FORT WORTH, Texas -

General Motors Financial is less than two quarters into its strategic adjustment of originating more prime paper than the finance company ever has in part to its enhanced relationship as the captive for the parent automaker.

But GM Financial is already seeing how more prime customers in its portfolio is leaving an impact on its delinquencies and its allowances for loan losses. That’s what company executives shared when they reported their first-quarter performance, which included gains in net income and consumer loan originations.

Taking into account what GM Financial reiterated is seasonality, the company said its consumer finance receivables 31-to-60 days delinquent stood at 3.4 percent of the portfolio as of March 31. That’s up just marginally from 3.1 percent the company spotted on the same date a year ago.

Meanwhile, GM Financial indicated its accounts more than 60 days delinquent came in at 1.4 percent of the portfolio at the close of first quarter both this year and last year.

And annualized net credit losses registered at the same reading on a year-over-year basis, both settling at 1.8 percent of average consumer finance receivables.

“I want to remind everybody that we do expect to see a mild decline in those rates as we go throughout 2015,” GM Financial president and chief executive officer Dan Berce said. “And going forward, we do expect to see our credit metrics, both delinquencies and losses, to show an improvement, mainly because we are originating a bigger mix of prime today as I showed you a few slides ago.

“In fact, the average FICO score for our March 2015 quarter originations were some 50 points higher than the origination mix a year ago,” Berce continued.

Along with traditional installment contracts, GM Financial is originating more leases. Operating lease originations of GM vehicles came in at $3.0 billion in Q1, up from $2.1 billion in the fourth quarter and $773 million in the first quarter of last year.

Leased vehicles totaled $8.9 billion as of March 31 as now GM Financial is the exclusive lease originator for GM vehicles. Buick and GMC came into the platform in February and Cadillac in March. Chevrolet joined the platform just before GM Financial closed its first quarter.

The company’s Q1 consumer loan originations came in at $4.1 billion, up from $4.0 billion in the previous quarter and $3.4 billion in the year-ago quarter.

GM Financial’s outstanding balance of consumer finance receivables totaled $25.6 billion when Q1 closed.

“The increases were mainly concentrated in vehicles sold by GM dealers, with big increases in loans originated on new vehicles for GM dealers as well as used vehicles. Those increases were led by the fact that our prime lending has now reached $467 million for the quarter, up from $292 million in the December quarter,” Berce said.

Meanwhile, the GM Financial’s AmeriCredit-branded business — vehicles the company finances that are sold by non-GM dealers — remained steady on a sequential basis at $700 million but slightly lower year-over-year.

“We continue to maintain strong discipline on both credit and pricing and loan structure in that business, despite the fact that competition was probably a little bit heightened in the first quarter compared to what we saw in 2014,” Berce said.

Looking over at GM Financial’s commercial business, the company’s outstanding balance of commercial finance receivables stood at $7.6 billion when Q1 finished. That figure is down slightly on a sequential basis ($8.1 billion) but up a bit year-over-year ($7.1 billion).

“The commercial business, it's pretty darn competitive and pretty price sensitive, so we are not in any way, shape, or form trying to artificially create share through price or otherwise. We are letting the business come our way because we are the captive,” said Berce of this segment of GM Financial’s business that is used by 530 dealerships.

“I think we will continue to see steady growth, that 40, 50, 60 dealer-adds a quarter. Again, for the first time we've got a full portfolio of product now, so I think that will help us competitively, whereas before we really had one hand tied behind our back,” he went on to say.

All of those performance elements combined to help GM Financial generate net income of $150 million for the quarter, up from $145 million a year earlier.

The company also mentioned it had total available liquidity of $10.9 billion as of March 31, consisting of $2.1 billion of unrestricted cash, $7.2 billion of borrowing capacity on unpledged eligible assets, $0.6 billion of borrowing capacity unsecured lines of credit and $1.0 billion of borrowing capacity on a Junior Subordinated Revolving Credit Facility from GM.

“We do believe that our growth in this business will continue to accelerate as we go into 2015 and 2016, because for the first time GM Financial now has a complete suite of products in the U.S. And our penetration in those products, whether it's U.S. lease, U.S. prime continues to increase,” Berce said.

“Again, we believe we had a very solid quarter highlighted by the successful execution of GM lease exclusivity in the U.S., which resulted in strong growth in our lease portfolio in U.S., coupled with continued growth in our prime,” he continued. “Our funding plan is on track globally. And despite the investments we have made in the balance sheet and infrastructure to achieve full captive status, we did hold earnings constant year-over-year.

“We do believe the investments that we are making now will pay off in the future. We expect 2016 and beyond profitability to increase at a nice rate from 2015. All in all GM Financial is well-positioned for future growth and increases in profitability, while we maintain a strong balance sheet and support for GM,” Berce went on to say.