The featured Premier Business Partner for July is Cox Automotive Lending Solutions.

Dealertrack provides innovative technology that is critical to the success of any automotive dealership or lending institution. Our unmatched product suite fosters efficiency through integration and enables growth-focused decision-making that yields measurable results. The powerful combination of Dealertrack products and our large-scale network of dealership clients and lending partners improves both the car-selling and -buying experience.

What are your financial services clients telling you are their biggest challenges and opportunities for 2021? (Could be broken into two questions)

With states now reopened, business restrictions lifting in terms of hours or capacity and many businesses scaling back up to “normal” – we are seeing a healthy auto retailing business, but it’s not without its hiccups. Tight inventory, economic stimulus, federal infrastructure plans and recent CFPB news are all attention-worthy topics with our clients. Cox Automotive believes some common themes for remainder of 2021 include:

• Mitigating Risk & Combating Fraud: Lenders are keeping a watchful eye on consumer credit, the independent retail space and fraud. With fraud and identity theft increasing year over year, lenders will continue to look more holistically at who a consumer is beyond just their credit score — and ensure the consumer is who he/she claims to be. Identity verification capabilities, such as drivers’ licenses, facial recognition, etc. to validate the consumer and help mitigate fraud, will continue to be a top priority as the lenders support and adapt to the digital transformation of the auto market. We anticipate that technology and automation will be continued trends here.
• Deeper Targeting & Identifying Opportunities for Growth: Lenders are increasingly looking at how using technology, valuations data and insights can help uncover new opportunities and markets to explore. Having a solid understanding of inventory levels, depreciation, knowing unemployment rates and credit application rates, and honing in on DMAs can help set a course for regional strategies. In 2020, we published regular insights to help lenders develop their strategies and navigate the uncertainties. We’ve continued this in 2021 as part of our partnership to help lenders succeed and grow.
• Digital continuity and automation remains a key trend and movement for lenders in 2021 and beyond.Lenders continue working on digital strategies to further their strong relationships with dealers and drive operational efficiencies. These strategies include Digital Contracting, providing multiple decisioning capabilities, operational excellence for automating title management, streamlining contract cancellation processes, and of course, more accurately and efficiently enabling digital retailing. We continue to evolve our solutions to provide added value for our lenders as they drive these digital shifts.

What key initiatives are you supporting for your clients in 2021?

Many lenders have told us that their 2021 initiatives are leaning into digital solutions to originate and service their loans as efficiently as possible. Lenders found advantages in solutions such as Digital Contracting and e-Signing functionality to enable safe, remote signing ceremonies between consumers and dealers — as well as to receive their funding packages digitally and expedite funding. Our roadmaps include enhancing these features and adding more functionality to drive even better consumer experiences and dealer/lender workflows.

Operational excellence initiatives have lenders looking inward to evaluate business process outsourcing. They recognize that title perfection and loan servicing can be lengthy and complex processes best handled by trusted partners. We are proud to help ensure their business continuity and operational efficiency for the entire lifecycle of the loan, from origination and contracting, through to loan termination. And when a loan terminates early, we can facilitate the cancellation of aftermarket products as well as streamline both the refund process and title release to consumers, dealers, and/or insurance providers.

We are committed to enhancing and evolving these proven capabilities, making these critical advantages accessible so lenders can support their dealers where and how the customer wants to buy their vehicle — and help the lenders maintain and manage a strong portfolio. Cox Automotive offers complete support of the deal from start to finish to help make the automotive ecosystem not just resilient, but stronger than ever.

What are some of the lessons you learned throughout 2020 that have helped your company be more productive, more efficient, more sustainable, more profitable this year? (They can choose which one they want to answer) 

Increasingly, the greatest competitive advantage will go to those who best combine data, technology, and products/services to build upon the ingenuity and resiliency that has kept the auto industry moving forward for more than 100 years.

As the industry begins to recover and consumer confidence and plans to purchase vehicles increase, Dealertrack and the entire Cox Automotive portfolio of brands remain focused on equipping all clients with the tools they need to be adaptable, flexible, competitive, and resilient in serving car buyers in 2021 and beyond.

What changes have you made to your business model or solutions’ road maps in response to evolving mobility and digital retailing trends? 

Cox Automotive’s focus remains on acceleration. This means making what is working and generating success for clients more readily available to everyone – no matter where they are in the digital adoption curve – so they can realize the benefits and advantages these solutions bring.  At the same time, we must help our clients with further efficiencies and ensure that proper security protocols are in place to mitigate fraud and protect personal and sensitive data.

• Enhancing the digital deal to drive further efficiency continues to remain a top priority. Our roadmap efforts underway are focused on helping lenders ensure they can effectively communicate to consumers when documents are needed through structured stips, providing alternative deal structures to digitally support the deal when deals change, and furthering the ability to be 100% automated when it comes to funding.
• The next step is connecting the retail experience — from starting a deal, to working, signing, and finalizing the deal. Consumers and retailers will be able to complete the shopping and buying processes from anywhere with Cox Automotive’s Complete Retail solution.

Learn more at coxautoinc.com.