Consumer Lending Company Revenue Benchmark

Average Consumer Lending Company Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every consumer lending establishment with paid employees, from a single storefront lender to the branches of national finance companies, and publishes their combined annual receipts, which for a lender means interest and fee income rather than the loans it makes. Dividing that total by the number of establishments gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$3,332,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $47.6 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 14,280 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $3,332,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Consumer Lending, NAICS 522291. The category covers consumer lenders making personal, installment and similar unsecured or secured loans from their own funds. Banks, mortgage lenders, sales financing companies and pawnshops are counted in separate categories. Classified separately in group 5222: 522210 Credit Card Issuing; 522220 Sales Financing; 522292 Real Estate Credit, and 1 further code. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed September 2026

Employer Establishments at Year Five Varies by cohort

Nondepository credit intermediation, NAICS 5222, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 42.1 to 56.2 percent. This benchmark covers Nondepository credit intermediation, NAICS 5222, as a whole, and this category accounts for 14,280 of the 46,129 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.

Payroll share of receipts, Consumer Lending, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 17.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a small share covering loan officers, collectors and branch staff in a business whose revenue is interest and fees, so the share is a staffing ratio and says nothing about surplus.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and revenue here means interest and fee income, not loan principal, so the figure describes what a branch earns on its portfolio rather than the amount it lends.

Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data

How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.

Scale and ownership, Consumer Lending, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 8.8 people, and the industry averaged 4.9 employer establishments per firm, which confirms that multi-establishment ownership exists in the published population without showing how establishments are distributed across firms. As an illustration, that headcount could be the loan officers and collectors of one branch office.

These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.

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Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis

Consumer Lending Company: how to read a lender's revenue without mistaking it for loan volume.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• What does revenue mean for a lender? Receipts are the interest and fees a lender earns on outstanding loans, not the principal it lends out or collects back. A branch originating a large volume of small loans can report modest revenue, which is why lender receipts and retail sales should not be compared.
• Where are the costs? The heaviest costs of a lender are the money it borrows to fund loans and the loans that go unpaid, and neither appears in a payroll share. Read the share as a staffing ratio, not as an indication of what a lender keeps.
• Which state rules apply? Interest rate caps, licensing, fee limits and loan size rules vary by state and shape what products a lender can offer and where it can operate. The same business model can be legal in one state and prohibited in another.
• Branch or company? Each branch of a finance company is counted on its own, so the average is a branch figure, and the ownership table above shows that multi-branch lenders are the norm in this category.
• Who are the borrowers? Lenders serving prime borrowers with larger loans and lenders serving subprime borrowers with small loans at higher rates earn very differently and lose very differently. The borrower mix decides both revenue and losses, and the census does not show it.
• How do online lenders compete? Online lending platforms compete for the same borrowers without branches, and some traditional lenders now originate online while keeping branches for collections and service. A lender's channel mix shapes its cost base and its reach.