💰 Virtual F&I: Meeting Customers Where They Are

At NAMAD, Mike Sims (Peak Performance Team) and Charlie Smith (Virtual F&I) put F&I’s future in plain English: customers want options. Some still prefer the office. Others would rather finish at home. Either way, F&I can’t become the bottleneck.

Flexible delivery
Their approach blends retail know-how with tech. Dealers can centralize F&I across rooftops, share support between stores, or tap on-demand help when one manager can’t keep up. No AI black box—just real people, real contracts, real compliance.

The problem it solves
Everyone knows the old scene: month-end logjam, jackets piled up, customers folding arms and pacing the showroom. As Charlie put it, “time kills all deals.” Virtual F&I gives customers a way to jump the line—complete menus online, skip the wait, and still get a real human walking them through.

Why now
Car deals aren’t linear. Trades get messy. Titles come in the wrong name. Customers want convenience without confrontation. F&I has to meet them where they are, not force them into a single lane. As Sims asked, the only real question is: “Why not?”

NAMAD’s backdrop
The NAMAD floor felt like the right place for this conversation. Sims called it a “family reunion,” where dealers don’t just network but literally walk each other over to the right connection. Smith echoed that—substance over flash, relationships over transactions.

That same spirit—meeting people where they are, and smoothing the rough edges of the process—is what makes this F&I model click.

Shoutout to Mike Sims and Charlie Smith for taking the time to share what they’re seeing.