FTC to Delve Into Dealer Side of Vehicle Finance at Roundtables

The Federal Trade Commission has announced that it will hold a series of roundtables on “consumers’ experiences when buying or leasing motor vehicles.”

The first of the roundtables will take place on April 12 in Detroit.

The roundtables are a direct result of a day-long symposium held at the Federal Reserve last fall. [Full disclosure: This author presented at that symposium.] Additionally, the Dodd-Frank Act has given the FTC more authority related to auto finance, and the commission is in the information-gathering faze before it fully exercises that authority.

FTC officials told AutoFinanceNews.net that the focus of the roundtables is on the dealers’ role in the financing process. Centrally, the FTC wants to address this dichotomy, which the commission delineated in its announcement of the roundtables:

Financing obtained at a dealership may provide benefits for many consumers, such as convenience, special manufacturer-sponsored programs, access to a variety of banks and financial entities, or access to credit otherwise unavailable to a buyer. Dealer-arranged financing, however, can be a complicated, opaque process and could potentially involve unfair or deceptive practices.

We’ll have more details on the roundtables as they become available. See the full FTC announcement in the Federal Register here.