EXCLUSIVE- Marcus, the lending platform launched a year ago by Goldman Sachs, is not yet bringing in real financial returns, but it is the centerpiece in the bank’s growing retail strategy.

The company wasn’t exactly effusive in distributing information about the product, not mentioning in the prepared remarks, but inquisitive analysts wormed it out of them in the Q&A. Chief Financial Officer Marty Chavez said this in answer to a question:

So, on Marcus, we recently passed $1.7 billion in originations, and we’re on track to reach $2 billion, 10 weeks now, by the end of this year. Our focus is absolutely on prime borrowers. The FICO score realized is definitely above 700. These are small ticket items. And as we’ve said and this continues to be the case, this is organically growing business, we’re doing it slowly and deliberately.

This doesn’t sound like much, but plans are being laid for bigger and better things for Goldman Sachs’s retail arm. Marcus accounts for 43% of the new lending planned by Goldman in the the next three years as part of its diversification strategy, according to the Financial Times. Marcus is also expected to be the center of a growing suite of products, including mortgages and other types of consumer loans. Just last week it was announced Goldman would purchase mortgage lender Genesis Capital. Goldman Sachs’s retail business was itself launched by the purchase of General Electric Co’s online deposits in April 2016.

A private banking product for the affluent, GS Select, was announced in July.

Nine analysts asked Chavez about Goldman’s consumer initiative in the earnings call, which took place yesterday morning. Some analysts expressed displeasure that Goldman was so stingy on lending news, given its presumed importance for the future.

Chavez alluded to ominous signs in the credit cycle, foretelling losses in consumer lending across the industry, and made the curious point that service and experience trump underwriting and analytics in Marcus:

I’ll note that while we have and have had for a long time strong risk analytics, particularly credit risk analytics underlying the business, we’re not leading with underwriting in this business; we’re leading with a better product and service and digital experience for consumers, and that remains the focus. I would also add on the realized losses, they have been less than what was put into the plan. And we are well aware, as all of us are of where we are in the credit cycle.

Marcus will launch in the U.K. next year. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has recently taken to Twitter to pop off such corkers as this:

Still thinking about #Bitcoin. No conclusion – not endorsing/rejecting. Know that folks also were skeptical when paper money displaced gold.

— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) October 3, 2017

His tweets focus on global macroeconomic issues. he has not yet tweeted about Marcus, though he spoke about it briefly to Jim Cramer this summer:

And so we had this platform called Marcus, which is named after our founder, Marcus Goldman. And we do loans between $3,500 and $30,000. We distribute this online. And now, I’m not – I’m very conscious of the limits of our expertise and what we’re good at and what we do.