Pelican Launches Mobile App For Subprime Collections

Pelican Auto Finance LLC, a subprime lender operating in California and Pennsylvania, has selected Payix to provide its collections tools, including through its new mobile app, the company announced in a press release yesterday.

The tools are designed to help Pelican better connect with its borrowers and improve its ability to collect loan payments, especially subprime borrowers, the release stated.

During a webinar hosted by the Center for Auto Finance Excellence in March 2016, Pelican’s then-Compliance Chief Joel Kennedy said that smartphones are “the future” when it comes to customer engagement. Then in July 2016, Pelican again told AFN that it would release a new smartphone app with a focus on subprime lending.

“We’re blowing past web design and going right for the mobile — we’re giving the website a second seat,” Kennedy said back then.

Now, more than a year since that conversation, the mobile app is built and will be white-labeled and integrated with Pelican’s loan management system in real time.

“The Payix mobile app is for reaching more than millennials,” Kennedy, now a chief operating officer of Pelican, said in the press release. “It’s exactly what the subprime automotive finance market needs to reach all of its borrowers.”

In addition to providing collections tools, Payix will also offer payment processing resources and business intelligence solutions typically available only to large-scale lenders, the press release stated.

Over the past few years, Pelican has migrated to Noble’s cloud system, offered pay-by-text options to its customers, and rolled out an e-statement service.