The article doesn’t actually have any data at all regarding the savings accounts. It combines losses on credit cards with a pessimistic quote from someone at the launch of the savings accounts. The credit card losses also look worse than they are. Goldman Sachs definitely seems to think they made a mistake, so I don’t doubt they’re losing money, but the numbers themselves are primarily paper “losses.” They’re setting aside a huge amount of money for theoretical future defaults on repayment. My understanding is the numbers are extra high right now precisely because they’re brand new and haven’t previously been provisioning for future losses. I don’t know the exact numbers involved but it seems like they’re recording extra losses last year and this year that would cover several years of future losses (cynically, I’m just going to assume this is some sort of strategic tax dodge).
I would guess the savings accounts just aren’t bringing in as much in deposits and there are more small accounts and higher operational costs than they planned for.
There’s been no indication at all that the savings accounts themselves are unprofitable. This article combined a journalistically negligent misquote from a single person at the internal announcement of the savings accounts with fuzzy numbers about previous provisions for future losses from the credit card. If they had any integrity, they’d just delete the whole article.
