How fintech is going to be the technological solder that binds dealerships, finance companies and consumers into an even stronger relationship permeated discussions at a host of annual automotive events late last month in San Francisco.
Cherokee Media Group is looking to continue that dialogue in a more intimate conference setting when it again hosts the Automotive Intelligence Summit, which aims to give leading experts in the auto fintech space the opportunity to reinforce the need for collaboration to strengthen current revenue streams and open new ones.
“Last summer’s first Automotive Intelligence Summit poured a great foundation for industry dialogue we heard for the remainder of 2018 and into the opening portion of this year,” Cherokee Media Group president Bill Zadeits said. “And we want this year’s Summit to extend that conversation where dealerships, finance companies, fintech entrepreneurs, investors and related experts all can let their voices be heard in an interactive setting that delivers more than just talking points, but also tangible strategy to lift the entire industry.”
The Automotive Intelligence Summit again will be in Raleigh, N.C., in the heart of North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Nestled among some of the most successful technological companies and leading universities, attendees will be gathering in the Tar Heel State capital on July 23-25 for a mix of keynote presentations and networking opportunities.
Last year, experts from an array of successful firms participated, including:
— Ally Financial
— Cox Automotive
— defi SOLUTIONS
— DRN
— Experian
— EY
— Fair
— Hudson Cook
— IBM
— IHS Markit
— KAR Auction Services
— Maryann Keller and Associates
— National Automobile Dealers Association
— SAS
These leading authorities shared not only what’s happening within their shops, but also provided projections about ways fintech might influence how dealerships and finance companies gain new customers as well as retain current ones.
Cherokee Media Group is already accepting applications to speak this summer’s event. Applications can be completed here.
“We are looking to provide the platform for the most innovative companies, experts and executives to showcase what is going to impact our businesses so the industry can remain nimble and address potential challenges,” Zadeits said.
“We all know fintech development is in constant motion,” he continued. “The Automotive Intelligence Summit will provide a pathway for growth for the remainder of 2019 and beyond.”
For more details about the Automotive Intelligence Summit, go to www.autointelsummit.com.
Artificial intelligence appears to be generating some real revenue in the automotive space.
Coinciding with a major update to its flagship platform, AI-driven marketing automation platform Outsell also announced strong 2018 financial results, with direct revenue up 45 percent over 2017 and direct bookings up 28 percent.
“AI-based marketing solutions are in high demand as dealers seek to individualize their customer communications to enhance the overall customer experience,” said Mike Wethington, founder and chief executive officer of Outsell.
“Outsell was the first to bring AI to auto marketers, and we are well established as the technology leader in the space,” continued Wethington, who insisted that Outsell offers the best platform for definitively measuring the impact of every marketing dollar invested.
Other company highlights from the year included:
• Launching Outsell 5.0, enhanced with even more artificial intelligence capabilities, providing dealers with insight into buying behavior and the ability to take targeted content to the next level, with automated, multi-channel campaigns that are individualized to each person’s exact preferences
• Launching Outsell 5.1, an upgrade that makes Outsell the first to auto-generate individualized customer incentives proven to drive store visits and sales
• Winning 10 awards for its products and its work with customers and partners, including the 2018 WebAward Automobile Standard of Excellence Award, a Gold Stevie Award and a Gold 2018 Summit Creative Awards
“In 2018, we made major improvements to the Outsell platform, laying the groundwork for all kinds of enhancements in 2019,” Wethington said. “At NADA, we announced Outsell 5.2, with new features that make it not only the best solution for managing and optimizing cross-channel marketing campaigns, but also greatly enhance auto marketers’ ability to create and share engaging content especially in social media channels.
“We are also working on some exciting enhancements around what we call private incentive offers that will help dealers provide the right incentives to motivate each individual customer without over-incentivizing — critical in an industry where dealers often spent four to five times as much on incentives as they do on advertising,” he went on to say.
As Wethington mentioned, at the NADA Show 2019 in San Francisco, the company shared details about Outsell 5.2, which he said includes new features for managing and optimizing cross-channel marketing campaigns, but also can enhance auto marketers’ ability to create and share engaging content especially in social media channels.
“Dealers struggle to measure ROI on marketing investments,” Wethington said. “In a competitive environment — and most dealers agree the economy has become more challenging over the past year – Outsell is an essential tool for helping auto marketers optimize results and the effectiveness of each marketing dollar.”
Specific enhancements in Outsell 5.2 include:
• The ability to create and execute on-demand campaigns for specific audiences
• Private offers that dynamically include personalized test-drive, sales and service incentives in email campaigns
• Direct mail integration, for true integration between online and offline campaigns
• Inclusion of new channels — display ads and direct mail on existing Conquest product — to drive increased reach and conversion
• New social ads features including Facebook Marketplace tools and the ability to promote specific inventory in social ads
• New content management capabilities that really separate Outsell from the pack – including new templates, brand compliance tools and the ability to measure/optimize content performance.
Outsell also gathered its Customer Advisory Board during the NADA Show 2019, bringing together dealer marketing leaders to discuss 2019 trends, long-term objectives, and how Outsell can improve its value to dealers.
“Outsell’s CAB meetings are the most valuable meetings we have all year long,” Wethington said. “We get to hear directly from customers about their objectives and challenges. The learnings from these events have a big impact on Outsell’s roadmap every year.”
Deloitte focused on three new technologies in an annual report that highlights on the latest trends that experts described as creating a climate of disruption and uncertainty.
The report titled, “Tech Trends 2019: Beyond the digital frontier,” explored how the convergence of new technologies with powerful forces is driving disruption across industries. According to a recap shared on Wednesday, those new technologies include advanced networking, serverless computing and intelligent interfaces as well as technological forces encompassing digital experiences, cognitive and cloud.
Back 10 years ago, when smartphones and mobile apps were gaining traction, and technologies like cloud and the Internet of Things were emerging on the scene, Deloitte released its first Tech Trends report. The organization has watched this evolution unfold as the digital imperative and the changing role of technology redefine the enterprise, yet adoption of these trends continues to vary widely.
Experts noted that some companies are only beginning to explore trends Deloitte wrote about in 2010, while others have advanced rapidly along the maturity curve.
“Make no mistake: Technology is not just an enabling function. Tech is the universal language of business today,” said Bill Briggs, global and U.S. chief technology officer for Deloitte Consulting.
“As the pace of change quickens, technology now leads business strategy. And technology trends has evolved from a CIO (chief information officer) and CTO (chief technology officer) concern into something driving CEO, management team, boardroom agendas — to redefine what enterprises can accomplish,” Briggs continued.
Authors recapped that “Tech Trends 2019: Beyond the digital frontier,” begins with a reflection on a decade of disruptive change driven by nine macro forces: digital experience, analytics, cloud, core modernization, cyber, business of information technology, cognitive, blockchain, and digital reality. The report further explores where these forces are headed.
Next, six trends that are giving rise to new operating models, redefining the nature of work and dramatically changing IT’s relationship with the business are detailed, including:
— AI-fueled organizations: Leading companies are systematically deploying rapidly maturing technologies — machine learning, natural language processing, robotic process automation (RPA) and cognitive — not just to every core business process, but into products, services and the future of industries. Deloitte believes organizations’ use of artificial intelligence is moving from “Why?” to “Why not?”
— NoOps in a serverless world: Experts asserted we’ve reached the next stage in the evolution of cloud computing with technical resources completely abstracted and management tasks increasingly automated. Freed from mundane responsibilities, the report noted IT talent can focus on activities that more directly support business outcomes.
— Connectivity of tomorrow: At both macro and micro levels, Deloitte explained technologies like 5G, mesh networks and edge computing are expanding business’ reach to both the far corners of the world — and the smallest spaces in warehouses, retail stores and other places with utmost precision. Experts contend that advanced networking is the “unsung hero,” driving development of new products and services and is transforming how work gets done.
—Intelligent interfaces: Today, Deloitte pointed out that people interact with technology through ever more intelligent interfaces that combine the latest in human-centered design techniques with leading-edge technologies such as computer vision, conversational voice, auditory analytics, augmented reality and virtual reality. Working in concert, experts see these technologies and techniques are transforming the way we engage with machines, data and each other.
— Beyond marketing with a reimagined experience: To deliver the highly personalized, contextualized experiences that today’s customers expect, Deloitte mentioned that some chief marketing officers are trading long-standing, traditional agency relationships for closer partnerships with their own CIOs. Enabled by a new generation of marketing tools and techniques focused on personalized, contextual and dynamic experiences, experts indicated that CIOs and CMOs can illuminate and engage customer needs and desires most effectively.
— DevSecOps and the cyber imperative: Deloitte explained that DevSecOps fundamentally can transform cyber, security, privacy and risk management from being compliance-based activities — typically undertaken late in the development lifecycle — into essential framing mindsets across the product journey.
The report closes by exploring how modern businesses can navigate digital transformation — building a roadmap that incorporates the right technologies, techniques, talent and executive support.
“While we take a pragmatic view, we also aspire to understand fully how forces like serverless technology, connectivity capabilities, and intelligent interfaces are reshaping industries,” said Scott Buchholz, managing director and government and public services chief technology officer at Deloitte Consulting.
“The report details how organizational leadership can shape ambitions and instill a culture to sense and make sense of what tomorrow may bring. And – importantly – a path to get there from the realities of today,” Buchholz went on to say.
The entire report can be downloaded here.
FICO recently learned its collection of patents grew by five.
Federal officials recently awarded five new patents to the Silicon Valley analytic software firm related to fraud, artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics. In total, FICO currently holds 192 U.S. and foreign patents, and the company has 93 pending patent applications.
Two of the patents are connected to analytic technology used by the FICO Falcon Platform for fraud management:
• Detection of Compromise of Merchants, ATMS and Networks relates to the generation of compromise profiles for financial accounts based on reported fraud data of a payment account and merchant device. These compromise profiles accelerate detection of fraud.
• Card Fraud Detection Utilizing Real-Time Identification of Merchant Test Sites covers a system and method for detecting when criminals are “testing” compromised cards, by using real-time merchant profiles and specialized scoring models.
FICO inventors also received three patents related to analytics and decision management:
• Efficiently Representing Complex Score Models can transform predictive models into a software program for deployment in a rules engine, helping IT departments solve the problem of operationalizing analytics. This technology is integrated in FICO Blaze Advisor decision rules management system, part of the FICO Decision Management Suite.
• Automatic Modeling Farmer covers an AI system that automatically can develop and evaluate a large number of possible predictive models in order to produce optimal models. This is a streamlined modeling process to enable quick development of large-scale models using Big Data, and is used by FICO data scientists to identify candidate data sources with the most predictive promise.
• Systems and Methods to Improve Decision Management Project Testing is an invention that can visualize the validation status of components of an executable decision management project, which improves project testing. This technology is integrated in FICO Origination Manager.
“This is an exciting time for analytics and decision management, and FICO’s inventions are propelling change in this field,” said Stuart Wells, FICO’s chief product and technology officer. “Our data scientists continue to be at the forefront of the AI revolution and the progress in intelligent decision automation.”
One of the first honorees highlighted among Women in Auto Finance during Used Car Week 2018 — Jennifer Reid of Equifax — delved into an array of topics with Nick, including the subscription model as well as how companies in the auto-finance space are going to handle future technological challenges.
Reid also shared some suggestions on how collaborative efforts could be the pathway for significant fintech advancement this year and beyond.
The podcast discussion can be found below.
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A trio of companies are joining forces to revamp the credit score.
Experian, FICO and Finicity announced a new credit score this week during the Money 20/20 USA conference. The new score, called UltraFICO Score, leverages account aggregation technology and distribution capability from Experian and Finicity to help consumers improve access to credit by tapping into consumer-contributed data, such as checking, savings and money market account data, that reflects responsible financial management activity.
With UltraFICO Score, the companies explained that a consumer grants permission to contribute information from banking statements, including the length of time accounts have been open, frequency of activity and evidence of saving, which can be electronically read by Finicity and combined with consumer credit information from Experian to provide an enhanced view of positive financial behavior.
Experian, FICO and Finicity estimate this new score has the potential to improve credit access for the majority of Americans and is particularly relevant for those who fall in the grey area in terms of credit scores (scores in the upper 500s to lower 600s) or fall just below a finance company’s cut-off score.
Consumers who are relatively new to credit with limited history or those with previous financial distress that are getting back on their feet stand to benefit the most, according to the companies.
“This changes the whole dynamic of the lender and customer relationship,” said Jim Wehmann, executive vice president of scores at FICO. “It empowers consumers to have greater control over the information that is being used in making credit risk decisions. It also enables a deeper dialogue between the consumer and lenders to help both parties make better financial decisions.
“It’s a game changer,” Wehmann added.
The companies indicated the UltraFICO Score will launch as a pilot program in early 2019. The pilot is designed to validate the score and assess willingness of consumers to share financial data for a potentially higher score.
The company noted pilot participants were sourced across various lines of businesses.
The model developed by FICO will be implemented through Experian and integrated into a finance company’s existing operational workflow. Borrower data will be aggregated through Finicity.
Officials pointed out the UltraFICO Score builds off of the framework of the base FICO Score, and is designed to reflect the same odds-to-score relationship so that the new score can be easily incorporated into lending strategies and origination account management systems.
The UltraFICO Score is slated to be broadly available to finance companies during the middle of next year.
“As the consumer’s bureau, our goal is to help empower consumers and to give better access to credit for more consumers, all while promoting fair lending,” said Alex Lintner, president of consumer information services at Experian.
“Through this project, we’ve found a new way to use consumer-permissioned data that allows lenders to make better decisions and helps consumers gain access to credit,” Linter continued.
Finicity chief executive officer Steve Smith went on to say, “This approach allows Americans to benefit from positive financial behaviors We are proud to have created a new way for consumers to share financial information, safely and securely so that a new UltraFICO Score can be created.”
To learn more, visit www.fico.com/en/products/ultrafico-score or www.fico.com/ultrafico.
Another client-service provider relationship has evolved into one of executive teammates.
TruDecision, a fintech company providing sophisticated applications of artificial intelligence, machine learning and other quantitative tools to dealers and finance companies, has named Joel Kennedy its chief operating officer.
Monday’s development involved Kennedy as the latest addition to the TruDecision executive team. He brings more than 21 years of executive experience in auto lending operations, technology and compliance.
“Today, lenders are inundated with analytic solutions gratuitously labeled as AI. The vast majority of these solutions are built by people who have never worked in auto lending,” said Daniel Parry, chief executive officer of TruDecision. “Decision tools can have very negative consequences when designed without a contextual understanding of the business.
“Our lender customers want to know not only that we have the sophistication to develop top-tier solutions, but that we have also had to live with the results of tools we create as managers and business owners. This is why Joel Kennedy is such a powerful addition to our team,” Parry continued.
“His extensive background will help TruDecision bridge the gap between analytics and the quantifiable results lenders demand,” Parry went on to say.
Kennedy was a co-founder and original investor in Pelican Auto Finance, and as a senior executive helped to grow the company from a startup to more than $100 million in auto receivables. Formerly, he served in senior leadership positions at ACC Consumer Finance, Wells Fargo, Capital One and General Electric.
During his more than two decades in the industry, Kennedy has been integrally involved in the origination of more than $6 billion in auto receivables.
Kennedy is presently a board member of the National Automotive Finance Association. And along with being a guest contributor to Auto Fin Journal, Kennedy is also a part of the collection of experts and executives set to speak during Used Car Week 2018, which begins on Nov. 12 in Scottsdale, Ariz.
And Kennedy will come to the industry’s leading event as COO of TruDecision.
“I have worked with Daniel Parry for years as a lender peer, and also as his client,” Kennedy said. “I have seen first-hand how powerful analytics combined with a real-world understanding of auto lending can transform business operations. I am very excited to join this team and help TruDecision continue to drive bottom line results for their clients.”
Industry leaders reiterated during this summer’s Automotive Intelligence Summit the importance of collaboration as technology evolves. Another example of those kinds of partnerships recently came to fruition involving Jericho Information Technology and OneMagnify.
Dave McCune, president of Jericho Information Technology which has provided analytics, risk, contact management, compliance and complaint resolution services to indirect auto finance companies in the United States and Canada since 2007, recently announced that the company has entered into a strategic partnership with OneMagnify, a full-service marketing, technology and analytics company headquartered in Detroit.
“Through our new strategic partnership with OneMagnify, we are now deploying artificial intelligence, machine learning and traditional statistical modeling capabilities for credit decisioning and behavioral collections prioritization using traditional and alternative data for continuously evolving predictive technologies,” McCune said.
“Through this new alliance, we can deliver significant new pricing, risk management and workflow optimization benefits to our clients,” he continued. “We chose OneMagnify after an extensive search for a company that will meet all of our clients’ needs and has a proven track record of performance with a high ROI.”
With a real-time connection to the loan origination system (LOS), this new technology partnership automatically can risk rate applications for financing and simultaneously provide pricing alternatives to achieve targeted ROI.
“Our clients deploy transparent, compliant and continuously evolving models that allow front-line credit officers to configure applications to targeted ROI,” OneMagnify chief analytics officer Keith Shields said.
“This provides the opportunity for more approvals that meet the needs of the customer, dealer and finance source,” Shields continued.
Using client histories from the Jericho Knowledge Base, the new platform can deliver improved collections performance through client-specific behavioral models that optimize the collections workflow and communication channels.
“OneMagnify can document actual results with clients that have deployed their predictive analytic solutions and have shown reduced workload and staff requirements along with lower overall delinquency and loss rates,” McCune said.
“Because Jericho clients already provide the interfaces to their operational systems, delivering this new capability with OneMagnify is both cost-effective and easy to implement,” he added.
If a consumer sees a vehicle they like at the grocery store parking lot, their child’s school or just about anywhere, USAA is giving its members the opportunity to gain information immediately about potentially buying a similar unit.
USAA — which provides insurance, banking, investments, retirement products and advice to more than 12.4 million current and former members of the U.S. military and their families — announced this week it is piloting an augmented reality application that aims to make vehicle buying easier for its members.
The app, which uses Blippar’s car recognition and AR technology, can allow members who are in the market to buy to point their mobile device at any vehicle year 2000 or newer and instantly see information like purchase price, cost of insurance and any similar vehicles for sale in the area overlaid on the car.
AR — which is probably best-known for gaming apps, such as Pokémon GO — is predicted to play a key role in consumers’ shopping experiences in the future. The USAA app will allow a member to quickly access USAA’s Car Buying Service, including local dealers and interest rates, in addition to providing cost and availability information.
Providing convenient and innovative self-service solutions has always been critical to serving USAA’s members.
“Since 1922, USAA’s goal has been to provide great service through exceptional experiences,” said Chris Cox, chief digital officer at USAA. “We welcome the opportunity to explore a variety of augmented reality use cases that are ultimately meant to make our members’ lives easier and facilitate their financial security.”
The app is being piloted on USAA’s member innovation website, usaalabs.com. Members can login and sign up to participate in the pilot to test the app and provide feedback. The company will then incorporate that feedback into the next phase of the app.
“Trends show that consumers are increasingly using digital channels to complete the entire car buying process,” said Heather Pollard, vice president of USAA Auto Experience. “By testing this new augmented reality capability, we hope to transform and enhance our members’ experience by making it as easy as possible for them to access the information they want, when they want it.”
If auto finance companies want a sharper glimpse at just how good the collateral attached to the vehicle installment contract they are underwriting might be, new tools arriving in April from CCC Information Services and LexisNexis Risk Solutions might have some ancillary benefits.
CCC announced the availability of Artificial Intelligence-powered capabilities that use computer vision technology to automatically detect vehicle damage and visually depict that damage using CCC’s unique heat maps.
The company said the CCC heat map technology is an auto claims industry first, transforming vehicle photos into heat maps, which can provide an insightful and more visually literate, color-coded view of the damage for every major vehicle brand and body type in the U.S., including sedans, SUVs, coupes, convertibles, vans, light trucks, hatchbacks and wagons.
CCC is a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider to the automotive, insurance, and collision repair industries.
Research shows that nine out of 10 consumers prefer estimates when delivered with heat maps that clearly highlight the damage versus estimates delivered without heat maps.
“For photos to deliver real benefits they need to be supported by data and a deep understanding of how the claims process works,” said David Bliss, vice president of product management for CCC. “We’re injecting our claims solution suite with AI, which becomes infinitely more powerful when combined with data in CCC ONE and CCC’s 30 years of experience supporting the auto claims industry.
“Our damage detection technology and heat maps bring depth and insight into otherwise opaque damage photos,” Bliss continued. “And we know through our 50 million annual consumer touchpoints that transparency is linked to satisfaction. CCC’s real-world applications of AI are a gamechanger for the industry.”
CCC’s claims solutions are powered by the CCC ONE Platform, a cloud-based hyperscale platform built for the massive-scale demands of today’s business environment, which includes digital content and telematics data. CCC has processed nearly 200 million automotive claims, and its solutions are in use by more than 350 carriers, 24,000 repair shops, OEMs, and third-party data and service providers.
Meanwhile, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a leading provider of data, analytics and technology for insurance, announced the launch of LexisNexis Vehicle History. The company said. its solution offers a more holistic view of a vehicle's lifecycle by gathering data on previous damage events, ownership changes, odometer readings and other data points to help insurers — and perhaps finance companies — make a more accurate risk assessment.
“Just as financial responsibility is predictive of future behavior, a vehicle’s history can be predictive of future loss,” said Tanner Sheehan, senior director of auto insurance at LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
“Relying on consumers to fill in the critical, but sometimes non-obvious or unknown, details for their insurer to then assess risk and provide an appropriate premium back to the consumer can be a cumbersome and unreliable proposition,” Sheehan continued. LexisNexis Vehicle History can provide a robust and simplified data gathering and delivery process that insurers can incorporate in their existing workflows. The solution draws from a variety of data sources to integrate important vehicle-related attributes into the pricing equation, while maintaining a simple quoting process for the consumer by prefilling information about the vehicle’s history.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions customers have access to data and analytics with sub-second turnaround utilizing a single point of entry that can eliminate the need for technology resources to implement the product.
“With the advent of the vehicle technologies like Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), there is an even greater need to incorporate vehicle-centric attributes into the insurance policy rating equation,” Sheehan said. “LexisNexis Vehicle History is an easy step any insurer can take towards understanding the vehicle’s history.”
