Volvo Financial Services is aiming to rollout e-contracting for retail loan contracts to a majority of dealers by yearend, and is working to extend the technology to its lease originations by “early 2018,” Tony Nicolosi, the captive’s president, told Auto Finance News.
The company introduced e-contracting for retail loans through the Dealertrack platform in July 2016 and has been training dealers throughout the year, to make the transition smooth, Nicolosi said.
“Our overall goal is to make life less complicated for our dealers and customers, and we believe going to e-contracting — the digitalization of the world — is the way to go,” he said. “The dealers are really seeing the benefits of it: it’s faster, it’s easier, you can sign everything on an iPad — and there are less errors made.”
Expanding e-contracting to leasing isn’t so much a technological or legal challenge, rather Volvo wants to make sure dealers are properly trained in the new process, Nicolosi said. Dealertrack also assists in the education process, and helps vet potential issues in the system.
“The challenge is teaching an old dog new tricks,” he said. “ It’s like anything else, we’ve gotten so use to doing business a certain way: the paper contracts, the funding packages, putting out all the documentation together in a file, and then mailing them into a service center to be reviewed. It’s just like learning any new technology would be for you and me, at the beginning it’s hard, but once you get through, it’s really neat and really easy.”
