Dealer Andrew Walser understands millennials' desire for speed and convenience. That's why his company got rid of finance and insurance managers at its 23 dealerships.

"If you go to an Apple store, everyone's a cashier there," said Walser, CEO of Walser Automotive Group in Minneapolis. "The process becomes much more streamlined that way."

The Walser group eliminated its F&I managers five years ago and instead created a hybrid process consisting of sales staff and a finance center. The goal was to speed customer transactions and improve talent recruitment. It made more sense considering that sales skills differ from financing skills. Now Walser can hire people who better fit each role.

The plan stumbled at first, with the average F&I revenue per vehicle falling. But with some tweaks, the group has shortened transaction times and raised customer satisfaction scores and revenue.

"Most of our stores are in a 20 group," Walser said. "Our average cost to sell a car is now half that of a traditional dealer's cost."

Creating a hybrid

In October, Walser, 50, took over as CEO of the group his brother, Paul Walser, 62, ran for 20 years. Paul Walser now focuses on acquisitions and manufacturer relations.

As part of the leadership changes, Walser brought back Candice Crane as chief talent officer. Previously, Crane headed recruiting and human resources there. She designed the sales compensation and recruiting strategy. Most recently, she was vice president of dealer solutions at Hireology, a Chicago hiring and retention technology provider. The move to eliminate F&I managers is steeped in recruiting, Crane said.

"I was with the organization when we went through this change," Crane said. "The discussion started with, 'How do we recruit recent college graduates?' We needed to stabilize pay. The largest personnel cost in the store is finance managers. So if we could reallocate that spending to the sales floor, we could hire more salespeople."

Crane's team devised a hybrid model. First, Walser created a centralized finance center to work with lenders to secure customer financing. The sales representative presents the customer with the menu of F&I products and, separately, one of 27 people working in the finance center arranges the financing.

"We separated the finance manager's job" from the sale of menu F&I products. That's because a traditional finance manager job requires two skill sets. It needs someone who is detail-oriented and good with numbers, yet they need to be extroverted and personable enough to sell products. Those are two different people," Crane said. "Now, we'll go after a person who is good with finance for one job and a college grad for a sales job."

Andrew Walser: Millennials desire speed and convenience.

Simplify it

Those who work in the finance center are often college graduates with finance degrees who do not want to sell. They earn $14 to $19 an hour with no commission.

"These are not your traditional finance managers; they are more administrative," Walser said.

By making these changes, Walser also had to limit the F&I menu offerings to the four most salable products: extended service contracts; guaranteed asset protection; an environmental package consisting of rustproofing and paint sealant; and lease care, which protects against damage done during a lease.

"If you have one person selling the car, you have to make it more simple for them and the customer," Walser said.

The new process initially showed mixed results. The good news was that eliminating F&I managers cut the average time from when customers agreed to buy a vehicle to when they took delivery to 45 minutes, from 90 before the changes. The bad news was that F&I revenue per vehicle dipped $50 on average.

Over time, per-vehicle revenue recovered. Today it's $375 higher than the baseline average when Walser had F&I managers.

"I believe it's simply because we saved the customer time and the person they worked with the entire transaction is someone they trust," so they want to buy more F&I products from them, Walser said.

Lenders benefit

Plus, all of Walser's stores are achieving higher customer satisfaction scores since eliminating F&I managers. But those who like it most are the lenders, Walser said.

"We now control where the paper of all 23 of stores go, so the lenders have a one-stop shop. They don't have to go to each of our stores and build a relationship with each F&I manager there, who may leave, then they have to start over with a new manager," Walser said.

Walser works with select lenders now and has improved its buying power.

"We're saving their people a lot of time. And they understand the Walser customer and how we do business," Walser said. "They are assured volume, so they may write deeper loans."