FORT WORTH, Texas — AmeriCredit announced this week that former Ford Motor Credit executive Joe Poi has joined the company as senior vice president of credit risk management.

Discussing his recent move with SubPrime Auto Finance News, Poi said the allure of helping AmeriCredit go full-spectrum was just too much to pass up.

In his new role, Poi will head up AmeriCredit's credit, risk management department, which is responsible for the company's custom scorecards, loss forecasting and credit risk analysis. The department is also charged with the duty of enhancing the company's strategies to reduce credit exposure.

Bringing with him almost 20 years of experience in the industry, Poi most recently served as director of risk management with Ford Credit. He held a variety of other roles with Ford and Ford Credit in the past, covering finance, engineering, marketing and sales.

"I'm thrilled to be here. It was time for a change, the way I look at it," Poi told SubPrime Auto Finance News. "AmeriCredit is a smaller but growing company. There's a lot of activity going on, a lot of growth initiatives. I'm at a company where I can see that I can add some pretty important perspective from the rest of the industry on the new initiatives we are taking."

Poi also talked about AmeriCredit's goal of going full-spectrum, and explained how he can help the company achieve its mission.

"It's a unique perspective and position to be in because most other companies are going to be heading in the other direction — going into subprime," he pointed out.

"We're actually moving up the credit spectrum. With my background at Ford Credit, having been at a larger company — one that's captive and understands pretty well the prime and near-prime part of the business — being able to be here as we move up the spectrum is really a good opportunity.

"I think part of the advantage of being here as we go up the spectrum and calibrate our scorecards, we need to ensure that the characteristics that we view both from a subprime and near-prime lender will also transform into the prime lender and prime credit decision. That's an excellent challenge," he concluded.