With an eye on growth in the cloud and beyond, Equifax on Friday named Sunil Bindal as senior vice president of corporate development, effective immediately.
In this critical role, the company said Bindal will report to Equifax chief executive officer Mark Begor and serve on its global senior leadership team.
An established leader in mergers & acquisitions, Bindal joins Equifax from Total System Services (TSYS) where he most recently served as the senior vice president and global head of mergers and acquisitions and corporate development. In that role, Bindal was responsible for several key acquisitions, including the $60 billion merger of TSYS with Global Payments to create the largest pure play payments company.
“As a leading data, analytics and technology company, leveraging Equifax’s $1.25 billion cloud data and technology transformation for growth is at the center of our strategy for the future and we are energized to add Sunil to our leadership team to lead our global M&A efforts,” Begor said in a news release.
“He has an impressive track record of success, and his addition to our team better positions us to be opportunistic as we focus on adding new data assets and capabilities through acquisitions,” Begor continued.
Prior to TSYS, Bindal served as vice president of corporate development at Broadridge Financial Solutions during which he led several high-profile acquisitions.
Equifax mentioned Bindal also brings significant experience in the growth-oriented technology sector, having served as director of technology M&A at Credit Suisse. During his tenure, he led the execution of about $20 billion in global M&A transactions and was awarded the Credit Suisse Deal of the Month.
Point Predictive recently bolstered both its human and financial resources.
The San Diego-based company, which provides machine learning solutions to the financing industry to curb fraud and streamline operations, announced that it has completed its Series B growth financing.
Napier Park Financial Partners led the investment round with participation from the company’s existing investor, Mosaik Partners.
Point Predictive also announced it has hired Michael Housman as its new chief technology officer and promoted Eric Werab to chief revenue officer to facilitate the rapid growth Point Predictive is experiencing.
One of the first Emerging 8 honorees, Point Predictive has gained wide adoption of its Ai+Ni scoring solutions across the automotive and fintech markets during the last 18 months. The company said its Auto Fraud Manager, IncomePASS and Synthetic ID Alert solutions are quickly becoming de facto standards for auto-finance companies experiencing significant growth in their portfolios and looking to control their risk and streamline underwriting.
Point Predictive explained the new funding will help the company aggressively expand the executive, product, sales, and marketing teams as well as continue to grow its data scientist and engineering teams.
Point Predictive said it plans to enhance its solution portfolio in the automotive industry and expand into the mortgage, personal lending and other industries with their patented technology solutions.
To lead this growth, the company has hired Housman as CTO and promoted Werab to CRO.
Housman joined Point Predictive from RapportBoost.ai where he served as its chief data science officer.
Werab has been with Point Predictive for three years as the vice president of product strategy. Prior to joining the company, Werab led a software business in the risk and accounting space at Fiserv.
Point Predictive acknowledged that it expects to announce additional members of the expanded executive team during the fourth quarter.
“We believe Point Predictive is poised to transform the lending industry with their unique brand of Artificial and Natural Intelligence technology and their powerful proprietary consortium data,” Napier Park partner Steven Piaker said in a news release.
“As fraud continues to grow globally, the team at Point Predictive has figured out a way to power more trust in lending by informing lenders which consumers and loan actors they can trust, and which they cannot,” Piaker continued.
“We were impressed with their ability to apply their technology across multiple lending industries — auto, mortgage and fintech — and are excited to participate in Point Predictive’s future growth,” he went on to say.
The investment round follows a transformative year during which both Point Predictive’s data consortium and customer roster experienced unprecedented growth.
The auto fraud consortium now aggregates more than four billion risk attributes sourced from more than 70 million consumer loan applications, including loan performance and fraud information, obtained from 35 finance companies nationwide spanning more than 75,000 franchise and independent dealers.
Every month, more than 2 million auto-finance applications are scored with Point Predictive’s Ai technology adding more than 170 million risk attributes to the consortium.
“We are excited about the support from Napier Park and our current investor Mosaik Partners,” Point Predictive chief executive officer Tim Grace said. “Their investment, expertise in the space, and network will not only help us solidify our customer base in auto lending, mortgage lending and fintech, but it will also help us expand into new markets and delivery channels.
“We look forward to continuing our tradition of innovation and providing our customers and prospects with amazing results,” Grace went on to say.
In connection with the financing, Piaker will be joining Point Predictive’s board of directors.
For more information on Point Predictive and its solutions, send a message to info@pointpredictive.com.
JM Family Enterprises revealed a major executive succession plan on Wednesday, stemming from JM&A Group president Forrest Heathcott announcing he will retire on March 31, culminating a company career spanning nearly 30 years.
On deck to fill Heathcott’s role is fellow JM Family executive Dan Chait, who currently is president of sister company Southeast Toyota Finance (SETF), beginning on Jan. 1.
In addition to maintaining his current position along with his newly expanded roll., the company said in news release that Chait will continue reporting to Brent Burns, president and chief executive officer of JM Family.
“JM&A has the best associates and dealer partners in the business, and I have full confidence in Dan to lead this great company as we plan for JM&A Group’s future and its continued success,” Heathcott said.
Heathcott joined JM Family in 1993 and has held positions at three of the company’s subsidiaries — JM&A Group, Southeast Toyota Distributors and Southeast Toyota Finance. He took on his current role of president of JM&A Group, one of the largest independent providers of F&I products and services in the industry during 2007.
“As president of JM&A Group, Forrest has led the team passionately, with strong vision, always staying steps ahead in the F&I industry,” Burns said. “Clearly understanding the needs of today’s dealer and driving the business based on the guidepost that our success is measured by the dealer’s success, the team has been able to consistently deliver on its goals.
“A true, hands-on leader, Forrest thinks not only about the business, but about our associates first, as is the JM Family way. While Forrest will be missed, we are excited about his next chapter and those adventures he will now have time to take,” Burns said.
Chait joined SETF in 2002 as vice president of asset management. In 2007, he became group vice president responsible for the company’s portfolio management, dealer services, operations, sales and marketing functions. In 2011, Chait was named senior vice president, and in 2012 became president.
The company highlighted Chait has 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, holding senior-level positions with US Airways, AutoNation and UniCapital Corp.
In order to ensure a seamless transition, the company indicated Chait will begin shadowing Heathcott and the JM&A Group leadership team in the coming months, engrossing himself in the business nuances and its ongoing initiatives, as well as meeting and connecting with dealer partners.
Beginning Jan. 1, Chait will assume full responsibility for leading JM&A Group and SETF, with Heathcott moving to the role of strategic advisor to accelerate Chait’s learning curve and support his long-term success.
“Dan has the full backing of JM&A Group’s senior management, who value his partnership and respect the success he’s built at Southeast Toyota Finance,” Burns said. “After nearly two decades with JM Family, Dan has proven himself to be a strong leader, a team player and a true ambassador of our culture.”
Providing Chait with added support, Bill Shope, a SETF associate since 1990, has been promoted to senior vice president and COO of Southeast Toyota Finance and will lead the company’s day-to-day operations.
In recent years, the company highlighted Shope has been integral to the development of SETF’s advanced analytics capabilities and risk management approach, “which has enabled the company to expand the level of support it offers Toyota dealers in the Southeast and launched a wave of growth in the business that continues today.”
One of this year’s Emerging 8 honorees hired a new chief marketing officer; an executive whose career includes time with Experian among other firms.
On Tuesday, Volta, a provider of innovative electric vehicle charging networks, announced its new chief marketing officer is Nadya Kohl, highlighting that her extensive background in marketing, data and emerging business models makes her uniquely qualified to drive Volta’s brand forward via this newly created role.
Part of the reason why the firm was highlighted earlier this year in Auto Fin Journal, Volta’s digital, place-based media allows forward-thinking brand partners to reach high-value audiences in historically unavailable “out of home” locations, while simultaneously driving a mission of sustainability forward.
The firm said Kohl will be responsible for Volta’s brand and marketing strategy, advertising, creative services, social media and corporate communications.
“Volta uses data to predict where to place charging in a way that best benefits our site and media partners. Nadya’s deep experience in the data world will be tremendously additive to our team as the electric vehicle market accelerates,” Volta founder and chief executive officer Scott Mercer said in a news release.
With over 20 years of experience in marketing, data and technology, Nadya comes to Volta with a background spent building and scaling emerging business models. Previously, she was responsible for leading marketing and business development at PlaceIQ, a provider location intelligence, creating awareness, adoption and revenue growth.
Prior to joining the PlaceIQ team, Kohl held positions overseeing marketing, corporate strategy, business development, partnerships and M&A for numerous multi-channel marketing companies, most notably Experian’s Marketing Services global business, where she was a founder of Experian’s global audience services platform.
“Scott’s vision to create a new model of electric vehicle charging is based on meeting consumers where they are in the real world. The power of Volta’s concept lies in offering new participants a role in this monumental shift: brands can support sustainability, and site owners can offer amenities that are proven to attract customers,” Kohl said.
“Having devoted my career to understanding consumer behavior through data, I can’t think of a more exciting mission. I’m thrilled to join the Volta team at this pivotal time,” she went on to say.
Based in New York, Kohn has worked extensively in the media, consumer products, retail and high-tech fields with global brands such as Mars, Walmart, Oracle, PwC and AMEX.
Vinli recently hired an executive vice president of partnerships who has an extensive background both with automakers and a pair of well-known technology companies.
Taking on this role for the connected car and data intelligence platform provider is George Ayres, who most recently served as a client partner for automotive at IBM.
Previously, Ayres was the vice president of global sales for Verizon Telematics and has also held leadership roles at both Ford and Jaguar during his career spanning three decades in the automotive industry.
“George has rare experience and unique skillsets in the automotive industry and is the perfect candidate to expand the Vinli ecosystem,” Vinli founder and chief executive officer Mark Haidar said in a news release.
Vinli’s cloud-based and containerized open micro-services platform can allow its clients and partners to quickly respond to the rapidly changing mobility market. For example, understanding how customers drive and maintain a vehicle, and predicting maintenance and crashes, may influence a fleet company’s insurance rates. The fleet company can also use this same data to incentivize drivers to improve their driving behavior and attention to vehicle maintenance.
“The automotive industry is constantly changing and there’s a lot of expansion within the connected and autonomous vehicle space right now,” Ayres said. “My motivation has always been to stay on the leading edge of this high-tech digital transformation, and that’s why I’m joining Vinli. Their fast-moving and agile team is making really interesting things happen through innovative connected vehicle technology, data and predictive analytics.”
And Vinli sees the future as encompassing much more.
“Beyond automotive, industries from retail to insurance are using mobile technology, geo-location targeting, and micro-personalized data to be even more relevant to their customers,” Ayres said.
“What these companies want to figure out is how to leverage transportation and vehicle data so they can engage with their customers better and integrate it with the other information they already have. Vinli is uniquely organized to lead in this space," he went on to say.
An executive who spent nearly two decades with Gulf States Toyota now is the chief operating officer FunnelAI, a real-time B2B artificial intelligence-based semantic search platform.
Taking on this role for FunnelAI is Laura Ryan, who will be responsible for the development and execution of the strategy that will ensure accelerated growth in all areas of the company with an immediate focus on product, sales and marketing initiatives.
Before joining FunnelAI, Ryan led Purdy Mobility as chief executive officer. Purdy Motor Group is a Costa Rica-based company with operations in the U.S., including Texas-based franchised dealerships. In this role, Ryan was responsible for strategically expanding, broadening, and diversifying Purdy Motors’ operations in the United States.
According to a news release, Ryan previously spent 19 years with Gulf States Toyota, a private distributor for Toyota Motor North America; most recently as vice president of market representation and dealer development.
In her more than 25 years in the automotive industry, FunnelAI highlighted that Ryan has held positions in all aspects of the business which have provided her valuable knowledge and experience in the industry.
“Laura’s proven success and track record of performance in the automotive industry; specifically, in areas of implementation, execution and business and strategic development over the course of her career make her an excellent addition to the FunnelAI team,” FunnelAI CEO and co-founder Sri Kamma said.
“Right now, the auto industry is going through a drastic change and we want to make sure we’re available to help our current customers and new customers with their transitions,” Kamma continued.
FunnelAI said it is seeing increased demand due to the need for intelligent solutions in the automotive sector that ensure customers complete the entire buying journey from the comfort and safety of their homes, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
FunnelAI’s real-time AI platform solutions include:
— Products that can harness the power of digital communications to bring not only the information but the intent of digital conversations from more than 2,000 social platforms and forums in real-time, providing businesses with opportunities to engage with qualified consumers that have expressed a high purchase intent.
— Products that can understand a consumer’s life cycle events and then provide businesses the information and ability to proactively engage in real-time based on specific life events to ensure the right communication at the right time. This level of engagement and connection can build relationships and increase retention.
— Products that can provide analytics and market intelligence for dealerships, businesses and OEMs, including market dynamics, brand awareness, competition placement, product feedback, online reputation and prospective and current customer profile management and analysis.
To learn more about the company, visit http://www.funnelai.com.
An executive who began his professional career in the trenches at a dealership now is the vice president of business development of CarLabs.ai, an artificial intelligence-powered, conversational engagement platform designed to successfully implement and personalize sales and customer service via chat on social channels, websites, voice and other messaging channels.
Named to this post this past week was John Ruble as CarLabs’ said in a news release that company will benefit from Ruble’s formidable AI business development track record to expand its client base and bring value to new automotive partnerships using the CarLabs.ai platform.
CarLabs highlighted that Ruble brings a strong pedigree in both automotive and AI to this role.
Prior to joining CarLabs.ai, Ruble held the position of vice president of strategic accounts at Conversica where he developed partnerships with dealer groups and OEMs.
Prior to Conversica, Ruble was with Shift Digital, where he gained diverse experience in the automotive industry in digital technology, lead management, chat integration, and overall digital UX management. In his previous roles, he helped define the optimum product-market match to help customers acquire the technology needed to achieve their targeted KPIs and business objectives.
Ruble began his career in Detroit and worked at a number of dealerships, which included a role as acting general manager for a Hyundai dealership.
CarLabs explained this experience provides Ruble with a rich understanding of the best application of digital marketing for the automotive industry and what it takes to succeed as a dealer in both variable and fixed operations.
“His experience and skills will support CarLabs partners in the auto industry to apply technology and enable personalized one-on-one conversations with car shoppers and owners; at the contextually relevant time, and across multiple messaging and conversational platforms throughout a customer’s car shopping and ownership journey,” the company said.
To learn more about the company, visit www.carlabs.ai.
The next chapter in Chip Perry’s professional career officially began last Friday; this time with another start-up.
The executive who previously has served as a leader with The Los Angeles Times, Autotrader and TrueCar became president and chief executive officer of A2Z Sync, a software and dealer-services company that says it can enable dealers to modernize and transform the vehicle-buying experience by re-organizing their stores around a single point of contact (SPOC) sales
A2Z Sync was founded in 2017 by Aaron Wallace, the owner of the Schomp Automotive Group based in Denver. Wallace set out to revolutionize the retail environment by creating a highly customer-centric purchasing experience that enabled his dealerships to stand out from the competition, gain market share and increase profitability.
In 2018, Morrie’s Auto Group was the first non-Schomp dealer to adopt the A2Z platform. Today, A2Z serves 25 dealerships.
To date, the company said more than 250,000 vehicle-sale transactions have been processed through the A2Z platform.
And now the company is being led by Perry, who departed his most recent post with TrueCar last June.
“I joined A2Z Sync because I’m a big believer in its mission to help dealers fundamentally transform how they sell cars, by having a single salesperson handle the entire transaction from start to finish without the usual back and forth and waiting for F&I,” Perry said in a news release.
“By using A2Z Sync’s highly automated software platform to deliver a superior customer experience, dealers are selling cars much faster, often in under one hour, while also enhancing the jobs of salespeople, reducing operating expenses, and increasing F&I income. I’m excited to help bring this breakthrough technology to dealers all across America,” he continued..
Perry went on to say, “Because new cars are largely viewed as commodities, the only way dealers can truly differentiate themselves, other than through location and inventory size, is by providing a better customer experience. While a differentiated experience is the ‘Holy Grail’ that many dealers have aspired to, few have been able to deliver it. A2Z helps dealers win by delivering the highly convenient and transparent experience customers have come to expect from other product categories.”
Perry was the first employee at AutoTrader.com, in 1997 and served as founding CEO for 16 years. Earlier in his career, as a vice president of The Los Angeles Times, he led the team that launched one of the first online newspapers in 1993.
“I’m very excited to welcome Chip Perry as the new president and CEO of A2Z Sync. He has unparalleled experience as a digital-automotive visionary and a stellar reputation as a hands-on leader who inspires both employees and dealers to high levels of performance,” Wallace said
“Perry will help us rapidly scale A2Z Sync and enable dealers to dramatically improve customer satisfaction, sales staff retention, and dealership profitability,” Wallace went on to say.
For more details about the company, go to https://www.a2zsync.com.
Last week, Equifax hired a former top executive from Cox Automotive.
After being Cox Automotive’s first chief data officer for a little more than a year, Equifax announced the appointment of Luber as the new chief product officer for United States Information Solutions (USIS). Luber will report to Equifax USIS president Sid Singh.
In keeping with the evolving needs of USIS business customers, Equifax said in a news release that Luber is charged with product strategy, new product innovation and product lifecycle management.
“Mark’s proven track record in the data and analytics industry, along with his passion for technology and innovation, will help us leverage the product development potential of our new cloud-first technology infrastructure. His expertise will help continue the development work of data-centric analytical products and solutions,” Singh said.
“He brings a critical understanding of the use of differentiated and unique data, and deep platform development experience as we pioneer new solutions and execute on our growth strategy,” Singh continued.
While with Cox Automotive as chief data officer, Luber created customer value through the delivery of new and expanded information services. Prior to Cox Automotive, Luber spent 16 years with LexisNexis Risk Solutions, where he most recently served as the senior vice president of global product and analytics leading a team to design and deliver information services.
“This is an exciting time to join the USIS team as the enterprise continues to bring differentiated data to the cloud and accelerate the pace of innovation,” Luber said.
“We are well positioned to drive new credit, marketing, identity, and digital commerce solutions for Equifax customers, whose needs are rapidly evolving in a changing economic climate,” he went on to say.
On Monday, CDK Global announced its intention to create a chief operating officer role to better align functions and improve the overall effectiveness of the company’s North American business.
The company then said executive vice president and chief financial officer Joe Tautges will assume the COO position effective upon appointing a successor to the CFO role.
CDK Global explained the COO role will bring together the North America sales and customer experience teams, as well as the DMS, CRM, layered applications and portfolio business units, to ensure the accountability and execution of a coordinated and focused plan.
“Adding this critical role will help us drive further our strategy for growth and continue our commitments to delivering the best support to our customers,” CDK Global president and chief executive officer Brian Krzanich said in a news release.
Tautges joined CDK Global in 2017 from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. An internal and external search for a new CFO has already begun, according to the company.
“In his more than three years at CDK, Joe has made tremendous contributions both inside and outside the Finance area, which makes him the ideal leader to assume this position,” Krzanich said. “Joe brings strong financial acumen, in-depth knowledge of both the automotive and technology industries, and a keen ability to drive our top-line growth, as well as manage the bottom line.
“I am confident in his ability to build on our momentum and carry us forward into the future,” Krzanich went on to say.
