GM Financial and Ford Credit are making auto finance more digital with online lease-end tools.
The online platforms are the captives’ latest efforts to streamline the lease-end experience and improve coordination among the dealership, lender and customer.
Much of the car-buying transaction can’t be done online because of state-level regulations that require inked signatures, but setting up the lease renewal and recommending future purchases is within captives’ reach.
GM Financial is trying to reduce the friction in the lease-end process and establish a stronger relationship among the customer, GM Financial and the dealer, said its chief marketing and digital officer, Will Stacy. Lease renewal at the dealership today is almost “like you walked in for the first time,” he said. General Motors’ captive aims to build an experience that acknowledges that the dealer and GM Financial already know the customer.
In November, GM Financial launched a pilot of its e-lease online platform with about 30 Cadillac dealerships.
The tool recommends vehicles for the customers’ next lease based on the vehicle they currently drive. And when it’s time to apply for the next loan or lease, fields are pre-populated, Stacy said.
GM Financial loads vehicle inventory from the originating dealership for customers to shop through after they’re approved.
“When they hit ‘apply,’ it goes right into the lead system at the dealership so they have that information right away,” said Stacy. “The goal is to make more of that transaction available online, but we’re not quite there yet.”
So far, customer and dealer feedback has been positive, he said, “because it does reduce friction. There are less things you have to do as a customer.”
“It’s quicker to go through the experience, and it’s nice having the inventory from the dealership already there,” said Stacy.
Ford Motor Credit Co. began piloting its tool — called Drive New. Now — last April and has since expanded it to all customers. The captive also appointed personal lease assistants to work with about 1,000 customers from select dealerships in Philadelphia and New York four months before their leases expired. That pilot is ongoing.
“We definitely know that more digital, more opportunity for the consumers to choose how they want to work through that renewal process, is important,” Jim Drotman, executive vice president for Ford Credit’s U.S. and Canadian operations, said last month. “So we’ll continue to make changes over the next several quarters to get it right.”
Ford Credit will continue to test the tool and iterate on the current version, he said.
Jackie Charniga contributed to this report.
