Driving financing
When buying a car, people often consider the kind of vehicle they want — a Chevy Impala, a Toyota RAV4, a Ford Ranger. Rarely, if ever, do they think about the lender that will finance the sale. So, few people know what Hunter Allen knows — that Capital One is the largest auto-loan company in the U.S. aside from auto manufacturers’ own loan departments.
“Every car sale is an agreement between a dealer, customer, and lender,” said the vice president of product and go-to-market for Capital One Auto. “We provide the lending part of that equation.”
About two years ago, Dallas-based Capital One Auto began providing a lot more. The $76 billion auto loans division of Capital One Financial Corporation pivoted from just lending to also developing and providing software products designed to help car dealers optimize their sales.
“Our packages provide what we do best — financing, underwriting, and customer marketing,” said Allen, a 2006 leadership studies and political science graduate. “In the last two years, the sales of our product bundles have grown exponentially. Now dealers are asking us to build more products.”
To increase the dealer product business, he works closely with the sales, product, and marketing teams. “I ask our sales teams, ‘What do our customers want?’” he said. “We synthesize the information our sales force brings back and make it digestible for the product team, so they can create products that benefit the car dealers and their customers. Then I ask our marketing team, ‘How do we get our message out in the simplest, most compelling way?’
“Recognizing that I’m never the smartest person in the room, I strive to foster an environment where everyone can bring their best ideas and the best answer wins.”
Although this project has been one of the most rewarding experiences of his career, he said his most significant challenge came in 2020. At that time, he was overseeing the onboarding and titling experience for Capital One Auto customers. The COVID-19 pandemic upended the way the company did business.
“Car sales plummeted because dealers could not get new cars or parts,” the executive said. “DMVs shut down, so lenders could not perfect their interest on car titles. We had to think creatively about how to develop and implement a new titling process that would enable people to keep driving cars when the world was in upheaval.”
Most importantly, he prioritized the safety of employees who had to come to the office daily to process the paper titles.
“We ran multiple shifts a day to ensure social distancing,” Allen said. “And we fed people. Even though my job didn’t require me to be in the office, I spent a lot of time there. It was important for people to see I was in the boat with them. My understanding of how to lead with empathy grew.”
He credited the Jepson School of Leadership Studies with teaching him a systematic approach to problem solving, something he said he used as a practicing lawyer at a Dallas law firm and then at Capital One. “In Dr. Terry Price’s class, we learned to break down an argument into its constituent parts and then defend or rebut each claim,” he said. “This is how you solve problems in business.
“Recently, my five kids saw me drinking from a University of Richmond glass and one asked, ‘How come you have so much Richmond stuff?’ To which my wife replied, ‘Your dad really loved his college.’ My liberal arts education taught me how to think and communicate clearly. I had a transformational experience at Richmond.”