American Express 2015 Annual Report Download - page 5
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AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY | ANNUAL REPORT 2015 4
• We grew our lending business faster than the market, while maintaining our
industry-best credit performance. Adjusted loans rose by 7 percent worldwide
and 10 percent in the U.S. in 2015.3 We’ll continue to target new lending prospects
and deepen relationships with current customers.
• We expanded our digital capabilities and partnerships to better serve our
customers. Actions here included the launch of Amex Express Checkout and
integrations with Airbnb, Android Pay, ApplePay, Samsung Pay and Uber.
• We streamlined our management structure, creating integrated consumer,
commercial and merchant teams to help accelerate our growth.
• And, taking advantage of our financial strength, we returned more than $5 billion
to our shareholders last year through dividends and share repurchases.
We accomplished a great deal, but, as I said earlier, we have more work to do. We’re
heightening our eorts with a focus on three priorities:
• Reduce our expense base and optimize our investments;
• Accelerate revenue growth; and
• Continue to use our capital strength to create value for shareholders.
Let me start with expenses and give you a little more context.
In 2013, we set a goal to limit opex growth to 3 percent or less. We have beaten that
goal every year since then. To accomplish this, we took a number of restructuring
actions that provided benefits in 2015 and will continue to aid us in 2016.
The plan we announced in January is a major step up from there. We aim to reduce
our overall cost base, which includes total operating expenses plus marketing and
promotion costs, by $1 billion by the end of 2017.
This will involve structural changes to streamline the organization and reengineer
key processes that now exist in multiple parts of the company to increase
eciency. I’ve assigned our Vice Chairman Steve Squeri to lead the eort. He’ll
work with me and other senior leaders in every area of our business to ensure
we move quickly and meet our goals.
Reduce Costs