AI adoption is changing how auto finance companies approach efficiency gains and how the industry scales, Sanjiv Yajnik, president of financial services at Capital One, tells Auto Finance News in the latest episode of “The Auto Finance Roadmap” podcast.
“The rate at which we are innovating right now, given AI, is unbelievable,” he says.
Technology and AI-based tools are making processes faster and less expensive, Yajnik says.
“People do research in a different way,” he says. “They can find things in a different way. It’s much faster.”
On the other hand, technology is contributing to shifts in the industry’s structure, Yajnik says.
“Industry structures are based on two things. One is scale, because scale determines how quickly and how consolidated an industry grows, and the other is [that] the demarcations between two industries dissolve,” he says.
While historically, “sometimes, there is one industry that does only finance, and another does only search. When technology comes to bear, there’s a reason they are separate, because you need to pour a lot of money into it [and] you need certain expertise,” he says. “But when that expertise changes, the industries collapse into something completely new, and this is why incumbents often get left behind.”
Adapting to changes in technology industrywide requires building from the ground up, Yajnik says.
“When you’ve got major technological change, it’s hard to be a generalist and say, ‘I’ll just get these engineers, and I’ll make them do a few things,’” he says. “You have to get fully into it 100% and start playing with all the things yourself.”
Yajnik holds 27 patents, with more pending.
Read the full profile on Sanjiv Yajnik, 2025 Auto Finance Executive of the Year
Capital One’s auto originations increased 8.5% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025 to $10.2 billion, with auto outstandings up 8.8% YoY to $83.6 billion.
In this episode of “Weekly Wrap,” Auto Finance News Editor Amanda Harris and Capital One’s Yajnik discuss AI innovation in auto finance, including responsible use of AI and technological changes still to come in the industry.
Subscribe to “The Roadmap Podcast” on iTunes or Spotify or download the episode.
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