Westlake Financial and Pagaya Partner to Enhance Automotive Credit Decisions

Westlake Financial has partnered with Pagaya Technologies to provide Westlake’s auto dealer partners access to Pagaya’s tech-enabled credit-decisioning product.

Westlake Financial is an automotive FinTech company with nearly $24 billion in assets under management, while Pagaya is a global technology company specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for the financial ecosystem, the companies said in a Thursday (Sept. 7) press release.

With the new partnership, Westlake Financial aims to facilitate smarter and more empowered credit decisions, ultimately improving the car-buying experience for customers and creating more loans for a wider range of consumers, according to the release. By leveraging Pagaya’s credit-analysis platform, Westlake can enhance its existing decisioning model and provide competitive approvals to dealers, enabling them to fund more loans.

“Pagaya’s AI technology and two-sided lending network allows us to unlock new opportunities for our team and facilitate seamless transactions, ultimately helping our dealers sell more, and our customers get approved faster,” Don Hankey, chairman of the board of Hankey Group, the parent group of Westlake Financial, said in the release.

The partnership between Westlake Financial and Pagaya is an expansion of a pilot program conducted in 2021, the release said. The program focused on increasing access to auto financing for consumers of two auto retailers to provide greater financing access for everyday customers.

Through the collaboration, Pagaya’s auto partners can make quicker and more accurate credit decisions, expanding their product offerings and improving the overall customer experience, per the release. Additionally, Pagaya’s fully pre-funded model allows its auto financing partners to approve more loans without using their own balance sheets.

“Through this expansive partnership, our tech-enabled, two-sided lending network will integrate with the thousands of Westlake dealers and dealer groups, accelerating the growth of our auto product and our presence in auto dealerships across the country,” Pagaya Co-founder and CEO Gal Krubiner said in the release.

In another move in this space, FinTech company Upgrade said Aug. 30 that it expanded its services to include consumer auto loans. Upgrade aims to “combine the automation of a FinTech lender with a more personal relationship with dealers reminiscent of traditional lenders,” the firm said.

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