Westlake Technology Holdings posts banner year

Westlake Technology Holdings , the umbrella company to Westlake Financial and Western Funding , grew its portfolio 14.7% year over year in 2020, landing the company with $12.1 billion in total managed assets, despite headwinds brought on by the COVID-19 economic crisis. Full-spectrum lender Westlake Financial, its largest company, continued its push into the prime credit segment, which grew 6% YoY, David Goff, chief marketing officer, told Auto Finance News. Goff attributed the companywide growth to its employees’ ability to execute on the company’s operational strategy . “Our biggest push has really been in that prime near-prime space,” Goff said. “We saw 6% growth in prime loan originations and that's not even the 600-plus, that's just our prime paper.” Goff credited the growth in the prime credit segment to Westlake Technology’s status as a privately held company, not beholden to investors, which allows it to offer competitive rates on new and used vehicles. “For us, being private, we're able to kind of put that money in where we want,” Goff explained. “We offer rates at 2.99% on new vehicles for consumers with an 800 credit score or more. If it's a used vehicle, then 3.99%.” Westlake’s investment in various technology platforms, such as TurboPass for example, also has helped to facilitate growth in the prime space, Goff said. Westlake partnered with TurboPass for STIP verification in August of last year. “We're pre-verifying, which is allowing us to waive almost like about 53% of all the STIPs we normally used to collect, so the STIP requirements on those deals is a lot less now” Goff said. “By implementing a lot of these tools has helped us from a risk level to be more aggressive in that prime market and provide better callbacks and better structures.” That strategy trickles down to all Westlake’s lending operations, including branded vehicles , commercial vehicles , commercial real estate , RVs and motorcycles, and classic cars, Goff said. “We want to give the dealers the ability to basically finance anything they trade in, instead of maybe taking it to wholesale and hoping they’re going to get what they traded it in for,” Goff said. Meanwhile, subprime lender Western Funding, which Westlake acquired out of bankruptcy in late 2013 , reported a 21% YoY increase in deal volume, with 37% YoY growth in producing dealers, Goff said. Western Funding is a pool-based lender, similar to Credit Acceptance Corp. , that services dealer loans. Dealers earn money in one of three ways: through an upfront advance, upon reaching a 50-deal pool limit, and an 81.2% interest share profit over the life of the loan. Western Funding is eyeing 21% growth in 2021, with similar growth in producing dealers, Goff said. Other company assets grew, as well. Westlake Capital Finance , which provides credit lines and commercial real estate loans, increased 152%; Westlake Portfolio Management added $300 million into third-party servicing portfolios; and Westlake Flooring Company increased its portfolio size by 24.8%, with a 42.4% reduction in delinquencies, Goff said, although he was unable to provide additional portfolio metrics. Even lease volume through Credit Union Leasing of America increased 43% in the fourth quarter, despite an industrywide reduction in lease volume. Looking forward, Westlake has “set an aggressive goal of 20%” growth this year, Goff said. Auto Finance Innovation Summit, the premier event for technology in auto finance, returns March 16-17, 2021, as a virtual experience. The virtual experience will offer the quality networking and education of past events, all through an online platform. To learn more about the 2021 event and register, visit www.AutoFinanceInnovation.com .

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Westlake Technology Holdings posts banner year

Westlake logged gains in all its lines of business

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In-vehicle financing: New paths, new opportunities

Executives from Chase Auto, Pagaya, TFS, Vroom join Innovation Summit speaker faculty

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