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.