Sopra Banking Software extends its auto financing offerings to local and regional US banks

SBS currently works with large auto manufacturers and financiers including Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Volvo and TD Auto Finance to digitize the legacy process of financing dealerships’ wholesale inventory. The company will work with Vero to address the unique needs of US community financial institutions and power their wholesale financing ambitions.

Wholesale, or ‘floorplan’, financing represents a lucrative business model for auto manufacturer captives, banks and lenders alike. But often everything from loan underwriting to onboarding dealers, processing financing and managing risk in loan portfolios is still dependent on decades-old, heavily manual systems.

Inefficiencies in these areas have made it difficult for even the largest lenders to scale their wholesale financing operations into new markets and acquire new customers. These challenges compound for smaller local, regional and community financial institutions that make up a substantial 97% of the US banking industry.

Sopra Banking Software will work with Vero to provide a wholesale financing solution tailored to the specific needs of US small and mid-sized banks and other lenders. Their joint solution will complement SBS’s continued work with leading global financial organisations and auto manufacturers.

Using SBS’s Sopra Financing Platform (SFP) to power lenders’ back-office wholesale financing operations including loan processing, billing and inventory auditing, Vero will simultaneously provide lenders with its digital, frontend platform. Vero’s customer-facing services include everything from application underwriting to automated communications with dealers and managing the entire lifecycle of loan portfolios. For small and midsize institutions that often have fewer resources to allocate to wholesale financing than larger enterprises, these end-to-end services introduce operational efficiencies at scale.

“Vero shares our vision of digitizing these operations from end to end, and has made significant headway in servicing the needs of local and regional financial institutions with a comprehensive digital engagement solution powered by SFP,” said James Powell (pictured), Head of Specialized Finance, Sopra Banking Software.

“Working together, we’ll be uniquely positioned to introduce further efficiencies to these organisations and their larger counterparts by not only addressing their internal wholesale needs, but providing an unrivalled experience to the dealers they work with as well.”

In addition to providing an end-to-end technology platform, the partnership between SBS and Vero will offer local, regional and independent lenders the ability to fully outsource their wholesale financing operations through Vero’s managed servicing arm. In doing so, Vero can take over all or some of the operations and management of lenders’ floorplan programs, such as title processing, audit reconciliation, or compliance. This enables lenders to scale their wholesale operations without adding specialised headcount, while reducing costs and freeing up existing teams to focus on other areas of business.

“Sopra Banking Software has reimagined the way that lenders handle the back-office aspects of wholesale financing—the antiquated, paper-heavy and time-consuming processes that have stood in the way of success for many companies in this space,” said John Mizzi, CEO of Vero Technologies.

“The company’s expertise in this regard complements the work that we’re doing to digitize the frontend of wholesale financing, and will enable us to bring our offerings to a greater number of financial institutions.”