Consumer Portfolio Services (CPS) recently continued its robust roll out of artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to provide greater payment flexibility and more efficient processing of retail installment contracts.

The company — which provides indirect auto financing to individuals with past credit problems, low incomes or limited credit histories — closed out the year with three major partnerships to improve efficiencies, dramatically reduce funding time and offer more payment options for customers.

The company chose Informed.IQ to automatically calculate income, collect and clear credit stipulations and dealer docs, creating a better dealer and consumer experience throughout the auto lending process.

CPS said through a news release that it expects Informed.IQ’s AI tools to significantly reduce the funding time.

For decades, CPS has focused on bringing improved intelligence to auto lending, becoming a leader in FinTech initiatives that enhance the front-end review and financial decision-making process.

CPS is also helping automate the backend servicing experiences and has partnered with Prodigal to better manage the collections and servicing workforce and process. Prodigal is a consumer finance intelligence solution that uses AI to analyze agent and borrower conversations and enhance profits, experience, and compliance.

For a customer standpoint, CPS named PayNearMe as its primary payments partner. This partnership will accelerate the finance company’s digital transformation and deliver a frictionless customer experience across all digital payment types.

CPS indicated PayNearMe will eliminate onsite cash payments, dramatically reduce the number of customers who pay by check and transition the majority of customers to electronic payments through greater pay options.

“Our whole business has become artificial intelligence and machine learning driven, from credit to servicing,” CPS chief operating officer Mike Lavin said. “Adding these three partners to our backend and front-end system at the start of the new year enables us to make the loan funding process easier, provide more accessible payment options for our customers, and use AI to effectively improve collections by reducing the workload.”

As of Sept 30, CPS has purchased more than $19.7 billion in contracts since the company began operations in 1991. The company currently services a total managed portfolio of approximately $2.7 billion with about 185,000 active customers.

In late first quarter, CPS said it will be introducing a new AI credit decision model that will improve fraud detection, lessen credit losses, and increase approval rates.

Then later in the year, CPS said it will be introducing an AI-focused scorecard for its recovery and repossession system that will combine delinquency data with machine learning allowing the company to better analyze when the right time is to recover a vehicle.