Global information management company Iron Mountain‘s new Digital Auto Lending solution allows auto lenders to automate document processing and improve funding time.
Iron Mountain (IRM) provides asset storage and information services for more than 225,000 organizations globally, according to the company’s website. Iron Mountain InSight® Digital Experience Platform (DXP), a software-as-a-service launched in August, allows users to automate workflows, access physical and digital unstructured data — which is more challenging to search and sort — and turn the information into structured data that is organized and searchable.
IRM digitized over 2.4 billion documents in 2023 and is on track to outpace that volume in 2024, Matt Kilboy, director of banking and financial services product management, told Auto Finance News.
The company’s Digital Auto Lending solution, built on InSight DXP, uses intelligent document processing, allowing lenders to “seamlessly receive, process, and distribute both physical and digital information from dealers into bank platforms,” he said.
Auto Finance News spoke with Iron Mountain about its Digital Auto Lending solution, document automation, and cost-efficiency capabilities. What follows is an edited version of that conversation.
Auto Finance News: Why is IRM launching an auto lending solution?
Matt Kilboy: IRM has been called upon by key industry auto lending stakeholders to reduce the cost and cycle time required to fund an auto loan delivered by the originating auto dealership.
Iron Mountain’s Digital Auto Lending solution introduces technology to automate the receipt and review of loan documents, replacing legacy manual practices. Car financiers who manually process auto loans with many incoming documents are exposed to higher operational costs, expanded funding cycle times, and processing errors.
Banks want to fund transactions as quickly as possible and reduce their costs. The solution takes content, whether structured or unstructured, from the dealer, ingests it, standardizes it and normalizes it. Then, the structured data is sent electronically to the bank to accelerate the funding process.
AFN: What value does it bring to the bank/financier and the dealer?
MK: Leveraging a unified, secure platform for digitization and automation can help auto financiers reduce funding costs, increase operational efficiency and scalability, and improve loan-level accuracy.
Lenders can reduce costs by processing and funding more loans per staff resource to expand profitability, improving quality and scalability. Automation significantly reduces manual tasks and cuts cycle times.
A seamless internal and external process reduces cycle times by eliminating redundant steps, speeding progress and improving customer satisfaction. These benefits enhance the auto dealership’s funding experience through improved liquidity and reduced costs associated with loan-level exception processing.
Lenders can process more loans while effectively managing financial and operational risk. Accelerating funding strengthens dealer relationships and protects profit margins, improving the bank and dealer experience. Manageable, secure digital processes also improve data quality and allow client partners to improve regulatory and investor reporting capabilities.
Larger data sets allow the funding bank to better understand customer needs, financial motivations and buying patterns, allowing them to provide valuable product offers to their new customers.
AFN: What role does AI play in the Digital Auto Lending solution?
MK: Auto financiers are accelerating their adoption of end-to-end digital contracting and AI-powered smart automation. After grappling with manual processes and physical document dependencies for decades, AI is rapidly advancing solutions and urgency. It’s becoming clear that change is imperative to reduce costs, gain efficiency and achieve scalability.
We’ve examined the legacy manual practice and are replacing it with the ability to classify documents and extract data against customer-defined business rules.
Our solution applies machine learning to read, extract and index critical data. A human-in-the-loop approach allows users to review and update metadata and data extracted by the machine learning engine and make necessary corrections.
Pre-built data recognition and extraction models, business rules, workflows and integration capabilities enable rapid deployment tailored to the auto financing industry’s dynamic needs.
AFN: What options can a bank or financier consider to jump-start digital transformation if it lacks technology, people and AI processes?
MK: Receiving files is challenging for many of our bank customers today.
Outsourcing some business processes, particularly those outside your core area of expertise, can result in several benefits, including reduced costs, scalability, improved efficiency and greater flexibility. The lender is better positioned to focus on growth initiatives rather than process delivery requirements.
For example, a national leader in auto financing experienced a 70% reduction in funding time from 10 days to 3 days using InSight Intelligent Document Processing. Additionally, by eliminating manual processes that took 1.75 hours per file, the financier saved over $2.7 million annually. These factors allowed the lender to grow its market share by enabling aggressive pricing options, supporting a more positive funding experience.
A large North American bank chose Iron Mountain’s business process management services (BPM) to handle document ingestion, data extraction and storage of incoming loans. Iron Mountain handles 600,000 to 1 million loans annually for the bank, helping resolve compliance issues and dramatically reducing time to revenue.
— Sponsored by Iron Mountain
