SBS’ Post

Transcript

Hi, Andy. Hey, how are you? Thank you. I'm great. How are you too? Very well. Beautiful evening here on this end. Can you introduce you quickly for the people who will see that content? Sure. I'm Andy Coborn's. I'm Executive Vice President for Legal and Regulatory Affairs at the National Automobile Dealers Association. And ADA is the trade association that represents automobile dealers in the United States. We represent them before the federal government. We the Congress, the administrative agencies. We interact on their behalf with automobile manufacturers, with lenders. Which is the people who are who are here. We also educate them on their duties and also on best practices to how to be better at being dealers and and serving their customers. According to you without the most important trends that we will have to monitor in the financing industry in the next years. Well there are, it seems to me there are two, two big trends that are happening simultaneously. There are many things that are going on in the industry is in flux, a lot of changes coming on simultaneously, but there are two, two big ones. One is that we're having a once in a lifetime. Evolution of the products that are sold. This is the electrification of the vehicles. The world is moving towards electrification. But we we gotta move in the proper pace to ensure that we the consumers are met. Their interest and needs are met and we are. We are working very hard to get that pace right to not move too fast not to go too far too fast because we will leave the consumer behind and of course they ultimately it's only the consumer that matters in this instance so so the the how we handle electrification. How we roll it out over what time frame we roll it out is very important. The other is that through digitization and the advancements in technologies the entire way that motor vehicles are distributed is also going through some changes there. We are looking to an evolved system but we are also one that is is in our view going to be appropriately dominated by the franchise dealer system that the the and and this is a lot of what I I. Speaking about here was focused on that those issues how how did the the distribution system is evolving. There's a fair amount of talk here in in in the EU about a concept called agency. We really we view it somewhat differently. The we view it as identifying the appropriate functions that a distribution channel needs to deliver for the manufacturer, for the product producer and then find out what channel is best at doing those functions and there's some choices. But the the first step is what do you need your distribution channel to do. And then whether that's a direct sales model or a dealer, a pure franchise dealer model or some hybrid of the two, we need to to evaluate which one of those is most cost effective at doing it, which one produces the most value for the entire industry and the entire ecosystem. We're pretty confident that when looked at that way you'll see that it's the the franchise dealer model that works best and that's what I was explaining when I spoke earlier today to the attendees at the conference. But the we're not wed to one flavor of that approach which would be agency there. There's reasons why Europeans are are we European OEM's are looking at agency. It's largely a function of some specialized laws in the in the in the EU, both the GDPR, the privacy laws here and the block exemption antitrust laws and falling out of that are some reasons that they're considering agency. But but the real questions are what are the functions that a a distribution channel needs to provide. And who can provide at most cost effectively and deliver the most value and that's what we were pleased to be able to express our views on because we think that at least in the United States, but we think globally the the franchise dealer model is the right way to go as an ecosystem. If there is one thing that we could do better, what would it be? Well, I think we that we we need to view ourselves as an ecosystem that we're we're all in this together. There are joint responsibilities and joint opportunities that the the goal should be to grow the pie as big as possible and the path to that growth. I think is is is collaboration and working, working as a single ecosystem. And when I say that I mean a single ecosystem by brand. So it's GM is is going to go with its dealers and with its suppliers and with its lenders and it will battle in the marketplace against against Volkswagen or against BMW or against Ford or against Toyota or Honda. All of the of the various enterprises are each going to go in as groups and. Is as as enterprises and and and do it. I think if we view ourselves as ecosystems we will we will do the best for the consumer, the best for the dealers, the best for the OEM's, the best for the lenders. Thank you. Thank you Andy for they are very interesting insights and I I wish you all the best for the rest of your time in Paris. Thank you.