Cost Control
AFN: With margins so thin, what are you doing to control costs?
Mark Kaczynski, president of Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp.: Margins are getting extremely thin. There are a lot of competitors, especially in prime. We already have one of the lowest cost bases, significantly less than some of our major competitors, so it’s hard for us to improve on that. But, obviously we look at our expense structure for ways to be more efficient. One way we do that is off-shoring or on-shoring certain back-shop functions. We have a subsidiary in Mexico and when it makes sense, we use some of those resources.
Amit Shah, senior vice president of servicing at Westlake Financial Services: Our operational expenses hit a record low recently, and the way we got that low is by using technology and innovation. Many customers don’t like to talk to anybody, but just like to have a wide range of self-service options, which is what Westlake is also focused on. We have a mobile app, we just released our new myAccount, and we have more options on our IVR [integrated voice response] system. We are trying to cut time on the front end as well, using more automation.
Kennedy: We are actually going to be spending some money, now with the focus on the top and bottom line — you don’t want to cut too deep. For me, 2016 is a year to make sure our key performance indicators are identified, and that we can run the business utilizing those measures. If we do that, then the financials will deliver themselves.
Wood: We are looking at increasing the number of collectors, and decreasing the number of accounts per collector. So we are actually bringing the cost up right now. We are just looking to see that as our portfolio grows, we are staffed accordingly.
