What’s better than being nominated for an award? Being nominated for two awards! Here at Connected Car Finance, we are delighted to announce that we are up for two awards at this year’s Car Finance Awards.
A year of hard work has paid off in a way that we are extremely proud of. As a business, we have been nominated for Best Broker at the Car Finance Awards 2022. Our very own Luke McCarthy has also received an individual award nomination for Best Relationship Manager – showing that the dedication of our team has been rewarded on both a company and an individual level.
Best Broker
Over the past year, we have made a concerted effort to provide an excellent service to our car dealer partners and our lenders. Our success at achieving this can be seen in the increase to our dealer network. In the last 12 months, we have expanded our active transacting dealer network from 435 dealers to 589 – an increase of 140%.
Our total pay-out over the last year also increased from the previous 12 months. In our first year of trading, we made a total pay-out of £59 million. This year, this total pay-out amount rose to £90 million.
We have also put emphasis on protecting our clients from fraud and identity theft. We have embraced new technology, such as Open Banking, to protect our lenders from fraud when they are making financial transactions. Additionally, we have introduced new protective measures including facial recognition as a part of our ID verification process to protect dealers and customers from identity theft. It is through these technologies that we have better protected our car dealer and lender clients and their customers from the dangers of the online world.
Talking of the online world, we are helping our independent car dealers to create an online presence through our partnership with Car Dealer 5. Car Dealer 5 help dealerships to build an online presence through website creation and marketing. To further support our car dealers, we subsidise the cost of the website, helping their business to bloom.
Our team also offers our clients a 24/7 service, meaning that our clients can contact us whenever they need to. We assist all of our lenders, dealers and end-users this way in order to ensure that they have a smooth and productive experience with us.
Best Relationship Manager
Luke McCarthy has had an exemplary year. After smashing his targets and providing an unparalleled level of service to our clients, he has also become a father and has been nominated for Best Relationship Manager at the Car Finance Awards 2022. It is the second year running that Luke has been nominated for Best Relationship Manager, and we really hope he wins as there is no one more deserving of the award.
During his first year as a Relationship Manager he achieved 860 deals from a target of 590, exceeding his target by 145.76%. His second year was similarly impressive in that he achieved 998 deals from a target of 805 (123.98%). These scores show that Luke is hitting almost 100 deals per month. This means that his completed deals have amounted to a jaw dropping £17 million in advance.
Achieving this amount of deals is made all the more impressive by the fact that Luke started off with a dealership base of 0. When Luke first took on the role of Relationship Manager, he had to create partnerships with car dealers across his area. In the past 2 years, he has grown his network of dealers from 0 to over 100.
As well as Luke’s excellent sales record, what’s perhaps most impressive about him is the level of dedication he shows to each and every dealership client, and to the rest of the Connected team. Luke regularly travels up and down the country in his own time to provide support for other Relationship Managers.
He has also taken on the responsibility of mentoring 4 new team members, helping them to learn the skills of the trade. Again this has meant providing out-of-hours support for these team members, showing just how committed Luke is to our company, his clients and his colleagues.
Continuing to Grow
It goes without saying (though we’re going to say it anyway!) that we are extremely grateful and proud of our team for their achievements this year – we don’t know what we’d do without you! To be nominated for two awards is a huge achievement, and we feel that to know that we are doing all the right things to provide an excellent service to our car dealers and lenders is the perfect way for us to be able to further improve our practices and provide an even better experience in the future. Now let’s just hope we, and Luke, win!
