Vinayak Hegde used a portion of his first annual letter to shareholders as Credit Acceptance CEO to emphasize how much technology is key to continued success of the subprime auto finance company, which closed the year with more than 9,800 dealers active in its funding network.

“Technology has always been one of the most powerful levers for building long-term value, and we believe it will play an even more important role in the decade ahead,” Hegde told shareholders. “For a company like ours — where thousands of decisions each day influence long-term value — better tools, faster insights, and consistent judgment should translate into sound outcomes for consumers, dealers, and shareholders.

“Our investments in technology, especially in (artificial intelligence), are aimed at building infrastructure to support the business for many years. The value of these investments can be reinforced over time as capabilities are reused, scaled, and improved.

The product initiatives Credit Acceptance has in motion include:

—Making it easier for dealers to seamlessly and securely capture consumer information across in-store, web, and marketing channels through its digital credit application. Dealer adoption of this product has nearly doubled, according to the company.

—Expanding the new contract origination experience designed for the way franchise and large independent dealers operate in today’s market. This experience includes deeper RouteOne e-contracting integration, enhanced deal-structuring and optimization tools, and broader support for F&I products.

—Unveiling a new payment experience triggered by personalized text messages to allow consumers to securely click to pay without logging into a digital account. The company said the majority of consumers using this experience completed their payment in less than 60 seconds.

—Launching an artificial intelligence-powered call-center agent to help consumers quickly access account information and complete payments. The agent successfully handled thousands of inbound calls during the fourth quarter, with broader deployment planned for 2026.

“Over the past year, we began building foundational capabilities to support faster, consistent, and customer centric decisions across our underwriting, servicing, and dealer facing systems,” Hegde told Credit Acceptance shareholders. “AI-driven tools in our workflows have already shown that machines can process patterns in risk data with remarkable speed and precision. These tools don’t replace humans; they enhance our abilities. By handling the high-volume analytical work, they allow our people to focus on insight, nuance, and customer understanding. That’s when great systems elevate great teams.

“We also redesigned our dealer experience with the same philosophy of starting from the customer and working backward,” he continued. “Dealers told us they needed more clarity, faster responses, and simpler workflows. So we rebuilt the interface and contract‑submission experience to reflect those needs. The feedback has been encouraging—reduced back‑and‑forth, more predictable timelines, and a system that feels like it was designed for them rather than for us. As we expand this work, our goal is to have the dealer experience become one of our most differentiated assets.

“Importantly, not every idea works, and that’s by design,” Hegde said. “We test new tools in controlled environments, learn quickly from what customers tell us, and scale when we see real-world proof. This approach allows us to wander productively, discovering improvements we wouldn’t have found if we had insisted on certainty upfront. We believe wandering, paired with discipline, leads to inventions that reshape experiences.”

While Credit Acceptance acknowledged it closed last year with softening originations and performance of its outstanding portfolio, Hegde closed his shareholder letter by emphasizing the company’s long-term outlook.

“The decade ahead presents significant opportunity for Credit Acceptance,” Hegde told shareholders. “We are strengthening our core product, modernizing our technology foundation and use, deepening our dealer and consumer partnerships, and building a performance‑driven culture that fosters continuous operating improvement. Individually, these changes are incremental. Taken together, they signal a more durable, more agile Credit Acceptance.

“Over the next decade, our ambition is to serve more consumers, deepen the relationships with our dealers and build an industry-leading disciplined, data‑driven, AI‑enabled platform,” he continued. “Transparency remains central to our relationship with you, our shareholders. We believe openness is essential to building and maintaining your trust.

“We are building a company designed to compound intrinsic value over time, through consumer and dealer obsession, disciplined risk management, prudent capital allocation, AI-enablement, and a strong performance-driven culture,” Hegde added. “We hope this letter conveys the scale of the opportunity: a focused organization with a clear mission, a durable and innovative business model, and a long‑term orientation that aligns closely with the interests of patient capital.

“Our management team and I go to work for you every day, recognizing the enormous responsibility that we carry on your behalf. We appreciate your continued support and trust. It is an honor to lead this organization, and we are committed to building a stronger Credit Acceptance — for our consumers, our dealers, and our shareholders — for many years to come,” he went on to say.