Keith Hayward, head of unit stocking at Lombard

Sword Apak’s implementation of its wholesale finance system (WFS) with Lombard Asset Finance (Lombard) is first of its kind. Lombard, part of Royal Bank of Scotland Group, identified a potential market opportunity in the automotive finance sector and decided to go for it.

Keith Hayward, head of unit stocking at Lombard explained the company recognised that many large dealership groups sought to become more independent by moving away from manufacturer vehicle funding. By doing this the dealers would gain greater bargaining power over the manufacturer when negotiating stock level volumes and pricing. It would also give them the freedom to select the best finance deal from an independent stock funder once the manufacturer’s interest free period had ended. Dealer groups would also no longer be tied to any reciprocal retail-finance business with the manufacturer’s captive finance provider. 

By providing wholesale floor-planning as a separate stand-alone facility Lombard could help the top tier UK dealerships realise their ambitions and at the same time gain a key competitive advantage over its closest floor-planning rivals.

Hayward stressed: “For Lombard’s business model to become successful a specialist and robust wholesale floor-planning system was required that would support fully automated, high volume, unit processing with sufficient control to mitigate risk. This would allow Lombard to target the top 100 UK dealer groups that require stock funding with the objective of building a portfolio volume of over £500m.”

The system also needed to interface seamlessly with the dealer’s dealer management system so that the user did not need to re-key information from one application to the other. Thus eliminating any extra administrative burden for the dealer.

After screening the marketplace Lombard selected Sword Apak’s WFS system. It was implemented within five months and provided to Lombard on an “on demand” basis.

Hayward said: “Lombard’s rapid growth to become one of the leading independent automotive stocking finance providers is a remarkable success story which can largely be attributed to the successful implementation of Sword Apak’s WFS system, and supported by its dedicated staff. In just three years Lombard has built a portfolio volume to the value of £670m funding 31,000 vehicles across 51 dealer groups and generating some 33% growth year-on-year. We could not have achieved this success without Sword Apak.”