FLADCO News

As dealerships focus on making every penny county, it’s a great time to review all kinds of expenses – especially the ones that don’t appear on your balance sheet. Things like costly chargebacks caused by cancellation of F&I products like GAP coverage.

GAP insurance has long been a great way to provide customers with a valuable service while creating an excellent revenue stream, and as money gets tighter and loans get longer, it’s more important than ever for customers to get GAP protection.

The trouble for dealerships is that most GAP plans have a painful flaw: Early cancellations and the subsequent chargebacks dealers must pay.

The U.S. Department of Defense has changed its interpretation of a key part of the Military Lending Act (MLA) to allow dealerships to offer Guaranteed Asset Protection (GAP) to service members and their families. Now all military customers who finance a vehicle purchase can choose GAP coverage.

Last week we told you about a unique high-mileage vehicle service contract plan called WiseMVP. This protection from Wise F&I is more important than ever, as customers keep their cars longer and more trades come in with well over 100,000 miles.

The average age of Americans’ vehicles is nearly 12 years – the highest figure ever recorded. Increased reliability and economic forces are keeping vehicles on the road longer than ever. When they finally do hit dealer lots as trades, it seems inevitable these older vehicles will be destined for unprofitable auctions.

After a year of solid growth in sales that defied predictions of a decline, most analysts are calling for a very challenging 2019 for automotive sales. December was down for most automakers. Economic and political uncertainly coupled with higher interest rates mean that U.S. auto sales could fall by as much as 4% according to some forecasts.

Given the bumpy road ahead, it has never been more crucial to maximize the profit on every sale you make. We thought it would be a great time to repost a piece we did last year about how to make the most out of your F&I offerings

As F&I becomes an increasingly important part of per-vehicle revenue, it is critical to deliver F&I offerings that customers want to buy. Automotive News says that F&I profits now exceed those on new cars themselves. The top public dealership group, AutoNation, now averages $1,789 in F&I profit per vehicle, and some privately held dealerships are easily outpacing that impressive figure.