Fortegra Financial Corp., a leading international specialty insurer and subsidiary of Tiptree, recently announced a new partnership with Carleton, which offers financial calculation software.
The partnership is designed to provide a seamless interface for lending platforms to easily and accurately calculate payments with Fortegra’s credit protection product.
This new partnered solution can allow Fortegra clients to accurately quote and present Fortegra’s credit protection products directly within their lending platform through CarletonCalcs API interface. Officials acknowledged credit insurance calculations remain a burden for many lending platforms, and this difficulty inhibits product promotion for many lenders.
With more than 150 integrated partnerships, the CarletonCalcs API has tried to eliminate the calculation burden that lending platforms encounter by providing an interface designed with easy integration as a central software feature.
“Automation has become a must-have rather than a nice-to-have requirement in our industry,” Fortegra senior vice president of credit protection Mike Ferris said. “At Fortegra, we’re always looking for new solutions to meet the ever-changing needs of our clients. Thanks to our new relationship with Carleton, we’re making loan submission and accessibility much faster and more efficient, once again helping Fortegra clients ‘Experience More.’
Through this integrated delivery, it can provide dealers and finance companies with the ability to quickly calculate loan information — including interest, fees, taxes and credit insurance rates—as well as assure that data is compliant within a dealer’s business decisions and governmental regulations.
Carleton president Matt Ruszkowski highlighted the Fortegra/Carleton partnered solution has been successfully adopted by multiple clients.
“We’re proud to partner with Fortegra to streamline the loan process for their clients and allow them to accurately compute and present their credit protection products within their client’s lending platforms,” Ruszkowski said.
“As the credit insurance industry continues to adapt to an ever-changing technological landscape and provide automation for its customers, Fortegra is taking the important steps to remain an industry leader with their customers’ ease-of-use and satisfaction as key to that continued success,” he went on to say.
For more information on Fortegra products and services, visit www.fortegra.com. For additional information about Carleton products and solutions, visit www.carletoninc.com.
Another finance company is seeing the potential benefit of leveraging Dealertrack Accelerated Title.
After recently reaching relationships with Westlake Financial Services as well as dealer associations in Louisiana and Wisconsin, Dealertrack this week announced that KeyBank Dealer Retail Services has selected the company’s solution to help expedite its vehicle payoff and title release process with dealers accepting vehicle trade-ins.
For more than 60 years, KeyBank Dealer Retail Services has been dedicated to helping dealerships nationwide succeed through competitive commercial banking and retail financing solutions. By activating the Accelerated Title solution, KeyBank can now offer dealers increased internal efficiencies, reduced processing costs and faster title turnaround service.
With Accelerated Title, dealers and lenders gain a seamless connection between the payoff process and title receipt. Bringing these two processes together removes the need for dealers to hand write and mail checks overnight, and then wait for the delivery of the title, which according to industry standards could take 12 to 18 days or more.
Dealertrack’s unique finance company and dealer solution can provide the exclusive ability for titles to be released to dealers in as quickly as four to six days, substantially speeding up the standard payoff and title release process by up to 70 percent.
As dealers continue to battle with margin compression, Dealertrack insisted that it’s integral that their partners provide new ways to maximize efficiency and cut costs. On average, Dealertrack estimated that dealers pay a holding cost of $32 per day, per vehicle that sits idle on their lot.
In addition, Dealertrack spotted long-standing proprietary research that indicated vehicles holding a title are nearly two times more likely to sell on the first pass through an auction lane than those without titles.
“We are always looking to optimize our services and improve efficiencies for our dealers,” said Craig Stickney, national director of KeyBank Dealer Retail Services. “With Dealertrack Accelerated Title we can speed up the title release process, while also helping dealers quickly turn around inventory and reduce holding costs.
“These savings in both time and money not only benefit KeyBank, but also our dealer partners who are trying to meet changing customer expectations and navigate today’s margin-compressed environment,” Stickney continued.
Accelerated Title can allow what Dealertrack said is “unprecedented” visibility into the titling process to ensure validity of the trade before the deal is finalized. It also can equip dealers with 24/7 title tracking, reporting and statements so clients know exactly what’s happening with every transaction.
“The ability to expand our partnership with KeyBank Dealer Retail Services to bring Accelerated Title to more dealers is a great milestone as we continue to see unprecedented title turns on trade-ins, increased profitability for our connected dealers, and a seamlessly connected workflow between lender and dealer partners," said Kaitlin Gavin, vice president and general manager of Dealertrack Registration and Title Solutions.
“With more than $1 billion in payoffs processed for our lenders last year, we are working tirelessly to streamline the titling process and create efficiencies for dealers and lenders to help both parties boost productivity and profitability long-term,” Gavin went on to say.
This week, Darwin Automotive announced that it has been selected by Ford Protect to be a preferred provider within the company’s core F&I menu, as well as the Darwin digital retailing and service menu for Ford Dealerships nationwide.
Dealerships use the Darwin technology platform to deliver a personalized, effective customer experience and to rate, contract and remit F&I contracts electronically.
Darwin Automotive currently supports more than 154 different product providers and, as a preferred provider, Ford Protect will promote Darwin Automotive to its dealers. Ford Protect dealers will also receive national discounted pricing for all of Darwin Automotive products as part of the relationship.
“We are excited to have Darwin as a preferred provider for Ford and Lincoln Protect dealers. Darwin's menu, tablet and digital retailing experience products reflect an understanding of dealership operations and help support a dealer's existing F&I processes,” Ford and Lincoln Protect U.S. operations manager Steve Lopez said.
Darwin currently operates in all 50 states. More than 4,000 dealerships nationwide have enrolled in Darwin Automotive’s F&I software, which is endorsed by several top F&I product companies, agencies and OEMs.
“We are thrilled to be a preferred provider to Ford Protect, because they truly understand the importance of an integrated shopping experience,” Darwin Automotive chief executive officer Phillip Battista said.
“This relationship enables their dealers to educate customers and sell F&I protection wherever they choose to engage with the dealership, placing them at the front of the digital retailing game. It adds value for their customers while generating profitable income,” Battista added.
For more information or to schedule a product demonstration, call (732) 781-9010 or visit www.darwinautomotive.com.
