GM Financial’s Commercial Lending Aims for Faster Funding

PLANO, Texas — General Motors Financial’s commercial vehicle lending (CVL) department looks to perform “bigger deals” with General Motors Corp. this year and strives to achieve a faster funding time, according to Kevin Peters, GMF’s senior vice president of CVL.

“From time to time, GM will ask GMF to assist them in their conquest of customers currently purchasing competitive brands,” Peters told Auto Finance News. “CVL’s involvement may include providing additional funding capacity for fleets or commercial independent leasing companies.”

The CVL team is working “closely” with the GM’s fleet and commercial team and with GM dealers “to conquest new business,” he said. “New products, such as our pre-qualified lines of credit and fleet-management products, allow both the GM commercial sales team and dealers to offer a complete solution to their prospective customers.”

GMF recently announced it will pilot a fleet-management product with dealers “within the next month,” according to Peters, which will provide fuel cards, maintenance management, and other offerings. “Having the ability to pair our competitive fleet-management and financing options with GM’s strong vehicle offerings should lead to more productive initial discussions and help build brand loyalty,” he added.

The CVL department is also focusing on its goal of expediting its loan approval turnaround time to less than 30 minutes, Peters said.

“Things have changed in this commercial business,” he added. “I’ve been in it for 20 years, and what used to be an hour-long business call — now it’s 20 to 30 minutes. We’ve been working towards getting to that, and we’ve been able to achieve that recently.”

Technology and competition continue to raise the bar on dealer and customer expectations, he added. “Our CVL team strives to achieve a decision turnaround time of less than 30 minutes, while still conducting verifications and direct dealer engagement upfront — both of which expedite and improve the dealer experience at time of contract funding.”