Category: 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

Dealership Training

Responsibilities of an F&I Manager

Post author By efgmarketing
Post date March 17, 2016

Jason Hash
Training Manager
EFG Companies

When you think of an F&I manager’s responsibilities, what comes to mind? What do your sales people think the F&I manager’s responsibilities are? What do lenders think?

As a dealer principal or general manager, you probably think the F&I manager is responsible for increasing your gross profit, maintaining lender relationships, and ensuring compliance. And, that’s a fairly comprehensive outlook. Meanwhile, ask any sales person and they might say something more like this, “The F&I manager just sells products.” And, lenders might describe the F&I manager’s role as, “structuring financing arrangements”.

While each of these descriptions touches on some of the F&I manager’s responsibilities, they fall short in representing the total importance of an F&I manager’s position in dealership operations. And, while that’s not technically a bad thing for people to define F&I managers differently, giving everyone in your dealership a baseline overview of the F&I office’s function can actually help enhance dealership performance and foster a greater level of teamwork.

So, what exactly are the responsibilities of an F&I manager?

Tags F&I, F&I Manager, F&I training

Dealership Training F&I

Overcoming Objections Starts with Sales

Post author By efgmarketing
Post date January 7, 2016

Contributing Author: Hollis Goode, Regional Vice President, Dealer Services, EFG Companies

Overcoming objections is quite possibly one aspect of the F&I office that is focused on the most. Classes abound on this topic. Dealers, in tune with their teams, provide one-on-one coaching sessions on this alone. After all, the more successful an F&I manager is at overcoming objections, the better their numbers, resulting in increased profit for the dealer.

I’d posit that many training courses/one-on-one sessions start something like this:

“The vehicle service contract is too expensive. Go.”

Tags dealership training, EFG Companies, F&I, F&I Presentation, F&I training, Hollis Goode, Overcoming Objections, sales training, vehicle sales