Marc S. Lipschultz
Yes, thanks. And I think maybe what I'm going to take a slight step back and just try to comprehensively address the overall credit theme question and well phrased. So I think it's actually important to level set in one place to begin with, which is credit quality here, our peers and at the banks for that matter, despite some Tempus and [indiscernible] it's very strong, very strong. The -- I'm going to come back to us, but let's just start with the ecosystem in total. It's very healthy. The ecosystem, the credit ecosystem is extremely well capitalized. It's trillions and trillions of dollars, and then you have a problem. And in this case, as you point out, a handful of problems that appear to be rooted in fraud, which is kind of the least relevant indicative issue when it comes to credit quality or systemic problems and yet has garnered extraordinary amounts of attention. Banks do a very good job. Like I don't want this to be misunderstood. We're all part of a common ecosystem. We have a different approach. But take banks like Wells Fargo. They do a phenomenal job. JPMorgan, phenomenal job. These are great institutions, and we work with them all the time. And so I think we should start with -- there's almost like -- I don't know you're all familiar with the Mandela effect. This is like the Mandela effect of finance, which is this just common population collective misimpression of what's going on. And for those who don't know Mandela effect, there's these like people imagine that the monopoly guy had a monopole, he didn't, or the Pikachu's tail has a black tip, it doesn't. There's just these common misunderstandings and misimaginations, and I can do a list so everyone has one. Fruit of the Loom doesn't have a cornucopia. So in any case, the point being like somehow by just talking about this enough, people have worked themselves into this imaginary world where there's some big or potential credit problem. And from where we sit now, I'm going to be a little more parochial, there's definitely not. When I now look at our book, performance remains extremely strong. You know we've originated over $150 billion in credit over the last decade, and we're still running at 13 basis point loss rates. And it will be higher than that over time, like that's too low. That's not the right rate. We don't suggest it is or should be. And in any given quarter, we have a company that has its challenges. We've had every -- we'll have it every quarter. We'll have -- some company has a challenge. We have 400 of them. But the key is to have very few when you have them get a good recovery. And all of that is working, and we are not seeing anything in our portfolio that is thematically problematic. We're not seeing anything that suggests a shift in overall credit quality or yellow lights or anything like it. We're still seeing growth. I'm not trying to be Pollyanna like I said, of course, there are going to be companies that get in trouble. We've had them and we will have them. And so will our peers and so the banks that's the nature of being a lender. But the key is, is it thematic, does it suggest anything greater or does it even really matter much to the net result when you talk about such small numbers of defaults with any reason recovery, and the answer is it doesn't. And so I'm not -- by any measure, trying to be dismissive, but I do think like a little bit of a step back because now it's like this daily rhythm of like everyone saying, what about this thing? What about that thing? As for the items you mentioned, now let me just tie it back again. Now I'll just be parochial again rather than try to speak so broadly. Actually, the strength of what we do in asset-backed is exactly what you described, the thoroughness with which we tie in with the originators, the quality of the originators, just like we do in sponsor finance, we care who the partner is. We care who that originator is. And I have to tell you that there's a lot of reasons to think that SoFi and PayPal are really well-run companies that aren't -- I hope God willing, companies like that are not any part of the problems that we're talking about. And so that is part of selection. Then there's how you do it. There are tools that can be deployed and we deploy in this business. You do use third-party servicers. That's a way to have someone else looking. You do field checks. And by the way, if you do field checks in some of these circumstances, you see red flags. If you look at platforms, you see red flags, like -- it is very, a, a lot of work can be done even to confront fraud and prevent it or at least prevent it from getting into your portfolio. And then once you're in any credit, while they -- let's forget fraud, let's just talk about deteriorating performance, daily data ties. We have a whole data science team here. This is -- that's why I get asset-backed ought to be done by professionals and asset-backed, part of why we acquired one of the best in the business because this is a very different business from what many people in credit do. It does have many, many more line items and flows. So do we do anything new? Well, listen, any time there's a problem anywhere in the financial markets, of course, our job is to instantly go back and look and say, does this suggest there's anything else we should have been doing or could be doing? And the comforting answer for you will be we went back, we looked and no, there's nothing that we would -- that we missed. There's nothing we would change. We think we have fantastic controls. That doesn't mean no one could ever defraud us. Anybody could be defrauded. But I would tell you that, no, we actually looked and when we study what did happen and study how we approach it and frankly, what we even knew about maybe we're having looked at some of these companies over time, no, I think we feel great about how our process works, but we will always be vigilant about it. But again, I think everyone is maybe -- not everyone. I think we're a little careful of just kind of this churning and churning and churning. I think the credit system banks and private lenders I think we're in a really, really healthy place. And last thing I'll say, if you really -- if someone is looking around for, oh, you know what, there's really some problem in the world of credit, then I would tell you that people should take the flight to quality and get into our BDCs and get into our real estate products, all of which are designed to be defensive and take credit. It's the senior part of the equity capital stack. So the last point I'll make, and I don't mean to drone on about this, but I know it's a really important topic to the market right now, and I understand that. If you're actually concerned about the broad credit industry, banks, private lenders included, I mean, people need to take a pause and think about what that means for their equity books. We are the senior parts of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of companies -- and by the way, many favorably selected by sector, by sponsor, by capital structure. So if you really are watching this problem, we ought to all collectively turn our attention to, in that case, wildly overvalued equity markets, and we ought to have people moving into credit, not out of credit. And that's not my opinion that we have wildly overvalued. I think we actually have a really healthy economy and a really healthy ecosystem. And last, I see it with our portfolio. We continue to see great strength.