Credit Acceptance Corp. chief executive officer Brett Roberts sees only one scenario where the competition for auto financing originations will diminish.

Until that condition ever arrives, Credit Acceptance still is adding contracts to its portfolio at a strong pace having closed 2015 with booking 298,288 vehicle installment contracts. That figure represented 33.2 percent jump year-over-year.

Investment analysts wanted to know if Credit Acceptance could keep up that pace, especially since its active dealer pool is much deeper, too. The company reported 9,064 active dealers as of Dec. 31; those stores closed at least one contract with the finance company during the quarter.

“I think the best way to get a sense for the competitive environment for us is to look at volume per dealer and the volume per dealer for the quarter increased by 3.8 percent,” Roberts said. “That’s less of an increase than we saw in prior quarters of the year, although we did have a tougher comparison as the fourth quarter of the prior year was when we started to grow the business.

“Beyond that, I think as long as there is capital available to the market, we will continue to see lots of competition,” Roberts went on to say when Credit Acceptance hosted a conference call following the release of its latest financial performance.

“It is very competitive right now. It has been for some time. But in terms of an outlook, it’s really hard to say wouldn’t look for much of a change until capital dries up for the industry,” he went on to say.

Credit Acceptance continues to be on the hunt not only for originations but to grow its dealer network. Roberts estimated there are 60,000 franchised and independent dealers nationwide; many of which have limited resources to work with subprime customers.

“We have very small market share currently. There is a lot of dealers out there that could use our program and benefit from it. They don’t have it currently,” Roberts said.

“We would like to think that we have lots of room to continue to grow our active dealer count. We made some progress on that this quarter,” he continued.

Credit Acceptance also acknowledged that as its origination volume is growing within an expanding dealer base, the terms of those contracts also are lengthening as well. The company indicated its average initial term for contracts assigned in 2015 was 49.8 months as compared to 46.9 months for contracts assigned in 2014.

The combination of all that activity pushed Credit Acceptance to a consolidated net income level for the year of $299.7 million, or $14.28 per diluted share. That figure is up from $266.2 million, or $11.92 per diluted share, in 2014.