great examples again. Thank you for those. Hey, Perry, we always like to ask our guests to reflect a little on the personal side for us. Is there something most people might not know about you, something from your past, a milestone, I don't know, a feat that was accomplished? Anything, anything come to mind? What would you share with us? I don't know if I've got any great feats outside of work and an amazing family. I've been married for over 34 years and have three great kids, and one of them just got married. But one of the things that people don't really know about me much is I love to chef it up, and I love to cook, particularly during the summer and holidays.

44:04Coming up on Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days. I do all the cooking for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. and it's just the fun of bringing people together and seeing them enjoy a meal uh a homemade meal like i require uh during the holidays nothing can be store-bought nobody can bring over a pie or you've got to make it right so everything's gonna be made and of course got a pair of good wines but um yeah so even yesterday i ventured into making a chili uh that i never made before it was very complex very a lot of depths and flavors took hours to make but you know it's one of those things that I find therapeutic, but it's just enjoyable.

44:44Yeah, nice. Nice share for us. Thank you for that. What about a, is there a book or a resource or something that you've turned to from time to time, or maybe it's just a book you like to escape with? Anything you can share with us? So it's funny. I am not a huge book reader. My reading tends to be much more current. So Every morning, I read the journal. I follow CNBC, BBC, read The Economist. I go through the daily news clipping service that's sent to me. I think that's an important part of leadership is having a broad aperture on what's happening in the world and figuring out what it actually means to your business.

45:20I do listen to weekly podcasts like Moody's Analytics or the All In podcast, which is quite tech and AI heavy. um you know but there's one book that i thought you know which is like a business book that i'd probably uh recommend be the outsiders uh by william thorndyke if you've seen that one or heard that one um and what i like about it and you probably could tell it resonates with me is uh you know it challenges the traditional image of what makes a great ceo and leader right the leaders he was profiling uh you know weren't necessarily the most charismatic or higher profile people they were disciplined independent thinkers exceptional capital allocators right they understood that being a ceo isn't simply about growing the company it's about creating long-term value and consistently making good decisions about people business and capital and so you know for me and it also you know reference like consuming information from a lot of different sources challenge conventional wisdom develop your own point of view and then have conviction to act on it.

46:24And so that really aligns with the value of principles by which I prefer to operate. Yep. Great, great selection for us. Thank you for that. And we are up to our final question. This is where we're going to ask you to look forward. We would like to know what your priorities are for the coming 12 months as a CFO. What would those be? I think it's pretty much keep doing what we're doing, right? Keep the organization focused and disciplined on driving profitable, sustainable growth. Got to navigate the ever-changing macro and political environment, which tends to drive regulatory and legislative conditions that impact our business.

47:01Be disciplined on capital allocation. You make sure we're making the right investments in AI to position the company for the long term. Investing in our people, both in finance and around the company to encourage them to lean into modern tools and capabilities so they can be as effective and successful as possible. And like I said, as a company, just keep doing what we say we're going to do and keep delivering on that. Our investors and stakeholders have very much appreciated that. Terry Biberman, thank you for joining us on CFO Thought Leader. Thank you for having me.

47:42Hello. We're benchmarking the CFO path. Join 500 finance leaders helping define how today's CFOs rise and lead. If you're a CFO or senior finance executive, contribute your experience. It takes just a few minutes and you'll receive early access to the findings. Visit cfothoughtleader.com slash benchmarking.