DALLAS — Drive Financial rolled out its revamped finance program for dealers late last week, and some of the changes include restructured tiers and various provisions that give dealers greater flexibility in setting up deals for customers.

To shed some light on the new program, Tom Dundon — chief executive officer of Santander Consumer USA — recently spoke with SubPrime Auto Finance about the changes and how they can benefit dealers.

Basically, with Drive Financial restructuring its tiers, fees run on a sliding percent basis instead of a straight-dollar basis, which officials said makes it easier for dealers to earn more profit on each finance deal.

According to the company, some of the other components include:

—Reduction of base fees and simplification of the Drive program by eliminating additional fees.

—Increased advance rate 10-20 percent.

—Back-end products on all deals.

—More advance for better credit quality applicants.

—Lower fees for better collateral, higher equity deals and shorter terms.

Considering the "wild swings" in used-car values, part of the changes include advancing off the market values from Black Book, Dundon explained

"We want to make it easier for dealers to work with us.  Our analysis shows that we can give dealers a more consistent advance rate when using Black Book because it is a better representation of the market value for used vehicles," he noted.

"The goal is to make sure the dealer has enough room in our advance to put as many deals as possible together while ensuring we are controlling risk," Dundon continued. "We believe we can protect the interest of the dealer, the customer, and ourselves by focusing on the market price of each unit.

"We realized in the past that it was difficult for the dealers to figure out which units would work for our program and we had to simplify the process," Dundon further explained. "It also allows our buyers more flexibility to help put deals together because they are able to pick from all the cars in the dealers inventory."

The company is also advancing $1,000 more and lowering discounts by $1,000 so far (on average).

Moreover,Drive Financial lowered and/or eliminated the minimum cash-down requirements for shoppers trading in vehicles.

And the company is also allowing dealers to include warranty and gap insurance on all their deals. Previously, only 20 percent on loans included these back-end products, but Dundon expects it to eventually climb to 80 percent.

"Our buyers have been given a lot more flexibility to put deals together with dealers," Dundon shared with SubPrime Auto Finance News. "We've got some automated processes so we're waiving some stips at approval. So it's a little easier for dealers to package up a deal and send to us."

The main reason all these changes were made, Dundon noted, was to ensure that dealers know what a consumer can afford and can help them find a vehicle that is both affordable and something the customer wants.

"We want customers to buy what they want and we want dealers to have the flexibility to sell any vehicle on the lot that they can afford," he pointed out.

Dundon later added: "When the economy was tougher, it was a hard time to be aggressive. Now we feel its time to be aggressive."

So far, the response from dealers has been strong, Dundon noted. In fact, the company has had to boost its staff to keep up with the demand.

"Dealers are excited, obviously. I think they feel it's a long time coming. Our apps have almost doubled since we announced the program," he shared. "We've had to add sales representatives and buyers to keep up."