The Benefits and Challenges to Subprime Lending
The backbone of the OPTIMUS financing program is access to multiple lenders. In particular, OPTIMUS delivers approvals through the subprime lending market, increasing your overall sales and profitability. The first thing we need to understand is that the subprime customer is not a BAD customer. Sometimes, bad situations happen to very good people. These good people may temporarily struggle to balance their daily, weekly and monthly functions, and this temporary struggle may impact their credit score. But understand, excessive heat and intense cold affect all households (perfect credit history or not). As a contractor, embrace these customers for both the benefit of helping someone in need and the benefit of increasing your monthly sales. Being able to meet these customers’ needs can quickly add tremendous profit to your bottom line.
The one challenge is we simply have to be a little more patient. The fact is that this type of customer comes with a higher risk, and the lenders will need a little more information to offset that higher risk. Remember: the Prime loans (~700 FICO+) are underwritten and approved automatically by an algorithm, so they are literally processed within seconds. The Near Prime and Subprime loans, however, need a little more care and are generally underwritten and reviewed by a person. Again, this means we will need to be a little more patient. Be prepared to have the customer provide a little more information than they normally would with the Prime lenders. This is usually pretty minimal, and most times, the biggest ask is just time and patience. In return, you will be rewarded with more approvals, more closed sales, happier customers, and more revenue and profit. Talk about a win!!
As an example, at the time of this writing, I can see that ONE DEALER, on our OPTIMUS platform, submitted 20 applications in the last 24 hours. Seven of these turned into Near Prime or Subprime APPROVALS. That’s a ~30% increase in sales, in ONE DAY, just by embracing the Subprime market. For those not embracing math, that’s a nearly 40% increase, which is certain to make everyone happy.
If you would like clarification around the OPTIMUS Near Prime or Sub Prime tiers, please CLICK HERE to schedule a consultation with one of our OPTIMUS representatives. Our team would be happy to walk you through the process and answer any questions or concerns you may have. Remember, don’t be afraid of success! Embrace the solutions available and use OPTIMUS to its fullest.
Eric Gude is the National Sales Director at EGIA and manages the Contractor Services team that includes dealer and distributer training, dealer onboarding and customer service. Eric can be reached by email at egude@egia.org