Former Santander exec Josh Baer named AutoFi president

Digital auto retail and finance platform AutoFi tapped Santander Shopper USA head of pricing and technique Josh Baer as its president.

Baer, whose resume additionally contains greater than a decade at Capital One, will run AutoFi’s lender and enterprise segments. AutoFi on Thurday mentioned he’ll give attention to dashing development in these companies with “transformative retail and financing experiences” which is able to assist shoppers meet client preferences.

AutoFi’s software program permits customers to browse dealership stock and see financing gives tailor-made to the dealership’s preferences. It dealt with greater than 1 million financing requests to lenders and was related to greater than $three billion in gross sales final 12 months.

“AutoFi is a pioneer within the digitization of the auto {industry},” Baer mentioned in an announcement Thursday. “The corporate is uniquely positioned with producers, retailers, and lenders to ship digital experiences that may drive the way forward for the market. The chance to form such a big and sophisticated {industry} is compelling .”

Baer began at Capital One in 2004 as a program finance lead and left in 2017 as its client credit score danger analytics head, according to his LinkedIn page. He joined Santander as its head of danger of operations technique and have become its chief danger officer earlier than taking the pricing and technique management position in January 2021, in accordance with the profile. He has an MBA from the College of California at Berkeley and a finance diploma from James Madison College.

“Bringing finance innovation to the auto ecosystem is a essential a part of our technique and differentiation,” Kevin Singerman, who continues to be AutoFi’s CEO, mentioned in an announcement Thursday. “Josh’s expertise in credit score, lending, automotive and danger administration brings deep area and working experience to raised serve our seller, OEM and lender clients with industry-leading merchandise.”

AutoFi famous that it employed Baer after asserting in March it had raised $85 million from investors — a gaggle that included Santander Shopper USA.

“With this extra capital we are going to double down on our mission to carry pleasure and belief on this market by enabling banks, captives and specialty finance firms to raised help the large transition of offline to on-line commerce,” Singerman mentioned in an announcement then.