Mickey Quinn, president of Spectrum Dealer Alliance and a recent inductee to Bobit Business Media’s F&I Hall of Fame, pointed out an obvious truth about finance-and-insurance products at this year’s Agent Summit. 

His point brought up an area of opportunity for auto dealerships: getting information on their F&I products online. 

“We’re going to see the consumer want to be more educated than they are,” he said during a panel discussion with his fellow inductees, “because right now they can get the information on the car on the internet. They really can’t get the information about the F&I products.” 

Shopping for cars online has become common consumer consumer practice since the Covid pandemic, when for the most part people couldn’t visit dealerships, not in the way they had before. During the lockdowns and amid the wariness of public contact that followed, they got used to researching on their devices. 

F&I products are typically another matter. When the customer arrives at a dealership, it’s likely the first time they’re introduced to the menu of choices now available beyond financing.  

But as many industry veterans like Quinn frequently mention, today’s consumer doesn’t want to feel blindsided. He wants to be guided into discovery, even if it’s self-guided. Your dealer clients, therefore, have a lot to gain from making their F&I lineups visible and clear on their websites and other channels. 

Since many consumers now hold onto their cars far longer than in the past to avoid today’s prices and interest rates, F&I products will naturally be more appealing to them. Add to that the inflation on parts and labor since the pandemic. Getting product information on the dealer website where it’s easy to access and understand, even compare options, could go a long way in boosting F&I sales. 

Agents, you can be agents of change when it comes to encouraging your dealer clients to add this layer of knowledge to one of their best marketing tools. As front-end margins thin down from pandemic-era highs, F&I is an increasingly valuable profit center and should come with its own online real estate. 

As Quinn pointed out, “Any consumer that’s not buying a product that’s going to take them beyond warranty, I mean, they’re making a huge mistake.”