TCF Turns to E-Contracting to Speed Decisioning

TCF Bank is looking to expand its e-contracting solution with other application portal vendors — such as DealerTrack — in 2018, Todd Pierson, president of the bank’s auto lending arm Gateway One, told Auto Finance News.

Currently, TCF is live with a pilot through RouteOne to bring e-contracting to participating dealers.

“That [expanding e-contracting] will improve the relationship with our customer and our dealer,” he said. “Clearly, the dealer turning that contract around quicker will ultimately get the funds in the dealer’s hands a lot sooner than it does today.”

E-contracting is part of a larger effort at Gateway One to reduce the decisioning time between the dealer and lender. These efforts include e-contracting but also refining the underwriting criteria and communicating more efficiently.

“We’re really focused on those areas of underwriting so we can more quickly turn around decisions to our dealers,” Pierson said. “We’re focused on funding loans as soon as they come in to turn those dollars around to the dealer as quickly as possible. From a customer experience standpoint, we’re focused on improving that relationship with our customers and providing those services and functions that are of most interest to them.”

The bank is in the midst of a 30% to 40% pullback in originations in the coming years, as AFN previously reported. Gateway One is also holding on the securitization market for the time being in search of more opportunities as previous issuance have been downgraded.

Further down the line, Gateway One is interested in technologies that will allow the lender to more directly communicate with consumers, Pierson said.

“Some of the areas we’re thinking of in loan servicing is texting and chatting with our customers in real-time so we are ultimately interfacing with them the way they would want us to interface with them,” he said. “Technology is a key role for us to be efficient and effective in managing our expenses.”