General Motors Financial Co. launched the latest version of its Dealer Dividends program to all dealers last month — following a soft launch for existing floorplan dealers in November 2016, Jonas Hollandsworth, the captive’s executive vice president of U.S. sales and credit operations, told AFN.
“We transitioned to our enhanced Dealer Dividends, which is much more focused on providing rewards to dealers that floorplan with us,” he said. “Dealers have the opportunity to earn dividends by achieving benchmarks that we set for them.”
In turn, dealers can put the dividends they earn toward increased opportunity to earn on reserve, or to offer consumers 84-month financing — an initiative the captive recently launched in a “very limited” capacity on Cruze models, in response to a request from parent company General Motors Co., Hollandsworth said.
Also in November, the captive started to offer non-GMF floorplan dealers the opportunity to try out the Dealer Dividends program. “Effectively, for 120 days, we provide them all the benefits of being a floorplan dealer, including the fully enhanced Dealer Dividends, and that’s proven to be very beneficial,” he said. “When a dealer change s their floorplan [provider], it’s not something they do on a regular basis — it’s something they do maybe once in a decade. It’s a huge decision for the dealer to make, so we give them the opportunity to try us out and see what it’s like.”
Dealers have to submit a full application for the trial program. The captive has held three trial periods for the program, two of which are still ongoing. However, GMF experienced a 75% conversion rate, with the potential for a rat e as high as 90% in the coming days, from the November trial, Hollandsworth added.
Floorplan financing represented 89% of GMF’s North American commercial portfolio and the company had 792 commercial dealers in North America by yearend 2016 — up from 745 in September.
