The National Automotive Finance Association (NAF) held its annual Non-Prime Auto Financing Conference last week in Plano, Texas. This was a great opportunity for subprime lenders to network, share best practices, get updated on industry trends and learn about new innovations in our space. I spoke to many lenders, agents and other vendors who were really glad to be back – we’ve all missed the camaraderie and learning that can happen when we come together.
The group was eager to talk about what’s coming for the industry as the pace of collections and recoveries begins to increase. There was a lot of discussion about a desire to improve business strategy and performance, mitigate risk and protect assets. A common thread I found in talking to lenders and agents was an eagerness to learn more about DRN and opportunities to partner and add value – especially in the loan origination stage and with portfolio management. We stressed that lending partners can use DRN data early in the loan cycle to assess risk, look for and manage delinquencies, and locate assets – before getting to the repossession stage.
Since the pandemic, there’s been consolidation in the recovery industry. This, along with high fuel costs and general inflation, has put increased pressure on both agents and lenders to work as efficiently as possible. We know our data and analytics platform – including tools like Risk Scoring and heat maps – provides teams with insights and data beyond what they get with public record data alone. Partnering with DRN empowers these teams with the most credible data available and gives them the best possible chance for success – at any point in the loan cycle from origination to collections to recovery and repossession.
One unique opportunity that I found at this year’s conference was the interest of other vendors in exploring how they could partner and integrate with DRN and MVTRAC to offer even better solutions and higher value to their customers. I think this is an exciting possibility and a great example of how businesses are eager for partnership as we all come out of the pandemic.
Thanks to NAF for another great conference this year.
