First Niagara Bank hit the ground running when it debuted its indirect auto loan business back in February 2012.
During the first quarter 2014, average indirect auto loan balances increased $160 million to $1.6 billion. Indirect auto originations totaled $242 million at an average customer FICO score of 753, and yielded 3.21% net of dealer reserve.
Craig Stickney, Vice President, Senior Leader, Indirect Lending at First Niagara said the lender’s growth strategy is pretty much the same as it was two years ago. Nonetheless, there’s always room for improvement and the bank just made a major one.
The bank completed a six-month project to implement its new CMSI loan origination system last week.
“We’ve migrated our 12,000 or so dealers onto the new platform,” Stickney said.
The new platform is a complete overhaul of the old system, according to Stickney, and should improve the speed of delivery.
“In our world, we need five- to ten-minute turnaround time, not five- to ten-hour turnaround time,” he said.
The system will also foster the lender’s granularity in terms of pricing, so it can move towards loan-to-value calculations, debt-to-income behind the scenes, as well as looking at the collateral — all of which will allow the bank to better evaluate the risk and price the loan
He also said the new loan origination system will improve the reporting and managing of its dealer base more efficiently.
He said the LOS points the credit officer in the right direction to, for example, helps them connect the dots on a particular piece of missing information, in order to approve a loan more efficiently.
