Chinese New Year marks the first twelve months of a highly successful implementation of White Clarke Group’s (WCG’s) CALMS2 end-to-end platform for one of China’s wholly foreign-owned auto finance companies. Supported from WCG’s Beijing office, the new system has helped the client manage and control spectacular growth in captive finance vehicle sales, handling many hundreds of thousands of finance agreements, in a fast, flexible service that is essential in this rapidly evolving market.
2014 is officially designated the Year of the Horse, but results from WCG’s client suggest it is car sales which are galloping ahead. Over the past year, it has seen its monthly average for finance agreements activated increase 400% between February 2013 and January 2014. The first month of this year saw a record number of contracts activated, and all predictions suggest volumes are set to rocket further in the coming months.
All financing offers made by the company are handled via CALMS2, a comprehensive system which manages dealer point-of-sale, loan origination, automated decisioning and credit scoring, and back-office lease and loan administration. Implementation took just ten months, and the business results have been equally quick to appear: applications decision turnaround time has improved by 56%, dealer input ration is up by 50% and funding turnaround time has been cut by 37%.
The explosive growth rates have come as no surprise, since as the global leading captive auto-finance company WCG’s client has long recognised the potential in the Chinese marketplace where new car purchases are predicted to rise between 30% and 50% annually. It also knew that success in this market would depend on the right IT systems, capable of scaling up to meet increasing volumes and with sufficient flexibility to meet the needs of new, innovative finance solutions.
A twenty-year relationship with WCG had seen the company adopt CALMS2 as the backbone of its operations in many territories, but the size and significance of the Chinese market meant it conducted a full review of the marketplace when it first started looking to replace legacy systems with a more sophisticated and agile finance platform. As a result it selected CALMS2, initially for its retail business but with the aim of also using the package to support its fleet and wholesale business lines.
Brendan Gleeson, Group Executive Vice President, White Clarke Group, said: “China holds enormous strategic importance for WCG. We believe the market’s growing maturity will drive demand for more sophisticated solutions than has been the case in the past. The successful implementation of CALMS2 is a clear signal to the marketplace about our capabilities to bring our world class CALMS2 solution to the Chinese market. We work in strong partnership with our client and look forward to working with them further in this exciting, vibrant marketplace.”
