India’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki has announced its financing platform ‘Smart Finance’ for its ARENA customers. With the introduction of this platform, Maruti Suzuki will look into digitalizing the entire financial solutions. Currently, the need of the hour is to stay at home and this platform is very much in tune with what we call the new normal. Maruti Suzuki claims that after the launch of the ‘Smart Finance’ facility 24 out of 26 steps involved in a car purchase will now be digitized.
This digital financial service is expected to be launched in 30 cities across the country. The salient features of this ‘ONE-STOP-SHOP’ include the option to choose among various financial products as per the customers’ requirement, get quotes of loans, documentation formalities and disbursal of loan as well. The flow of process starts with a sign up followed by choosing the car of the customer’s choice, then the customers will be given all the quotes among which they have to choose one. The next step will prompt the customer to upload the necessary supporting documents and in the last step the financier will check all the details and upon successful verification, the loan will be sanctioned online.
Customers will have the freedom to choose from 12 different financiers namely, State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Mahindra Finance, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank, Bank of Baroda, Cholamandalam Finance, Kotak Mahindra Prime, Axis Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, Yes Bank and HDB Financial Services with customisable EMI option. This facility will also allow the customers to track the loan status online and will be offered to take multiple loans as well which does add to a lot of convenience for the customers.
With the growing penetration of digitalization, the automotive firms are also increasingly investing their finances to enable tech-driven offerings for their customers. Recently, Maruti Suzuki’s chief rival in the Indian automotive market, Hyundai Motors India Limited had also launched its smart financial solution named ‘Click to Buy’ which is an end-to-end online car purchase platform which is also very similar to that of Maruti Suzuki’s ‘Smart Finance’ offering.
