Synchrony Financial

to Advance Digital Growth, Customer Experience and AI Momentum

Synchrony also announced that Florin Arghirescu has been promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, reporting to Doubles. He will lead Synchrony’s Technology team and be responsible for enterprise technology strategy and execution, including the company’s AI agenda, engineering and platform capabilities. He brings more than 25 years of experience across technology and product development leadership roles.

“Florin has the technical depth and enterprise perspective to accelerate our AI momentum and advance our technology strategy, and DJ has a proven track record developing talent and leading large teams that support customers every day,” Doubles added. “Together, they will help us scale innovation and strengthen the capabilities and culture that make Synchrony a great place to work.”

“As a company that helps power financial flexibility and access for millions of Americans and their families, Synchrony plays an important role in everyday lives and the broader economy,” Doubles said. “These leaders will help us continue delivering for our partners and customers, accelerate AI adoption, advance emerging areas like agentic commerce, and build the talent and platforms that will drive our next phase of growth and value for our stakeholders.”

Our partners leverage our expertise in financial services marketing to complement their brand promotions. Our marketing teams offer expertise and experience in omnichannel strategy and planning, utilizing a comprehensive set of marketing technology tools and machine learning algorithms, often tailored to the portfolio or product, focused on expanding and optimizing customer relationships through data-led personalization capabilities.

We may also face increased competition from current competitors or others who introduce or embrace disruptive technology that significantly changes the consumer credit and payment industry. In the future, we expect our products may face increased competitive pressure to the extent that our products are not accepted in, or compatible with, digital wallet technologies such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay and other similar technologies. The introduction of emerging technology, such as AI shopping agents, may allow for autonomous shopping on behalf of consumers, including the selection of the method of payment used at the point of sale.

In addition, new tech-enabled platforms have arisen to support our potential partners in scaling quickly. These include eCarts (e.g., Shopify and Magento), independent software vendors (e.g., ServiceTitan) and payment processors (e.g., Stripe and Adyen), as well as multi-source financing platforms, such as Versatile Credit which we acquired in October 2025. Building relationships with and integrating our offerings into these platforms is important to attract and retain certain types of new merchants (e.g., select larger, mid-size, and smaller digital and non-digital merchants or specialty merchants such as contractors). If our competitors secure and maintain advantaged positions with these platforms, we may be unable to drive growth with merchants that leverage these platforms. Further, technological advancements in ecommerce may impact our ability to maintain existing relationships and/or acquire new relationships. For example, agentic commerce, which utilizes artificial intelligence ("AI") shopping agents to act on behalf of consumers and businesses, is an emerging AI technology that has the ability to autonomously handle shopping tasks. AI shopping agents are designed to discern consumer intent and preferences, search and compare products, request financing options, compare rewards, and select what they perceive to be the optimal way for a consumer to purchase a product or service. If our competitors secure and maintain advantaged positions with these new agent-driven purchase paths, we may be unable to maintain our existing relationships or drive growth with consumers and merchants that leverage these capabilities.

The consumer credit and payments industry is highly competitive and we may also face increased competition from current competitors or others who introduce or embrace disruptive technology that significantly changes the industry. In the future, we expect our products may face increased competitive pressure to the extent that our products are not accepted in, or compatible with, digital wallet technologies such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay and other similar technologies. Companies that control access to consumer and merchant payment method choices at the point-of-sale or through digital wallets, commerce-related experiences, mobile applications or other technologies could choose not to accept, suppress use of, or degrade the experience of using our products. Such companies could also require payments from us to participate in such digital wallets, experiences or applications or negotiate incentives or pricing concessions, impacting our profitability on transactions. Additionally, AI shopping agents are transforming traditional ecommerce by augmenting human involvement in consumer purchases. In the future, shopping agents may autonomously manage the entire purchase on behalf of a consumer, including the selection of the method of payment used at the point of sale, which in turn could impact the utilization of our products.

Information security risks for large financial institutions like us have increased recently in part because of the rise of new or expanded technologies such as generative artificial intelligence, the expanded use of the internet and telecommunications technologies (including mobile and cloud technologies) to conduct financial and other business transactions, increased remote working dynamics, and the increased sophistication and activities of organized crime, nation-state actors, perpetrators of fraud, hackers, terrorists and others. In addition to cyber-attacks or other security breaches involving the theft of sensitive and confidential information, hackers recently have engaged in attacks against large financial institutions that are designed to disrupt key business services, such as consumer-facing web sites, via increasing use of ransomware technologies. Our business performance and marketing efforts may increase our profile and therefore our risk of being targeted for cyber-attacks and other security breaches, including attacks targeting our key business services, websites, executives, and partners. We are not able to anticipate or implement effective preventive measures against all security breaches of these types, especially because the techniques used change frequently and because attacks can originate from a wide variety of sources. We employ detection, prevention and response mechanisms designed to identify, prevent, contain and mitigate security incidents, but these mechanisms may not be sufficient and early detection may be thwarted by sophisticated attacks and malware designed to avoid detection (e.g., use of generative artificial intelligence technologies) and the extent to which preventative measures may be effective may likewise be dependent on the sophistication and complexity of such attacks.

The risk of fraud continues to increase for the financial services industry in general, and credit card fraud, identity theft and related crimes are currently prevalent and are likely to become more prevalent as perpetrators grow more sophisticated. Additionally, the growing sophistication of artificial intelligence technologies, such as generative artificial intelligence, may increase our susceptibility to fraud. For example, perpetrators of fraud may use artificial intelligence to create convincing false identities and fictitious documents that are difficult to detect. Our resources, technologies and fraud prevention tools may be insufficient to accurately detect and prevent all of the various forms and instances of fraud. High profile fraudulent activity also could negatively impact our brand and reputation, which could negatively impact the use of our cards and thereby have a material adverse effect on our results of operations. In addition, significant increases in fraudulent activity could lead to regulatory intervention (such as increased customer notification requirements), which could increase our costs and negatively impact our operating results, brand and reputation and could lead us to take additional steps to reduce fraud risk, which could increase our costs.

We expect that new technologies and business processes applicable to the consumer credit industry will continue to emerge, and these new technologies and business processes may be better than those we currently use. The pace of technology change is rapid and our industry is intensely competitive. We may not be able to deploy new technologies in a timely manner, including emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence and blockchain, where their adoption is rapidly accelerating, as critical systems and applications become obsolete and better ones become available or implement adequate controls to manage the risks associated with these technologies. Additionally, our competitors may successfully adopt or innovate new technologies or new uses of existing technology before we do, which could leave us at a competitive disadvantage. A failure to maintain current technology and business processes or effectively implement and maintain new technologies and business processes could cause disruptions in our operations or cause our products and services to be less competitive, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We have layers of protective controls embedded throughout our technology environment designed to create a solid security shield between actual or potential threats and our assets. Further, our information security program is designed to adapt to an evolving landscape of emerging and available technology and related threats, such as artificial intelligence ("AI"). Through the evaluation of data gathered from external sources about emerging threats and incidents, assessments of internal incidents and strategic technology investments, security controls are adjusted on an as needed basis.

•Training and Education: Our information security program is supported by regular training of information security employees and awareness training and activities for executives, directors, and employees companywide through which we communicate our information security policies, standards, processes and practices. Training topics include social engineering (such as phishing), AI, including AI-related threats, and outbound data sharing. We routinely review and update our training programs in an effort to align with the evolving information security risk landscape.

We also have several management subcommittees, which ultimately report to our Board, that play key roles in the oversight of cybersecurity risk. Areas of oversight include: (i) risks associated with our information technology related processes, systems and activities; (ii) activities and capabilities designed to mitigate data protection-related risk; (iii) our operational resilience priorities, strategies and capabilities; and (iv) risks related to the use of generative AI. Our information security team, led by our Chief Information Security Officer ("CISO"), in collaboration with our Risk Committee and our executive leadership team, closely monitors our information security program, including our strategy, and information security policies and practices, against a rapidly evolving landscape of threats and regulatory requirements and expectations. The Risk Committee receives reports and briefings on our information security and enterprise risk management programs at least quarterly, including the results of any external audits, examinations and evaluations, as well as maturity assessments of our information security program, at least one of these sessions is held jointly with the Audit Committee.

Our partners leverage our expertise in financial services marketing to complement their brand promotions. Our marketing teams offer expertise and experience in omnichannel strategy and planning, utilizing a comprehensive set of tools and machine learning algorithms, often tailored to the portfolio or product, focused on expanding and optimizing customer relationships.

Information security risks for large financial institutions like us have increased recently in part because of new or expanded technologies such as artificial intelligence, the expanded use of the internet and telecommunications technologies (including mobile, other connected devices and cloud technologies) to conduct financial and other business transactions, increased remote working dynamics, and the increased sophistication and activities of organized crime, perpetrators of fraud, hackers, terrorists and others. In addition to cyber-attacks or other security breaches involving the theft of sensitive and confidential information, hackers recently have engaged in attacks against large financial institutions that are designed to disrupt key business services, such as consumer-facing web sites, via increasing use of ransomware technologies. Our business performance and marketing efforts may increase our profile and therefore our risk of being targeted for cyber-attacks and other security breaches, including attacks targeting our key business services, websites, executives, and partners. We are not able to anticipate or implement effective preventive measures against all security breaches of these types, especially because the techniques used change frequently and because attacks can originate from a wide variety of sources. We employ detection, prevention and response mechanisms designed to identify, contain and mitigate security incidents, but early detection may be thwarted by sophisticated attacks and malware designed to avoid detection and the extent to which preventative measures may be effective may likewise be dependent on the sophistication and complexity of attacks.

We expect that new technologies and business processes applicable to the consumer credit industry will continue to emerge, and these new technologies and business processes may be better than those we currently use. The pace of technology change is rapid and our industry is intensely competitive. We may not be able to timely deploy new technologies, including emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence and blockchain, where their adoption is rapidly accelerating, as critical systems and applications become obsolete and better ones become available or implement adequate controls to manage the risks associated with these technologies. Additionally, our competitors may successfully adopt or innovate new technologies or new uses of existing technology before we do, which could leave us at a competitive disadvantage. A failure to maintain current technology and business processes or effectively implement and maintain new technologies and business processes, could cause disruptions in our operations or cause our products and services to be less competitive, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our analytics teams, utilizing a set of analytics tools and machine learning algorithms, help us expand and optimize customer relationships through the building of targeting tools and the deployment of detailed test-and-learn tracking of omnichannel marketing campaigns.

Information security risks for large financial institutions like us have increased recently in part because of new or expanded technologies such as artificial intelligence, the expanded use of the internet and telecommunications technologies (including mobile, other connected devices and cloud technologies) to conduct financial and other business transactions, increased remote working dynamics, and the increased sophistication and activities of organized crime, perpetrators of fraud, hackers, terrorists and others. In addition to cyber-attacks or other security breaches involving the theft of sensitive and confidential information, hackers recently have engaged in attacks against large financial institutions that are designed to disrupt key business services, such as consumer-facing web sites, via increasing use of ransomware technologies. Our business performance and marketing efforts may increase our profile and therefore our risk of being targeted for cyber-attacks and other security breaches, including attacks targeting our key business services, websites, executives, and partners. We are not able to anticipate or implement effective preventive measures against all security breaches of these types, especially because the techniques used change frequently and because attacks can originate from a wide variety of sources. We employ detection, prevention and response mechanisms designed to identify, contain and mitigate security incidents, but early detection may be thwarted by sophisticated attacks and malware designed to avoid detection.

As our products, partnerships, and networks come together, the ultimate benefit is the ability to align the customers’ and Synchrony’s needs across our over 70 million active accounts. Through each step of the customer journey – even before acquisition – our customers expect personalized products, experiences, messaging, and service. These are all enabled through continuous comprehensive data analytics. Synchrony gathers thousands of customer data points curated through customer interactions with Synchrony, our partners, and third-party data providers. Through the combination of effective data management, curation of data products for internal use, performance tracking and measurement, and development of decision signals leveraging machine learning algorithms and other data science methods, our experienced team of business analysts and data scientists support decision making throughout the business.

Our analytics teams help us expand and optimize customer relationships through the building of targeting tools and the deployment of detailed test-and-learn tracking of omni-channel marketing campaigns. This closed loop learning process uses a set of analytics tools and machine learning algorithms to read and react to the customer’s response to these treatments. This learning can be applied to decisions around ad placements, creatives, visuals, messaging, and offers to relevant customer segments. This example is repeated thousands of times a month across digital and non-digital use cases to constantly maximize campaign response, customer acquisition, customer share of wallet, and program profitability.