NASHVILLE, Tenn. — After launching itself as a recovery management and skip-tracing services provider back in March, Primeritus Financial Services acquired another industry player on Thursday — Renovo Services.

Primeritus executive vice president of sales and marketing Joe Mappes said the company expects to provide further information about the new combined product portfolio and roadmap during the next several months.

In passing the torch to Primeritus, Kevin Flynn, former chairman and chief executive officer of Renovo Services, said, "I'd like to thank the whole team of employees for all they have done to make Renovo Services an industry leader. I would also like to thank the Renovo Services customers for their business and their trust. I believe the combination with the team at Primeritus is a true win for Renovo employees and its customers."

Cam Hitchcock, executive chairman of Primeritus Financial Services, said, "The completion of this acquisition represents another major step in Primeritus' evolution and growth in the recovery services and skip-tracing industry.

"Primeritus and Renovo will be a great combined entity," Hitchcock continued. "By combining our complementary technologies, deep industry expertise, sales channels and customer bases with a best in class agent network, Primeritus will be redefined as the company best able to assist clients in increasing their business agility."

Primeritus CEO Chuck Tapp went on to say, "In addition to great technology and strong customer relations, Renovo Services and their companies bring the talent of their employees in operations, systems engineering and customer service.

"We believe this expansion increases our ability to innovate and develop solutions for our customers, and will further enhance our investments in training, compliance and technology initiatives," Tapp added. "Primeritus can now begin to execute its plan to combine agent networks and integrate operations and customer care functions within these two organizations."

Wholesale veterans Hitchcock, Tapp and Phil Hanks partnered with a New York-based private equity firm to acquire the assets of ASR Nationwide, rebranding it into Primeritus Financial Services and recapitalizing the company for growth.

At the time of their March announcement, Hitchcock, Tapp and Hanks said they were looking to leverage their 50-plus years of collective industry experience and strong client relationships in the auto finance industry to pursue an aggressive growth strategy.

Hitchcock, a partner at Elysian Advisors and board member of two private equity-backed companies in the asset remarketing space, previously was president and chief executive officer of ADESA's Dealer Service Group, which includes Automotive Finance Corp.

Tapp had most recently been vice president at OPENLANE and held a number of executive positions at leading automotive service providers and financial institutions, which included responsibilities over sales, marketing, operations and remarketing.

Hanks, a long-tenured executive at Manheim who most recently served as vice president of Renovo Services upon Renovo's acquisition of Manheim's Remarketing Solutions division, is president and chief operating officer of Primeritus.

Hanks shared an outline with SubPrime Auto Finance News back in March 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 said.

"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.

Hanks told SubPrime Auto Finance News back in the spring that he understood other companies already existed in the space Primeritus now operates, but he and the team are undaunted.

"We're obviously very eager to compete with these guys," Hanks said in March. "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.