Announcements recently arrived involving PassTime GPS, Heritage Acceptance and Sword Apak.

LEVERAGE, the service corporation of the League of Southeastern Credit Unions & Affiliates (LSCU) that equips credit union partners with products and services to fulfill day-to-day needs, named PassTime GPS as its preferred GPS provider.

Officials explained this technology can provide credit unions with a greater ability to grow more members with added protection, improve member payment performance and reduce delinquency rates.

It also provides the tools to increase originations without increasing staff. PassTime GPS technology can help to ensure accounts stay current and can help create opportunities to cross-sell to a more loyal borrower.

“At LEVERAGE, part of our mission is to offer new strategies to credit unions for loan growth.  PassTime GPS is designed to provide participating credit unions with a stronger competitive advantage in auto lending,” said LEVERAGE president and chief executive officer Patrick La Pine.

“The market for subprime lending is expanding, and PassTime GPS will deliver resources needed for credit unions to meet the growing needs of this market,” La Pine continued.

Improving the bottom line by reducing expenses, growing loans and increasing non-interest income, as well as improving regulatory compliance, LEVERAGE offers products to increase operational efficiencies for credit unions across all environments. Streamlining actions that valuable organizational resources can allow more time to concentrate on serving members.

“When credit unions support LEVERAGE, they are supporting the credit union system. LEVERAGE brings simple solutions that pay big dividends,” the service provider said.

Some of the PassTime product features include tamper detection, scheduled payment reminders, web based command management, tamper detection and text/email communication.

“We are very excited to partner with LEVERAGE as the group’s preferred GPS provider,” PassTime chief operating officer Chris Macheca said.

“LEVERAGE has built a reputation in the industry as partnering with best-in-class vendors to offer its members access to solutions to help their businesses,” Macheca continued. “We look forward to continuing to help credit unions increase their collections and reduce repossessions with our GPS and automated collection technology.”

For more information about LEVERAGE and its products and services, contact Rhea Oaks, director, product management, at (866) 231-0545, ext. 1146.

Heritage’s new VSC offering

Heritage Acceptance, a finance company specializing in purchasing automotive retail installment contracts, announced a new vehicle service contract offered through Marathon Administrative Co.

“We are excited to announce more expansive product offering for our dealers and customers,” Heritage president Curt Holmes said. “The new coverage offers coverage to the customer that includes roadside assistance and a higher liability limit that will better protect the customer’s investment.

“Should there be a covered failure Marathon claims managers will be quick to expedite claims and get the customer back on the road with minimal inconvenience,” Holmes continued.

Heritage vice president of sales and marketing Mike Monaghan added, “The new plan offered by Heritage will be a greater benefit to the selling dealer. With automatic customer referrals, improved labor rate payment and an enhanced compensation plan, this product is a great win for our dealers as well as the customer.”

BMW Group Financial Services launch Pan-European technology program with Sword Apak

The planned harmonization of BMW Group Financial Services European core operating systems under the iDEAL Program (Integrated Delivery of a European Application Landscape) is designed to integrate three key modules. That group includes commercial finance, dealer front-end and contract management system for retail leases and installment contracts. The first component has been the Pan-European delivery of Sword Apak’s wholesale finance floor planning system (WFS) for commercial finance.

By delivering on time and on budget, Sword Apak said it will help to continue to shape the following rollouts and phases of the program. Following a rigorous selection process, Sword Apak was selected to support the commercial finance core element of the iDEAL Program, due to its proven experience in providing state-of-the-art wholesale floorplan financing solutions on a single platform that work seamlessly across multiple geographies.

“iDEAL has the ambitious strategy to create standard operating solutions across BMW FS in Europe. In such a bold undertaking, it is always important to get off to a great start,” said Axel Frank, the IT project lead for BMW Group Financial Services for commercial finance.

“The fact that WFS has a proven track record across different geographies made it a natural candidate to select it and kick start with WFS the wider iDEAL program,” Frank continued. “The technical and project management expertise that Sword Apak has brought to the rollout has been invaluable.”

Since the successful launch of wholesale finance floor planning system for both the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland markets of BMW Group Financial Services, the system is now being utilized by 1,143 users and has been made available to more than 260 BMW Group and ALPHERA retailers and dealer partners.

The complexity of the project required the migration of 354 retailers, 1,416 credit lines and 63,415 existing loans. The entire process was facilitated by Sword Apak’s API integration layer, which allows connection to 13 surrounding systems.

“BMW Group Financial Services allowed us to play a very active part within its fantastic team; happy to learn from our expertise in other Pan-European and indeed global applications,” Sword Apak executive vice president James Powell said. “They welcomed our expertise on both the technical and cultural challenges that such a program faces and we gained new insights on the emerging challenges facing captives of OEMs in what is a truly dynamic global market.

“We are proud to have partnered with BMW FS to hit their first major milestone on schedule; now we are gearing up to accelerate delivery to even more roll outs,” Powell went on to say.