Heritage Acceptance Corp. is still recovering from a greater-than-expected surge in loan originations last year, Vice President of Sales and Marketing Mike Monaghan told Auto Finance News.
Heritage Acceptance began 2016 with the goal of boosting originations, but the lender did not expect the volume it received, Monaghan said.
“Our goal last year was to ramp up originations,” he said. “We were surprised with the response. We grew both vertically and horizontally,” meaning Heritage was receiving more applications from its current dealer base and signing more dealers.
While Monaghan declined to offer a growth percentage, he said the surge stemmed from the lender’s focus on franchise dealers. “We grew very, very fast last year, and we had a lot of growing pains,” he said. “We are trying to figure out the staffing for the volume we want to get,” he said, referencing that the company did not have enough people on staff to handle the volume.
Heritage’s “renewed focus” is to balance volume yield with staffing growth to service the new business, he added. Elkhart, Ind.-based Heritage Acceptance originated 263 loans in December 2016. It makes loans for a network of 600 dealers in five states.
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