Octane Enters Auto Finance With Captive-as-a-Service Platform for Dealer Groups

New updates have been reported about Octane.

Octane has expanded into the auto market with a Captive-as-a-Service platform designed to let dealership groups operate their own branded captive finance programs without the capital, infrastructure, or regulatory burden of building a lender from scratch. The turnkey offering centralizes underwriting, loan processing and servicing, compliance, funding, and capital markets execution on Octane’s technology stack, but under the dealer’s chosen brand, enabling dealers to capture economics from loan originations, strengthen customer retention through a fully branded experience, and turn financing into a strategic profit center. Programs can be tailored to include Octane’s digital soft-pull tools, Prequal and Prequal Flex, to generate qualified leads; customized lending and promotional structures at the dealership level; and ongoing monthly customer touchpoints that support remarketing, service offers, and repeat sales.

The move builds on Octane’s track record in powersports and RV financing, where its captive and private-label partnerships helped the company surpass $7 billion in aggregate originations through its in-house lender, Roadrunner Financial, since 2014, and issue more than $4.7 billion of asset-backed securities since 2019, including AAA-rated senior tranches. Octane’s capital markets execution and whole-loan sale and forward-flow capabilities—totaling $3.3 billion in loans sold or committed—provide dealers with scalable funding and balance sheet flexibility, backed by relationships with institutional investors, banks, rating agencies, and warehouse providers. Management, including CEO Jason Guss, President and CFO Steven Fernald, Chief Risk Officer Mark Molnar, and SVP of Credit Strategy, Auto, David Bertoncini, is leveraging decades of combined auto, credit risk, and capital markets experience to position Captive-as-a-Service as a new revenue stream for dealer groups across the credit spectrum. Early dealer partners report improved control over financing, better portfolio economics, and a more integrated digital and in-store sales journey, signaling potential for Octane to become a key infrastructure provider for captive-style auto finance at scale.