Goldman Sachs restructures to create consumer lending division

Jan. 7 (UPI) -- Investment giant Goldman Sachs said it's reorganized its corporate structure in light of new moves into consumer lending, according to documents filed Tuesday with U.S. financial regulators.

The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed the 150-year-old bank has created a new and separate corporate business segment for consumer lending operations called "consumer and wealth management."

Its other three traditional business segments are now called investment banking, global markets and asset management.

Analysts said the structure more closely aligns Goldman Sachs' corporate structure with other Wall Street institutions already active in consumer lending.

The restructuring comes in advance of next week's fourth-quarter earnings report and the company's first investors day event later this month, and highlights a greater emphasis on growing its consumer-oriented businesses.

Goldman Sachs first made an aggressive move into the consumer lending space with the 2016 launch of its Marcus platform, which President David Solomon hopes to leverage and eventually offer consumer-facing services like checking accounts, payment solutions, credit cards, mortgages and auto loans and insurance products.

Last summer, the company introduced the Apple Card with the technology giant and said in November it had lent about $10 billion in credit to cardholders. Goldman Sachs also faced accusations of sexism over the credit limits extended to men and women.