1978Westlake Financial was founded as the Buy-Here-Pay-Here division of the Hankey Automotive Group. Initially a captive entity of three downtown Los Angeles franchise dealerships, Westlake has since grown into one of the largest and most experienced servicer of sub-prime automotive contracts in the United States.

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1986The first "Buy Program™" was born. It was little more than a Lotus®-based spread sheet programmed to approve a deal based on two major factors: customer creditworthiness and deal structure. Customer credit was scored based upon credit history, job/residence stability, and debt-to-income ratio. Deal structure relied on the manipulation of term, ACV to loan, and down payment. This early version of The Buy Program™ allowed Sales Managers to approve the deals without having to wait for Westlake to get back to them.

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1991A more refined version of The Buy Program™ was developed that was continuously modified based upon historical trends in the various portfolios. It was also at this time that Westlake began offering servicing and collections of accounts to selected franchise dealers throughout Los Angeles on a "full recourse" basis.

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1994Westlake phased out origination of "service only" portfolios and introduced the first "non-recourse" Buy Program™ to Southern California dealers. Recognizing that the independent dealer community was for the most part an under-serviced market, and that their traditional methods of customer financing and funding were inefficient, Westlake decided to originally target the small "mom & pop" stores who would normally not be able to get access to this type of structure-focused financing.

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1995The efficiency and ease of the new DOS-based Buy Program™ was easily and instantly recognized by the dealer community. Dealers were no longer restricted to stringent "bank hours" and finance company "stipulations" that seemed too restrictive. Approvals were available to the dealerships 24/7/365, with terms that the dealer controlled. Westlake experiences 35% portfolio growth. Westlake begins working on the technology that would lead to web based origination.

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1997Westlake completed the design and implementation of the internet-based "under-writing" system. Unique to the finance industry, this system allows dealerships, Westlake field representatives, and internal Westlake personnel to track the flow of contracts from start to finish in a real-time basis via Nowcom's DealerCenter® website. This integrated platform has given Westlake a huge advantage in efficiency over other traditional finance companies.

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1998Westlake began broadening its scope to include programs that would make it competitive within franchise dealerships as well. Programs such as "Preferred" and "Platinum" were added on top of their deep and wildly popular "Standard" program. Never losing focus of their original core of independent dealers, a profit-sharing ProfitBuilder™ program was later added to slot below the Standard program for Buy-Here/Pay-Here type customers. It was at this point in Westlake’s history where the company took on the form seen today.