Category: Compliance

Benefits of Documenting Your Dealership Processes

Post author By efgmarketing
Post date July 27, 2016

Contributing Author:
Steve Roennau
Vice President
Compliance
EFG Companies

As a dealer, you’ve probably heard that it’s important to document your processes seven different ways. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is rallying for them. Lenders are asking for them. And, soon it will be a requirement for all dealers to have documented processes.

But what does this mean? I get a lot of questions from dealers asking some variation of, “Do I just need to document my processes with regards to regulations, or all my processes?” In short, the answer is invariably, “You need to document all your processes.”

But, here’s the kicker: there are so many processes in a dealership that not everyone knows where to begin. And, so many processes are simply just part of the routine, that many dealers haven’t conceptualized how to define them beyond, “just do it”.

Just like with any big project, think about tackling this project one bite at a time. Start with the checklist on your deal jackets. Define and write down the process behind each item on the list. Each process should consist of three components:

Tags CFPB, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Compliance Dealership Training

Juggling the Compliance Acronym Soup: CFPB, ECOA, FCRA

Post author By efgmarketing
Post date March 30, 2016

Contributing Author:
Steve Roennau
Vice President
Compliance
EFG Companies

Compliance has been a hot topic going on three years in the auto finance space. Lenders, such as Ally Financial, Toyota Motor Credit, and the American Honda Finance Corporation, have reached resolutions with the CFPB based upon dealership practices. We’ve all known that the CFPB has been trying to regulate dealerships through lenders. With this heightened sensitivity to compliance, other regulatory bodies that have jurisdiction over automotive dealerships, such as the FTC, are now turning their gaze to dealership practices.

While everyone is frustrated with the ambiguity of the CFPB, there are some well-defined actions dealerships can take to ensure compliance with entities like the FTC. With this in mind, now is the time for dealers to brush up on their F&I practices to ensure compliance, starting with this simple question: When a dealership sells a car and secures financing, who is the creditor at the time of sale?

If you said the dealer is the creditor, you would be correct. However, many F&I managers often think that the lender is the creditor. This mindset opens the door for non-compliant behavior as the F&I manager could think that their actions have fewer repercussions. As a dealer who knows about the legal repercussions, wouldn’t you rather have an informed staff that takes accountability for their actions?

Tags Ally Financial, American Honda Finance Corporation, CFPB, Compliance, ECOA, FCRA, FTC, Toyota Motor Credit

Compliance

Impact of the Toyota Settlement

Post author By efgmarketing
Post date March 2, 2016

Contributing Author:
Steve Roennau
Vice President
Compliance
EFG Companies

After undergoing a stringent investigation by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Department of Justice, Toyota Motor Credit Corp (TMCC) reached a “voluntary” resolution this past January to address alleged discriminatory practices in its loan pricing.

Of all of the lenders anticipating a CFPB investigation, TMCC was arguably the most prepared, having completed a very thorough overhaul of their compliance procedures based on CFPB industry recommendations. If anyone was going to come out the other end of a CFPB investigation unscathed, it might well have been them.

Nevertheless, it seems that the CFPB’s agenda to use lenders to regulate dealers was not appeased with anything less than sweeping caps on dealer reserve. TMCC joined the growing list of lenders to cap dealer markup at 125 basis points for loan terms up to 60 months, and 100 basis points for loan terms longer than 60 months. And, as with previous settlements with other lenders, TMCC retains the right to pay dealers a flat fee for setting up the loan in addition to the approved dealer markup.

The TMCC settlement is momentous to the industry because the CFPB appears to have settled on a way to regulate auto lending without implementing an industry-wide flat, but rather with capping dealer markup.

Tags CFPB, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Justice, DOJ, EFG, EFG Companies, Toyota Motor Credit Corp