Enova Doubles Small Business Loan Originations YOY

Enova’s small business lending arm, powered mostly by OnDeck, originated $659M in Q1 of 2022. That was more than double the volume over the same period in 2021 and up 14% sequentially from Q4 2021. Overall, Enova reported a Q1 net income of $52M.

“The first quarter net charge-off ratio for small business receivables was 1.9%, up from 80 basis points last quarter, but below the prior year ratio of 2.6% and below pre-pandemic periods as we continue to see strong payment performance across all of our small business products,” said Enova CFO Steven Cunningham during the quarterly earnings call.

Company CEO David Fisher said that Enova felt really good about its market position in the small business lending space and considered itself the largest player in the non-prime sector of it overall. “We are not feeling APR pressure in our small business products,” Fisher said when asked if competitive forces might drive the company’s loan prices down. He attributed the company’s rapid originations growth to both an increase in marketing spend and an increase in customer awareness that they can access capital quickly online.

“…small businesses have a pretty strong appetite for growth, but also for kind of more traditional non-bank small business lenders,” Fisher said. “I think kind of the online approach with kind of the speed and the ease and the transparency is really appealing to businesses.”