Gaining market share by “design thinking” the auto finance business

Banks across the globe are in the pursuit of transforming themselves into a digital business. To be a real digital business, banks need to address the needs of the evolving and well aware “digital consumer”. This will entail that banks adopt a “need servicing” business model as against the current “product provisioning” model.

What does this mean? We believe that banks should challenge themselves to become purchase enablers instead of playing a utility role of purchase funders. We also believe that this is, foremost, a mind-set issue more than anything else. For banks that want to take the leap, the question of feasibility and viability become paramount and such a mindset gets killed at the drawing board itself.

The auto finance marketplace is so diverse and fragmented that it provides banks the right opportunity to evolve the “needs servicing” business model with an evolutionary disruptive approach to the current business model.

If we take the US as an example, the fragmentation in the auto finance space can be substantiated by the following data

• No single FI had more than 5.8% of market share
• The top 10% financial institutions accounted for only 37.7% vehicle finance transactions
• Only 55% of finance transactions were funded by banks
• Total of around 54,000+ franchised and non-franchised dealership in the US

There is enough and more evidence available today for how “digital” as a channel is being leveraged increasingly by the consumers in the auto purchase journey of “awareness”, “consideration” and “purchase”. This consumer behaviour is a good enough trigger for banks and dealerships alike to attract the consumers and engage them on digital channels.

We, at vLendRight, believe that banks have an opportunity like no other entity to monetize the evolving consumer digital behaviour. Banks are the custodians of “customer data” which is foundational to understanding the “what”, “why” and “how” behind the customer’s auto purchase decision. Banks also have an existing robust partnership with dealerships which potentially could enable them to play the role of the glue that enables an end-to-end purchase journey.

vLendRight as a platform helps banks embrace design thinking as a philosophy to evolve the “needs servicing” business model by making the proposition “technologically feasible” and also “economically viable”. vLendRight as a platform inverts the role of the bank in the customer auto purchase journey by enabling the banks to be the “guide rails” which brings the “customers” and the “dealers” on to a common platform .The platform simultaneously achieves two things

• Digitally emulates the customer’s current journey by using core design thinking constructs, including journey mapping, and empathy mapping
• Reimagines the information systems that the customer uses for the purchase journey as a harmonised “value ecosystem” of partners and data syndicates

vLendRight as a platform will help banks gain market share in auto finance and also reinforce their brand of “customer first banking”. The platform will help partner dealers with a robust sales enablement and forecasting platform driving both the volume and speed of inventory turnover.

vLendRight is one of the early stage startups.

(All the stats quoted are from Experian auto report)