Drive customer-first lease success
How OEM captives can play a key role in modern D2C vehicle sales
The automotive retail landscape is undergoing a fundamental shift. For more than a century, OEMs relied on dealership networks as intermediaries to distribute vehicles and auto-finance, helping customers to acquire their next vehicle while driving car sales volume. Both OEM captives and independent banks have long supported this model, including in used vehicle finance and for brands without their own financial services arm.
Last Updated: April 2026.
Today, advances in data, analytics, and digital commerce are reshaping that model. Direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales are gaining traction, not by replacing dealerships, but by connecting digital and physical touchpoints into a single hybrid retail journey.
In response to increasingly digital-first buyer journeys—where most customers begin their research online and expect to see a clear monthly finance rate alongside the purchase price—OEMs are moving toward showrooms with integrated finance that combine vehicle configuration, purchase prices and monthly finance/lease rates in one seamless experience. This integrated finance layer may be delivered by a captive, a partner bank, or a leasing provider and embedded directly into the digital buying journey with accurate rates reflecting car configuration and product and service options. For this model to work effectively, pricing must remain consistent across every touchpoint. A D2C journey quickly breaks down if the monthly rate shown online cannot be reproduced in the showroom, at the dealership, or in the contract itself.
As an automotive finance provider, whether an OEM captive or an independent bank, you sit at the center of this transformation. You manage pricing, contracts, and customer data across the vehicle lifecycle. Within regulatory boundaries and applicable data-sharing constraints this data can become a powerful enabler of more relevant customer engagement, expanded product offerings, and new models such as usage-adjusted subscriptions, D2C leasing, and embedded services.
However, regulatory frameworks may limit how financial agreement data can be shared with OEM sales organizations—particularly in renewal or proactive sales contexts—requiring carefully designed operating models to unlock value while remaining compliant. To do this at scale, a retail-focused finance and contract engine is essential, one that orchestrates the journey behind the scenes while allowing front-end flexibility. Just as importantly, that engine must govern pricing centrally so that every quote, offer, and contract reflects the same underlying calculation logic across channels.
Shifting customer behavior, changing roles
Dealerships remain an important part of the automotive buying experience, particularly for private individuals and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This applies across both OEM-backed dealer networks and independent used-car dealerships, where multiple finance providers often compete at the point of sale. However, their role is evolving. According to the EY Mobility Consumer Index 2025 global survey, 41% of vehicle buyers prefer to complete their purchase in person—down from 61% in 2024.
This decline points to a gradual shift in how the journey begins: while the final vehicle and finance transaction may still be concluded at the dealership, the search, exploration, comparison, and configuration stages are now predominantly driven by online activities, even though physical interaction with the vehicle remains a key decision factor.
Evidence shows that in-person engagement continues to play a critical role in final decision-making. Deloitte’s research shows that more than 80% of surveyed consumers across the US, UK, Germany, and Japan want to physically interact with a vehicle before purchasing, particularly for test drives. Yet many also want to reduce, rather than eliminate, the number of dealership visits. Customers are not choosing between digital or physical channels; they expect both to work together seamlessly, depending on the stage of the journey.
That shift is reflected in growing consumer openness to buying directly from manufacturers. In the Deloitte 2025 Global Automotive Consumer Study, 46% of US consumers, 40% of UK consumers, and 38% of German consumers surveyed said they would be interested in acquiring a vehicle directly from the OEM. In Japan, 34% expressed the same interest. At the same time, digital vehicle platforms increasingly embed finance offers from multiple providers—demonstrating that integrated finance is becoming a core component of the online retail experience, regardless of whether the provider is a captive or an independent bank.
Together, these trends reinforce the need for hybrid retail journeys that allow customers to explore and evaluate monthly finance options online, involve dealerships where physical interaction is required, and then move seamlessly from quote to contract and into digital, in-life self-service throughout the contract lifecycle.
From the customer’s perspective, interactions with the OEM, the dealership, and the captive finance company form a single journey, not separate systems or organizations. Traditionally, this experience has been orchestrated by the dealership. After the finance or lease contract is signed, the captive becomes the long-term contractual partner—historically engaging with customers via phone, post, or later email. Today, that relationship is increasingly digital, continuous, and experience-driven. This puts you in a unique position to move beyond transactional contract management and take ownership of the end-to-end customer relationship.
Orchestrating D2C and dealership models
As digital sales channels evolve, many OEMs are exploring agency models to rebalance dealer relationships. In this model, customers can buy, lease, or finance vehicles directly from the captive—often starting online—while dealers act as local agents for test drives, delivery, and after-sales services.
At the same time, independent and specialist banks must integrate seamlessly into both OEM-led (typically those OEMs or brands that do not have their own captive) and multi-brand dealer platforms—offering competitive rates, instant credit decisions, and digital contract execution within the same embedded retail journey. This approach combines pricing control and consistency with the personal touch and physical presence customers still value. In practice, that means D2C success depends not only on attractive digital journeys, but on governed calculation and quote consistency from first configuration through contract signature.
For captives, this model unlocks new opportunities. Beyond vehicle financing, Deloitte’s research shows strong consumer interest in adjacent services such as vehicle insurance purchased directly from the manufacturer. While value-added services such as insurance, maintenance plans, and extended warranties are not new—and some of which have been capitalized rather than managed as subscription services—digital D2C models enable these offerings to be presented more transparently, bundled more flexibly, and managed more dynamically throughout the contract lifecycle. This shifts them from static add-ons at point of sale to configurable, lifecycle-driven components of a broader mobility proposition.
A central role for auto-finance providers
In the long run, this integrated approach benefits all stakeholders. Finance providers—whether OEM captives or independent banks—gain a central position in a connected ecosystem enabling consistent pricing, operational efficiency, and a unified view of the customer across channels. Dealers benefit from clearer role definition and operational simplification, focusing on vehicle expertise, customer interaction, delivery, and after-sales services, rather than managing fragmented finance processes. Customers benefit from transparency, convenience, and the ability to manage their contracts digitally.
With solutions like the SOFICO Miles Retail Suite, auto-finance providers can power this hybrid retail journey by acting as the pricing, contract, and lifecycle engine behind OEM-owned front ends and dealer touchpoints. Customers move fluidly between channels, while you retain control over contracts, data, and long-term value creation. This is what enables D2C and assisted sales models to work together: front-end flexibility combined with centralized, controlled pricing that stays consistent across the entire retail journey.
By owning and orchestrating the full journey—from quote to contract signature and in-life self-service—you are well positioned to shape the future of automotive financing. The shift is already underway. The opportunity now is to lead it.
