Good day, everyone. Thank you all for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Jiayin Group's financial results for the first quarter of 2022. We released the result earlier today. The press release is available on the company's website, as well as from newswire services. On the call with me today are Mr. Dinggui Yan, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Chunlin Fan, Chief Financial Officer, and Ms. Yifang Xu, Chief Risk Officer. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risk and uncertainties. As such, the company's actual results may be materially different from the expectations expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's public filings with the SEC.
The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Also, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during the conference call are in Chinese renminbi. With that, let me now turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Dinggui Yan. Mr. Yan will deliver his remarks in Chinese, and I will follow up with corresponding English translations. Please go ahead, Mr. Yan.
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. In the first quarter, we were faced with significant volatilities from the macro environment following the latest COVID-19 resurgence in certain areas of China. However, despite the pandemic-induced economic deceleration, we continue to strengthen our core competencies by enhancing our risk management capabilities, acquiring high-quality borrowers, and expanding partnerships with licensed institutions.
Notably, our loan origination volume grew by 95.4% year-over-year to RMB 8,153 million in the first quarter. More importantly, we focus on achieving an ideal combination between business growth and profitability improvement. We further refine our cost and expenses structures by enhancing our operating efficiencies, leading to continued margin expansions. In the first quarter, our income from operations reached RMB 182.5 million, and our net income was RMB 144.6 million. One of our strategic priorities during the quarter was to further enhance the credit risk profiles of our borrowers to ensure the quality and sustainability of our solid portfolio growth.
The success of our efforts here can be seen in our thirty-day delinquency rate reduction to 0.78% from 1.31% at the end of 2021. The ninety-day delinquency rate also dropped to 0.53% from 0.72% at the end of last year, illustrating the consistent improvement of overall borrower credit quality.
在未来，我们也将持续投入线上精准营销，以进一步扩大我们的借款人规模和提升顾客水平、顾客效率，同时保持我们的借款人整体信用质量在一个非常健康的水平。
We also continue to optimize our borrower acquisition efforts this quarter. Our increased investments in our targeted online marketing programs enabled us to improve our borrower acquisition efficiency and the quality of our borrower base. Going forward, we will continue to invest in our online marketing initiatives to further expand our borrower base with enhanced borrower acquisition efficiency while maintaining our borrowers' credit quality at a very healthy level.
与此同时，我们持续拓展与持牌金融机构的合作，实现资金来源多样化。截至本季度末，我们合计与四十家金融机构达成合作，此外还有四十五家金融机构正在洽谈中。更重要的是，本季度全国性金融机构的放款量已占到总放款量的大多数。同时，我们积极尝试新的业务模式，利用我们的综合能力为合作金融机构赋能。通过这一模式，我们为合作伙伴提供顾客风险分析、运营等环节的专业化服务，对其自营业务进行数字化改革。目前，我们已与四家金融机构就这一模式建立了合作。同时，我们还在与另外三家机构洽谈，进一步扩大我们的合作网络。
At the same time, we remain committed to expanding our partnerships with licensed financial institutions to continue diversifying our funding sources. As of March 31st, 2022, we have forged partnerships with 40 financial institutions, and we are currently in discussion with another 45. More importantly, national financial institutions in our partnership network contributed to the majority of our total loan volume in the first quarter. In addition to that, we are also actively exploring new collaboration models by leveraging our integrated platform to empower our financial institution partnerships. Under the new partnership model, we provide specialized services including borrower acquisition, risk analysis, and other operational services to enable our partners to digitize their own operations. We have already implemented the new partnership model with four financial institutions, and we are in discussion with another three institutions to further expand our partnership network.
此外，作为我们企业责任的一部分，本季度公司继续助力小微企业主贷款服务。这些小微企业主在经济波动中面临着前所未有的生存压力，让他们的融资需求在很大程度上仍然没有得到充分满足。因此，我们继续发展小微企业主的贷款服务，以帮助他们更好地恢复。
In addition, we also upheld our corporate responsibility to support small and micro business owners during the quarter through loan services. While small businesses have the hardest time adjusting to the economic disruptions, their financing needs remain largely under-penetrated and underserved. As such, we continue to develop our loan program for small business owners in order to help them better recover from the economic hardships.
最后，在我们的国际业务扩展中，我们继续在每个区域市场推出量身定制的服务和产品。受海外地区疫情影响，我们一季度对海外业务的拓展采取了比较谨慎的做法。然而我们仍然在向目标市场扎根，也在积极寻求与当地持牌金融机构的合作，以扩大我们的市场份额，继续保持我们的优势。
Finally, on our global expansion, we continue to roll out tailored services and products in each regional market. We also adopted a more prudent approach in response to the pandemic across different markets. However, we are still achieving solid progress in penetrating target markets. We are also actively developing new partnerships with local licensed financial institutions to expand our market share and fortify our leadership.
在四月二十九日，中共中央政治局出台措施，以促进平台经济健康发展。根据我们的观察，平台经济专项整改已接近尾声。我们相信未来常态化监管所带来的更好的行业环境将持续汇集领先的金融科技平台，而金科也不例外。
Recently, on April 29th, the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party introduced steps to support the healthy development of the platform economy. By our observation, the regulatory ratification process is nearing its final phase. We firmly believe that a better regulated industry environment will continue to benefit leading fintech platforms such as Jiayin Group. To conclude, we upheld our commitment to strengthening our risk management capabilities, growing our borrower base, and deepening our partnerships with the licensed financial institutions. As our strong performance in the first quarter again demonstrated vitality and resilience, we are relying on a solid foundation of improved profitability and asset quality to overcome any macro uncertainties in 2022. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Mr. Fan Chunlin. Please go ahead.
Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Yan, and thank you everyone for joining our call today. First of all, I'm glad to be back after departure from Jiayin for more than one year. I'm so pleased to resume my role as CFO and to meet investors and all the friends here. I also very appreciate the team of Jiayin for their great job during my absence. As Mr. Yan mentioned earlier, we delivered the robust financial results in the first quarter, marked by strong top-line growth and margin improvements. During the quarter, we grew our loan origination volume by 95.4% and the revenue by 49%. Importantly, our net income increased by 54.3% year-over-year, while net margin further expanded to 28.3% from 27.3% a year ago.
Such achievements against the backdrop of increasing macroeconomic uncertainties and COVID-19 disruptions again demonstrated the effectiveness of our growth strategies. Now let me go through our financial highlights for the quarter. Please note that unless stated otherwise, all numbers quoted are in RMB, and percentage changes refer to year-over-year comparisons. Net revenue was CNY 511.2 million, up 49%. Revenue growth was primarily driven by the significant growth in loan origination volume, which increased 95.4%. Other revenue increased to CNY 64.7 million, driven by the increase in revenues from individual investor referral services. This increase was partially offset by a decrease in our revenues from overseas markets in the quarter. Moving on to costs. Origination and servicing expenses were CNY 93.4 million, up 45.7%, largely in line with the increase in our loan origination volume.
Allowance for uncollectible receivables, contra-assets, loans receivable reduced by 50% to RMB 4 million, mainly as a result of the decreased loan volume from our overseas business during the first quarter of 2022. G&A expense was RMB 14.7 million, up 7.7% due to higher professional service fees we incurred this quarter. R&D expense was RMB 41.8 million, up 48.8%. We recorded a higher employee compensation and benefit costs as well as increased fees for professional services in the quarter. Sales and marketing expenses were RMB 148.8 million, up 63.2%, reflecting higher borrower acquisition and credit assessment expenses in line with the increased loan origination volume. Consequently, we reported a net income of RMB 144.6 million, compared to RMB 93.7 million in the same period of last year.
We ended this quarter with RMB 170.3 million in cash and cash equivalents, compared with RMB 182.6 million as of December 31, 2021. Moving to our guidance, we expect our loan origination volume in the second quarter of 2022 to be between RMB 11 billion and 12 billion, and our full year guidance remains unchanged. With that, we can open the call for questions. Mr. Yan, our CEO, Mr. Xu Yifang, our Chief Risk Officer, and I will answer questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the hash key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Andrew Scutt from Roth Capital Partners. Please ask your question.
Good morning. Congrats on the strong quarter, and thanks for taking my questions. My first question is about your guys' international presence. Can you guys just maybe provide an update on the different international markets you guys are in and just comment on if you guys are gonna start reporting any origination metrics around the international business?
Hello, Andrew. This is Yifang Xu. I'm gonna take on your questions about our international markets. In the early part of the call, you have heard some overall view of our international performance. Now I'm just diving into a little bit of details in each of our markets. In Mexico, as we have previously communicated, we have been a strong player in the market, which is continuing. We are taking that leading position in terms of the volume. In Q1 2022, our focus in Mexico has been focused on the product offering expansions. We are starting with working on our strategy to move up to a better, higher quality customers and providing a product with a longer term. Moving on to our Nigeria market.
Last quarter, we have been reporting on our aggressive high volume growth, which is at a double-digit month-over-month growth rate in terms of volume. In Q1 2022, we are maintaining our growth, but not at a higher rate and a higher double-digit rate. We are much more focusing on a bigger volume now, continue to drive down the risk metrics, which is we have been able to achieve both reasonable healthy growth while having a better and improved risk performance. Going back to Indonesia, we are working on a relaunch that is to relaunch our presence in Indonesian market. Compared to...
Compared to our operational model in 2021, we're exploring much more flexible and different strategy to allow us dive into potential plays in Indonesia lending market. In terms of the reporting metrics, due to the operational setup is slightly different from market to market, we are still working on how what's the best way to reporting on that operational metric to providing our investor a better view on that. I'm hoping what I have discussed above that can help understand a little bit about what our overall strategy in each market is and what's the movement we are focusing on. That'll be all. Hope I answer any question.
Yes. Thank you. That was very helpful. Thank you. Next question for me, a very exciting guidance of, I believe it was eleven to twelve billion RMB in originations next quarter. Can you kind of talk about what's driving that growth, whether it might be better acquisition of customers, or the introduction of the small business loans? Just any commentary around that would be helpful.
Sure. This is Yifang Xu again. I'm gonna get a little bit more details into your question about our growth, loan growth. I think if we looking at a year and a half back in Q4 2020, which is the time when we fully transition into loan facilitation model, I believe our last year, a little bit over a year performance has proven to be welcomed and acknowledged by our institutional partners. As a result, our partnership with licensed financial institutions have continued to grow, and which we have seen a significant growth in Q1 2022.
As we have broader and deepened relationships with our institutional partners, we're seeing that our overall loan growth. We're happy that our overall loan growth was able to meet the needs from our institutional partners. On the other side of our loan origination, with long-term focus and investment in the technology and the lending capabilities, our operational teams were able to meet such a high demand on our loans and as well as deliver a healthy performance.
In particular, we have been focusing on the online marketing acquisition. Especially due to the COVID resurgence in hotspot areas all over China, our focus on the online marketing has benefiting us to continue to drive the growth while we are experiencing some uncertainties from the COVID situation in China. On the other hand, we continue to focusing on our R&D in our risk management. Aside from the technological investment, we also have pioneered the early risk and metrics both model implementation and model monitoring, which allow us to take a much earlier peek at both our prospects risk profiles, as well as our applicant level applicant risk profiles, in addition to our mature day one risk and day ninety risk.
With that, we are able to drive a high double digits, even triple digits growth in our portfolio. In the meantime, we are keeping our risk and metrics at a healthy level, and which is actually going even downward with a meaningful downward trend. That'll be my comment on the.
Great. Thank you. I really appreciate. Yeah, I really appreciate all the detail. Last one for me. Just my understanding, the government put out some notices on how to enhance the financial services market to spur economic growth during the pandemic, ongoing pandemic issues that have been going on around the world. Can you kinda talk about how that impacts Jiayin moving forward, especially during the recent lockdowns that were put in place?
Okay, Andrew, I will take this one. As you all know, Shanghai has just undergone a so-called all silent period, right? Officially, we don't call that a lockdown. Everybody is aware that China's economy is facing difficulties since March, and the challenges are very tough compared with the 2020 pandemic control year. The central government and the local government are fully aware that economic development, including the GDP growth, employment data, control of inflation, is a foundation of China's overall development. Since the reopening of Shanghai on June 1st, most of the employees for Jiayin, we say goodbye to our family and come back to office, right? The good thing about Jiayin is, number one, almost all our business could be conducted online. Number two, we are focused on consumer loan services, right?
Number three, our loan facilitating business is nationwide, and Shanghai only accounts for a small portion of our whole business. Fundamentally, the impact to our business is minimal compared with other industries. Certainly, given the current macro environment in China, we will keep closely monitoring the evolving macro environment and our particular segment. The company is fully prepared to face any difficulties resulting from the macroeconomy and the pandemic control. We're also happy to see that to the nature of our business, I just mentioned, we haven't seen any, like, obvious deterioration of the liquidity data yet, right? Yifang Xu could probably add on to that.
On the contrary, due to our better asset quality and collection efforts, the liquidity data has proven to be further improved and that's the current figures that we have seen. In all, despite the whole silent period over the past 2-3 months in Shanghai, we have seen a lot of good news and the measures coming out from the government as well, right? Which gives us a lot of confidence. I think that in short, we are optimistic about our future. The guidance we just give is actually pretty conservative. That's my view. Thanks Andrew.
Yes, thank you very much for answering my questions. Once again, congrats on a strong quarter. That's all for me. Thanks.
We have no more questions at this time. I will return the call to Shawn for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and thank you all for participating on today's call, and thank you for your support. We appreciate your interest and look forward to reporting to you again next quarter on our progress.