Synchrony's September charge-off rate falls to 4.7% as loan receivables grow 3.09% from a year earlier

Synchrony Financial's September credit file, furnished to investors on October 20, put period-end loan receivables at $103.3 billion, 3.09% above a year earlier, and the net charge-off rate at 4.7% against 5.3% in September 2025. The 30+ delinquency rate was 4.3%, up 0.1 percentage point from August and below 4.4% a year earlier.

Charge-offs fall as the loan book grows

Synchrony's period-end loan receivables were $103.3 billion at September 30, 2026, against $103.0 billion at August 31 and $100.2 billion a year earlier, a 3.09% increase over twelve months. Average loan receivables, the denominator of the charge-off rate, were $102.7 billion. The exhibit states dollar amounts in billions and labels the series unaudited.

The net charge-off rate was 4.7%, down from 4.9% in August and 5.3% in September 2025, 0.6 percentage point lower than a year earlier and the lowest reading in the thirteen months shown, matching January 2026. The adjusted net charge-off rate, a non-GAAP measure the filing says spreads recoveries evenly across each quarter, was 4.6%, against 4.9% in August and 5.1% in September 2025.

The rate is annualized against average balances, so it already reflects a book that grew over the year: the improvement comes from lower losses per dollar of receivables, not from a shrinking portfolio.

Delinquency turns up a notch

The 30+ delinquency rate rose to 4.3% in September from 4.2% in each of the four preceding months, the first month-over-month increase since February. It remains below the 4.4% recorded in September 2025 and below the 4.7% peak this series reached in February, so the September move is a pause in the improvement rather than a return to winter levels.

Delinquency is the earlier signal: accounts that fall behind typically feed charge-offs in later quarters, so a 0.1 percentage point rise matters more for the direction of the series than for its size.

Why cycle dates move the monthly rate

The filing ties month-to-month swings to its charge-off calendar. Charge-offs run on cycle dates that vary in number with the calendar and billing cycles, and the exhibit lists 29 such dates for September 2026 against 28 for September 2025. The document says "the amount of charged-off loan receivables can vary between monthly periods with no corresponding change in the performance of the portfolio."

That caveat cuts both ways for this file: the rate fell even with one more cycle date than a year earlier, but the same table lists 25 cycle dates for October 2026, fewer than the 28 in October 2025. Consumer credit card loans were "greater than 90% of total period end loan receivables at September 30, 2026", so the calendar applies to nearly the whole portfolio.

A credit file without an income statement

This 8-K carries no revenue, profit, loss provision or outlook. It furnishes the statistics under Item 7.01, the Regulation FD disclosure item, and states that the information is furnished rather than filed for purposes of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act. The company "intends to continue to furnish these statistics on a monthly basis" and says that for the last month of each calendar quarter they will be furnished with the quarterly results announcement; September is that month, so the file lands with the third-quarter report without restating any of it.

The document also offers no payment rate, no segment detail and no explanation of what lifted delinquency in September, so the cause of the uptick cannot be established from this filing.

The October file and the fourth-quarter print

The next read is the October statistics in Synchrony's next monthly exhibit; this filing names no date for it. Two checks matter then: whether the 0.1 percentage point September increase in delinquency extends into a second month, and whether the charge-off rate holds near 4.7% against a lighter cycle calendar.