Tag Archives: auto loan portfolios for sale
Auto Finance Summit 2019 Registration Opens With New Agenda
Auto Finance News is proud to announce that the Auto Finance Summit 2019 registration and agenda are now available on AutoFinanceSummit.com. The 19th annual event will take place October 28-30 at the Bellagio Las Vegas. Registration can be submitted here.
It’s a revolutionary time for auto finance, as technological innovations are making waves in the industry. Meanwhile, lenders are working to stay ahead of the changing compliance landscape, while trying to leverage evolving marketing techniques to retain customer loyalty.
The Auto Finance Summit 2019 will dive deep into these trends, touching on innovative uses for artificial intelligence and machine learning, prepping for heightened data security requirements, creating a customer-centric strategy, and much more.
The refreshed 2019 agenda is three days loaded with new features and crowd favorites, from exclusive networking events to the return of the popular Women in Auto Finance Luncheon, and session tracks dedicated to essential areas of lending operations.
Our 2019 agenda allows participants to customize their conference experience by selecting from session tracks including Technology & Mobility, Customer Experience, and Compliance & Risk. The full agenda can be viewed here.
Additional topics for discussion will include the latest on TCPA regulations and enforcement; the intersection between EV, AV, and finance; tracking customer activity to tailor loan offerings; the ever-changing landscape of dealer fraud; and how to leverage fintechs to step outside of traditional lending.
The event will kick off with workshops that provide attendees an opportunity to discuss the industry’s most pressing trends in an intimate group setting. Full details of the workshops can be found here.
Even more networking opportunities will be available to attendees through the exhibit hall’s more than 100 top industry vendors — and that’s just on the first day. Expect a full slate of more than 40 panelists and presenters on days two and three covering everything from deliberating the pros and cons of subscription services to tailoring servicing techniques that surpass customer expectations.
The Summit continues to put together an elite speaker faculty comprised of the industry’s top executives to inspire attendees with strategies to navigate the year ahead. The full speaker roster will be posted on the event’s official website and announced here on Auto Finance News as names are made available in the weeks and months to come.
For more information on the event, travel, lodging, and to register, please visit the Auto Finance Summit website by clicking here.
Four Things Lenders Should Know to Mitigate TCPA Risk
General Motors Scales Back Car-Sharing Service Maven
Hyundai Capital to Debut Bundled Lease in Florida
SAN DIEGO — Hyundai Capital America plans to roll out the Hyundai Plus Lease pilot in Florida as it continues down “the path of bundling total cost of car ownership,” National Sales Director John Thacker said during a panel discussion at the Auto Finance Sales & Marketing Summit.
“[HCA] found that typical car insurance runs $100 a month for consumers, and bundling insurance [with a lease] brought that down to $50 a month,” Thacker said. Also, the Hyundai Plus Lease is “easy” for dealers to pitch to consumers since it helps simplify the car-buying experience by bundling options, he added.
Read more: HCA Launches Lease Bundle for Luxury Brand Genesis
Already, the Hyundai Plus Lease program has sparked an increase in penetration rates in Texas — historically a smaller lease market for the captive. HCA initially launched the all-inclusive lease option in July 2018; it is currently being piloted in New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin. The program allows consumers to lease cars for a three-year term that combines payment, car insurance, and maintenance coverage into the $279-per-month starting price.
HCA chose its newest market for the Hyundai Plus Lease on the heels of the success of Genesis Finance’s all-inclusive lease program called Genesis Spectrum, which launched in Florida in March, Thacker said. “The Genesis version of the program is doing pretty well,” he said. “It finds us a segment of business. A lot of that business is first-time buyers.”
Tricolor Uses Innovation, Technology to Drive Customer Experience
Don Goin, President and Chief Operating Office, Tricolor Auto Acceptance
At Tricolor Auto Acceptance, technology drives the goal of delivering seamless, sustainable financial products across dealerships and digital channels, President and Chief Operating Officer Don Goin told Auto Finance Excellence.
“Our business strategy is hyper-focused on the customer experience relative to financial inclusion,” Goin said. “Part of this strategy is the prioritization of product development that simultaneously solves for differentiated experiences and efficiency in how we operate.”
Goin spoke with AFE about the subprime lender’s new Google AdWords campaign, the most overrated innovations in auto finance, the biggest concerns facing the industry, and the major lessons he’s learned in his 17-year tenure in the industry. What follows is an edited version of Goin’s conversation with AFE.
Auto Finance Excellence: In March, Tricolor implemented Google’s AdWords advertising platform to attract a more refined set of customers. What was the impetus for that initiative?
DG: Our core customer is highly engaged online, particularly on social media, and most of them interact digitally via smartphones. We are deploying Google and a handful of other companies as part of an overarching lead-generation and customer-retention strategy. We implemented these with a test-and-learn methodology and found interesting results that have led us to continue our investment.
AFE: What is the most underrated innovation in auto finance that you’d like to incorporate into Tricolor’s practices?
DG: It’s probably easier to define overrated innovations in auto finance!
I started my career as a software engineer and spent most of my career building technology capabilities and organizations in and around auto finance. Even in my operations roles, I employed technology heavily and always had a nearby software engineering team. Those experiences help me see through market hype and distill promoted technologies to their core capabilities.
Frankly, a lot of what we see in mainstream technology today has been around for a long time, it just hasn’t been as accessible. For example, the distributed computing that we see in cloud services has been around for decades, but great companies like Amazon and Google have now made it available to the masses. The math behind algorithms that drive artificial intelligence and machine learning were proven out long ago, but the computing capacity had to catch up.
The greatest advancement has been in the widespread adoption of technologies like APIs, Big Data, cloud, and machine learning, because they generate an ecosystem of capabilities that are much easier to develop and integrate than we’ve seen in the past. In the end, it’s more about what an organization is able to do with a given technology and how they choose to innovate than [about] the technology itself.
If I’m placing bets on what to choose next, I would make the bet on AI. Business leaders should pay very close attention to what is happening with machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and social network analysis. AI appears to be growing globally at a much faster rate than we expected in terms of VC funding, startups, earnings call mentions, and patents.
AFE: What is the biggest concern the industry is facing? Interest rates? Tightening regulations?
DG:I think the industry is too focused on price. Lenders are just beating each other up. I’d rather see companies focus on the customer experience, matching customers with vehicles they desire and to offering affordable financing options they need and deserve.
AFE: What major lessons do you take away from your 17-year tenure in the industry, and how do you apply those lessons to the changing auto finance business?
DG: That’s a big question! I’ve had the good fortune to work with a number of innovative companies and many talented people over the years. Thee auto finance business is more challenging today than ever. But looking back, I think there are some important lessons in how to be successful.
In the early days, we were using faxes for credit applications and doing our own data entry on the funding floor for contracts and stipulations. Buyers worked every deal over the phone, and servicing was mostly manual. As the industry evolved and became more digital, it put pressure on our pace of innovation, and we had to adapt accordingly.
I’ve also had experiences where we were the digital leaders, causing competitive disruption. In either case, I characterize my most successful experiences as those that occurred during intense periods of change, with lean, at organizational structures and very talented people. The focus and unity of talented people drive a dramatically different result.
Today, the pace of change is increasing, and the cycles occur in compressed timeframes compared to a decade ago. Competing in an efficient market with digital disruptors means we need to be more agile and execute with more precision than ever before while ensuring we have good controls across our business.
My advice for others would be to focus on real business problems and don’t follow the pack. Innovate toward capabilities that make you more competitive by listening to the customer. Don’t undertake a “digital transformation” project — just be digital. Finally, never lose sight of risk management, controls, and cybersecurity. They serve an important purpose that will allow you to be a market disruptor without disrupting your business.
AI Startup Helps BMW Financial Scale Call Center With Chatbots
SAN DIEGO — BMW Financial Services will have automated “digital assistants” added to its call center capabilities by the third quarter, thanks to a partnership with startup CarLabs.AI, the tech company’s Chief Executive Martin Schmitt said at the Auto Finance Innovation Summit Wednesday.
CarLabs is a company that delivers AI-powered digital assistants for automotive brands. It started working with the captive after being selected from a handful of startups at BMW’s “CollaborationLab” in September 2018.
The first phase of the partnership will deliver automated customer service in the payment area. The digital assistant, or chatbot, will be able to answer customer questions, Schmitt said, such as, Did you get my payment? Did I get charged twice? Why did my payment go up?
With BMW Financial, the issue was “cost savings” rather than “additional sales or conversions,” he said, noting that the captive’s Columbus, Ohio-based call center already had “hundreds of highly trained” employees — the hurdle was scalability.
“It only scales by throwing money at it and more people, so for a few years they had been looking at solutions of ‘How do we automate this?’” Schmitt said. After CarLabs worked with BMW’s legacy systems in the CollaborationLab, Schmitt said the captive wanted to automate customer support on and off the website.
Also Read: Hyundai Capital Launches AI-Powered Chatbot
The next phase, which was given no specific timeline, will focus on lease retention.
“The process is currently a one-size fits all, where nine months before the lease ends you get a fancy brochure in the mail,” Schmitt said. However, with conversational engagement and artificial intelligence, BMW Financial can have a much more relationship with the customer. For instance, the digital assistant could see in a CRM that the size of a customer’s household has increased, “so we’ll make a special [lease] offer for a car that seats seven,” he said.
Bank of America Expects Direct Volume to Match Indirect Within 5 Years
SAN DIEGO — Bank of America‘s direct loan portfolio may catch up with its indirect portfolio as soon as 2022, Duane Freeman, senior vice president of consumer vehicle lending and national sales executive, predicted during a panel discussion at the inaugural Auto Finance Sales & Marketing Summit on Monday.
“We do see a future within the next three to five years that we could originate as much direct as indirect,” Freeman said, noting that the bank has traditionally been a lender in the indirect space.
Bank of America had $41.4 billion of auto loans and leases outstanding last year, according to the Big Wheels Auto Finance Data 2019 report published this week. To achieve that growth, Freeman said the bank will have to focus on giving consumers options and control, and having a dealer base that understands the expectation when a consumer is referred to them.
“Ultimately, in our vision, the direct origination from the dealer is fulfilled via the indirect transaction,” he said.
The bank’s online portal, which launched in 2017, will likely play a pivotal role in that changing portfolio growth. Freeman expects the number of dealers on the portal to hit 5,000 by yearend, compared with about 3,000 currently, he said. The online portal drove more than half of the bank’s direct auto loan applications in February.
Fidelity Bank Exits Indirect Auto
Bloom Wins DEMOvation Challenge at Auto Finance Innovation Summit
SAN DIEGO — Bloom, a decentralized data security solution powered by blockchain, was crowned the winner of the third annual DEMOvation Challenge at the 2019 Auto Finance Innovation Summit, toppling six other startups.
The DEMOvation Challenge offers fledgling startups the opportunity to showcase their technology in front of a wide audience of auto lending and leasing executives during a two-day innovation event.
Bloom is an end-to-end protocol for identity verification, risk assessment, and credit scoring, and aims to connect its users with both traditional and digital currency lenders.
Bloom was founded in September 2017, and its app launched in early 2019. The startup has averaged about 100,000 new users per month, and currently has 400,000 users on its platform. Its 23 employees are based in San Francisco, with team members in New York and Seattle.
Other startups that participated in the DEMOvation Challenge were Aclaro, CarDeals2Me, Dasceq, DriveItAway, Launch Mobility, and TurboPass.