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White Papers & Case Studies: Route One

RouteOne Interface - Increasing Your Indirect Auto Loan Volume

Executive Summary

The relationship between automobile dealerships and lending institutions has been thriving for decades. Dealerships depend on banks and credit unions to provide financing for their customers, while banks and credit unions depend on dealerships to provide a steady stream of borrowers.

As our world becomes more and more fast-paced, the demand for speedier service rises along with it. What once may have taken a week to do is now expected to take a few hours. This demand also applies to the world of indirect auto lending. Today’s consumer does not have the time or patience to spend days selecting a vehicle and waiting for financing so they can drive home in their new car. With the invention of the Internet, consumers are more well-informed and accustomed to finding and getting what they want, when they want it. By taking advantage of the Internet and all it has to offer, lenders can increase their loan volume while dealers give their customers the quick service they need.

In recent years, dealers have been able to speed up the credit application process through the use of web-based Credit Application Management Systems like RouteOne. RouteOne is a joint venture between four of the biggest captive finance sources: DaimlerChrysler Services, Ford Motor Credit Company, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, and Toyota Financial Services. RouteOne allows dealers to submit credit applications over the Web. The application is then passed to the captive finance sources and/or indirect lenders specified by the dealer. A decision is made and returned to the dealer. This takes a process that used to take hours or days and reduces it to mere minutes or seconds.

With the number of franchised dealers under RouteOne at 22,000 and growing, it is easy to see the potential increase in loan volume your organization can achieve through RouteOne. It is for this reason that APPRO is the first company to develop a commerically available interface to RouteOne. This allows your company to use the auto-decisioning capabilities of your current LoanCenter Consumer system to process incoming auto loan and lease applications from RouteOne.

This white paper discusses how your institution can use the APPRO RouteOne interface to increase your volume of applications, thus, increasing the number of loans financed. You will see how the RouteOne interface works with your existing system and get a behind-the-scenes look at the technology being used to make this interface a reality.

Technology Meets Necessities

Our lives have become much more fast-paced and demanding over the last decade. We’re trying to accomplish more in less time than before. The explosion of cell phones and the Internet keep everyone connected personally and professionally. This connection enhances our lives, but also makes our time more precious than ever before.

Most people can’t afford to take the time to slow down. In an ideal world, there would be no deadlines and no need to hurry. But the world is not always ideal. There is a need to get things done in the quickest, most efficient way possible. This need creates a demand for the technology that we have grown accustomed to and expect in virtually every aspect of our lives. This includes going to our local dealership to buy a car.

“I Just Don’t Have the Time!”

With the demands that are placed upon people’s time coupled with our dependence on transportation, most people don’t have the luxury of spending a lot of time picking out a car, applying for financing, waiting for a decision, and taking care of the necessary paperwork.

Dealers who have chosen to use RouteOne have done so in order to accelerate the process of buying a car. The added convenience of RouteOne can increase the volume of applications being entered at the dealership. This means more opportunities for your institution to provide financing. Using APPRO’s RouteOne interface will allow dealers to submit their applications to your institution.

Take Advantage of Your Existing System

You are already well aware of the capabilities of APPRO’s LoanCenter Consumer product. LoanCenter Consumer is the culmination of top-tier technology with over 25 years of experience in the lending industry. APPRO’s Risk Manager and Expert System provide your institution with a form of artificial intelligence that you can use to enforce your lending policies in a fast, efficient manner.

With such a comprehensive system already in place, wouldn’t it be great if you could use your system to decision applications that come from RouteOne? We couldn’t agree more. That is the purpose of the RouteOne interface. This interface allows you to receive applications that are entered by dealers and pass them through APPRO’s Risk Manager, which renders a quick decision on the application, then passes it back to the dealership.

How Do the Applications Get to Me?

With applications being entered into RouteOne, you may be wondering how the applications get from the dealership to your LoanCenter Consumer system. Aren’t there compatability issues? Not if you’re using the RouteOne interface!

The RouteOne interface is actually a translation layer within the APPRO Loan Exchange (ALEX). ALEX acts as an intermediary between a lender’s APPRO system and a foreign system.

The RouteOne translation layer takes advantage of Extensible Markup Language (XML) technology to facilitate the transfer of information between systems. It takes what is entered into the RouteOne website by the dealer, converts it into XML, and maps the data into your LoanCenter Consumer database.

From here, the application is processed in the same manner that applications entered by bank and credit union employees are. The application is subject to whatever rules and policies your institution sees fit. It is passed through the 3D Policy Matrices and Expert System Rules that you set for the RouteOne channel and the indirect auto lending product being used. You are able to take full advantage of the auto-decisioning capablities of your LoanCenter Consumer system.

How Does the Dealer Get the Decision?

After a decision has been made on the application, it is passed back through the RouteOne interface and back through ALEX. The application data is converted into XML, then mapped to RouteOne’s database. The dealer can now view the status of the application with a few clicks of a mouse.

Be Up to Standard

In an effort to create a universal format for the interchange of data in the automotive industry, the Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail (STAR) was formed. STAR is an industry-wide initiative to create an IT standard for how dealers, manufacturers, and customers communicate with each other. One of the goals of STAR is to develop a standard XML message that can be used to transmit data.

Due to the fact that dealers are adopting STAR as their method of data communication, APPRO’s RouteOne interface uses STAR XML messages as the courier of information between the dealer, RouteOne, and LoanCenter Consumer. This ensures that all of the needed application information gets to and from the dealer and the lender as quickly as possible.

Are My Applications Secure?

One of the largest concerns of doing business over the Internet is the everpresent threat of hackers and the need for top-of-the-line security. The RouteOne interface uses digitally signed SOAP messages which are received through Secured Sockets Layer (SSL) through ALEX to give your application data the security that it requires.

Here’s what that means in plain English:

SOAP was developed to help bridge the gap between all of the different types of firewalls and operating systems that are out there on the Internet, creating a lightweight messaging format that works between different platforms. SOAP takes the concept of XML and tries to further simplify it. The result is a better, faster way to get information from one system to another.

SSL is a type of encryption that is used to make sure that unauthorized individuals don’t see the data that is being transmitted from one system to another. Standard SSL uses 128-bit encryption. This means that there are over a decillion possible keys and only one of them will successfully decrypt the data.

Considering how sensitive this data is to the dealer, customer, and your institution, it is of the utmost importance that it be secure. With this technology in place, you can sleep easily knowing that your transactions are safe.

The Bottom Line

What’s better than being able to increase your institution’s loan volume? Being able to increase your institution’s loan volume without any human interaction! Using the RouteOne interface on your LoanCenter Consumer system allows you to do just that.

On the lender’s side, all of the application processing done by LoanCenter Consumer via the RouteOne interface is completely behind the scenes. Applications are passed from the dealer, to the lender, and back to the dealer without any lender employees pressing a single key. This means that you can increase your loan volume without the added cost of having to hire additional data entry personnel!

For More Information

If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities presented by the RouteOne LoanCenter Consumer interface, please contact your APPRO sales representative or your Customer Focused Team (CFT). If you are not a current APPRO client and are interested in seeing what APPRO can offer your institution, please contact the APPRO sales department at (866) 277-7612 or by email at sales@approsystems.com.