SAN FRANCISCO -

AutoFi says more than 10% of franchised dealerships now use its digital car sales and finance platform, as the fintech firm has enjoyed client growth of more than 125% so far this year.

With the coronavirus pandemic forcing dealers and finance companies to adopt more online practices to keep vehicles rolling over the curb and contract flowing into portfolios, AutoFi also added four technology and auto industry veterans to its leadership team. The newest hires include:

— Matthew Orlando, vice president of major accounts and strategic partnerships

Orlando joined AutoFi after more than 13 years with RouteOne, a joint venture created by Ally Financial, Ford Motor Credit, TD Auto Finance and Toyota Financial Services. He most recently served as RouteOne director of major accounts and director of OEM and partner strategy, focused on business growth in the areas of credit, eContracting, digital retail, and open integration strategy.

Earlier in his career, Orlando served in leadership positions within Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, United Technologies, AlliedSignal, and Motion Industries.

— Michael Helgesen, vice president of dealer success

Helgesen arrived at AutoFi with a history of industry leadership. He most recently departed Cox Automotive as senior divisional manager for Northeast and enterprise partnerships. He created a new Cox division to improve retail performance and operational effectiveness of digital retail applications for over 175 dealer groups, OEM partners, and major account groups.

Prior to Cox Automotive, Helgesen served as chief operating officer of Joe Rizza Ford and for the Grossinger Auto Group. Earlier in his career, he spent nearly 17 years with KIA Motors Americas, finishing as director of central region operations.

— Julia Link, vice president of marketing

Link brings two decades of experience at fast-growing technology companies encompass product marketing and management around business intelligence, security and SaaS platforms to her post at AutoFi.

Link previously was head of product marketing for the website security business unit of Symantec. She has held roles with SAP, McAfee (Intel), Jaspersoft (TIBCO), and Hyperion Solutions (Oracle).

— Ilan Dar, chief information security officer and vice president of engineering

Dar also possesses more than 20 years of experience, leading teams across engineering, product management and information security functions. Prior to joining AutoFi, he was the vice president and chief information security officer at risk management software platform company Sphera.

Dar also previously held leadership roles to drive product innovation and organizational efficiency at Avaya, LiveOps (Serenova), KACE (Dell) and Sybase (SAP).

Along with the new hires and growth within the franchised-dealer community, AutoFi’s recent milestones also include:

— Supporting two of the top four online-only dealers by using the AutoFi finance API to power their digital purchase process

— Automated decisions for more than 40 banks, captives and specialty finance companies

— Checkout experience served to customers 45 million times on 420,000 unique vehicles in August to date

— More than 100 integration partners

— 45% team growth in 2020 in support of dealer customers and product investment

Since the pandemic took hold in March, AutoFi said it has seen monthly submitted credit applications on its platform increase by 80%.

AutoFi chief executive officer and co-founder Kevin Singerman responded in a news release by saying, “2020 has been a disruptive year presenting so many unpredictable obstacles. We’re committed to helping our customers overcome these challenges through technology innovation.

“Digital sales is the fastest-growing segment of automotive retail, and we welcome our new leaders to join us in our mission of helping dealers thrive with digital sales and financing,” Singerman went on to say.