Release 2: Total Capability (Jan 2024)
Meeting the complex end-to-end lifecycle demands of successful finance providers.
Delivered in a series of six releases, Alfa Systems 6 helps finance providers tackle the significant challenges they face, and seize the lucrative opportunities that lie waiting.
Why Total Capability?
Alfa Systems 6 continues to fulfill a key role as the core platform on which asset finance ecosystems are orchestrated. In an age of data lakes and APIs, a provider's choice in deploying multiple systems has never been greater.
However, carried out inefficiently - for example, leveraging distinct software platforms for different business lines or processes - can still attract significant cost and effort. This can be seen in pricing not synchronized between quoted and active contracts, extensive provider onboarding time and data mapping, plus intensified vulnerabilities, audit requirements, testing, and other complexities within the interactions between API and system.
For those undertaking a systems selection exercise, striking a balance between operational efficiency and richness of capability poses a challenge. Consolidating your processes and business lines on a single platform like Alfa Systems 6 offers the complete ensemble of cost savings, efficiency gains, and rich functional depth.
Introducing Total Originations in Alfa Systems 6
In 2024, as part of Alfa Systems 6, Alfa launches an Originations product with full capability for the US auto finance market. It covers direct and indirect lending, from quoting to funding, and represents an integrated part of the Alfa Systems platform, allowing customers to take advantage of Alfa Systems’ total capability.
Alfa has responded to changing market requirements, as well as customer feedback, by expanding the functionality of our Originations product to be the premium solution to occupy a place at the heart of your business, allowing you to operate a single system that incorporates our powerful Originations, Servicing, and Collections capabilities.
Watch Total Originations in action:
Total Originations for US auto finance in Alfa Systems 6
Total capability, across the entire originations journey and beyond.
Alfa’s best-in-class originations functionality is already established with a string of notable brands with international footprints. They harness its robust suite of tools, which includes campaign management, complex quoting, underwriting and credit conditions, credit snapshots, line-of-credit approvals, and a powerful credit decision engine; all exposed by a suite of flexible APIs.
Today, we're witnessing a dynamic shift in the market landscape. In addition to a growing trend in direct lending (see below), compelling developments include the emergence of new asset types, not all of which rely on franchised dealers. There's greater accessibility to customer data, with the increasing acceptance of modern data sources like Open Banking, facilitating the safe expansion of originations volumes.
The adoption of innovative technologies is empowering automation, ushering in a new era of efficiency. Users can benefit from easy, invisible integrations with custom service providers, such as intelligent document reading. The use of no-code integration layers, as well as workflow and rules that incorporate business logic, can streamline processes further. Document metadata or KYC data can be compared with data from credit snapshots, with business rules triggering automated workflows or a feed into credit decision engines and scorecards, resulting in rapid, automated responses for a large proportion of decisions. This heightened level of automation releases valuable resources, leaving users time to deal with more complex, higher-margin transactions.
Exploiting new direct lending channels
In the US, the trend of increased direct sales, and therefore lending, gains momentum with the growth in EVs and the desire to own the customer relationship. Tesla has been at the forefront, paving the way for direct-to-consumer sales, a model adopted by EV companies like Polestar and Lucid, who operate without franchised dealers. This movement has prompted some established brands to create new, EV-focused entities, and while the extent of permitted direct sales varies from state to state, a pure online sales journey remains an option - albeit with some inconvenience.
The direct-sales model is changing the game for both OEMs and dealers. The shift to direct-to-consumer sales allows OEMs to realize higher price points since dealerships must adhere to the MSRP and can no longer undercut one another.
In Europe and the UK, where legislation doesn't present a barrier to direct sales, there is a notable shift towards this model.
Today two-thirds of consumers and more than 80% of younger car buyers are open to the concept of digital retailing. Whether it's checking availability, sourcing a valuation, booking a test drive, paying a deposit, or organizing finance, 60% of car buyers would like to do these key jobs online.
The Alfa Systems 6 Total Originations solution
Upholding our commitment to enabling excellence in both direct and indirect lending, Alfa continues to set the standard in the industry.
Total Originations in Alfa Systems 6 offers choice and versatility, allowing you to design your own direct lending capabilities using the full suite of APIs, combined with workflow- and AI-powered, fully automated underwriting. Alternatively, you can handle quote requests from dealers through pre-built interfaces and leverage the multiple user journeys provided out of the box. Optional add-ons allow for more complex solutions through a wider range of functionality.
Meanwhile, larger OEMs benefit from superior functionality for dynamic, dealer-specific campaigns updated seamlessly via APIs with no downtime. With price-setting moving increasingly from the dealers to the OEM, the reactive ability for volume brands to adjust prices quickly, in order to meet targets, is increasingly important.
In an increasingly digitized world, customer buying habits have changed, and an agency model provides a consistent and transparent purchase journey, whether that’s online, in a physical showroom, or a combination of the two.
For the niche asset financing company, Alfa Systems' decisioning engine provides automated credit decisions and scorecards, without the need for integrations.
Total Capability: Further enhanced in Alfa Systems 6
Meeting the complex end-to-end lifecycle demands of successful finance providers.
Leveraging Alfa's experience in customer processes, Alfa Start offers auto and equipment finance companies a cost-effective and streamlined solution. Alfa Start is a preconfigured product that covers the entire asset finance lifecycle, from originations to collections processing and remarketing, including regulatory reports and documentation. With Alfa Start an implementation can reach live production in less than 24 weeks. Easy integration with legacy systems or specialized software providers is facilitated through a full suite of APIs, providing a seamless experience.
Alfa’s global experience across diverse industries means that we support a vast array of financial products and services. Unlike niche players, Alfa's platform supports lease and loan products, including wholesale, serving both retail and commercial customers. With a highly experienced team of engineers and implementation consultants, clients can harness Alfa’s flexibility to model their desired financial product precisely. Recent investments in usage-based pricing and revolving credit facilities have further enriched the product range to address emerging requirements with forward-thinking solutions.
Total Capability: Meeting challenge and opportunity
Alfa Systems 6 can transform your business, open up new revenue streams, and bring heightened productivity to your operation.
If a finance company owns the entire customer journey, then they own the relationship, and can ensure the best possible customer experience. If a customer is seeking an auto loan, the finance company can provide a direct, tailored quote with no need to pay a dealer. Furthermore, they own that customer’s data and can perform analysis for future revenue opportunities, understanding their needs and predicting future behaviors. They can also explore integrations with niche software providers and apply them throughout the customer journey. By integrating with just one system, these initiatives can be executed more swiftly and with greater flexibility, delivering more efficiency and value. Alfa Systems 6 can serve as this one system, providing multiple branded solutions while retaining customer journey ownership.
Choosing a platform that supports a complete range of product types, with customizable processes based on configuration, allows a finance provider to achieve greater flexibility for different products and processes when demand requires - without having to invest in alternative systems or technological enhancements. Business change, training, and testing can be performed across a single platform, increasing efficiency.
Changing business cases, and the need to grasp sales opportunities in an environment where a rapid turnaround is key, are more achievable with a platform that supports different product and asset types, as well as end-to-end processes. Alfa Systems 6 supports simple auto loans, through wholesale products to complicated leases and credit facilities, with complete processes for usage-based products and service subscriptions.
The trend towards direct lending and OEM-set pricing requires instant pricing updates for dealers, based on sales target progress for different models and areas. The API-driven campaign management tools within Alfa Systems 6 allow these dealer prices to be updated dynamically and on demand, without any system updates. This can be combined with Alfa System's multiple branding capabilities, to allow full flexibility for finance companies offering finance-as-a-service to other brands.
Sophisticated automation tools that can be accessed via the Alfa Systems platform, including REST APIs, webhooks, complex workflows and business rules, and a credit decision engine, allow finance companies increasing accuracy in automated processes, and rapid decision-making from indirect or direct sales.
Reducing implementation costs and accelerating the implementation process is essential. In the current unpredictable environment, characterized by a rising operational cost base, utilizing a single platform for all capabilities can save both time and resources in achieving business objectives.
Alfa works with a diverse set of financial institutions across various industries, with clients ranging from relatively small finance providers to some of the largest and most complex global banks and finance companies. As consultants and active market participants, Alfa possesses extensive knowledge of industry processes and best practices; insights which have been built into the preconfigured Alfa Start products. Utilizing the Alfa Start products as a base allows access to implementation cost savings, as well as potential operational cost savings through best-practice processes for your industry.