A new program from Dealertrack aims to further shorten the amount of time it takes to buy a car.
The North Hills, N.Y.-based company, which provides digital products to the automotive retail industry, recently released Dealertrack uniFI, a new finance and insurance platform designed to streamline the car-buying process for consumers, lenders, dealers and more.
Nearly 60 percent of Dealertrack’s 1,600 lenders are credit unions, and the platform is expected to be rolled out to all customers by the end of 2019.
The product, Dealertrack said in a Nov. 5 press release, is the industry’s “first single platform that seamlessly connects the entire deal process with open integration.”
According to a
Dealertrack also noted that, on the lending side, delays sometimes occur around “multiple systems requiring re-keying of data and the error rate on paper contracts.”
In addition, the final stage of car-buying -- the F&I process -- is “complicated with different systems handling different parts of the process, such as credit checks, loan applications, taxes, titling and trade-in values,” Dealertrack cited.
To address these various issues, Dealertrack said that its uniFI aims to “bring together these different systems to create a seamless F&I solution.”
For example, instead of switching between multiple systems and re-entering data each time, dealership staff can use uniFI to run credit checks, submit credit applications, structure deals and calculate accurate payments, add aftermarket products, and speed trade-in payoff and title release.
“The car-buying experience should be an exciting time for consumers, but it’s often lengthened by a set of disjointed technologies required to finalize the sale,” Cheryl Miller, Dealertrack VP and general manager of Dealertrack F&I Solutions, said in a statement. “Dealertrack uniFI creates a single technology platform to simplify the process. Dealership sales staff spend less time logging into and typing data into various systems.”
