and business loans to dealerships that represent automotive brands within the Volkswagen (VW)
Group, including Audi, Bentley, Skoda, VW, and VW commercial. Its strategy also encompasses the
provision of finance and insurance products to the Australian business and consumer market via
such dealerships. Products offered include finance leases, novated leases, commercial hire
purchase, chattel mortgage, and consumer loans. These products are originated primarily through
about 170 dealerships across Australia. VWFS Australia's strategy includes increasing its
penetration rate (i.e., the percentage of VW Group-manufactured vehicles financed by VWFS
Australia). Its penetration rate is currently about 58%.
As a captive auto financier, VWFS Australia's primary target market is potential acquirers of a new
vehicle manufactured by the VW Group; however, VWFS Australia's origination channels include
dealerships that are "multimanufacturer." In addition, it has partnered with Jaguar and Land
Rover, which do not have finance arms in Australia. Accordingly, the collateral pool for this
transaction is diversified by the inclusion of about 48.5% (by discounted pool balance) of
contracts that are secured by motor vehicles manufactured by a company outside the VW Group.
Although the dealerships are incentivized with commissions and, in some cases, volume bonuses,
all credit decisions remain centralized at VWFS Australia's head office. In addition, such incentives
are clawed back in cases when, before the expiration of the preagreed time frames, contracts are
terminated early or the financed vehicle is repossessed. Dealership performance is also tracked
via hindsight reviews, month-end arrears performance, and quarterly reviews of relative dealer
performance.
The products being securitized in this transaction include VWFS Australia's "ABS Book," which
includes commercial hire purchase, chattel mortgage, and consumer loan contracts secured by
new or used passenger or light commercial motor vehicles. Although such vehicles may include
passenger vehicles used in businesses such as couriers and limousines, such vehicles are subject
to additional credit-assessment criteria. The types of motor vehicles that VWFS Australia will not
finance include trucks, buses, taxis, and commercial vehicles over 4.49T.
VWFS Australia may provide finance to borrowers for additional products such as comprehensive
insurance, gap insurance, extended warranty insurance, and vehicle servicing; however, each of
these is the subject of a separate contract to the vehicle finance contract.
VWFS Australia's credit function has a reporting line to senior management that is separate to its
sales function. While dealers may enter finance applications via the system's Access Catalyst
dealer interface, all credit decision-making is centralized with VWFS Australia's credit team.
Certain credit decisions are built into Access Catalyst and cannot be changed by the dealers, such
as the maximum contract terms of 60 months for commercial hire purchase and chattel mortgage,
and 84 months for consumer loans (provided that there is no balloon, otherwise a maximum
contract term of 60 months would apply).
Applications submitted are assessed via VWFS Australia's scorecard, introduced in 2012, where
they are also subject to checks against credit policy. Applications may be auto-approved or
declined, or referred to retail credit, where they are assessed by a credit officer who holds the
requisite delegated lending authority. Applications that are outside policy, such as vehicle age or
balloon policy, are referred. If an application is declined, then resubmitted with changes, the new
application would not be automatically referred. It could be auto-approved or referred to a
different credit analyst and potentially be approved. However, an application will be locked down
in the system if is resubmitted more than six times. Between January and December 2018, around
55% of applications were auto-approved, and of the 44.8% of applications that were referred,
around 86% were approved. Initially, when the scorecard utilized in the decision-making process
was implemented, VWFS Australia compared the arrears performance of contracts that were
auto-approved with manual approvals and observed that the auto-approved contract arrears were
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