Chase launched a new fintech offering, Chase Auto Direct, to allow customers to shop for a vehicle and secure financing through the Chase.com website or app, the company announced yesterday. Consumers can then close the deal at one of Chase’s network of 14,000 dealerships.
“When the customer goes online and they are at a point where they want to choose financing and choose a car, we want to present them with our dealers,” Bruce Jackson, head of retail lending for Chase Auto Finance, told Auto Finance News today. “When Chase customers go to that dealer, the dealer knows how to interact with us — they have a relationship with the underwriter, they know what products we finance on the backend, and where to send funding packages, etc. We wanted to simplify that [car-buying] process for both Chase customers and Chase dealers.”
Using technology from digital automotive marketplace TrueCar, Chase customers can configure their preferred options for a new or used car, find matching cars online, and get approved for their loan. The service provides a more “transparent experience” by allowing customers to use Chase Auto Direct to be presented with a dealership in the Chase network that has inventory meeting the customers’ preferences, Jackson said.
“We have worked very hard the last three years to make our interactions with dealers simpler and faster,” Jackson told AFN. “We are very pleased with where we are with our dealer body,” and Chase wanted to ensure that “when a Chase customer wanted to have a great experience, the best way to get that to happen is to present them with a Chase dealer.”
Chase Auto Direct is expected to roll out nationwide and to non-customers by early 2017. The service will launch into additional sets of states every two to three weeks throughout September, starting with launching into 10 more states by Sept. 11, Jackson said.
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