FORT WORTH, Texas -

General Motors Financial president and chief executive officer Dan Berce offered some noteworthy details about the finance company’s subprime business even though more and more of its originations and outstanding portfolio balances are attached to installment contracts and leases associated with prime consumers.

GM Financial closed the year with 18 percent of its originations being considered subprime since the contract holder had a FICO score of 620 and lower. That level is down from the company’s 2014 reading that stood at 37 percent.

However when looking at the value of those originations, Berce pointed out that the origination amount was nearly flat year-over-year as the 2014 figure came in at $1.482 billion and the last year’s stood at $1.479 billion.

Berce delved into the topic of subprime even more when GM Financial hosted its recent conference call with Wall Street observers and shared its fourth-quarter and full-year report.

Here we see on the surface, improving credit trends with losses declining to 3 percent from 3.6 percent a year ago and delinquencies, whether it's 31 to 60 (days) or 61 plus, being fairly flat,” Berce said.

“These metrics are being impacted by the increasing amount of prime and near prime business that we are doing, which tends to have lower losses than our legacy subprime book,” he continued. “And as we continue to grow our prime origination, these metrics should continue to improve.

“I want to point out, though, that 60 percent of our North America retail loan portfolio still would be considered subprime by credit score, and so our metrics are higher than what a purely prime portfolio would look like,” Berce went on to say.

Overall performance

GM Financial reported that its Q4 net income rose to $131 million, up for $59 million. The company’s earnings for the year came in at $646 million, compared to $537 million for 2014.

The company indicated its Q4 retail loan originations dipped a bit on a sequential basis, coming in at $4.4 billion compared to $4.7 billion for the previous quarter. But the Q4 figure was up year-over-year when GM Financial originated $4.0 billion to close 2014.

For all of 2015, the company said its retail loan originations totaled $17.5 billion, compared to $15.1 billion a year earlier.

GM Financial’s outstanding balance of retail finance receivables stood at $29.1 billion as of Dec. 31.

Within the leasing space, GM Financial noted its Q4 originations totaled $5.4 billion, up significantly from a year earlier when the figure came in at $2.1 billion. However the company’s leasing originations did soften a bit on a sequential basis as they dipped from $6.2 billion in Q3.

For the year, GM Financial originated $20.2 billion in leases, up from $6.2 billion a year earlier.

Also of note, the company mentioned its outstanding balance of commercial finance receivables was $8.4 billion as of Dec. 31; a rise from $8.1 billion at the close of 2014.