Brand Automotive Financial Services

It is not often that a person gets to start a brand new division at a bank that has been in operation for over 100 years, but that is exactly what Dave Reese has done. As President of Brand Automotive Financial Services (a division of Brand Bank), Reese was provided with a ground floor opportunity to establish an automobile lending group for the Lawrenceville, GA-based bank. Bartow Morgan, Jr., CEO of the bank who is the great-great-grandson of the bank's founder, chose Reese to take on this challenging task because he has over 22 years of automobile lending experience. To jump-start his new division, Reese, in turn, chose the leader in indirect lending software to handle his indirect lending: Teledata Communications, Inc. (TCI).

Of course, Brand Automotive did not rush into this decision lightly. Reese, a self-described "tough customer," explains the process: "We put together a task force and looked at numerous vendors over the course of a few months. We selected TCI's DecisonLender software because we were convinced that it had the depth of functionality that we were looking for and would be able to easily grow with our needs." He and his team especially liked the ease of use of DecisonLender and its point and click interface. Reese says "We really liked the functionality and flexibility of the system. ... I wanted an enhancement added to the system called the Management Queue, and some custom reports put together. TCI has done a great job responding to my needs and requests, plus they were very responsive to our questions during the sales cycle."

Brand Automotive wasted no time in getting on the fast track: in just a few short months the bank had over 80 dealers across northeast Georgia signed up and was funding over $7 million dollars of loans per month! TCI's software was a strong contributor to this phenomenal success because it provides all of the workflow and automation tools that Brand needed so that they could concentrate on working with dealers and building their book of business. "Through hard work and with the help of TCI's system, we have become real players in this market," enthuses Reese. Two loan officers were trained on the system and now stay quite busy. Reese recalls that "it was an easy learning curve for them and TCI really went above and beyond with training us and getting our team up to speed quickly."

Reese wasted no time in putting the system through its paces, and enjoyed the benefits of having of having about 20% of the applications autodecisioned by DecisionLender in just a few seconds. Those that required manual decisions were quickly dispatched by the loan officers. Reese emphasizes that "the main summary screen in DecisionLender is excellent. At a glance, it provides us with all of the important information that we need to make an informed assessment. If you need to do further research, you just click on one of the tabs and quickly drill down into more detailed data."

As with any type of lending, it is critical to keep an eye on credit quality. Reese says that "TCI's system allows us to control our risk levels in a very granular manner. With all of the tools and reports in DecisionLender, we can easily manage our loan portfolio." TCI is helping the bank grow beyond its traditional lending areas of small business and construction and drive new revenue with automobile loans. Reese is excited about the future: "We have a lot of talented people here and plenty of room for even more growth. DecisionLender has been an excellent choice for us and we have really established a great relationship with TCI that will serve us well going forward."

For more information about TCI, visit http://www.tcicredit.com