Yirendai earns 1.37 billion yuan net profit in 2017

Yirendai Ltd, a leading financial technology company in China, earned a net profit of 1.37 billion yuan (US$220 million) in 2017, up by 23 percent from prior year, according to its unaudited annual financial report.

Its total net revenue grew by 71 percent to reach 5.54 billion yuan during the same period, the report said, showing great potential of the fast expanding online financing sector. 

For the full year of 2017, the US-listed company facilitated 41.4 billion yuan of loans to 649,154 qualified individual borrowers through its online marketplace, representing a year-on-year growth of 102 percent.

Yirendai said that around three quarters of its borrowers were acquired from online channels during the past year and nearly 100 percent of the loan volume originated from online channels was facilitated through mobile.

Thanks to its expanded online business, the financial technology firm helped 592,642 investors with a total investment amount of 48.07 billion yuan from January to December of 2017.

Total fees billed, a major contributor to the company’s net income, stood at 2.94 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2017, up by 81 percent from the same period of 2016.

Driven by the growth of loan origination volume, Yirendai saw its upfront fees billed to borrowers surged by 62 percent to 2.37 billion yuan from October to December.

Last December, regulators require major online lending platforms must be registered before the end of April 2018, and the rest before the end of June.

Fang Yihan, the chief executive officer of Yirendai, said they will continue to grow its online lending platform, online wealth management and technology platform businesses in 2018.

Fang added that over the next few months, the company will “remain in close communications” with the regulatory bodies for the upcoming registration process and she believes that leading platforms including Yirendai will benefit from a healthier industry development driven by tightening regulations.

Yirendai went public in the New York Stock Exchange in December 2015 as the first financial technology company from China to do so.