OneMain Holdings, Inc. is an American financial services

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headquartered in

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, with central offices throughout the United States. The company wholly owns OneMain Finance Corporation and its subsidiaries, through which it operates in the

consumer finance Personal finance is the financial management which an individual or a family unit performs to budget, save, and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future life events. When planning personal fi ...

and

insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...

industries as OneMain Financial. Its business primarily focuses on providing

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s and optional insurance products to customers with limited access to traditional lenders, such as

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...

s and

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companies. OneMain's roots stretch back to 1912 when it was founded by Alexander E. Duncan as Commercial Credit Company in Baltimore, Maryland. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, Commercial Credit Company eventually became a subsidiary of Citigroup and was known as CitiFinancial. After the 2008 financial crisis, Citigroup reorganized its business, with the company regarding CitiFinancial as a noncore business that it renamed to OneMain Financial and sought to sell. Meanwhile, Interstate Finance Corporation was founded in Evansville in 1920 and experienced its own series of mergers and acquisitions until it became American General Finance, the consumer finance subsidiary of

AIG American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is an American multinational finance and insurance corporation with operations in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions. , AIG companies employed 49,600 people.https://www.aig.com/content/dam/aig/amer ...

. In November 2010,

Fortress Investment Group Fortress Investment Group is an American investment management firm based in New York City. Fortress was founded as a private equity firm in 1998 by Wes Edens, Rob Kauffman, and Randal Nardone. When Fortress launched on the NYSE in February 200 ...

purchased a majority stake in American General Finance and renamed it to Springleaf Financial the following year. In November 2015, Springleaf Financial acquired OneMain Financial, with OneMain becoming the surviving brand. As of December 2020, OneMain had approximately 1,500 branch offices in 44 states. A group of entities managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management, Inc. and Värde Partners, Inc. currently owns 28.1% of the company.

History

OneMain Financial was formed in November 2010, following

's majority purchase of American General Finance from

. Fortress subsequently renamed the company to Springleaf Financial and took the company

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in October 2013. OneMain in its present form is the result of Springleaf Financial's acquisition of OneMain Financial (formerly CitiFinancial) from Citigroup in November 2015, with OneMain becoming the surviving brand. Both CitiFinancial and American General Finance have their own lines of history as consumer finance companies dating back to the 1910s and 1920s, respectively.

CitiFinancial history (1912–2015)

Commercial Credit Company (CCC) was established as a public company by Alexander Edward Duncan and eight businessmen in Baltimore, Maryland in 1912. It began as a lender of capital to companies with their accounts receivable as security. Over the course of several decades, CCC adapted to the changing times, expanding into auto financing and personal lending, maneuvering into insurance to provide coverage for the products it was financing, and even manufacturing war-related goods during the

WWII World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and post-war eras. By 1968, the company was the target of a

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Loews Corporation Loews Corporation is an American conglomerate headquartered in New York City. The company's majority-stake holdings include CNA Financial Corporation, Diamond Offshore Drilling, Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, Loews Hotels and Altium Packaging. ...

, which had already owned 10% of the company's common stock. However, CCC's management sought a different buyer and was able to sway computer company Control Data Corporation (CDC) into acquiring them instead. CDC initially utilized CCC as a vehicle to assist customers in financing their computer leases and to stabilize earnings due to the seasonality of the computer business. However, as the computer business became more cutthroat and computer leasing was falling in favor of purchasing, CDC's business began to wane in the next decade and a half. Meanwhile, CCC accounted for more and more of their profits as it expanded its financial services, but it was unable to keep up with industry peers. In 1984, CDC tried to find a buyer for CCC, but could not sell it for the right price. It subsequently withdrew CCC from the market and accepted

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's proposal to spin-off CCC into its own public company in 1986. Weill, who had just left American Express after not being lined up as its next CEO, claimed to have pursued the deal for the fun and challenge. He and his associates invested their own money to own 10% of CCC, while CDC retained a 20% stake, with the remaining 70% offered to the public. Weill brought in experienced management to prop up the business to success, exiting unprofitable segments and tripling operating profits within a year.

American General Finance history (1920–2010)

OneMain Financial (formerly Springleaf Financial) (2010–present)

In 1912, OneMain Financial was founded by commercial credit in

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, to provide working capital to manufacturers and building contractors. After several acquisitions, the company became a part of Citicorp in 1998 and in 2011 the name was changed to OneMain Financial. In 1920, Interstate Finance Corporation was founded in Evansville, Indiana, to underwrite sales of Inland Motor Truck vehicles. After several acquisitions, the company became a part of

in 2001. In 2010, Fortress Investment Group acquired the business from AIG. In 2011, the company changed its name to Springleaf Holdings, Inc. Its brand name became Springleaf Financial Services. In November 2015, Springleaf Holdings, Inc. acquired OneMain Financial from Citigroup for $4.25 billion. The new company kept the name OneMain Financial. The

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...

required Springleaf to sell 127 branches and certain related assets to Lendmark Financial Services, LLC. before the merger. The sale was completed in May 2016. The brand migration from Springleaf Financial to OneMain Financial was completed in October 2016. A bill introduced in California legislation (Assembly Bill 539) that would limit interest rates notably excludes three lenders, OneMain being one of the three lenders. The reason these lenders are exempt from the bill is because their interest is capped at 36 percent, however according to a Pew study the APR is understated due to the aggressive selling of add-on products.

References

External links