Hyundai and Kia Expand Use of Dealertrack Electronic Contracting Tool

Dealertrack said Monday that it is expanding its partnership with Hyundai Motor Finance and Kia Motors Finance that will make Dealertrack Contracting available to the brands’ dealers in all 50 states by the end of October.

The contracting tool, currently available in 39 states, allows Hyundai and Kia dealerships to submit contracts electronically, which mitigates manual data entry and calculations errors, eliminates the need for “wet” signatures and allows for same-day loan approval.

The use of electronic contracting continues to gain traction. Hyundai and Kia say 35% of their 1,600 nationwide dealerships use e-contracting.

“Our goal was to launch electronic contracting in all 50 states and to enroll 25 percent of our dealers by the end of 2018. We have achieved that goal three months early,” Eckart Klumpp, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Hyundai Capital America, said in a company statement.

An early adopting Hyundai dealership noted how e-contracting has affected the dealership’s bottom-line.

“Electronic contracting has definitely benefited our store by making it easy for us to minimize mistakes as the system verifies all data before signing the contract,” Mike Lahham, general manager of Kia Downtown Los Angeles, said in the company’s statement. “From a profitability point of view, it increases our bottom line by having a faster cash flow in our system as well.”

Hyundai and Kia began their partnership with Dealertrack, a subsidiary of Cox Automotive, in 2003 when they deployed Dealertrack’s credit application tools.