Goldman CEO Says Marcus Gets ‘No Credit’

Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said the firm’s digital Marcus business “getting absolutely no credit from anybody else in the investing community,” according to a report by CNBC.

Solomon spoke at an awards ceremony put on by J.D. Power, where the company received an award for customer satisfaction in personal loans.

Marcus gets about $1 billion in deposits every month, and there was also a recent announcement about the firm’s partnership with Apple, but Goldman’s stocks are relatively flat.

“We started out to try to create a business that would disrupt what’s a big broad industry by really focusing on our customers, on our clients in a way that we would provide better service, better solutions, deal with pain points,” Solomon said. “If we were out in Silicon Valley and made 20 percent of the progress that we’ve made, we would get a lot of credit and people would be throwing money at us to own a piece of this business. But nestled inside little old Goldman Sachs, we’re just going to have to prove it over time.”

Marcus was launched in 2016 and basically has two products, high-interest savings and personal loans. It has collected about $48 billion in deposits and it had earned around $5 billion in loans.

Goldman Sachs recently shifted to banking for the masses, after courting rich and affluent customers for almost 150 years. For many years the bank was seen in a bad light and Rolling Stone magazine once called it a “vampire squid” with the purpose of stealing money.

Marcus, however, wants to help ordinary American save some money here and there, the CEO said.

“In the history of our firm there are different periods of time where we all go through different cycles and different things happen,” Solomon said. “I believe there are a lot of people in the world who aspire to be affiliated with our brand, and if we offer a service to them that’s more focused on what they need, over time we’ll have plenty of customers.”