The pandemic might have intensified a challenge that dealers could encounter more often if they retail a vehicle to a customer who resides somewhere else other than the state where the store operates.
Computerized Vehicle Registration (CVR) — a joint venture between CDK Global and Reynolds and Reynolds — recently announced a new partnership with Automotive Titling Corp. (ATC), a Colorado-based company that provides out-of-state title and registration services to dealers throughout the United States.
These two large brands in the electronic vehicle registration (EVR) space are combining forces to provide an enhanced and faster vehicle registration experience for car buyers in all 50 states.
“Our partnership with ATC will allow dealers nationwide to process in-state and out-of-state fees more accurately through on-demand fee quotes,” CVR senior director Monique Buduan said in a news release. “By automating fee quotes and documentation, we are creating a process that will enable car buyers to trust dealers to facilitate vehicle registration through an accurate, low-hassle experience.”
To further improve the experience, the companies indicated dealers will also have access to forms with auto-populated data tailored to each specific transaction, minimizing the risk of inaccurate documentation from the beginning.
“This partnership is the realization of a long-held vision to bring together the best EVR and out-of-state providers to create a seamless title process for our customers,” said Marcus Alley, vice president of strategic initiatives at ATC. “Title clerks will have the convenience of CVR’s EVR platform and expertise of ATC’s out-of-state solution to reduce unnecessary penalties for our customers.”
The companies added that EVR integrations for CVR and ATC will be rolled out on a state-by-state basis with integrations for select states made available by early this year. Currently, all CVR customers can leverage ATC services while integrations for their state are launched.
For more information, visit www.cvrconnect.com.
To borrow a term from one of its promotional campaigns, auto-finance underwriting is getting a boost via a new collaboration involving Experian and defi SOLUTIONS.
The firms recently announced that defi SOLUTIONS has teamed with Experian to bring Experian’s Premier Attributes to auto-finance companies. As part of the collaboration, provider using defi SOLUTIONS’ loan origination systems will have access to more than 2,000 credit attributes, including more than 100 that are specific to the automotive industry.
Clients can optionally access Experian’s Attribute Management Studio, which can provide the ability to define, code and manage attributes in-house.
Using these attributes, the fintech firms say that finance companies can develop a more complete understanding of an individual’s credit behavior, improve predictability and make smarter underwriting decisions.
Delivered through Experian’s Attribute Toolbox, Premier Attributes can enable finance companies to make more informed credit decisions across the entire customer life cycle — opening the door for growth, reduced risk and improved customer loyalty.
Experian added that its tool also can aggregate the freshest credit data available, potentially providing a significant performance lift over decisioning models built using other credit attributes.
“Experian’s focus on the delivery of high-caliber, relevant data meshes perfectly with the now and future of defi SOLUTIONS,” defi SOLUTIONS chief strategy officer Charles Sutherland said in a news release.
“We plan to continue working to not only increase the volume of information available to lenders, but also to develop services that further improve efficiency by enabling the lender to decide at what point the data is introduced into their decisions,” Sutherland continued.
Robert Boxberger, Experian’s president of decision analytics, added, “We are committed to providing lenders of all sizes with quality data-driven insights to more accurately predict credit risk and make sound lending decisions quickly — and that’s never been more evident than within the automotive industry.
“Our Premier Attributes help open the door for lenders to assess risk with decision strategies and credit scores that ultimately improve their bottom line,” Boxberger went on to say.
For more information about defi SOLUTIONS, visit https://defisolutions.com. To learn more about Experian’s Premier Attributes, visit https://www.experian.com/decision-analytics/premier-attributes.html.
CRIF Select recently finalized relationships with Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) and Auto Financial Group (AFG).
CRIF Select reached an agreement for an exclusive indirect financing partnership with PenFed Credit Union, which is headquartered in Tysons, Va., with more than $26 billion in assets and serves more than 2 million members in locations throughout the United States Puerto Rico, Guam and in Okinawa, Japan.
“Partnering with CRIF Select will help us expand our market footprint and reach new auto lending levels in 2020 and beyond,” said Ivan McBride, director of automotive lending at PenFed Credit Union.
“We are thrilled to partner with CRIF Select and their amazing team in order to reach our goals,” McBride continued. “We are immediately entering 10 new states and continue to work towards offering PenFed auto financing in all 50 states.”
According to a news release, one of the main reasons that PenFed Credit Union chose to partner with CRIF Select is due to its document automation and paperless processing abilities.
CRIF Select’s document automation can allow PenFed to work with dealerships in a digital environment to collect and audit all contract and funding package documentation.
“CRIF is a global leader in digitalization, and we are proud to be innovative and continue to improve the user experience with this platform,” CRIF Select chairman Larry Howell said.
CRIF Select president Jeremy Engbrecht added, “Partnering with PenFed Credit Union is a tremendous opportunity to showcase the benefits of an outsourced indirect lending solution like Select Complete,”
“PenFed Credit Union has started a great program, and we are confident that we can help open doors to them for further growth opportunities and increased efficiency,” Engbrecht said.
Another major benefit for PenFed Credit Union is that the company now can utilize CRIF Select’s connectivity to portals such as Dealertrack and RouteOne, as these are vital to any indirect lending program’s success.
“Partnering with industry leaders, such as CRIF Select, is part of Dealertrack’s longstanding and ongoing commitment to help dealers and credit unions transform their businesses and grow their indirect automotive lending opportunities,” said Cheryl Miller, vice president of operations for F&I solutions at Cox Automotive.
RouteOne senior vice president, business development Jeff Belanger added, “RouteOne is excited to welcome PenFed to our credit platform.
“Our longstanding integration with CRIF Select is now enhanced with PenFed Credit Union, further expanding RouteOne’s robust offering to our dealer base. We believe in supporting dealer choice in everything they do, and the addition of PenFed is another extension of that philosophy,” Belanger went on to say.
Meanwhile through its other new relationship, CRIF Select will now offer AFG’s walk-away balloon and leasing programs through its 5,000 dealers and more than 140 financing partners.
“We are excited to partner with CRIF select, which will allow us to meet the growing demand for residual-based financing products by bringing our programs to even more consumers through CRIF’s extensive dealer and lender network,” AFG chief executive officer Richard Epley said.
Engbrecht said, “We are excited about this new partnership with AFG in order to add value to both our lender and dealer partners. AFG understands their space very well and is very client-centric, which makes us like-minded partners.”
Lightico chief revenue officer Gilad Komorov wrote in a commentary published by Auto Fin Journal earlier this summer that “Auto-loan fraud may be growing in complexity, but so are the technologies that are being created to combat it.”
The partnership the Emerging 8 honoree finalized on Wednesday reinforces Komorov’s assertion about how the firm involved in next-generation digital customer interactions is trying to help.
Lightico announced a partnership with Mitek, a provider of digital identity verification services, to augment its identification and verification (ID&V) toolset. The partnership comes on the heels of what the Lightico said has been “unprecedented” growth during the first half of this year as businesses, especially banking and insurance, scramble to provide remote, easy and secure services to consumers.
“When looking for the right partner to bolster our ID&V services, we knew it had to combine two core values that define our platform: best-in-class security with the imperative to make interactions seamless and simple,” Lightico chief executive officer Zviki Ben Ishay said in a news release.
“We’re excited to be continuing our rapid growth with the knowledge that Mitek’s industry-leading technology will help us keep millions of interactions easy and secure,” Ben Ishay continued.
Lightico highlighted the integration includes a combination of Mitek technologies used by leading financial institutions including Mobile Verify with Face Compare, a next-generation digital identity verification service, and Mobile Fill to speed up processes.
The firms explained this new technology can provide top-of-the-line fraud detection and prevention to support Lightico’s offerings, including remote onboarding, servicing, loan origination and modification to reduce turnaround times, improve completion rates, cut fraud and increase customer satisfaction.
“Lightico is a terrific partner because we share the same goals: making digital transactions secure, effortless, efficient and, as Lightico says, unforgettable,” Mitek vice president head of product and corporate development Sanjay Gupta. “That’s never been more important than in today’s complicated world.”
Lightico’s solution is designed to digitize customer-facing interactions such as e-signatures, document collection and payment for businesses, allowing for consumers to quickly and securely complete processes on their mobile phones through a link that opens a secure channel.
For more information, visit www.lightico.com.
JM&A Group and MileOne Autogroup first began a relationship back in 2005; two years before Apple introduced the iPhone.
Now with smartphones prevalent and online activities commonplace, the independent provider of F&I products and the dealer group recently expanded their 15-year partnership to include the retailer’s new virtual F&I model.
Describing itself as “pioneers” in the virtual F&I space, JM&A Group highlighted that it is significantly expanding its footprint by delivering the process within the MileOne infrastructure.
During the initial phase of the partnership, which is expected to last approximately 90 days, JM&A Group said it will manage and conduct MileOne's Virtual F&I operations while training the dealer group's internal team on how to sustain a successful Virtual F&I program, before turning the reins over to the MileOne F&I manager and providing continued support.
As one of the largest automotive sales and service delivery networks in the Mid-Atlantic region, MileOne represents 27 automobile brands with 80 dealership locations throughout Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina.
The partnership with JM&A Group will initially go live at 15 to 18 dealerships with the possibility of future expansion, according to the company.
“The potential for time savings and new revenue streams through Virtual F&I is an exciting proposition for our industry as consumer preferences and buying habits shift,” said Scott Gunnell, group vice president for business strategy and operational excellence at JM&A Group.
“Virtual F&I has been proven to increase customer satisfaction by creating a seamless and modern way to conduct F&I at a time and place that’s convenient for them,” Gunnell continued in a news release.
While this new service model is an evolution and a learning process, JM&A Group indicatated that dealers utilizing virtual F&I have reported great gains both from a business profitability standpoint and in customer satisfaction.
The company’s initial testing of its virtual F&I service with various dealership partners began in October 2018, and has delivered more than 5,500 deals since that time.
JM&A Group said the collaboration with MileOne will be the first mass roll-out of its kind, providing valuable learning opportunities about the viability and scalability of this service going forward.
“We, along with JM&A Group, are being very strategic and intentional in how we have been implementing this offering during its pilot phase, which is critical to the process of launching something new in the automotive industry,” MileOne Autogroup division president Bill Baker said.
“Together we continue to refine the approach to deliver an efficient, customer-centric experience,” Baker went on to say.
Dealers who want to learn more about this product can go to info.jmagroup.com/virtual-fi.
This past week, CU Direct announced a new integration with VinSolutions automotive CRM, creating what the tech firms believe are six benefits for dealership F&I offices.
As a result of the collaboration, CU Direct has expanded its CUDL auto financing platform’s DMS/CRM integration solution to include VinSolutions. The developer of lending software technology for the credit union industry explained the system integration with the CUDL platform can minimize the need for dealers to double enter data, better simplifying and streamlining the entire application process, allowing more opportunities for quicker financing solutions.
“Credit unions are an important conduit to financing options for many car buyers,” said Tracy Fred, vice president of operations, CRM sales and service, for Cox Automotive’s Dealer Software Solutions. “We stand with CU Direct in their commitment to giving credit union members all the benefits of a smoother, more efficient and enjoyable car buying experience.”
The companies went on to mention in a news release that the new system integration with VinSolutions can provide a number of key advantages for dealerships including:
• Pushing complete deals from VinSolutions directly into CUDL system
• No double entry of application data
• Streamlined workflows
• Faster processing times allowing for quicker decisions
• More time to sell products
• Improved CSI with less customer time in the F&I office
“Our stores got an early trial of this integrated offering and it’s been very effective at streamlining indirect auto lending deals,” said Shane Robidoux, general manager of Lithia Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram of Portland.
“Our finance team can push consistent and complete customer and vehicle data from the VinSolutions Connect CRM desking tool straight to CUDL. Saving steps means saving time- that makes everyone’s job easier and keeps customers happier,” Robidoux added in the news release.
The nation’s largest credit union auto lending network, CUDL connects credit unions to 15,000 auto dealers nationwide. Collectively, the 1,100 credit union partners on the CUDL platform have been the nation’s No. 1 auto-financing source since 2017, according to CU Direct.
“The landscape of lending is changing, and we recognize the value and need for delivering a simplified, streamlined application process for dealers and their customers,” CUDL product director Marty Simons said. “As a result, we’ve joined forces with VinSolutions to provide dealers with the ability to easily send deals to credit unions, paving the way for an improved customer experience.”
For more information, visit cudirect.com or www.vinsolutions.com.
Rodo — the online vehicle leasing startup and Emerging 8 honoree that first entered the marketplace known as Honcker — recently announced a partnership with Motus, a provider in reimbursement solutions for businesses with mobile-enabled workers.
The companies explained their relationship is designed to simplify vehicle buying and financing through the Rodo app for the hundreds of thousands of business drivers who already rely on Motus for vehicle reimbursement.
“Rodo is the fastest and easiest way to lease or purchase a new vehicle safely—without ever leaving your home,” Rodo founder and chief executive officer Nathan Hecht said in a news release. “Rodo’s marketplace gives local dealerships across the U.S. the premier platform to make that possible, while providing consumers a digital, on-demand way to safely get into a new car in a matter of minutes.
“We are thrilled to partner with Motus to offer their customers a fast, easy way to obtain a vehicle,” Hecht continued. “Motus drivers will now be able to access the premier car buying experience by seeing actual monthly payments on live inventory from dealerships around them. They can complete transactions on the app and get free home delivery, while also knowing that they’re getting the best deals available.”
Rodo’s solution is geared to offer both dealerships and consumers an easy and seamless transaction with more than 170,000 vehicles from every major manufacturer. With Rodo, dealerships can manage their inventory and pricing to maximize sales and profits.
Consumers can download Rodo’s app to shop, receive personalized transparent lease or finance payments—including all available industry rebates or discounts—and quickly obtain approval.
“Drivers with Motus travel thousands of miles and spend hundreds of hours on the road each year. Their vehicles are highly-used and vital to the work they do each day,” Motus chief strategy officer Todd Gebski said. “We’ve provided innovative solutions that keep them productive and safe on the road, but our partnership with Rodo will now also allow us to provide the mobile workforce with the means to lease or purchase the vehicle of their choice without the fuss of the dealership sales process.
“By partnering with Rodo, we’re bringing extended benefits to our drivers, who can now more easily find the car that suits their needs, obtain the best price available and quickly get behind the wheel,” Gebski went on to say.
To learn more or download the app, visit https://www.motus.com/rodo/.
In an effort to provide dealerships with all the tools they need to streamline and complete customer vehicle sales online. digital sales platforms AutoAlert and AutoFi teamed up this week to create an integrated software solution.
AutoAlert and AutoFi highlighted their new remote selling solution designed to strengthen the capabilities of dealerships challenged by the unpredictable sales environment of the COVID-19 pandemic is set to launch in June
AutoAlert’s CXM (Customer Experience Management) has an artificial intelligence engine that can optimize complex customer journey data from a myriad of sources to send more than 5 million personalized key to key offers every month to qualified buyers from the dealership’s database. CXM can provide dealers with the opportunity to positively engage and communicate with their sales and service customers while creating the best customer experiences.
A previous honoree among the Emerging 8 highlighted in Auto Fin Journal, AutoFi and its e-commerce platform can integrate with a dealer’s existing systems through its API and allow vehicle buyers to apply for financing, receive real-time offers from finance companies and select vehicle protection products to finalize a deal digitally, providing almost entirely touchless vehicle sales.
In the new collaborative solution, the companies explained AutoAlert will integrate AutoFi financing capabilities into its outgoing customer offers so vehicle shoppers can complete the purchase from the safety of their homes — or anywhere else they feel comfortable.
The companies said multiple dealers have asked for the AutoAlert and AutoFi integration. One is Brian Huth, general manager of Sam Pack’s Five Star Ford in Dallas, one of the Blue Oval’s 2019 Top 100 Volume dealers.
During the state-mandated showroom closure in March, Huth and his team used both platforms in tandem to beat their April 2019 new-vehicle sales by 47%, according to AutoAlert and AutoFi.
Based on April 2020 performance data, Five Star Ford Dallas is now 49th in the Top 100 Volume dealers for 2020.
“AutoAlert and AutoFi’s platforms work so well together,” Huth said in a news release. “This integration takes the next step and will help us move beyond the boundaries of our dealership by identifying more customers, deliver timely offers, and sell more cars.”
Huth and his sales staff use AutoAlert CXM to identify prospective buyers who might be interested in a better deal.
For example, AutoAlert can pinpoints previous customers without perfect credit ratings who have since taken action to improve their credit. With the lower terms and delayed payments currently offered by manufacturers, the companies pointed out more eligible consumers could potentially enter the market.
Despite the April closure of the Dallas showroom floor, Huth’s sales staff was able to safely close deals from their homes by using AutoAlert and leveraging AutoFi’s purchase flow to arrange attractive customer terms.
AutoAlert executives believe these enhanced online sales capabilities may accelerate buying cycles, leading to a faster recovery in dealership jobs and revenue.
“We are committed to continuing to innovate and help our dealers recover as quickly as possible while providing customers with the best vehicle purchase experience on their terms,” AutoAlert chief executive officer Mike Dullea said. “AutoAlert CXM provides our dealers’ customers with over five million personalized offers each month and adding the AutoFi technology enables the customer to move at their own pace allowing dealership personnel to respond with the exact information the customer wants.
“Our dealers are really energized by our integration with AutoFi as we further enable a seamless digital retailing experience from any location, including the customer’s home,” Dullea continued.
AutoFi executives, who have seen monthly submitted credit apps increase 80% since March, believe remote sales will remain a crucial component of total sales as dealers strive to abide by any continued social distancing guidelines and assuage ongoing consumer anxiety.
“This crisis is pulling forward the adoption of digital purchase experiences much faster than the industry anticipated,” AutoFi chief executive officer and co-founder Kevin Singerman said. “Our partnership with AutoAlert creates a powerful customer experience, giving vehicle buyers personalized offers that for the first time can be transacted remotely.
“We are thrilled to bring this type of innovation to our dealers across the country,” Singerman went on to say.
Both AutoAlert and AutoFi reiterated that they offer comprehensive dealership training, a satisfaction guarantee and full integration management so dealers can stay focused on their daily business of fulfilling customer needs.
Bob Tasca, vice president of Tasca Automotive Group, which has nine dealerships in several states, applauded the integration of AutoAlert and AutoFi.
“Technology that makes it easier for our customers to do business with us and get what they want is always welcome, and that’s what AutoAlert and AutoFi have accomplished,” Tasca said in a news release. “The customers have more choices and they have an even better purchase experience with our dealerships.”
Dealers can learn more about driving increased sales through the integrated AutoAlert and AutoFi solution by registering for an informational webinar scheduled for noon ET on May 27. Registration can be completed at go.autoalert.com/remote-selling-webinar.
FormFree recently announced a partnership with Ocrolus, a leading fintech infrastructure company that looks to transform documents into actionable data with more than 99% accuracy.
Officials indicated FormFree’s Passport all-in-one asset, employment and income verification service will include API calls to Ocrolus for paystub collection and data verification.
Each day, Passport helps tens of thousands of loan originators assess the ability of loan applicants to repay loans. The companies said FormFree’s partnership with Ocrolus will enable Passport to ingest data from paystubs submitted in PDF or cell phone photo format.
“Income verification is a critical factor in assessing a borrower’s ability to repay a loan,” FormFree chief executive officer Brent Chandler said in a news release. “Enabling lenders to corroborate images of paystubs against digital data sources will allow them to make credit decisions with a high level of confidence.”
As Ocrolus digitizes data from submitted paystubs, Passport will corroborate that data against public and proprietary sources to validate that the stated employer is a real company with whom the loan applicant has a verifiable connection.
Next, the program is designed to compare the paystub data against consumer asset data to calculate annual net pay and gross income. The verified asset, income and employment data points then can be pushed to lender systems such as point-of-sale (POS) platforms, loan origination software (LOS) and automated underwriting systems (AUS).
“We developed Ocrolus to analyze documents of any format or quality with over 99% accuracy,” Ocrolus CEO Sam Bobley said. “FormFree is a leading fintech that we are proud to partner with; incorporating our capabilities within Passport will provide lenders with precisely accurate data for financial decisioning.”
Maxwell and Graves Solutions (M&G Solutions) recently announced a partnership Remitter, which offers a white-labeled SMS and email communications platform powered by artificial intelligence and used by providers in the financial services industry to improve collection and recoveries performance.
Officials highlighted the partnership between M&G Solutions and Remitter will further add to Remitter’s expertise in the accounts receivables space within the Unites States.
Under the agreement described in a recent news release, M&G Solutions will help champion the Remitter brand and assist financial service institutions with the implementation of Remitter’s product into existing strategies. The partnership brings together M&G’s expertise in the collections and operations space with a leading non-voice solution to help clients implement a best in class non-voice collections experience for the consumer.
“Remitter’s solution immediately resonated with our entire team, M&G Solutions managing partner Brad Bone said. “As operations executives, we often observe companies with an over-dependence on voice-only collections strategies. This is particularly true given the challenges we are currently facing in the industry.
Remitter’s product provides a solution in the collections space and leverages a communication channel preferred by most consumers today,” Bone continued. “We could not be more thrilled to be partnering with Simon and team to help tell the Remitter story and the value it can bring to our client base.
Remitter founder Simon Scalzo added, “M&G Solutions expertise in receivable management represents an exciting addition to Remitter’s growing team. The M&G Solutions team brings over 100 years of experience in supporting collection strategies for a diverse range of financial services companies.
“We’re excited to partner together to further improve recovery performance, while also enriching the customer experience and strengthening brand affinity, for our clients,” Scalzo went on to say.
For more details, go to remitter.com.
