At a Glance

• A dealer network is a distribution agreement, not a moat. The entity that can end a vendor program with one announcement is the manufacturer, and most programs have no commercial relationship with it.
• Captive and private-label decisions are almost never triggered by dissatisfaction with a funder. They are triggered by a finance-penetration number landing in front of an OEM CFO who had never seen it.
• The reporting a manufacturer cannot get from its own dealers — approval rates, penetration by model line, lost-sale reasons — is the cheapest relationship asset a funder has and the one most programs never deliver.
• Building the corporate relationship raises concentration risk rather than lowering it. The exposure is worth taking knowingly instead of discovering it at renewal.

The Relationship Sitting Above the Channel