The future of mobility services is still quite uncertain, but Westlake Financial Services intends to continue investing in these service to be a player in the space no matter what shape it takes, said Casey Harmon, senior vice president of corporate development at Westlake Financial.
“It’s about what models, in addition to Uber and lyft, are going to catch on in terms of how people are sharing ownership or acquiring access instead of owning vehicles,” Harmon told Auto Finance News during a video interview at the 2016 Auto Finance Summit. “To the extent that those models play out, I know that we’re going to be trying hard to be a financing source for that.”
Earlier this year, Westlake began phasing out of a partnership penned with Uber and are free to expand into other areas of rideshare and mobility services. Harmon previously told AFN “it was an awesome partnership,” and that they learned a lot about different ways of financing.
However, there were also lessons in risk management and identifying some of the struggles involved with rideshare programs.
“The fundamentals of underwriting still matter,” said Chris Urban, vice president of risk management, during the video interview. “Some of these customers have no history of driving for Uber before and were buying way too much for a car than we would have otherwise approved them for, all on the thought that if they do drive for Uber they are making money they can repay the loan. But performance wasn’t’ where we wanted it to be and now we require more bank statements and a solid history of income before we approve.”
One of those barriers is evaluating how much a driver will actually hit the road for Uber and turn that asset into an income, said Ian Anderson, group president of Westlake Financial.
“That’s something that’s really hard to predict,” Anderson told AFN. “You can predict the credit, you can predict the structure of the loan, but whether or not you have an individual that will drive enough to make that payment, or an individual that won’t, is really hard to predict.”
The company also talked about how it is automating its origination process in the video below, sponsored by White Clarke Group. It’s the latest in a series of interviews that have included Hyundai Capital America’s Chief Risk Officer Marcelo Brutti, Ally Auto’s President Tim Russi, and Mercedes-Benz Head of Marketing Operations Rob Wegener.
