DealMaker Launches: Hybrid, Pre-desking Solution for Digital Retailing

Dallas Texas, – January 26th, 2023 – eLEND Solutions today announced, at NADA 2023, the launch of DealMaker, a digital finance pre-desking platform that evolves basic online payment calculator tools and the educated guesswork used by most desk managers. It is designed to eliminate frictions and profit leaks by providing customer and vehicle-qualified payment terms matched to lender fundable contract terms – prior to the F&I handoff.

“Most digital retailing experiences promise more than they can deliver, especially when it comes to matching a consumer’s credit profile, vehicle selection and deal structure to a fundable purchase contract with lenders,” said Pete MacInnis, Founder and CEO of eLEND Solutions, an automotive FinTech company focused on accelerating ‘transactional’ digital buying experiences.

In today’s economically uncertain environment, when affordability represents the biggest challenge to car buyers and monthly payments matter more than the selling price, ensuring that quoted payments are accurate is critical to the modern retailing success. Yet, in a new report, based on a recent survey of auto dealerships, the majority say it’s common for payment estimator tools to provide inaccurate or unrealistic payment expectations. DealMaker is designed to solve this.

A hybrid, pre-desking solution for digital retailing, DealMaker is powered by advanced credit filtering and calculation logic and instantly matches a remote or in-store customer and vehicle-of-choice to a waterfall of qualifying lender programs – eliminating F&I guesswork.

“Quoting transactional and fundable rate, term and payment options reduces frictions during the negotiation, leads to faster, more profitably structured deals and higher closing ratios. It can also positively impact F&I sales penetration,” continued MacInnis. He noted that 88% of dealers report they would realize a 10% or more increase in F&I sales penetration if consumers are quoted qualified payment terms matched to lender fundable contract terms, with dealer mark-ups, before getting to the F&I office. Moreover, eighty-five percent estimate that this could save 15 minutes or more in the F&I office (with over 30% saying it would save over 30 minutes).

Because it eliminates the bottlenecks and inefficiencies created by poorly structured deals, DealMaker improves the speed and quality of the customers transitions to and through the finance department, reducing unwinds and rewrites, enabling F&I managers to sell more back-end products with higher penetrations and profits.

DealMaker is currently being piloted by a handful of dealers across the country.

How DealMaker works:

• DealMaker is powered by a logic- and rules-based decision engine and pre-desking software that goes deeper than other tools that calculate payments based on factory cash, finance, and lease incentives with fully integrated rates and residuals.
• DealMaker is embedded within the dealer’s sales and finance workflow, similar to a lender’s Loan Origination System (LOS), and empowers fundable deal structuring matching the vehicle model ID/trim level and the consumer’s entire credit profile to a waterfall of lender programs, including underwriting, pricing, loan advance and stipulations simultaneously.
• DealMaker includes advanced credit filtering and calculation logic for all makes, all models, new and used, all terms and all credit tiers.
• Consumer-submitted credit application and full credit file is parsed and filtered by DealMaker to determine ability, stability and credit qualifications.
• DealMaker’s rules-based decision engine then calculates debt-to-income, payment-to-income and loan-to-value ratios; identifies high credit, time on credit report and lender rules, which can vary depending on consumer qualifications.
• DealMaker’s loan program pricing varies by lender and is based on: is the vehicle new, pre-owned, or certified pre-owned? Is it the same brand as the captive lender, are there mileage limitations at different terms, etc.?
• DealMaker lender credit decision results are displayed instantly at the point of sale.
• DealMaker matches “The Deal” to the best lender fundable program.
• The near-final deal can be negotiated online or completed before the test drive ends.

“Making deals transparent is the linchpin to accelerating digital retailing into truly successful modern retailing. This, along with fully connected workflows, is the mission of DealMaker,” concluded MacInnis.

eLEND Solutions will be demonstrating DealMaker at the 2023 NADA Show in Dallas, at Booth #4185.