Western Funding Hits Record Volume in June

Subprime auto lender Western Funding Inc. funded 906 deals last month for a total of $11.2 million — its best month ever. The Las Vegas-based company said on Wednesday that its outstanding portfolio was $84 million, a 154% year-over-year increase.

Western Funding President Guerin Senter told Auto Finance News back in December 2014 that the company would aim for $200 million outstanding at yearend 2015, but has since dialed back on the rate of growth.

“We’ll end the year at $150 million, I don’t think we’re going to push that hard,” Senter said. “We basically re-forecasted sometime in Q1 and decided that would be the right ending number and did a bottom-up approach. In other words, we think about how many salesmen we’re going to hire, how many deals a month they’ll make. You don’t want to be buying everything, you still have to be picky, and we still buy less than 10% of what we look at.”

Western Funding, a unit of Los Angeles-based Westlake Financial, said June originations increased because the lender added to its sales team and expanded into new markets. The company had 110 employees at midyear, up from 40 in January 2014, Senter said. Western Funding expects to lend in all 50 states by yearend.

The company is “fully ramping up,” Senter told AFN, adding that “[we’re] recruiting right now and we’ll be hiring another 20 people, all in sales, to start Aug. 10.”