FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Southern Auto Finance Co. announced it has teamed up with TCI to use its DecisionLender software to automate and improve SAFCo's indirect lending activities. SAFCo said it expects the new platform to be launched during the second quarter of this year.
"At SAFCo, our goal is to make subprime financing as simple and efficient as possible, and we look to accomplish that by matching close, personal service with world-class systems," explained George Fussell, president of SAFCo.

"DecisionLender allows us to do just that," he continued. "It offers the sort of versatile, powerful solutions that our dealer customers would typically expect only from a larger, national lender, and gives us a combination of talent and technology that is unsurpassed in the special finance industry."

According to officials, DecisionLender is a real-time, Web-based loan origination and automated processing solution that is used by credit unions, banks, finance companies and other lenders.

More specifically, executives said once DecisionLender receives a loan application, it automatically prepares a file for a credit analyst's review by retrieving credit and product-related valuation data, calculating loan ratios and evaluating risk against SAFCo's specific criteria.

Furthermore, DecisionLender will apply SAFCo's unique rules and parameters to each loan application, assuring that the company adheres to its own set of best practices, officials said.

"We are very pleased that SAFCo has chosen DecisionLender, and are confident that (the company's) dealers and staff will be pleased with the ease-of-use, speed, reliability, security and flexibility of our Web-based DecisionLender system," concluded William Nass, president of TCI.

SAFCo said it specializes in providing special financing to more than 12,000 credit-challenged customers and currently carries $80 million in outstanding loans. The company operates in 15 states.

For more information on SAFCo, visit http://www.gosafco.com/. For more about TCI, visit www.tcicredit.com.