CLINTON, Miss. — With wholesale vehicle prices continuing to be strong and financial institutions ramping up recovery efforts to leverage this condition, Phil Hanks believes he and the rest of the team at Primeritus Financial Services are “catching the industry at the right time.”

Hanks elaborated about the plans he and wholesale veterans Cam Hitchcock and Chuck Tapp have for the forwarding and remarketing company.

“We think the industry is ripe for an organization that’s well-capitalized, professionally run and values customer relationships and the agency partnerships more than anyone,” stated Hanks, the rebranded company’s president and chief operating officer.

Hanks shared an outline with Auto Remarketing about Primeritus’ list of services, as well as the other executives charged with carrying out the mission in the growing forwarding company space.

“In banks’ effort to be more efficient and focus more on their core competencies, we think there’s more of a drive to outsource that non-core activity to a third-party organization like ours, especially our ability to manage of these relationships for the bank and be one point of contact versus anywhere from three to five hundred points of contact,” he explained.

“We feel like we’re positioned well for how the industry is evolving, which is more of a consolidated, single point of contact high-efficient process than what was before, a multipoint probably not the most efficient environment,” Hanks continued.

“Then you’re looking at regulatory demands. Those are ever increasing every year. Those are the things we manage for the banks so they can focus on their core activities,” he went on to say.

Primeritus gave Auto Remarketing a blueprint for the list of services it intends to offer banks and other financial institutions.

Repossession Management

Hanks explained Primeritus acts as an outsourced business partner for its customers by managing the repossession process for customers not having the capabilities or desire to perform these functions inhouse.

Through proprietary methodologies and by leveraging a network of repossession firms throughout the country, Primeritus believes it can centralize and manage the repossession process to ensure client’s collateral is recovered in an efficient and timely manner.

As part of our repossession management service offerings, the company includes a number of standard benefits:

— Flat-fee pricing to standardize recovery and allow for accurate modeling through the collections.

—Dedicated manager that reviews portfolios daily to ensure performance and quality control.

—National servicing of accounts, including Alaska and Hawaii, for one flat fee.

—Customer-centric teams that intend to provide effective real-time communication.

—Dedicated impound team that handles the negotiation, payments and release of collateral not in possession of the debtor, including the advance of all monies owed on the unit.

—Transportation of all secured vehicles to appropriate auctions or storage locations.

Skip-Tracing

The genesis for Primeritus Financial Services came when Hitchcock, Tapp and Hanks partnered with a New York-based private equity firm to acquire the assets of ASR Nationwide.

“We feel like we have a really good foundation. One of the core strengths of that business was skip-tracing, which is critical these days,” Hanks highlighted.

As a result, Primeritus wants to provide skip-tracing services to its customers as a standalone locate service or as an addon service for accounts being serviced through its repossession management group.

“This service offering is designed to leverage indepth, investigative research and online profiling to identify the location of debtors and collateral that has become hard to find and not been located through traditional methods deployed by recovery agents or callcenter collectors,” Hanks said.

“We employ and empower the finest talent available in this and all area to accomplish these objectives,” he continued. “Our investigations focused on leveraging, correlating and analyzing all available data in effort to quickly put the pieces together to locate debtors and collateral,” he went on to say.

Transportation, Titles, Liens and Redemptions

Primeritus indicated it can deliver collateral units in a timely manner to the auction for remarketing and liquidation needs.

The company also added it is equipped to track titles, secure liens and facilitate redemptions, a service Hanks thinks can significantly assist turnaround of asset liquidations.

“Working closely with state DMVs and a variety of lenders, our staff offers an efficient and time-saving solution,” Hanks noted.

Remarketing

Hanks believes this element to Primeritus’ portfolio offering might shine the most since he, Hitchcock and Tapp, combined, have close to 50 years of professional experience with companies such as ADESA, Manheim and OPENLANE.

“We feel we have the best industry experience. We think the remarketing avenue is a vital piece to this entire process. It’s just as critical as the recovery piece in getting the highest value for the vehicle,” Hanks emphasized.

“Chuck’s background in online remarketing is critical to our organization as a lot of lenders are exploring that opportunity more and more in an effort to liquidate the vehicle in a more efficient, cost-effective manner than going through the physical auctions,” Hanks continued. “But the physical auctions will still be a primary source of liquidation for us. We’ll definitely utilize both resources, both online and in-lane efforts.”

Executive Team

Beyond Hitchcock, who will act as executive chairman of Primeritus, and Tapp, who will serve as Primeritus’ chief executive officer, the company detailed other members of its executive team.

—Joe Mappes, senior vice president of sales and marketing, has been charged with leading the company’s external growth. Prior to joining Primeritus, Mappes held senior positions at Auction Broadcasting Co., PAR North America and ADESA.

—Gail Clark, chief financial officer, who previously service as a financial consultant for Merrill Lynch and an agent for the Internal Revenue Service.

—Christi Kaldon, vice president of operations, who previously managed multiple departments including direct leadership, coaching and development of ASR Nationwide’s skip-tracing services. Kaldon also served as a branch manager and consumer banking officer with AmSouth Bank.

—Kim Pena-Molnar, vice president of operations, who previously was a vice president at Renovo Services. Molnar owns 20 years of industry experience, including stops at Remarketing Solutions, Manheim and ADT Automotive.

—Kelly Delavoye, executive director of sales and marketing, who previously worked for American Recovery Service and USA Recovery Service.

—Keith Baggett, director of vendor relations, who during the past 14 years held various positions with Remarketing Solutions and Renovo Services. Before entering the repossession industry, Baggett spent more than six years working with DIRECTV.

Future Expectations

Hanks said he understands other companies already exist in the space Primeritus Financial Services is venturing, but he and the team are undaunted.

“We’re obviously very eager to compete with these guys,” Hanks told Auto Remarketing. “We know them very well, particularly me since I’ve been in this space for the last roughly 12 years. We think the differentiator for us is a number of things, the capitalization of our business, the strength of our balance sheet, and the factor we will put more emphasis on the partnership with our supplier network and our customer relationships.

“Not only will we have the metrics in place so our customers know how they’re volume is performing, but also the supplier network will be a collaborative effort in order to ensure the best possible, most efficient process is in place,” he continued.

“We will also look to do acquisitions in this space as well,” Hanks concluded.