Westlake Financial Services saw “very quick” dealer adoption of its e-contracting solution, which the lender first rolled out in January to five states, and which has since grown to 22 states, Casey Harmon the company’s senior vice president of corporate development, told Auto Finance News.
E-contracting is now used on 60% of the contracts coming through Westlake’s participating dealerships and Harmon expects that figure will grow to 90% as the program expands to all 50 states by the end of the year. Westlake’s dealer reps provided in-person training to the dealers as well as online demos to assist in the roll out.
The lender partnered with eOriginal Inc. to implement the technology, which has allowed contracts to get funded, on average, a half-day faster than traditional deals, according to a press release. However, there are still some paper documents that will need to be signed at the dealership.
“Documents that cannot be electronically signed include those where the BMV of the state requires a wet signature,” Harmon said. “Often times, it’s title related documents … we’ve left those out, and the dealer needs to print those and have the customer sign them.”
The lender first piloted an e-contracting solution in February 2016 through RouteOne, which was a much easier process that Westlake could just plug into, Harmon said. It took another year to launch a solution for its own DealerCenter servicing platform, which accounts for 70% of the lender’s volume, according to the release.
There were a number of legal and compliance hurdles that went into the process, Harmon admitted, but said the coordinated efforts of Nowcom — the lenders’ sister technology company — as well as compliance and sales departments came together to make the launch smooth.
Westlake rolled out an online pre-qualification platform to consumers in California in February, as another in-house solution to cut down on the time consumers spend in the dealership.
