Press
Modives CEO, Fred Waite, discusses CheckMy Driver with Brooke C. Furniss at the NADA conference
Fred Waite, with Brooke C. Furniss during Facts Not Feelings Live, streamed from NADA 2024
Las Vegas, Nevada, February 29, 2024 —
Brooke:
Well, welcome back into Facts Not Feelings Live, streaming from NADA 2024, so exciting. As we've talked about a couple of times, it's been really, really hot. We're starting to get the shade over us a little bit and I'm looking over here, I'm like, "Oh, I'm actually in the shade a little bit here. It's kind of nice. I don't feel like I'm overheating as much." Might be able to put on the jacket. We'll see, we'll see. And we have with us, if you are unfamiliar, you're going to get to meet this gentleman right here. We got Fred from Modives. No, Modive?
Fred:
Modives.
Brooke:
God, I was close. I was practicing before and I was I'm like, "Look at the shirt." I'm like, "Ah, phonetically it's M-O... I don't know." Once again we're going to hand the mic over to him and let him do his thing. But we were introduced from the one and only super connector, Laurie Halter. Love her to death, she's amazing. Unfortunately can't be here, but we are so excited and miss her like crazy. And I was just blown away with some of the stuff that you all are doing right now. And we're going to get into the takeaways from NADA and all that. But let's start with your company and what you guys do.
Fred:
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for being here. I wish I was in the shade. I feel like the chicken McNugget underneath the McDonald's light. What Modive's done is we've taken a really arduous process of insurance verification that typically starts with the sales person asking for an auto ID card. And immediately, there's a fallacy that that actually means anything, because it doesn't, it's just a piece of paper. It means maybe you had it at some point but it could have been canceled.
And so the dealership would typically make the phone call to a Geico and wait on the call center for 15 to 30 minutes because carriers keep reducing their call center headcount. But it's a must do because you have to make sure your customer has active and adequate insurance.
And so, we've automated that process, 97% automation. Now it's simply a text or email from the salesperson to a consumer consent process where they just give us the credentials. We realtime grab all the data and bring back to the dealer. They're active. Almost as important if not more, is it adequate? Because if you see the data, people are reducing their coverage because of the prices.
Brooke:
Oh, it's crazy.
Fred:
And if you lease versus purchase, there's different requirements. And then there's accuracy. Is my address the right address? Is it the right name? And so, it really helps facilitate... It gives all that labor back. But the other real large issue is compliance. And so now with GLBA and some of the changes, you can't have auto ID cards and driver's license sitting around and paper and all that. That all goes away. It's all digital and it's a simple email or text. And they get all that time back and now they're compliant.
Brooke:
That's so amazing. I was talking a little bit yesterday with some people about the joys of not just GLBA, which is all clumsy and fun, but the car rule coming down the pipe, which is just crazy what they're asking. It's just nuts. Knowing that you're compliant, you've got all this man that just makes... Thank you. Thank you very much from all of us, man. And so, it was really cool to hear about what all you do and how the integrations. You integrate with the DMSs, correct?
Fred:
Yep. Fully headless as well.
Brooke:
Nice.
Fred:
It can be a queue for the dealer or it can be fully integrated to any of the DMSs, which are having great conversations with them.
Brooke:
I love it. I love it. Okay. Now this is your first NADA. Oh my goodness. First NADA. One, what inspired you to come here to the amazingness and the Super Bowl of all things? I get that, but what inspired you all to come here?
Fred:
When we were talking to folks about launching in the auto space, NADA came up every single time. And it's big.
Brooke:
Yes. Yes. It is.
Fred:
When people say, "Hey, I'm in the North Hall and I'm in the west," I'm like, "Oh, sure. No, I'll be there in a second." I'm like, "What?"
Brooke:
No. See you in an hour.
Fred:
I'm like, "Do I need a tram to get to the North Hall?" It is massive.
Brooke:
Like an escalator that takes me there. I'm like people mover.
Fred:
It is. It is impressive. Not just the sheer number of people, but the quality of the conversations that you have there. A lot of conferences you go, there's clearly your vendor, customer. This is a different vibe, but it's really nice. Everybody's actually considerate and open to hearing how can they get better their really at the end of the day better the customer's experience because that's what matters.
And even in the insurance verification piece, the last, I think it was CDK or Cox that put out a report that said insurance itself, that process of verification can help or hurt 12 points on the SAT scores.
Brooke:
That's crazy.
Fred:
And so, it's nice to just be an environment where there's not a, "You're a vendor. Go over there."
Brooke:
You got to sit in this corner and you sit over here.
Fred:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Brooke:
The lunch table is split at this point.
Fred:
Exactly.
Brooke:
That's crazy. Okay. Your first time here. What has been one of your big takeaways, especially the being your first one?
Fred:
I would definitely say the takeaways have been the really open communication and partnership feel for everyone we've talked to. Whether it is a CDK or any of the other DMS systems. It is let's sit down and figure out a way to work together, not a way to keep things separate.
Brooke:
The wall gardens. Yeah, man, it is crazy and that's a big one for me as well. And you guys have solved a lot of problems and I love that. But what are one of the biggest challenges you're seeing going into 2024?
Fred:
I would definitely see a challenge around education because particularly the one of compliance, it's one of the things everybody knows.
Brooke:
They think they do.
Fred:
It's almost like insurance, honestly. You only care about it when you need it. And so compliance people are going to care about it when they start getting fined.
Brooke:
Yep. Got four dealer [inaudible 00:05:13].
Fred:
It's coming. It's coming for sure because this data is privacy. And so, everything that we do is consumer consent driven. You've got TCBA, DLE. I mean there's a lot of millions of the acronyms to make sure that at the end of the day all the data is protected. And I think there's an educational component. It's great that we save time. It's great that we automated a process, but it's not the really cool part of it, but you're compliant. You don't have to sit there and-
Brooke:
I'm not getting sued. This is nice. I like this.
Fred:
It's crazy. We talked to many dealers in the process. And they're like, "Yeah. Yeah, look here, I got seven emails." No, you can't do that.
Brooke:
No. No.
Fred:
And that verification process, it's not just when you're buying a car. A huge hole that we have found is loaners.
Brooke:
Oh, that's a big one. Yeah.
Fred:
We have case studies from dealers where somebody came in. Same process. You go to get a loaner and they're like, "Hey, I need your auto ID card." Person took it home, gal, brand new Hyundai Santa Fe. 19-year-old son took it out, rolled it. She didn't have insurance, they had to write the whole thing off.
Brooke:
Oh my God.
Fred:
It's a very needed process. But compliance should drive, but...
Brooke:
One would think. One would think.
Fred:
One would think.
Brooke:
Yeah, I mean anyone that's watching, if you're in a dealership right now, I'm sure that those loaner stories, those horror stories are going through your head. I've got one in particular where it was sent out, got shot up, just bullet holes all through it. They bring it back. "That was there when we picked it up." "Really? We had bullet holes in the car?" Yeah. No, we did not actually, it turns out.
Fred:
That's funny.
Brooke:
There's nothing they can do about it. It's just the entire side is full of bullet holes. I'm like, "What? Did you take it to a gun range? Where'd you take this vehicle?" But it's so important to do that. I love the compliance thing that Andrea Amico coming on here in a little bit. And he's Privacy4Cars, which is just, I don't know if you're familiar with them, but incredible product, what they're doing. Anytime I am in a car, yeah, it's just awesome. He's all about compliance. You follow him online and he's posting articles all the time just of how things being leaked or cars are taking data or whatever it may be. It's just-
Fred:
Well, I mean it's really a fraud preventer as well. Because think about it, if you're somebody intends fraud and you come in. And the first thing that happens is you need to get your insurance verified. Well, that means you have to give me your real phone number or email and you're going to go through a process. And I'm going to say, "Well, wait a minute that says Robert and your name, you told me your name's Steve."
Brooke:
"Hey, Billy Bob, what's going on over there?"
Fred:
That's going to be like, "Hey, I need to use the restroom." And then they'll never come back.
Brooke:
Yeah. The cops come in. "Hold on. What's going on?"
Fred:
Yeah. There's so many stories of the typical process of, "Give me your auto ID card." They take a picture and then usually that manually moves through the process.
Brooke:
Yeah, man.
Fred:
We've talked to a lot of people where at some point it goes to the person who's doing the registration, the titling, all that. And story after story that auto ID card is missing. They lost it. Now they got to call the customer who's already unhappy because now I'm giving you a third copy of something. All that goes away and it just becomes compliant.
Brooke:
And to bring that up, and I know you talked about this a little bit, I just want to circle back to this. Because compliance, when you're looking at it, and it might not be a sexy topic, I get that, it is so incredibly vital that you have it. To know that, hey, going paperless, I don't have the IDs sitting out, I don't have your social security numbers sitting out.
Now those are all fineable offenses from the FTC. Knowing that those things aren't there anymore, I mean what a just weight off your shoulder? It happens all the time. All the time.
Fred:
All the time.
Brooke:
The pay plans, I mean things are left out all the time. But that's one area where you can be like, "Oh, I don't need any of this anymore. That's nice."
Fred:
And it's all there for history from an audit perspective. See, there's no more physical copies of anything anymore. But the dealer has the option to go back and say, "Well, let me make sure I got audited. Or that person did leave and they got a wreck. I can go back." Because we pull back the actual auto ID card...
Brooke:
Nice.
Fred:
Real time from the insurance company. They have that at their disposal.
Brooke:
That's so nice. Well, Fred, it has been such a pleasure speaking with you, getting to know you. And Laurie once again, thank you for introducing us.
Fred:
Yes, Laurie, thank you. You're the best.
Brooke:
We miss you dearly.
Fred:
We definitely miss you.
Brooke:
We miss you dearly.
Fred:
Everybody's talked to me about Laurie. As soon as you... The whole room lights up when you mention her name. It's awesome.
Brooke:
I know, it's just you can't smile, but you say her name, you're like, just sunshine. It's so nice.
Fred:
She's a breath of fresh air.
Brooke:
She really is. She really is. And we hope that you're doing much better, hun. And yeah, just thank you so much for dropping by. Thank you for what you guys are doing. And yeah, I will say with this has been your first one, let's round out with the last question here. If you could give one piece of advice to someone that's looking to come to NADA for the first time, what is it going to be?
Fred:
It would definitely be bring a team. I don't know that we're going to get to every single booth. There's so many. There's so much opportunity. I would not hesitate at all to come back. We will be back next year and I would encourage anyone that is looking to be in this space to make the trip.
Brooke:
Love it. All right. Everyone, thank you so much. Thank you.
Fred:
Thank you.
Brooke:
Everyone, thank you for being a part of this. And we'll be back with someone that's lining up over here. I'm not sure who it is, but somebody who's awesome and fantastic. And everyone, we'll see everyone and a little bit. All right. Thank you.
Fred:
Take care.
Transcript
Brooke:
Well, welcome back into Facts Not Feelings Live, streaming from NADA 2024, so exciting. As we've talked about a couple of times, it's been really, really hot. We're starting to get the shade over us a little bit and I'm looking over here, I'm like, "Oh, I'm actually in the shade a little bit here. It's kind of nice. I don't feel like I'm overheating as much." Might be able to put on the jacket. We'll see, we'll see. And we have with us, if you are unfamiliar, you're going to get to meet this gentleman right here. We got Fred from Modives. No, Modive?
Fred:
Modives.
Brooke:
God, I was close. I was practicing before and I was I'm like, "Look at the shirt." I'm like, "Ah, phonetically it's M-O... I don't know." Once again we're going to hand the mic over to him and let him do his thing. But we were introduced from the one and only super connector, Laurie Halter. Love her to death, she's amazing. Unfortunately can't be here, but we are so excited and miss her like crazy. And I was just blown away with some of the stuff that you all are doing right now. And we're going to get into the takeaways from NADA and all that. But let's start with your company and what you guys do.
Fred:
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for being here. I wish I was in the shade. I feel like the chicken McNugget underneath the McDonald's light. What Modive's done is we've taken a really arduous process of insurance verification that typically starts with the sales person asking for an auto ID card. And immediately, there's a fallacy that that actually means anything, because it doesn't, it's just a piece of paper. It means maybe you had it at some point but it could have been canceled.
And so the dealership would typically make the phone call to a Geico and wait on the call center for 15 to 30 minutes because carriers keep reducing their call center headcount. But it's a must do because you have to make sure your customer has active and adequate insurance.
And so, we've automated that process, 97% automation. Now it's simply a text or email from the salesperson to a consumer consent process where they just give us the credentials. We realtime grab all the data and bring back to the dealer. They're active. Almost as important if not more, is it adequate? Because if you see the data, people are reducing their coverage because of the prices.
Brooke:
Oh, it's crazy.
Fred:
And if you lease versus purchase, there's different requirements. And then there's accuracy. Is my address the right address? Is it the right name? And so, it really helps facilitate... It gives all that labor back. But the other real large issue is compliance. And so now with GLBA and some of the changes, you can't have auto ID cards and driver's license sitting around and paper and all that. That all goes away. It's all digital and it's a simple email or text. And they get all that time back and now they're compliant.
Brooke:
That's so amazing. I was talking a little bit yesterday with some people about the joys of not just GLBA, which is all clumsy and fun, but the car rule coming down the pipe, which is just crazy what they're asking. It's just nuts. Knowing that you're compliant, you've got all this man that just makes... Thank you. Thank you very much from all of us, man. And so, it was really cool to hear about what all you do and how the integrations. You integrate with the DMSs, correct?
Fred:
Yep. Fully headless as well.
Brooke:
Nice.
Fred:
It can be a queue for the dealer or it can be fully integrated to any of the DMSs, which are having great conversations with them.
Brooke:
I love it. I love it. Okay. Now this is your first NADA. Oh my goodness. First NADA. One, what inspired you to come here to the amazingness and the Super Bowl of all things? I get that, but what inspired you all to come here?
Fred:
When we were talking to folks about launching in the auto space, NADA came up every single time. And it's big.
Brooke:
Yes. Yes. It is.
Fred:
When people say, "Hey, I'm in the North Hall and I'm in the west," I'm like, "Oh, sure. No, I'll be there in a second." I'm like, "What?"
Brooke:
No. See you in an hour.
Fred:
I'm like, "Do I need a tram to get to the North Hall?" It is massive.
Brooke:
Like an escalator that takes me there. I'm like people mover.
Fred:
It is. It is impressive. Not just the sheer number of people, but the quality of the conversations that you have there. A lot of conferences you go, there's clearly your vendor, customer. This is a different vibe, but it's really nice. Everybody's actually considerate and open to hearing how can they get better their really at the end of the day better the customer's experience because that's what matters.
And even in the insurance verification piece, the last, I think it was CDK or Cox that put out a report that said insurance itself, that process of verification can help or hurt 12 points on the SAT scores.
Brooke:
That's crazy.
Fred:
And so, it's nice to just be an environment where there's not a, "You're a vendor. Go over there."
Brooke:
You got to sit in this corner and you sit over here.
Fred:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Brooke:
The lunch table is split at this point.
Fred:
Exactly.
Brooke:
That's crazy. Okay. Your first time here. What has been one of your big takeaways, especially the being your first one?
Fred:
I would definitely say the takeaways have been the really open communication and partnership feel for everyone we've talked to. Whether it is a CDK or any of the other DMS systems. It is let's sit down and figure out a way to work together, not a way to keep things separate.
Brooke:
The wall gardens. Yeah, man, it is crazy and that's a big one for me as well. And you guys have solved a lot of problems and I love that. But what are one of the biggest challenges you're seeing going into 2024?
Fred:
I would definitely see a challenge around education because particularly the one of compliance, it's one of the things everybody knows.
Brooke:
They think they do.
Fred:
It's almost like insurance, honestly. You only care about it when you need it. And so compliance people are going to care about it when they start getting fined.
Brooke:
Yep. Got four dealer [inaudible 00:05:13].
Fred:
It's coming. It's coming for sure because this data is privacy. And so, everything that we do is consumer consent driven. You've got TCBA, DLE. I mean there's a lot of millions of the acronyms to make sure that at the end of the day all the data is protected. And I think there's an educational component. It's great that we save time. It's great that we automated a process, but it's not the really cool part of it, but you're compliant. You don't have to sit there and-
Brooke:
I'm not getting sued. This is nice. I like this.
Fred:
It's crazy. We talked to many dealers in the process. And they're like, "Yeah. Yeah, look here, I got seven emails." No, you can't do that.
Brooke:
No. No.
Fred:
And that verification process, it's not just when you're buying a car. A huge hole that we have found is loaners.
Brooke:
Oh, that's a big one. Yeah.
Fred:
We have case studies from dealers where somebody came in. Same process. You go to get a loaner and they're like, "Hey, I need your auto ID card." Person took it home, gal, brand new Hyundai Santa Fe. 19-year-old son took it out, rolled it. She didn't have insurance, they had to write the whole thing off.
Brooke:
Oh my God.
Fred:
It's a very needed process. But compliance should drive, but...
Brooke:
One would think. One would think.
Fred:
One would think.
Brooke:
Yeah, I mean anyone that's watching, if you're in a dealership right now, I'm sure that those loaner stories, those horror stories are going through your head. I've got one in particular where it was sent out, got shot up, just bullet holes all through it. They bring it back. "That was there when we picked it up." "Really? We had bullet holes in the car?" Yeah. No, we did not actually, it turns out.
Fred:
That's funny.
Brooke:
There's nothing they can do about it. It's just the entire side is full of bullet holes. I'm like, "What? Did you take it to a gun range? Where'd you take this vehicle?" But it's so important to do that. I love the compliance thing that Andrea Amico coming on here in a little bit. And he's Privacy4Cars, which is just, I don't know if you're familiar with them, but incredible product, what they're doing. Anytime I am in a car, yeah, it's just awesome. He's all about compliance. You follow him online and he's posting articles all the time just of how things being leaked or cars are taking data or whatever it may be. It's just-
Fred:
Well, I mean it's really a fraud preventer as well. Because think about it, if you're somebody intends fraud and you come in. And the first thing that happens is you need to get your insurance verified. Well, that means you have to give me your real phone number or email and you're going to go through a process. And I'm going to say, "Well, wait a minute that says Robert and your name, you told me your name's Steve."
Brooke:
"Hey, Billy Bob, what's going on over there?"
Fred:
That's going to be like, "Hey, I need to use the restroom." And then they'll never come back.
Brooke:
Yeah. The cops come in. "Hold on. What's going on?"
Fred:
Yeah. There's so many stories of the typical process of, "Give me your auto ID card." They take a picture and then usually that manually moves through the process.
Brooke:
Yeah, man.
Fred:
We've talked to a lot of people where at some point it goes to the person who's doing the registration, the titling, all that. And story after story that auto ID card is missing. They lost it. Now they got to call the customer who's already unhappy because now I'm giving you a third copy of something. All that goes away and it just becomes compliant.
Brooke:
And to bring that up, and I know you talked about this a little bit, I just want to circle back to this. Because compliance, when you're looking at it, and it might not be a sexy topic, I get that, it is so incredibly vital that you have it. To know that, hey, going paperless, I don't have the IDs sitting out, I don't have your social security numbers sitting out.
Now those are all fineable offenses from the FTC. Knowing that those things aren't there anymore, I mean what a just weight off your shoulder? It happens all the time. All the time.
Fred:
All the time.
Brooke:
The pay plans, I mean things are left out all the time. But that's one area where you can be like, "Oh, I don't need any of this anymore. That's nice."
Fred:
And it's all there for history from an audit perspective. See, there's no more physical copies of anything anymore. But the dealer has the option to go back and say, "Well, let me make sure I got audited. Or that person did leave and they got a wreck. I can go back." Because we pull back the actual auto ID card...
Brooke:
Nice.
Fred:
Real time from the insurance company. They have that at their disposal.
Brooke:
That's so nice. Well, Fred, it has been such a pleasure speaking with you, getting to know you. And Laurie once again, thank you for introducing us.
Fred:
Yes, Laurie, thank you. You're the best.
Brooke:
We miss you dearly.
Fred:
We definitely miss you.
Brooke:
We miss you dearly.
Fred:
Everybody's talked to me about Laurie. As soon as you... The whole room lights up when you mention her name. It's awesome.
Brooke:
I know, it's just you can't smile, but you say her name, you're like, just sunshine. It's so nice.
Fred:
She's a breath of fresh air.
Brooke:
She really is. She really is. And we hope that you're doing much better, hun. And yeah, just thank you so much for dropping by. Thank you for what you guys are doing. And yeah, I will say with this has been your first one, let's round out with the last question here. If you could give one piece of advice to someone that's looking to come to NADA for the first time, what is it going to be?
Fred:
It would definitely be bring a team. I don't know that we're going to get to every single booth. There's so many. There's so much opportunity. I would not hesitate at all to come back. We will be back next year and I would encourage anyone that is looking to be in this space to make the trip.
Brooke:
Love it. All right. Everyone, thank you so much. Thank you.
Fred:
Thank you.
Brooke:
Everyone, thank you for being a part of this. And we'll be back with someone that's lining up over here. I'm not sure who it is, but somebody who's awesome and fantastic. And everyone, we'll see everyone and a little bit. All right. Thank you.
Fred:
Take care.
About Modives
Modives makes personal insurance verification simple for auto dealerships, property management and landlords. With its patent-pending platform, Modives verifies auto buyer and property renter insurance, eliminating time wasted on manual processes, creating a better customer experience.
For more information or for press inquiries, please contact MediaRelations@Modives.com or visit Modives.com.