I’m still catching my breath after another amazing Auto Finance Summit (AFS) where Informed has been a proud sponsor for the past few years. The growth we have seen and the partnerships formed continue to gather speed. We were thrilled by multiple customer shout-outs from the stage, heavy booth traffic, and happy customers stopping by to share their success stories. Between speaking engagements, keynote addresses, workshops, and fireside chats our team was able to tap into real thought leaders in the auto finance ecosystem. 

Some sessions were small, with an opportunity for lots of interactive discussions. Some sessions had several hundred in attendance. All were a blast. Here are my thoughts on a few:

Jayson Amandus, Vice President of Indirect Lending at BECU facilitated the Small Auto Financiers Lab and provided insights on maintaining growth momentum in an increasingly competitive environment. A hot topic was OCR and Amandus felt that a 10-20% success rate with OCR capabilities is worth at least $100k in efficiencies. Informed adds value well above OCR with a success rate of more than 90% of income documents classified, extracted and calculated.  And that’s in addition to successes customers realize by freeing up FTEs for higher function tasks.

Some context: BECU is attempting to perfect a process focused on Scalable FTEs and the value of that efficiency. BECU went from manually inputting information and organizing documents, to software that streamlines the process. Amandus is “sharpening (his) focus on earnings by investing in technology. This gives him a better return as he focuses on providing superior products and services to his members. He understands the need to balance technology and human intervention. Historically, he has only hired to address volume increases. Through automation he is supporting a lean organization in order to scale and create dynamic pricing.

We are proud to have partnered with Origence/CU Direct to help credit unions increase efficiency and compliance in the loan origination process while also continuing to grow loan volume and reduce fraud. To learn how we can do that for you, contact us.

Women in Auto Finance

Amy Brooks, a national retail sales executive at Chase Auto, led the Women in Auto Finance Luncheon keynote and provided incredibly empowering dialogue. Seeing such an impactful woman on stage in an industry that was once so male dominated, and listening to her career advice on transparency, validation and impact was an absolute honor. It is to describe the feeling of seeing so many amazing women in one room.  If we couldn’t connect during the event, let’s connect now! 

Informed Partners Featured On Stage

The second day of AFS provided more opportunities for collaboration with our partners. There was plenty of interest in our non-documentary validation products and new solutions. Sumit Sukhramani Head of Auto Tech at Wells Fargo and Prasad Yarlagadda, SVP Tech Delivery at Exeter Finance, discussed “Preparing for and Executing Crucial Technology Projects.” It was great to hear a customer and another industry leader talking about the state of the auto market and strategies for bringing in automation and machine learning.. 

Almost everyone seemed to be looking at bringing data into their decision making processes. Folks like BECU discussed the importance of data, knowing that it is our future advantage and current reality. Understanding data takes more of an organization’s bandwidth than ever before. While documents are still front and center, it is clear that there is a big demand for mining data to provide insights to prospects and customers. 

We also connected with Ian Anderson, Westlake Financial’s Group President and industry thought leader who spoke about their impressive automation journey and how Informed helps Westlake create a best-in-class customer experience. Ian won this year’s Auto Finance Excellence Award due to his leadership and contributions to the industry. I especially enjoyed the inspiring fireside chat and learning more about other amazing AI businesses, including Norcom. 

The final session of the event was a panel — Thinking Like a Fintech: How to Evolve Auto Lending Operations. Mike Lavin, EVP Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal Officer from Informed customer Consumer Portfolio Services highlighted how leveraging artificial intelligence in underwriting and collection helps speed up time to funding while increasing compliance within credit decisioning. Want to see Informed in action? Request a demo. Several attendees at the conference felt this session helped them focus on choosing a best in class solution that solves their specific needs and partnering to grow with market needs. I’m excited to be part of the fabulous team meeting this need!

We also spent time with partners like F&I Sentinel and TrueWork. And of course, it’s always great seeing my Informed teammates IRL. What a dynamic week with an amazing team. Grateful for all of the work our team puts in every day and for always leading with a people-first mentality!

We wrapped up AFS with a good, old-fashioned happy hour with our partner Truv and 150 friends. Really amazing turnout and thoughtful conversations with many dealer-centric auto leaders! If you’d like to learn more, contact us.

#AFS was a big success! We hope everyone gained as many valuable insights as we did.

We look forward to seeing you at the next conference. #FinancialServicesConferences #HudsonCook, #AFS, #NADA, #JDPower, #DallasConferences.