Musa Auto Finance is striving to compete nationally in the leasing market by focusing on used cars, President Richard Frunzi told Auto Finance News.
“We love used leasing,” he said. “It’s a tremendous value for the consumer when you think about potentially having a car payment that’s $50 to $70 less a month to lease a used car than financing it for 72 months.”
Typically, captives have a lock on lease volume in the industry, but Musa hopes to compete by offering lower monthly payments, longer mileage allotments, and lower down payments than manufacturers can offer, Chief Executive Jeff Morgan said.
“We’re never going to compete with the OEMs on rate, we’re not a billion-dollar operation; where we compete with the market is in customer service,” Morgan said. “We’re trying to be more lease-friendly to the end-user of the vehicle and our lease structure. We’re not really concerned with pushing metal down the road as much as we are with giving the customer a deal that meets their needs.”
Musa came on the scene earlier this year when it acquired assets from Jacksonville, Fla.-based lender MarkOne Financial and secured a $125 million warehouse facility agreement with Goldman Sachs and another $50 million in capital from Crestline Investors Inc. The company completed its first lease contract in May and Frunzi predicts, “It won’t be long before we’re doing several thousand leases a month.”
