About a year ago, I did an informal survey of F&I product providers. They were, and still are, moving toward a service-oriented architecture that prints forms and originates contracts online. For providers who do not have a forms service, Provider Exchange Network will host forms at a nominal charge. We offer this as a convenience, even though providers are moving away from it.
Lenders, however, are not moving in this direction. This is mainly due to stricter regulation of finance contracts, and also the disparate experiences of the two groups. In the late nineties, finance sources – both captive and independent – developed online credit systems. They subsequently moved to aggregators like Dealer Track, and many single-lender systems shut down.
So, while product providers have retained their online systems, and support their own services for e-contracting, most lenders do not. This is why my colleagues in Lender Services are busy loading their forms library, while we are unloading ours.
Virag Consulting 