Open Lending Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 1, 2025

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the OpenLending Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. On the call today are Jessica Buss, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer and Chuck Yell, Interim Chief Financial Officer and a member of the Board of Directors. I'd like to pass the call over to Ryan Gardella, Investor Relations, to read the Safe Harbor statement. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and appreciate you all joining us. Prior to the start of this call, the company posted the fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four earnings release and supplemental slides to its Investor Relations website. In the release, you will find a reconciliation of non GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures discussed on this call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call may contain estimates and other forward looking statements that represent the company's view as of today, 03/31/2025. Open Lending disclaims any obligation to update these statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

Speaker 1

Please refer to today's earnings release and our filings with the SEC for more information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied with such statements. And now I will pass the call over to Chuck to give an update on our business and financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2024.

Speaker 2

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. While the automotive lending industry and broader automotive market continue to navigate through challenging market conditions, we continue to focus on taking prudent steps aimed to maximize our future opportunity. Specifically, are focused on strategic efforts intended to drive new customer acquisitions and certified loan growth from new and existing customers, optimize profitability for our lenders, our insurance carrier partners and ultimately Open Lending make targeted investments that are expected to improve the experience of our lender customers and their borrowers. As part of our goal of optimizing profitability, each quarter we review the performance of our active certified loans to identify trends and adjustments we believe are needed to improve performance of our new originations. For the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, we identified new information that negatively impacted our outlook on the performance of our back book of loans, which is in turn negatively impacted our operating results.

Speaker 2

In summary, this review led to an $81,000,000 negative change in estimate or CIE associated with our profit share revenue contract asset to reflect our expectations of the performance on the approximately 411,000 active certified loans in our portfolio. The negative CIE was a result of further deterioration of our 2021 and 2022 vintages, as well as two additional factors that have negatively impacted performance of our 2023 and 2024 vintages. For fiscal year 2024, we generated 110,652 certified loans, $24,000,000 in revenue and adjusted EBITDA of negative $42,900,000 largely due to our fourth quarter results and the impact of the negative CIE. I recognize these results are disappointing to our shareholders. They are equally disappointing to me and to the Board.

Speaker 2

To address this issue, we have implemented corrective actions that are designed to yield improved performance of our new originations, while allowing us to continue our mission of serving the underserved, which I'll talk about shortly. First, let me discuss the deterioration of our back book. We continue to see deterioration of our 2021 and 2022 vintages, which combined make up approximately 40% of our active certified loans. These loans were made at the peak of the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index or MUVI of 257.7 in late twenty twenty one. The MUVI has since declined to 204.1 as of February of twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2

This represents more than 20% decline in used vehicle values over the past three to four years. This significant decline has caused more consumers who bought used cars in this period to end up with negative equity on their automotive loans, which in turn has increased the likelihood of default on vehicles that are now worth significantly less than their outstanding loan balance. These two vintages are estimated to have accounted for 40% of our total negative change in estimate for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. The poor performance of these loans in these two vintages is not unique to Open Lending, and in fact, this phenomenon continues to negatively impact all lenders participating in the automotive lending industry. As we have noted previously, we believe macroeconomic conditions also increase the likelihood of future claims from these vintages.

Speaker 2

Specifically, we are continuing to see elevated claims and there was an increase in sixty plus day delinquencies in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four from these vintages. Deterioration in these other historical vintages accounted for approximately 20% of the negative change in estimate for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. In addition to the deterioration of our back book, two cohorts drove incremental underperformance of our 2023 and 2024 vintages. These two cohorts were borrowers with credit builder tradelines and borrowers with fewer positive tradelines. First, credit builder trade lines primarily consist of credit builder cards.

Speaker 2

Credit builder cards work by allowing consumers to deposit a specific amount of money, often at the discretion of the consumer, into a credit builder account linked to a credit card. The consumer can then spend up to the amount deposited in the account on the card, though this means that the card issuer is not actually extending credit, monthly payment activity is reported to the credit bureaus, and a history of timely payments can increase the consumer's credit score. Many of these cards are approved by issuers without a hard credit pull. Moreover, since there is no preset credit limit, high utilization is not reported to the bureaus. While credit builder cards have been available to consumers for many years, they have seen a significant increase in usage over the last couple of years.

Speaker 2

The increasing use of credit builder products has negatively impacted the lending industry, but the risk profile associated with them is still challenging to assess by industry participants at this time. Through our analysis of the credit builder issuers in our portfolio, we have learned that the credit builder trade lines peaked at around 15% of our originations in the third quarter of twenty twenty four. Based on our performance data, borrowers with a credit builder tradeline performed twice as poorly as similarly scored borrowers without a credit builder tradeline. In addition to the credit builder tradelines, we saw an impact from borrowers with limited positive tradelines. In the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three, we launched our enhanced proprietary lenders protection scorecard known as LP two point zero and enhanced our underwriting standards.

Speaker 2

The underwriting enhancements in the scorecard were supported by third party historical performance data. As we discussed during the earnings call for the third quarter of twenty twenty four, following our implementation of LP two point zero, we have seen an increase in positive limited tradelines or thin files, which do not have a deep credit history. Consistent with our standard practice, we observed six months of age performance data before considering any underwriting changes. Under this approach, the first reliable data showing deterioration that we saw was with respect to May 2024 performance, and we promptly increased our cutoff score based on this data. For the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, we had sufficient performance data on multiple monthly vintages to identify the negative impact of borrowers with fewer positive tradelines.

Speaker 2

Combined, adjustments related to borrowers with credit builder tradelines and borrowers with fewer positive tradelines contributed the remaining 40% of our negative profit share change in estimate in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. As a result, we have taken corrective actions designed to ensure that Open Lending's portfolio does not continue to facilitate the underwriting and insurance of these underperforming loans. In the third and fourth quarters of twenty twenty four, we made adjustments to our underwriting rules for borrowers with credit builder tradelines, including negatively impacting their lenders protection scores and increasing their premiums to price more appropriately for the risk. The net effect of these underwriting adjustments is a decrease in the approval rate on this cohort. We anticipate that these actions will reduce the mix of borrowers with credit builder tradelines to under 5% of our fiscal twenty twenty five certified loan volume compared to approximately 15% of our fiscal twenty twenty four certified loan volume.

Speaker 2

We also implemented further credit tightening in the first quarter of twenty twenty five on borrowers with limited positive tradelines by increasing the minimum number of positive tradelines needed for an approval. We anticipate that these actions will decrease the mix of borrowers with limited positive tradelines from 10% in 2024 to less than 0.5% in 2025. While we have implemented targeted credit tightening and pricing actions throughout the last twenty four months, we anticipate taking further actions to increase pricing and tighten credit. These actions are intended to help ensure the performance and profitability of our new originations in order to further optimize results for our lenders, our insurance carrier partners, and ultimately, Open Lending. We believe based on the information we have available at this time that the changes that we have made to date are expected to result in improved performance and results for our new originations.

Speaker 2

Despite these disappointing financial results, there are many positive areas of strength in our business. Our lenders protection program continues to see strong interest from the market, highlighted by 58 new customers signed in 2024, including 13 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. We believe that our value proposition is strong, and we also believe that lenders truly value our platform to provide credit to the underserved near and non prime consumers. Next, I wanted to address our outlook for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. Currently, we expect total certified loans to be between $27,000 and $28,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2

We plan to provide additional outlook metrics as soon as reasonably practicable. Finally, I wanted to address the change in leadership that was announced yesterday evening. The board of directors has decided that open lending would be best served by making a change at the leadership level at this time. With that in mind, Jessica Buss, who has been serving as the Chairman of the Board, has been named Chief Executive Officer effective immediately. I will support Jessica as Interim Chief Financial Officer during the transition period and will assist in identifying a permanent CFO.

Speaker 2

Before moving on to our financials in more detail, I'd like to pass the call to Jessica.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Chuck, for your many contributions to Open Lending. Since joining the company in 2020, Chuck has been a critical part of the management team, leading the company through a challenging and volatile period for Open Lending and the industry. I am looking forward to continuing to work with you as a member of the board. And thank you, everyone, for joining us here today. I have served on the board of Open Lending for the past five years and most recently held the title of chief executive officer of Argo Group, a subsidiary of Brookfield Wealth Solutions.

Speaker 3

I have spent my entire career in the insurance industry, and I intend to bring that experience and expertise to bear on the current challenges and opportunities at OpenLending as we further our legacy of serving the underserved. In the coming days and weeks, we plan on taking concrete steps to review the overall operations of our business. At a high level, my goal as CEO of Open Lending will be to focus on profitable unit economics, growth, the right rate for individual loans, and a pricing approach that seeks to enhance predictability and reduce volatility for both unit economics and our contract assets. We are moving through a complex macroeconomic environment, and we expect that tariffs and other developments may prolong or exacerbate this environment. Now, more than ever, I believe we need a sophisticated, segmented, and real time data driven pricing model designed to enhance predictability of the profit share component of revenue.

Speaker 3

In addition, we intend to continue to enhance and refine our tools and scorecards in an effort to predict the drivers of frequency and severity of defaults. Further, we will be identifying potential cost efficiencies and process improvements throughout the loan lifecycle that may further streamline our business as well as planning to focus our future investments on our core Learner's Protection Program. Together, I believe this will drive value for our business and all our stakeholders. I look forward to providing more details in the coming weeks and months, as well as getting to know each of you better and hearing your unique perspectives.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jessica. Now I'd like to provide an update on our financial results for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. During fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, we facilitated 26,065 certified loans compared to twenty six thousand two hundred and sixty three certified loans in fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Total revenue for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four was negative $56,900,000 which includes $81,300,000 of the aforementioned ASC six zero six negative change in estimate associated with our profit share. To break down total revenues in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, program fee revenues were $13,700,000 profit share revenue was negative $73,200,000 net of the negative change in estimate and claims administration fees and other revenue was $2,500,000 As a reminder, profit share revenues comprises the expected earned premiums less the expected claims to be paid over the life of the contracts and less the expenses attributable to the program.

Speaker 2

The net profit share to us is 72%, and any losses in the net profit share are accrued and carried forward for future profit share calculations. The negative change in estimate during the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four reduced our contract asset and for certain loans caused the cash consideration previously received to be in excess of the expected profit share revenue. The amount of excess funds and the forecasted losses were recorded as an excess profit share receipts liability. Profit share revenue in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four associated with new originations was $8,200,000 or $314 per certified loan, as compared to $13,200,000 or $5.00 $1 per certified loan in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. The $81,300,000 negative profit share change in estimate recorded in the current quarter is associated with cumulative total profit share revenue previously recognized of approximately $410,000,000 for periods dating back to January of twenty nineteen, the ASC six zero six implementation date, and represents over 411,000 insured in force loans in the portfolio.

Speaker 2

Operating expenses were $15,400,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four compared to $17,900,000 in fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Operating expenses decreased 14% year over year. Operating loss was $78,600,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four compared to operating loss of $8,300,000 in fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Net loss for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four was $144,400,000 compared to a net loss of $4,800,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Given the magnitude of the losses related to the profit share revenue change in estimate for the fourth quarter, we recorded a valuation allowance on all of our deferred tax assets of $86,100,000 which increased our income tax expense.

Speaker 2

Net loss per share was $1.21 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four as compared to a net loss of $04 per share in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four was negative $73,100,000 as compared to negative $2,100,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. There's a reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP financial measures that can be found at the back of our earnings press release. We exited the fourth quarter with $296,400,000 in total assets, of which $243,200,000 was in unrestricted cash and $15,000,000 in contract assets. We had $218,300,000 in total liabilities, of which $139,700,000 was in outstanding debt.

Speaker 2

While we are disappointed with our results for the quarter and year, we believe we have taken actions that are necessary to better position OpenLending now and in the future. Against an increasing challenging macroeconomic backdrop, we are also taking concrete steps to tighten our credit standards and increase pricing where needed in an effort to drive revenue and reinvest in our core lenders protection program. While we continue to closely monitor our loan portfolios performance, we have confidence in our model and believe we have an opportunity to regrow our certified loans in the future. I want to personally thank our entire Open Lending team for their dedication to our company, our customers and our partners. We are all grateful for your diligent work and dedication to our mission.

Speaker 2

I would also like to thank Open Lending's customers, partners, investors and analysts for your business and support over the last five years. We will now take your questions.

Operator

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. Today's first question is coming from Vincent Caintic of BTIG. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. And Jessica, welcome. I look forward to working with you.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Focusing, just kind of on your perspective, Jessica, with your, you know, long insurance company background, if you can give us an overview of what what you think from the insurance perspective, you know, is going on essentially with Open Lending, maybe a broad question. And, you know, when we look at what's, you know, stock prices is down 16% pre market. And so there's kind of questions on what structurally needs to change, if anything, and what the economics are going to be. And so maybe you can talk about your perspective of what happened and what needs to change in order to move the company going forward and if there are any big structural changes need to happen economically. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yeah, thanks, Vincent. I appreciate the question. So maybe just to start, if you don't mind, talk a little bit about sort of why I decided to make the change and come here and a little bit about my background. I've been on the Board of Directors for the last five years and have watched the company evolve over time. And I think through that process, what we've learned is half of our unit economics really come from our profit share, which is truly an insurance product.

Speaker 3

And I spent my entire career in the insurance industry and really feel like an insurance type approach to both pricing, claims, operations would really be beneficial to the foundation that the company has already built. And so that's my perspective that I'd like to bring in is really to be the focus on profitable unit economics and to enhance the predictability and reduce the volatility, as I said in my comments, around our profit share component. And the way that we're going to do that is to build the already good pricing work that's been done by the team, but to do it in a more sophisticated segmented in a real time basis, bringing performance data forward, segmenting our business, looking at both how we can price on a real time basis, like an insurance company would price a true insurance product. We would do rate reviews quarterly. We would implement rate increases.

Speaker 3

But it also includes implementing rate decreases for better performing loans. So we need to look at each individual loan, price it appropriately, drive in better risks, drive out poor performing risks, or get the right adequate rate. And I think that's sort of what we've seen. Also, I believe that we can use more feedback data, like a better feedback loop, kind of break down the silos between sort of what we call six zero six, which in essence is like represents what we call in the insurance world, like the reserving perspective to say what actually happened and what could we have done from an underwriting or pricing perspective to actually increase the performance or reduce again the volatility of the performance of those individual loans like we would do in the insurance world. And I think a good example of that really, if we want to look backwards is when we look at the 2021 and 2022 vintages coming off of COVID, and we saw the movie at the highest point where we had very high used car prices.

Speaker 3

Today, we would have a forward looking perspective that we would probably likely need to raise rates, right? Because what's going to happen is that people are buying cars at the highest level. And then when the movie moves down and people begin to default, the severity of those defaults are going to be much larger than we would have priced for. Well, we are starting to think about those things forward looking instead of just being reactive. And I think that is sort of where we ran into some of the problems.

Speaker 3

The other, of course, I was on the super thin files, having very tight underwriting guidelines. And again, reviewing on a real time basis, bringing this performance and delinquency data quicker, collecting the data that we're using on pricing, measuring how we actually perform relative to what we expected on a more real time basis, again, so we can implement those changes. And if you think about sort of our targeted loss ratio, and how we can sort of reduce that volatility, We talked about we priced to a 60% loss ratio, and you will see that we've actually confined our current unit economics to a $300 the profit share piece of that. Well, within that 60% loss ratio, the distribution of results really is somewhere probably between a 20% and a 100% loss ratio, right? So not every loan performs at a 60%.

Speaker 3

What we want to do is drive more loan volume in the 20% to 60% loss ratio business and drive out the higher loss ratio business. And we can do that not by just driving rate increases on the worst performing loans, but actually reducing prices on the better performing loans. So again, we've got better loans with less risk at the right rate, which is also better for our credit unions and our customers as well.

Speaker 4

Okay, that's super helpful detail and I'm encouraged by that. Thank you, Jessica. And maybe just to give us some perspective, it sounds like there's a lot of perhaps a lot of infrastructure, a lot of things that need to be done. Just how difficult or how much work and how much investment needs to be put in to achieve these things? Just to give us some perspective.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I would say that the infrastructure and the piping and the tools are built. The team has done a great job with ScoreCard, LP two point zero. Matt Taylor joined us as Chief Underwriting Officer. That was a big addition to the company last year, really bringing in sort of the underwriting view. We now have actuaries on staff that are helping on the pricing side.

Speaker 3

And then Josh has joined us on the product side. And really what we need to do again is sort of bring that all together. And we will need to build probably more in-depth data, and we will need to accelerate, as I mentioned, receiving performance and delinquency data into the system and adjusting that. And then I think sort of the biggest add will be this idea predictive modeling. So how do we take that data and be better predictors of how ultimate loss cost will perform over time?

Speaker 3

And then measuring whether we are right or not, and then adjusting that on a real time basis, again, like in true insurance product. So I think it's not as much about true large infrastructure changes as it is about rethinking how we collect data, what data we retain from how we price, and then how we measure, how we perform relative to that, and then building predictive models, which again isn't infrastructure, it's more actuarial type predictive modeling like done in an insurance company. So it will take time for that to earn through, right? I mean, we've taken some corrective actions, as Chuck has mentioned in his comments, with underwriting changes on super thin and we've taken some rate increases on poor performing files and we've taken some rate decreases on big files where we've actually performed better. And again, those are good changes.

Speaker 3

We'll continue to get more and more granular in that approach. And so it will everything earns out over multiple years, right? But I think we would expect to see a pretty big lift from the changes that we've already made. And then we'll continue to get better and better. And we'll see better performing results with hopefully again less volatility around adjustment going forward.

Speaker 4

Okay, thank you very much. And last one from me and sorry, I'm just getting a lot of these investor questions on it. It's kind of separate topic, but just trying to understand the remaining exposure from the profit share and the make whole agreements and so forth. So it was very helpful to get the data point that 40% of your active certified loans are from that vintage So if I just take the 40% times the 411,000, that's 165,000 certs.

Speaker 4

But if I can understand, like, what's the remaining principal balance and maybe insurance at risk, just so I can understand how much make whole can be still clawed back and what other remaining exposure there might be? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes, Vincent, this is Chuck. If think about, you're right on the 40% of the in force loans and the amount of loans are still in the portfolio. The adjustments we've taken on the change in estimate in fourth quarter and prior quarters, we've virtually taken the unit economics that we had previously booked on those vintages pretty much down all the way down to not zero necessarily, but written down pretty far and it's on a vintage by vintage basis. But you're asking about principal balance. I mean, I don't have that number right in front of me that of what's left outstanding on that.

Speaker 2

The loans as you know amortize more heavily to the front end of the loans from an amortization perspective. So just again, that'd be something we'd have to get back to you on. I don't have that in front of me. But the amount of the write down on those vintages has been pretty significant. I mean, the prior adjustments in the call it past seven quarters and then of course with this adjustment in the fourth quarter because 40% roughly of the $80,000,000 that we took in the quarter was related to the 2021 and 2022 vintages specifically.

Speaker 4

Okay, got it. I'll get back in the queue. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Chuck.

Speaker 2

Yeah, thanks Vincent.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from John Hecht of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. And again, congratulations, Jessica. Look forward to working together. The first question I have is, you know, the credit builder trade lines and kind of the modifications in dealing with that customer base, How much does this affect of, like, your address addressable market?

Speaker 5

And then where can you go to offset the loss of that, you know, that type of customer?

Speaker 2

John, this is Chuck. I'll start and Jessica can jump in. But as we said in the prepared comments, this is new information obviously that we started seeing in, call it, late third quarter and primarily in fourth quarter as we did our analysis and it became a bigger piece of our book throughout 2024. But 30% of our 2024 volume was these fewer positive trade lines as we referred to them and then 15% of thin files and then 15% super thin roughly. So this is just the ones that have fewer than three positive tradelines.

Speaker 2

So we've adjusted for that And we took action in, gosh, in late third quarter and then again in the fourth quarter and actually in Q1 to kind of minimize those. And we put out an outlook for Q1 of, call it, between 27,000 search and 28,000. So that's actually up sequentially from where we hit for Q4. And so the addressable market, it wasn't a huge piece of our business. We didn't like the performance of it.

Speaker 2

We took corrective action to prevent those loans coming into the portfolio. So don't see it as huge impact of our go forward volume.

Speaker 3

I mean, maybe the other thing that I would add is that certainly, we are looking to be able to scale the business across all market cycles, but we're looking at quality over quantity right now. And I think where we get to with segmented pricing is that we start to attract and replace those super thins with better performing business from what has historically been our base customer, our credit unions. And we'll be able to do that through the pricing mechanism itself. Because while the super thins will get priced out or even underwriting through underwriting rules, we'll be able to write more of the better quality business by giving those policies again a more appropriate rate, which could be rate decreases. And we'll be able to actually target to that.

Speaker 3

So we'll be optimizing the portfolio with a more targeted approach of what we want to write. So more like being hunters and gatherers of the types of loans that we want in our portfolio.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then the second question I have is, you know, what do you guys think, you know, needs to happen in the market for the OEMs to, you know, I guess, have more flow coming through their their channels?

Speaker 2

Yeah. Some of what we've seen in the OEMs is it's kind of across the portfolio. John, it was OEMs and to a lesser extent through some of our credit union customers within these credit builder risks as well as these fewer positive tradelines. Some of that was impacted in the tightening actions that we took this year and excuse me, last year in 2024. But we are very excited about signing OEM three which we put out a release gosh a month or so ago now maybe two months ago.

Speaker 2

And that is in pilot and excited about that new relationship and it's growing across their dealerships. As you know in the past, can't mention the name, but very excited about that. So I think that will definitely be helpful in growing the combined OEM business throughout 2025.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks very much.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, John.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Peter Heckmann of D. A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. As regards to your insurance carriers, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you have three insurance carriers that are active currently. How does their capacity compare to maybe the 110,000 loans that you certified in 2024, continue to have something that's well in excess of that?

Speaker 2

Oh, yeah. I mean, the capacity from our three active carriers is plenty of to continue growing the company into the future at much larger certain levels.

Speaker 3

Yes, to add to that, we have been having ongoing conversations with the carriers. They're very excited about the work that we're doing. They're very pleased with the overall long term performance of the portfolio. And we have no restrictive caps on the amount of capacity. They'd like to do more business with us.

Speaker 3

So I would say that piece of the ecosystem is very healthy for us.

Speaker 6

Okay, great. And then how do you feel that some of the credit unions that historically participated in direct mail for refinancing, how do you think they're positioning for 2025? Do you think rates need to come down another 50 basis points or is it more other dynamics that they're looking at?

Speaker 2

Yes, think it's more I mean refi I think was about a little less than 4% in 2024 of our business. So we were encouraged late last year thinking we'd have more reductions, Pete. But we've all seen that that's kind of slowed and paused a bit. But as we've always said, we don't really need rates to necessarily come down. We just needed them to stabilize, which we've seen.

Speaker 2

It's been more of the credit unions kind of working through their loan to share and their capacity issues that they had throughout, call it 2023 and 2024. And we are seeing that improving. Loan to shares coming down a bit. Deposit growth, I think, I was actually about 4.6% across the credit union business, which if you recall, their deposit growth was got to a low of about 1%, one point five %. So that's encouraging.

Speaker 2

They're building deposits, which in turn follows with lending and auto. And they love the short term auto paper. And so we ought to start seeing that benefit as well and that will across all channels including refi.

Speaker 6

Okay. So no guarantees, but certainly the setup appears that refi could be a bit of a recovery in 2025?

Speaker 2

I think the consumers and where some of these loans were priced in the past would definitely benefit from an affordability. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 6

All right, thank you.

Speaker 7

Yeah, thanks Pete.

Operator

The next question is coming from John Davis of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hey, good morning, guys. I'll add my congrats, Jessica, and look forward to working with you. Just to touch on the insurance carriers, maybe from a little bit of a different angle. How has our profitability been? It sounds, Jessica, response to the last question, the relationship is good there.

Speaker 7

But just curious, are they still making money? Are they seeing losses? And is there any potential risk to the 72% that you guys get to keep? Could there be any downward pressure on that too for the insurance companies to improve their profitability?

Speaker 3

Yes. So long term profitability for the insurance companies has been very strong. You know, like all market cycles and all products in insurance, you know, there's going to be years where certain products don't perform as well as expected. And certainly, in certain vintages, we've seen that. But again, across the board, performance has been strong.

Speaker 3

Also remember that the insurance carriers get to keep 8% off the top. So their combined ratio leverage is very stable as it relates to sort of changes in the loss ratio they experienced. So their combined ratios have performed again very well over time. There have been a few vintages, of course, where they've been higher than expected certainly. But again, those relationships very strong.

Speaker 3

There has been no discussions about changing the percentage of profit share participation by the insurance carriers or us. So we would expect that to continue as it always has.

Speaker 7

Okay. That's helpful. And then if I look at the profit share per cert ex kind of the change in estimate, I think it was roughly $300 in the fourth quarter. It's historically been closer to $500 And I guess, Jessica and Chuck, just a couple of thoughts there. Were you over earning at $500 Is $300 the right way to think about 2025?

Speaker 7

And what do you need to do to get that going closer to historical levels versus the fourth quarter?

Speaker 3

Yes, so the 300 represents a constrained profit share under six zero six guidelines, which advises that we have to book a constrained profit share where we think that it's more likely not that there will not be a reversal of the profit share. Historically, the 500 was booked based on a projected 60% loss ratio. If you sort of look at you know, what we've booked in CIE adjustments over the past quarters, that would have taken that $500 down closer to kind of a $300 range. And, you know, we have taken the corrective actions that we believe will over time bring that back to 500, which again is really based on a 60% loss ratio target. However, we are not going to reflect that until we see that those actual constraints and underwriting changes have taken effect and that we see an actual improvement in the loan performance.

Speaker 2

The only thing I'd add is, John, J. D, is we've always under the six zero six constrained. It's just based on the recent performance and what we've seen in the back book and that further deterioration we've talked about and then some of these recent cohorts that are not performing just put some further constrained under the it's acceptable under the guidance. So as Jessica said, hope that those will perform better ultimately and we'll get back to those unit economics.

Speaker 3

Yes. And I guess the last part of your question is, what do we need to do? And I think that's what we talked about earlier is that we need to get this real time sophisticated pricing so that we don't end up in situations where we try to reduce again the volatility around the $6.00 6,000,000 so that we feel more confident in the 60% with less volatility around the performance around that number. But we would expect us to continue to price future vintages that would result in something closer to what you've seen as a historical $500 unit economic for profit share.

Speaker 7

Okay. But it sounds like in the near term, 300 plus or minus is the right way to think about it until you guys actually start seeing some improvement the track. Is that fair? And then last one for me, just last one for me on tariffs, obviously, likely helps credit as used car prices go up, it hurts affordability. So maybe just talk a little bit about how you guys think about obviously a lot of moving pieces and we'll see, but at a high level, maybe just give us some comments there.

Speaker 3

Yes, I think what we said and I think I mentioned it in my comments is that we would expect tariffs to be positive on sort of the back book as it increases collateral prices and then therefore would reduce severity on sort of on defaults. I think the question is, if tariffs stay in place, what does that do to the movie going forward in terms of used car prices in the long term as it will likely increase those as sort of new cars become more expensive and used cars become more expensive and become less affordable. We don't want to end up in the same position that we ended up in 2021 and 2022, where we had the height of used car prices and we weren't pricing it appropriately. So I think our viewpoint would be if we believe that is going to long term effect, used car prices being overinflated or being at an all time high, then we will need to adjust pricing to reflect that in our potential severity calculations going forward.

Speaker 7

I appreciate all the

Speaker 3

color. It positive on the back book.

Speaker 4

Okay. Thanks. Thanks, JD.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions, I will now hand the conference over to Jessica for her closing comments.

Speaker 3

Thank you. We appreciate your interest and support, and I'd like to again thank the team members of Open Lending for your hard work and dedication to our company. Thanks, and have a great day.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's event. You may disconnect your lines or log off the webcast at this time, and enjoy the rest of your day.

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Earnings Conference Call
Open Lending Q4 2024
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