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Guess who's coming to credit card ABS?

After securitizing both dealer floorplan and business loan collateral this year, GE Capital is prepping an entrance into the credit card sector of the ABS market. While still in the preliminary stages, GE Capital unit Monogram Credit Card Bank of Georgia filed a preliminary prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission to securitize its private label and retail credit card originations.

The pending transaction, according to the filing, will have a three-tranche floating-rate senior/sub structure, down to the triple-B level. Monogram Bank is listed as servicer with RFS Holding as the transferor. The receivables in the trust are presumably from GE Capital's retail and private label originations. GECC offers credit cards on behalf of home improvement chains The Home Depot Inc. and Lowe's Co., as well as retail giant Wal-Mart, various units of The Gap Inc. and even the gas cards for ExxonMobil.

Filed under the moniker RFS Funding Trust, GE Capital/Monogram Bank's first deal is tentatively slated for a late-summer debut, sources said. The move is just part of the larger corporate strategy shift away from reliance on ABCP and unsecured debt for funding. GE Capital had funded its receivables exclusively via its $34.4 billion Edison Funding conduit.

But GECC has increased its securitization effort this year, having brought three transactions this year, totaling over $2 billion. Prior to this year, however, GECC had been a sporadic ABS issuer at best, tapping the aircraft lease, equipment lease sectors one time apiece. GECC has also sold a pair of CMBS in 1998 and 1999.

Before this year, GECC's most recent ABS was in 2001, when it priced $1.4 billion of aircraft least ABS — which, at the time, achieved the first-ever triple-A rating by Moody's Investors Service, due to " the strong servicing capabilities and global outreach of General Electric Capital Aviation Services as servicer and credit enhancement through subordination and a 5.8% liquidity facility segregated on a tranche by tranche basis.

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