CarGurus is looking to be more than just a place where vehicle shoppers can find dealership listings. The site wants to be a conduit for how potential buyers secure financing, too.
“We want to be integral to the car shopping process for consumers, and for many car buyers that is increasingly occurring online. Some shoppers value the convenience and ease of online buying and are showing a willingness to conduct even a major purchase, such as a vehicle, digitally,” CarGurus chief product officer Tom Caputo told Auto Fin Journal via email.
“This partnership with Capital One enables consumers on CarGurus to go beyond just shopping for a car by enabling them to initiate the buying process online. In doing so, the consumer becomes more educated about financing options and saves time at the dealership, while the dealers gains introductions to more ready-to-buy shoppers,” Caputo continued.
As Caputo referenced, CarGurus announced a partnership with Capital One Auto Finance aimed at being a benefit to both consumers and dealers. The partnership will enable eligible shoppers on CarGurus.com to pre-qualify for financing before visiting the dealership in an effort to create a more transparent and efficient process for buying a vehicle.
“CarGurus’ partnership with Capital One Auto Finance allows car shoppers to expedite their purchase from their mobile device or computer, before they walk into the dealership,” Caputo said in a news release. “As a trusted automotive shopping leader to both shoppers and dealers, CarGurus believes that providing visibility into financing not only gives consumers the information they need to make a purchase decision, but also creates a more seamless, efficient experience at the dealership.
“We understand that financing is critical to dealerships, and we believe that this partnership will bring qualified shoppers, while still enabling dealerships to offer additional financing options,” he added.
The “View Financing Options” button can allow eligible CarGurus shoppers to see if they pre-qualify, with no impact to their credit score, on vehicles from dealerships that already offer Capital One financing.
Pre-qualified vehicle shoppers can see their rate and monthly payment on any eligible vehicle listed on CarGurus, then complete a credit application at the dealership to finalize the financing terms for that vehicle in-store.
“CarGurus and Capital One have had an advertising relationship going back a number of years, and this partnership is an opportunity for us to deepen that relationship by providing a great finance shopping experience for both car shoppers and dealers,” Caputo shared in his message to Auto Fin Journal.
“The online car shopping experience and credit approval process are both data-intensive, so the biggest challenge to overcome was building a VDP-integrated, pre-approval user experiences that was quick and intuitive,” he went on to say.
Caputo also mentioned CarGurus shoppers who are pre-qualified for financing through this partnership will now know more about purchasing their vehicle before they go to the dealership. He added dealerships will also benefit with better prepared customers who have more data about financing options and are ultimately closer to their decision on buying a vehicle.
“Our customers prefer transparency and efficiency when shopping for a car, and we understand that more of the car shopping process is occurring before they visit one of our locations,” said Adam Moore, director of pre-owned vehicle operations at McDonald Automotive Group.
“Our sales and finance teams believe that combining CarGurus, one of our most powerful used car lead sources, with the ability to market Capital One, one of our approved financing lenders, will not only create a better customer experience, but will also help us grow our business,” Moore continued in the news release.
Officials indicated the program will roll out nationwide in the coming weeks to the more than 10,000 dealerships that work with both CarGurus.com and Capital One. For these dealerships, financing through this partnership will be currently available for most new and used vehicles on CarGurus.com.
“Capital One has long been a leader in auto financing as well as digital banking, and we understand the challenges faced by both consumers and dealers,” said Jeffrey Rabinowitz, head of consumer auto finance at Capital One. “This capability helps bring transparency to the car buying process, and we’re excited to offer it to CarGurus shoppers.”
Dealerships that have questions about the CarGurus partnership with Capital One Auto Finance can contact their CarGurus account representative or email FAQ@cargurus.com.
Franchised dealerships in the Golden State now have another resource to foster compliance with privacy regulation set to be implemented in less than a year.
According to a news release distributed on Tuesday, Helion Technologies has partnered with the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA) to educate dealers on how to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Officials explained the sweeping new privacy law takes effect in January, imposing new data security standards on dealerships located in California as well as third-party vendors that access and/or store customer data from these dealerships.
In a nutshell, Helion Technologies indicated the CCPA requires businesses to implement “reasonable measures” to protect consumers’ personal data. The California attorney general defined “reasonable measures” as compliance with 20 controls established by the Center for Internet Security.
“For most dealers, compliance will require significant upgrades to their software, hardware and data security equipment,” said Erik Nachbahr, president and founder of Helion Technologies. “Additionally, dealerships will need to implement internal processes designed to keep data safe, and provide their employees with security awareness training.”
Helion Technologies indicated the CCPA applies to any business that meets one of these requirements:
1. Grosses $25 million or more in revenue
2. Buys, sells or shares personal information for 50,000 or more consumers
3. Derives 50% or more of its revenues from selling consumers’ personal information
The firm pointed out that many dealerships meet the first two requirements. In addition to dealers, the CCPA applies to third parties located outside of California. This situation means that auto manufacturers, dealership management software (DMS) vendors, CRM vendors, marketing vendors and any other entity that dealers share their customers’ personal information with, must also comply with the new law.
Helion Technologies went on to note the CCPA gives more rights to consumers related to how dealerships may collect and use their information. Once the laws take effect, upon a request from a consumer, the firm said dealers will be required to:
• Correct inaccurate consumer data
• Delete the consumer’s personal data unless it’s necessary to do business, as well as delete all of their data from the databases of third parties with which you’ve shared such information
• Restrict processing or sharing of information if the consumer objects to its usage for reasons not related to the purpose for which it was collected; such as usage in direct marketing
• Allow customers to easily opt-out of having their personal information sold to a third party
Dealerships are also required to proactively provide full disclosure to consumers about what their data is used for, who it gets shared with and for what purpose, at the time said data is collected, according to Helion Technologies.
The firm added non-compliance may result in fines and a flood of litigation from consumers.
“CNCDA is excited about our new partnership with Helion and the technical expertise they will bring to our members. We are committed to supporting the necessary outreach and critical education so that California dealers better understand the legal requirements of the CCPA, as well as the most cost-effective ways to keep their dealerships in compliance,” CNCDA president Brian Maas said.
“Helion’s knowledge in data security and technology will be enormously helpful to our dealer members as they navigate bringing their networks up to CCPA standards,” Maas added.
The pending regulation will be discussed in even more detail during the Automotive Intelligence Summit. Mary Ross, president of Californians for Consumer Privacy, and former CIA Counterintelligence Officer and counsel on the House Intelligence Committee, will explore the intersection of data privacy and big data during the event, which runs July 23-25 in Raleigh, N.C. Early bird registration discounts are already available.
To increase velocity for deploying predictive models, FICO and Equifax are introducing the Data Decisions Cloud.
And a trio of other related solutions from the companies’ collaborative efforts is on track to be released later this year.
According to a news release distributed on Wednesday, the companies highlighted the new Data Decisions Cloud is an end-to-end data and analytics suite designed to address key needs across risk, marketing and fraud to enable financial institutions to meet the needs of consumers faster and more precisely.
The Data Decisions Cloud integrates the Equifax Ignite platform differentiated data and analytic management with FICO Cloud applications and the FICO Decision Management Suite (DMS), a digital decisioning platform. The company explained this broad strategic alignment can enable organizations to explore differentiated data, uncover deep new insights, build highly-predictive models and rapidly deploy decisions into production systems across the customer lifecycle.
FICO and Equifax projected that financial institutions could benefit from an increased pace of innovation for data and decisioning, supported by incredible industry expertise and explainable artificial intelligence (AI).
FICO and Equifax also emphasized the strategic partnership is focused on a connected, end-to-end development and decisioning management platform that can allow customers to explore, develop, test and deploy powerful insights into production systems across the organization.
“Currently, there is a deluge of data, and while we have processes to extract meaningful insights to make it actionable, it is a cumbersome and time-consuming process,” said Liza Yannon, director of quantitative analysis at Key Bank.
“I’m excited to see that FICO and Equifax listened to the voice of the customer by coming together, and I look forward to seeing how they help us obtain more ready access to data, enabling better use of it in analytics and business decisions,” Yannon continued.
In addition, FICO and Equifax are planning to release three pre-built solutions later this year, including:
• A connected system for real-time access to raw and trended data that can enable the rapid creation and deployment of new predictive elements and promotes data science collaboration across the enterprise.
• A Compliance-as-a-Service solution that can enable customers of all sizes to support their anti-money-laundering and know your customer obligations across the customer lifecycle.
• An integrated pre-screen marketing automation solution that develops FCRA-compliant campaigns to acquire and retain customers.
“We know there is an overwhelming amount of data in the world, and we know consumer expectations are on the rise as they demand highly-personalized engagement, in real-time. To compete in this dynamic market, financial institutions need to leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics to find the key insights that will help them deliver differentiated and profitable customer experiences,” said Brian Riley, director at the Mercator Advisory Group.
“The Equifax and FICO partnership underscores these trends and should help address the industry’s most challenging problems like streamlining the customer experience, improving data analytic capabilities and reducing operating costs,” Riley added.
Top leaders at both FICO and Equifax elaborated about why the companies are joining forces on so many projects.
“We are energized about this broad partnership between Equifax and FICO. Two industry leaders are joining forces to help financial institutions better meet the needs of consumers and improve business agility,” Equifax chief executive officer Mark Begor said.
“Our partnership will seamlessly integrate Equifax’s differentiated data assets and Ignite platform with FICO’s market-leading cloud based decisioning software and applications,” Begor continued.
FICO chief executive officer William Lansing added, “Our common mission is to empower financial institutions to leverage data-driven decisioning in all their customer interactions.
“With this strategic partnership, FICO and Equifax will help organizations operationalize the best data with unparalleled predictive analytics and applied AI, and do so in a streamlined and cost-effective way,” Lansing went on to say.
