Dealers are seeing a surge in online finance as consumers take the digital route to market.
Online technology specialist iVendi said it is generating online motor finance quotes for buyers on around 250,000 vehicles every month.
“At a time when it is still possible to find people in the industry who deny the relevance of online motor retail, this shows its undeniable and growing importance,” said CEO James TewThe quotes are preconfigured to variation of vehicle, finance product, quote length and deposit so that they can be delivered instantly to used car buyers using a payment search online.
iVendi has plans to expand its online business. In late 2017 it announced plans to launch in 2018 an online new and used car retailing platform for franchised and independent dealers.
The platform, which will also be used for van and motorcycle sales, is still in development but has been in use since February by 500 dealers across the UK. iVendi claims monthly transactions already generated by the system are running at £2m.
According to James Tew (pictured), iVendi’s CEO, the company launched in 2009 with the intention of delivering an online trading platform but needed to develop a customer base first which it has done through its online finance calculator which is now used by dealers across the UK.
“We knew from the start that we wanted to rollout an online retailing platform as an off the shelf solution for dealers to plug into their existing websites. We’re now in a position where we have a critical mass of customers using our finance calculator who we can offer an off the shelf package to,” he said.
“Developing an e-commerce platform from scratch would be prohibitively expensive for most dealers and something only the bigger groups could afford in terms of development costs.”