Lease End Simplifies the Process of Exiting Auto Leases
Lease End, an auto-industry-focused fintech company based in Lehi, Utah, is taking a new approach to the lease-end process for consumers by offering fully online transactions.
Tech News
Lease End (Lehi, Utah), an auto-industry-oriented fintech company, is concentrating on making the end of a lease as painless as possible. With three offices in Utah and Idaho and over 200 employees, Lease End provides curated assistance with loan origination, lease buyouts, documentation, registration, and vehicle service contracts.
After creating and successfully exiting Doba, an online wholesaler business, Williams started to experiment in 2018 with the disruption of the leasing industry. Williams realized he could create substantial value for consumers by “transacting 100% online, through technology that we built, through our platform, you do not have to go back to the dealership. It's just a simple financial transaction, moving your lease payment from an OEM to a new financial institution that wants to loan you money to buy out your lease”.
Lease End solves customer pain points in four distinct ways. It reduces the time required to resolve a lease buyout, taking it from days to minutes. It offers clear, no-hidden-fee loan options, giving the customer clear options. It eliminates the hassle and stress of negotiating with a dealer. Finally, through partnerships with top financial institutions, it provides competitive loans for all credit profiles.
“We're originating these loans for banks and communicating between parties, and the bank will pay us a commission for lending this money to the driver," explained Williams, when he sat down with TechBuzz to tell us about Lease End recently. "That's number one. Number two, we sell vehicle service contracts. When you're under a lease, your vehicle is always protected, and you're always under warranty therefore, you have peace of mind. Third, we provide GAP insurance in cases where it makes sense for everyone. It covers the difference between the value and the payoff amount. Lastly, we do have a documentation service, which we use to pay our title and registration teams to process your title work. That is what allows us to enable our drivers to avoid the slow DMV process.”
Speaking about the goal of the company, Williams continued, “We empower our drivers to take control and treat this lease transaction as a true asset because, often, there is equity involved with the lease that most consumers don't even know about. We mail documents and work behind the scenes with DMVs and third-party companies through both software integration and manual work. We know exactly what it will take to buy out your lease in every state. It's really educating the driver that they're in the driver's seat they have the ability to execute this lease and purchase it if it makes financial sense for them. It is about making the process as seamless as possible, saving both time and money.”
“We have 208 current employees working in three offices: one in Lehi, Utah, and two in Idaho in Burley and Twin Falls. Our Burley office houses our title and registration team, our CFO and CRO as well as myself. The Twin Falls location includes all of our inbound calling teams. Lehi, we have 100 people, our CTO, and our COO. We also have a large outbound sales team there. Working with the Credit Bureaus, we know exactly 3 million people who are coming to the end of their leases this year. This year alone we have helped over 15,000 people exit their leases on favorable terms,” stated Williams.
“We've been doing this since 2021 so we're going to be four years old. From the start, we set the whole thing up like a true tech FinTech business. We still haven't educated enough people to know their options at the end of the lease. We want to start a relationship earlier with out drivers, give them calculators and the ability to understand the value of their asset during the whole life cycle of their lease”.
Reflecting upon the success of Lease End, Williams announced, “We're going to do $42 million in revenue this year. We have a 30% EBITDA margin, so we keep a lot of that revenue. We've never taken on investment, and we don’t owe anybody anything we own. We are super excited and plan to double the number of transactions to 26,000 and generate $80 million in revenue. Net margins should also increase to 35%.”
To learn more about Lease End visit https://www.leaseend.com/
