Navistar has re-launched Navistar Financial's retail captive financial services.
A provider a tailor-made, competitive loan and lease financing options, Navistar Financial was founded in 1949 but in 2010 its retail business was outsourced to GE Finance. This month, Navistar pulled that service back in house.
Patti Brault, Navistar Financial vice president of sales, told CCJ Monday at the American Trucking Associations Management Conference and Exhibition in Austin, Texas, that the structure of the new captive financial services organization allows it to evolve to best support the development of customers' business potential in a transformative transportation and logistics landscape.
"Through the life of that loan, if you have an issue, the captive finance company is going to stand with those customers because we're interested in those customers coming back to us," she said. "It's not so much about this truck. It's a business relationship that leads to the next truck, and the next truck."
As part of TRATON Financial Services, Navistar Financial will leverage global synergies and years of global multi-brand experience to service customers in the U.S. Navistar Financial offers customers new and used equipment ownership and leasing options which include truck bodies and vehicle modifications, extended service contracts and service solutions, and will soon extend to insurance offerings and preventative maintenance contracts.
Brault noted that Navistar Financial re-enters the market in a time of considerable financial uncertainty – one where access to cash is tight and interest rates are high – yet added that the timing couldn't have been better.
"Difficult times are the perfect time for a captive to come back because we're going to lean in," she said. "We're going to lean into that customer whose bank-lines are full.... third parties may be pulling back, and we're not. We're in here as an integral member of Navistar and of TRATON. It's a great time for us to be in because liquidity is drying up somewhat."
