Bravo XL, an application developed by Viva IT, helps one of the UK's fastest-growing vehicle finance companies to reduce their loan application process by 66%.
Driving the Loan Application Process
New or used car buyers are demanding more flexible financing solutions to help them with their purchase, and there is consequently a myriad of finance options available to them either directly from the dealer, or via finance houses or other institutions.
Vehicle Trading Group, based in Leicester, is the UK's fastest-growing vehicle finance company providing dealer stocking finance for second-hand motor dealers. The company is predominantly funded by private funders, rather than banks, making them extremely flexible and capable of deals that household bank-funded lenders can't offer. Vehicle Trading Group offers dealers a total package, including supplying dealers with cars directly from the general public at cheaper prices than anywhere else in the trade, funding their stock at 100 per cent of CAP clean, financing the consumer purchasers, and trading overage stock to the rest of its dealer network.
The company's vision is to revolutionise the dealer trading experience and become the biggest and best in the country with an aggressive growth strategy over the next two years and beyond.
Bravo is Key to Business Success
Key to helping the company deliver its business strategy is a project called 'Bravo XL', a back-office underwriting system that allows underwriters to evaluate proposals for car loans from dealers all around the country. The underwriting process consists of a number of stages: a decision is made on the basis of a credit search using the key customer information, and a credit limit is assigned. The customer will then select a car from the dealer's stock, these details are submitted along with a budget calculator for second-stage underwriting, and subject to identity checks, documentation is issued. It is essential that this process runs smoothly and rapidly, and that we are able to evidence a clear audit trail throughout.
However, faced with an existing system that was inefficient and not particularly user friendly, Vehicle Trading Group turned to Leicester based technology consultants, Viva IT. Zoe Hogg, Senior Underwriter-Team Leader at Vehicle Trading Group takes up the story: “The system is used by our underwriters once a dealer has submitted a proposal, they will make a decision, and send documents to dealers. Bravo XL is an interface that allows us to communicate directly with the dealer. The Payouts team also use the system to process the signed documents in order to complete the deal.
“The previous system was slow and disjointed which meant that it could take up to 45 minutes for an underwriter to evaluate, approve, and produce documentation for vehicle loans. It could often take up to an hour just to produce the documents to send them off in an email. Clearly, if we were to continue improving our service, this had to change.
“We began talking to Viva IT and although we presented them with a big challenge, they developed a solution within a matter of weeks. We have had a huge input into tailor-making Bravo XL to suit our needs and the past few months have been very exciting as it has evolved.”
Delivering Major Time Savings
“From the outset we were trying to simplify and speed the process and as a result of the new application, we have significantly reduced the average application processing time from an average of 45 minutes down to around 10 minutes, which includes the underwriting decision and document production. The initial acceptance used to take up to 15 minutes but we've now cut this down to just 5 minutes by using Bravo XL. We can now process documents for the affordability/vehicle detail stages in around 2 minutes whereas previously, this could take anything from 15 minutes to an hour.
“We are introducing our entire UK dealer network to Bravo. The system also enables our dealers to submit proofs (addresses, photo ID, etc) and additional customer information such as income and expenditure statements to ensure that we lend responsibly. We've also been able to add features such as HPI reporting for cars, credit searches and postcode lookups.”
Exploring New Opportunities to Develop the System
“As we move forward, we continue to work closely with Viva IT to develop the system further in order to deliver new process improvements including enhanced vehicle credit and reporting capabilities. We are also working on integrating the system with our stocking systems, which will bring the overall time per deal down. This will have a direct improvement on our underwriting capacity and our response time to dealers.
“We are also working with Viva IT on a separate project to develop a broker system that will enable us to process new customer leads, qualify them and integrate directly into the systems of leading UK lenders.
Zoe Hogg concludes by saying: “To continue to grow our business, the Bravo XL system is vital. The development of the system by Viva IT has already delivered significant savings in terms of reducing our processing time for dealers and their customers, and we are confident that the new system will continue to benefit our business.”