Oh it absolutely can, even the local CU's pay 2-3% of the amount financed, while giving the customer the same rate as if they had walked in the door and picked up a check.

Dan O'brien tried to get rid of the entire F&I department, have the salespeople/sales managers sell the extended warranties and place the loan, and have a centralized location (manchester) do the paperwork via videochat with the customers in an office- ie; Come sit in this office in front of this monitor mister customer, you're going to be videoconferencing with so and so to finalize your paperwork.

The problem with this is an F&I Professional has 3 main priorities, in order of importance: 1: Protect the dealership 2: Ensure all contracts are 'bankable' (ie; you have all of the required stipulations, the contract is properly written, and all required signatures are present) 3: Sell ancillary products (Extended warranty, gap, etc).

Sales Managers only have 1: Sell cars.

So when you have people that come in on a car who have an 850FICO, and are good to go at the quoted $600+ car payment but maybe are on a fixed income of $2000/mo, a sales manager is incentivized to give them a raise. $4000/mo will carry that car payment, they're an 850 so the bank is unlikely to require proof of income, and the customer isn't being misled about what his car payment will be, so why not?

An F&I person who takes their job seriously will catch that, put a stop to it, and ensure that it never happens again. A "loan closing specialist" who's only job is to sign paperwork, not only won't catch that, they're likely inexperienced enough that they don't even know to look for it. An F&I job is easily 6 figures, I've been doing it about 5 years, and my first year, which was also my worst year, was $165,000. So short sighted dealers will start to question if that role is really worth it, because hell, a good salesman can convince someone to take a warranty along with the car, so why am I paying this guy tons of money to do that? Dealers with more years in operation or who have been burned by overly aggressive/fraudulent sales managers never question it. Because yeah, I'm expensive. But not having someone like me is even more expensive.