CARY, N.C. -

Shared exclusively for SubPrime Auto Finance News, Experian Automotive determined the top 20 market holders of what analysts classify as finance companies — operations that do not hold consumer deposits and often specialize in originating subprime paper.

Experian Automotive compiled this listing based on both used- and new-vehicle originations compiled during the fourth quarter. The rundown is as follows:

1. Santander Consumer USA: 16.8 percent

2. Credit Acceptance: 10.6 percent

3. World Omni Financial: 6.8 percent

4. Gateway One Lending & Finance: 6.8 percent

5. Westlake Financial Services: 6.4 percent

6. AmeriCredit Financial Services: 4.8 percent

7. Exeter Finance: 2.6 percent

8. Regional Acceptance: 2.5 percent

9. American Credit Acceptance: 2.3 percent

10. Flagship Credit Acceptance: 2.2 percent

11. Consumer Portfolio Services: 2.1 percent

12. Prestige Financial Services: 1.1 percent

13. Lobel Financial: 1.0 percent

14. Lincoln Automotive Financial Services: 0.9 percent

15. United Auto Credit: 0.7 percent

16. Financial Institution Lending Option: 0.7 percent

17. Reliable Credit Association: 0.6 percent

18. Global Lending Services: 0.6 percent

19. First Investors Financial Services Group: 0.6 percent

20. Nicholas Financial: 0.6 percent

Before Experian released this market share data, many of these finance companies that are publicly traded discussed their Q4 results, including Credit Acceptance chief executive officer Brett Roberts.

“The first factor I would look at is the competitive environment. That certainly makes things challenging. We’re not getting any improvement there, but I don’t think it got any worse either,” Roberts replied when asked what might be impacting originations; elements such as softening consumer demand or the sales battle between franchised and independent dealerships.

“So I think what you saw in the fourth quarter is — as we talked about in prior calls — our strategy when the environment is competitive is to focus on growing the number of active dealers,” Roberts continued according to the transcript of the company’s latest conference call with investment analysts.

“It is difficult to grow volume per dealer when it is very competitive,” he went on to say. “But as I think we alluded to several quarters ago, as the base of dealers gets bigger, it becomes more difficult to grow that at a fast enough rate in order to offset the decline in volume per dealer, and to a lesser extent, attrition. So that is what we're seeing right now. We're having difficulty signing up enough dealers to offset those other two factors.”

Consumer Portfolio Services chairman and chief executive officer Brad Bradley addressed a Wall Street observer inquiry about what firms are originating subprime vehicle installment contracts if the conjecture about many of the firms on the list above is true — that many finance companies are tightening their underwriting. Bradley acknowledged he received the question “about a dozen times in the last couple months” when CPS held its quarterly conference call back in February.

“If vehicle sales are still really strong and subprime is cutting back, who’s buying all this paper, right? The niche that sort of fills that generally speaking would be like credit unions, savings and loans, things like that,” Bradley said. “So maybe the credit unions are picking it all up.

“You’d almost want one guy to say, ‘Oh, ours grew a ton,’ but no one has said that,” he continued. “So the paper’s got to be going somewhere and so maybe a few of the sort of bigger guys are reaching a little bit but it doesn’t seem to appear that way. So the only place it could also disappear that nobody is really seeing it, would be like credit unions. And so that would be if I had to give an answer, I would bet that.

“Subprime is mostly pre-owned vehicles. So you wouldn’t really see the comparison with the new,” Bradley went on to say.