Ford Financial, the world's largest automotive finance company, has experienced accelerated growth in its portfolio through increased sales and acquisitions of other automotive brands. While Ford Financial was focusing on its core business to support the rapid growth, the company needed assistance with executing its strategic information technology vision.
Ford Financial envisioned a common receivables business platform that would provide flexibility, support standardized processes, and offer features and functions to meet the high-volume, low-cost needs of the specialized and rapidly evolving automotive finance market.
The Challenge
Ford Financial needed a partner to jointly develop a state-of-the-art solution for its loan and lease receivables needs. Ford Financial required a system that would dramatically improve the speed of creating new products, boost loan servicing efficiency, allow for a single database of customer and dealer information, and eliminate the unnecessary costs and manpower requirements associated with running multiple receivables systems. The company sought to employ the latest technologies to vastly improve account processing for its customers while providing faster, reliable service at a lower overall cost.
The Solution
Fidelity Information Services (Fidelity), a division of Fidelity National Financial and leading provider of end-to-end retail lending solutions, was the natural choice to take on the challenge for Ford Financial. Fidelity has proven experience in large-scale project management, a solid record of partnership reliability, and has systems successfully operating at Ford Financial subsidiaries PRIMUS and Fairlane Credit.
In 1998, Fidelity and Ford Financial began jointly developing a fully integrated loan and lease receivables system specifically tailored to the automotive finance industry. The joint effort produced Fidelity's Advanced Lending Solutions (ALS) Automotive Finance - a market-leading application that offers a common receivables business platform for automotive captives and other financial services organizations with large portfolios of automotive loans and leases. The software supports a comprehensive list of competitive finance products ranging from dealer and direct loans to lines of credit, finance leases, operating leases, securitized loan pools and private label lending.
ALS Automotive Finance is a scalable software system that yields considerable savings and efficiencies in data management, systems operations and customer service, and facilitates and accelerates the creation of new lending products. It also serves as an effective channel of account information for dealers, customers and employees via seamless interaction through Internet and intranet networks.
Fidelity's Advanced Lending Solutions suite now provides a complete, end-to-end automotive finance solution that covers origination, servicing and collections. Fidelity and Ford Financial are continuing to forge ahead in their strategic alliance to further develop, implement and market this industry-leading automotive finance receivables system.
"Automotive finance is one of the fastest growing segments of the financial services industry," said Christine Pratt, senior analyst for consumer credit with research firm TowerGroup. "It is currently a $652 billion industry and is projected to be an $800 billion industry by 2005. Companies like Ford and Fidelity that can combine industry expertise with a new way of delivering next-generation technology solutions will gain competitive advantage in today's market."
The Results
Fidelity developed a single, integrated retail and lease receivables system for Ford Financial that supports common business processes, provides flexible program and product offerings, and eliminates the need for separate staffing, operations and support of multiple independent systems. In addition, the system significantly reduces Ford Financial's operating costs.
Fidelity initially converted more than 1 million of Ford Financial's Primus and Fairlane Credit retail and lease accounts to ALS Automotive Finance, running in a daily production environment out of Fidelity's technology center in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The stage is now set for Fidelity to assist Ford Financial North America with the conversion of more than 7 million additional retail and lease accounts to ALS Automotive Finance.
"This launch represents a significant milestone toward the completion of a common receivables business platform for the North American business units and establishes the industry's first commercial, combined loan and lease processing platform," said Ernie Hawke, vice president of Ford Financial's transformation project. "It was an outstanding team effort by all involved."
Ford Financial
- $140 billion in total assets
- World's largest automotive finance company
- Provider of retail, lease and wholesale financing
- 10 million customers in 40 countries
"This launch represents a significant milestone toward the completion of a common receivables business platform for the North American business units and establishes the industry's first commercial, combined loan and lease processing platform. It was an outstanding team effort by all involved."
- Ernie Hawke
Vice President, Transformation Project
Ford Financial
Fidelity's Solution
- Offers a state-of-the-art automotive finance system
- Provides an integrated system for both loan and lease
- Supports high-volume operations
- Reduces operating costs
- Creates opportunities for boosting revenue
September 2001