SAN FRANCISCO — Wells Fargo Financial recently announced it's expanding the range of consumer credit ratings it finances through the launch of Full Spectrum Pricing in its auto finance division. Company executives said this new offering is designed to offer dealers a wider range of financial services for their customers.

The successful early 2006 merger of Wells Fargo Financial Acceptance and Wells Fargo's Auto Finance Group made this new program possible, according to Dan Dissen, senior vice president of loss mitigation at Wells Fargo Financial.

"The merger of the former Wells Fargo Financial Acceptance and Wells Fargo's Auto Finance Group into Wells Fargo Auto Finance took the best of two strong companies and created a team that through the first half of 2006 has financed more vehicles than any other non-captive in North America," Dissen pointed out.

He went on to characterize Full Spectrum Pricing as a break-through program, which offers one-stop shopping for dealers and consumers.

"It makes the process very easy for our dealers to do business," he commented. "Instead of having to work with five to 10 different lenders' programs, they can now send their applications to Wells Fargo Auto Finance and get competitive pricing with one program, and only have to deal with one buyer, one sales representative and one funding department."

According to executives, the goal of Full Spectrum Pricing is to make a dealer's job simpler when it comes to financing, and so far, officials said this is being accomplished.

"Dealer response has been outstanding," Dissen said. "Besides being honored by our dealers with more applications and more business than we have ever received in the history of our company, we have heard first-hand that our new program and our new company structure are making their jobs easier.

"We're pleased that as we've transitioned to become the full-spectrum lender in the business, that we haven't moved away from our dealers' needs with subprime," he continued. "In terms of the market, we feel like subprime will continue to be an important segment for our dealers, and even if it doesn't expand, we want to keep looking for ways to make it easier for our dealers to help these customers."

The company also recently transitioned a call center over to the auto finance division to handle the increased application and lending activity.

"The addition of the Aberdeen, S.D., team is simply a reflection of the tremendous growth in business that we've experienced over the past few years," Dissen said. "While we've maintained a leadership position in non-prime, it is the near prime segment that we've seen the most growth."

During the company's recent quarterly conference call, executives highlighted the fact that auto finance receivables were up 30 percent to $24.5 billion for the time frame.

According to Tom Shippee, president and chief executive officer of Wells Fargo Financial, "The launch of the Spectrum Pricing program for our auto dealer customers provides them with retail financing and leasing options to meet all of the dealers' automotive financing needs throughout the credit spectrum from prime to nonprime — a major milestone in integrating the former Wells Fargo Financial Acceptance and Wells Fargo Bank's Auto Finance Group.

"During the quarter, we also completed the integration of our consumer and auto stores, which gives us a single-store network of 1,031 locations in the U.S. where we can offer consumers real-estate secured lending and direct auto lending," he continued. 

To learn more about Full Spectrum Pricing, visit www.wellsfargoautofinance.com.