The yield on the store finance and credit card business of Latitude Finance Australia, the former GE Capital Finance, is on the wane, or so two credit ratings agencies have disclosed.Latitude is breaking new ground in the debt capital market, as the first financier to put a master trust structure to work in an asset-backed transaction, and refinancing the bulk of its receivables through the Credit Card Loan Note Trust 2017-1.Pre-sale reports from Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's shed insight on the business affairs of Latitude Finance, an entity with around ten per cent of the credit card market by account numbers (but less by value of card balances).Latitude is an indirect subsidiary of KVD Singapore Pte Ltd, an entity owned by a consortium comprising Deutsche Bank AG and funds managed by Varde Management and KKR. GE Capital sold its consumer finance arm to Latitude in November 2015.The current credit card securitisation is a refinancing of another such financing put in place at the time of sale from GE to Latitude. It comprises MasterCard or Visa credit card receivables, and sales finance card receivables originated by Latitude Finance Australia or GE Capital Australia under retail partnership agreements.Latitude counts Harvey Norman, Super Amart, The Good Guys, Apple, Michael Hill, Freedom Furniture, Snooze, Bob Jane T-Mart and Forty Winks among more than 200 retailer partners in Australia.S&P said the aggregate receivables in the Loan Note Trust were A$3.8 billion, which is around seven per cent of the wider credit card segment, on Reserve Bank of Australia data.Three other prominent Latitude products in the pool are GEM Visa (which accounts for 21 per cent of receivables), CreditLine (17 per cent) and 28 Degrees (six per cent).Most of Latitude's portfolio (approaching 88 per cent) consists of sales finance cards, S&P said.Latitude's total card portfolio consists of 2.1 million accounts, of which 1.3 million are active; that is, accounts with a positive outstanding balance. The average balance of active accounts is $2,838 for the total pool. This compares to average credit card balances across the Australian population of $3,200."The portfolio's gross and adjusted yield performance has been gradually declining for a number of years," Fitch said.Fitch said it assumed a "base-case yield" of 12.5 per cent. The gross yield, excluding merchant service fees, has averaged 13.6 per cent over the previous year and 14.7 per cent over the previous five years, Fitch said.It added that the "yield on the Latitude portfolio is generally below that of prime credit card trusts in other international markets."Fitch mentioned another nugget, with "around 36 per cent of applicants declined."On average, the Latitude scorecard auto-approves 31 per cent of applicants, while 33 per cent are escalated for review and requests for additional information.