This evening I’ll be kicking off the eighth annual Auto Finance Summit with a presentation on the prospects for the automotive lending and leasing market. My central message: the prospects are not good.
Among the points that I will be making are:
-Both the overall auto market, as well as auto loan and lease asset quality, will be poor for the foreseable future;
-That inadequate access to capital will continue to plague this industry;
-That there still needs to be more of a focus on risk management in auto finance; and finally
– That the whole dynamic between lender and dealer has changed dramatically over the last three or four months.
The auto finance market is in a precarious spot. It needs the capital markets to start working again, or else the overall auto industry might succomb to a really negative slide.
