Brian Wenzel
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Synchrony Financial
Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Sychrony's 4th-quarter performance reflected the inherent resilience that comes from our diversified portfolio of products and spend categories, our balanced approach to underwriting and credit management and our sophisticated technology platform. This differentiated combination of strengths enabled our business to swiftly adapt to the evolving landscape. During the 4th-quarter, customers continue to seek out our flexible financing solutions as the strong value propositions and broad utility of our product offerings generate lasting value against a persistently inflationary environment.
As a result, we added 5 million new accounts, maintain approximately 70 million active accounts and generated $48 billion of purchase volume despite the continued impact of the credit actions we took between mid-2023 and early 2024. Ending receivables grew 2% to $105 billion as payment rates continue to moderate, down approximately 10 basis-points compared to last year. Purchase volume and receivables at the platform level reflected the continuation of the trends we discussed over the course of the year as customers have remain selective in their spending behavior and generally prioritize nondiscretionary and seasonal holiday items.
Platform purchase volume growth ranged between down 1% and down 6% year-over-year, generally reflecting lower spend per account as customers moderated both bigger ticket and discretionary spend, particularly in categories like furniture, electronics, cosmetic and outdoor as well as the impact of Synchrony's credit actions. Receivables growth across the platforms ranged from flat to 6% higher year-over-year, primarily due to slower purchase volume growth and payment rate moderation. Dual and co-branded cards accounted for 44% of total purchase volume for the quarter and increased 1%, reflecting the benefit of these products broad-based utility, offset by the combined impacts of selective customer spend and synchrony's credit actions.
Net revenue grew 4% to $3.8 billion, resulting from higher interest and fees and higher other income, partially offset by higher RSA and interest expense. Net interest income increased 3% to $4.6 billion as interest and fees grew 3%, primarily reflecting higher interest and fees on loans, partially offset by an increase in interest expense from higher interest-bearing liabilities. Our loan receivables yield grew 8 basis-points, primarily driven by our pricing actions, including the impact of our product, pricing and policy changes or PPPCs as well as lower payment rate, partially offset by higher reversals and a lower late fee incidents.
Total interest-bearing liabilities cost was 4.58%, an increase of 3 basis-points versus last year. RSAs of $919 million were 3.57% of average loan receivables in the 4th-quarter and increased $41 million versus the prior year, primarily reflecting program performance, which includes the impact of our PPPCs. Other income increased $128 million, primarily related to the impact of our PPPC related fees, which were partially offset by the impact of our disposition. Provision for credit losses decreased to $1.6 billion, primarily reflecting a $100 million reserve lease in the 4th-quarter compared to a reserve build of $402 million in the prior year, partially offset by higher net charge-offs. Other expenses decreased 4% to $1.3 billion, primarily driven by the prior year restructuring costs and other notable expenses as outlined on Slide 17 of our earnings presentation and lower operational losses in the current year.
These decreases were partially offset by costs related to the Allied lending acquisition and technology investments. The efficiency ratio was 33.3% for the 4th-quarter, an improvement of approximately 270 basis-points versus last year, reflecting a combination of Synchrony's cost discipline and revenue growth. Taken together, Synchrony generated net earnings of $774 million or $1.91 per diluted share and delivered a return on average assets of 2.6%, a return on tangible common equity of 23% and a 23% increase in tangible book-value per share.
Next, I'll cover our key credit trends on Slide 11. At quarter-end, our 30-plus delinquency rate was 4.70%, a decline of 4 basis-points from 4.74% in the prior year and 8 basis-points above our historical average from the fourth quarters of 2017 to 2019. Our 90-plus delinquency rate was 2.40%, an increase of 12 basis-points from 2.28% in the prior year and 16 basis-points above our historical average from the fourth quarters of 2017 to 2019. And our net charge-off rate was 6.45% in the 4th-quarter, an increase of 87 basis-points from 5.58% in the prior year and 96 basis-points above our historical average from the fourth quarters of 2017 to 2019. Our allowance for credit losses as a percent of loan receivables was 10.44%, which decreased approximately 35 basis-points from the 10.79% in the 3rd-quarter.
As shown on Slide 12, the credit actions we've taken from mid-2023 through early 2024 are improving our delinquency formation as the rate of year-over-year growth in both 30-plus and 90-plus delinquency rates continue to decelerate. These trends give us confidence in our ability to return to our long-term net charge-off target. Turning to Slide 13, Synchrony's funding, capital and liquidity continue to provide a strong foundation for our business. During the 4th-quarter, Synchrony grew our direct deposits by approximately $716 million and reduced our broker deposits by $938 million.
At quarter-end, deposits represented 84% of our total funding with secured and unsecured debt, each representing 8% of total funding, respectively. Total liquid assets and undrawn credit facilities were $19.8 billion, essentially flat versus last year and represented 16.6% of total assets, a 26 basis-point decrease from last year. Focusing our capital ratios, as a reminder, we elected to take the benefit of the CECL transition rules issued by the joint federal banking agencies. Synchrony will make a final transition adjustment to our regulatory capital metrics of approximately 50 basis-points in January 2025, which will reflect the fully phased-in effects of CECL.
The impact of CECL has already been recognized in our income statement and balance sheet. Under the CECL transition rules, we ended the 4th-quarter with a CET1 ratio of 13.3%, 110 basis-points higher than last year's 12.2%. Our Tier-1 capital ratio was 14.5%, 160 basis-points above last year. Our total capital ratio increased 160 basis-points to 16.5%. And our Tier-1 capital plus reserves ratio on a fully phased-in basis increased to 24.3% compared to 22.1% last year. Synchrony returned $197 million to shareholders during the 4th-quarter, consisting of $100 million in share repurchases and $97 million in common stock dividends, totaling $1.4 billion of capital returned during the full-year 2024.
At year-end, we had $600 million remaining in our share repurchase authorization for the period ending June 30, 2025. Synchrony remains well-positioned to return capital to shareholders as guided by our business performance, market conditions, regulatory restrictions and subject to our capital plan. Turning to our outlook for 2025 on Slide 14. Our baseline assumptions include a stable macroeconomic environment, full-year GDP growth of 2.2%, a year-end employment rate of 4.1%, a year-end Fed funds rate of 4.25%, full-year deposit betas of approximately 60%. In addition, given the uncertainty with regard to the litigation process and the political landscape surrounding the late fee rule, our outlook assumes no impact from the potential late fee rule change, but does include the impact of our PPPCs.
If the Lay fee rule were to go into effect, this outlook would no longer be applicable. Starting with ending loan receivables, we expect purchase volume and new account growth to continue to reflect the impacts of our credit actions and selective customer spend behavior. We also expect payment rate in 2025 to generally remain flat with 2024 levels as a result of our past credit actions, which have stabilized the mix of customer payment behaviors. As a result, we expect low single-digit growth in ending loan receivables for the full-year 2025.
We expect net revenue for the full-year to be between $15.2 billion and $15.7 billion and to follow seasonal trends. We expect year-over-year growth in both interest income and other income as the impact of our PPPCs build, partially offset by the flow-through of lower average prime rate on our variable-rate receivables, lower late fees as delinquency performance improves, lower-yielding investment portfolio due to lower benchmark rates and finance charge and late fee reversals associated with the seasonality of our credit performance. Lower average benchmark rates should also contribute to lower funding costs as our CD maturities reprice, although this will be influenced by competitive deposit beta trends in response to any additional rate cuts that may occur.
In addition, we generally expect to maintain higher levels of liquidity of approximately 17% for the next few quarters, given our desire to prioritize our deposit customer relationships and prefund future growth. Finally, RSA as a percentage of average loan receivables should be between 3.60 and 3.85%, driven by improving program performance as net charge-offs decline and the impact of our PPPCs increase. We expect our portfolio net charge-off rate for the full-year to be between 5.8% and 6.1%, primarily reflecting the benefit of our prior credit actions and our differentiated approach to underwriting and credit management. And we expect our efficiency ratio to be between 31.5% and 32.5% as Synchrony remains focused on driving operating leverage in our business.
Before I turn the call over to Q&A, I'd like to leave you with three key takeaways from today's discussion. First, Synchrony is well-positioned to reaccelerate our growth. Our investments we've made and credit actions we've taken were designed to prioritize sustainable, profitable growth through evolving market conditions. Our performance since exiting the pandemic in 2021 demonstrates our discipline with average ending loan receivables growth of approximately 9%, while delivering an average return on assets of approximately 3% and average return on tangible common equity of approximately 25%.
Second, the outperformance of our portfolio's credit trends relative to the industry has enabled this track-record and our recent delinquency formation trends give us confidence in both our credit outlook and our ability to reaccelerate profitable growth. We are watching for continued stability in the macro-environment, more confident consumer spend behavior and continued improvement in our delinquency performance to support the gradual reversal of our credit restrictions.
And third, Synchrony's robust capital position is a clear strength. It will enable our growth while also supporting greater capital returns to our shareholders in the years ahead. In summary, Synchrony's high-level execution in 2024 has positioned us well for 2025 and beyond as we drive progress towards our long-term financial targets. With that, I'll turn the call-back to Catherine to open the Q&A.
