text: A sales finance company is exposed to various forms of risk. One risk is interest rate fluctuation. 
  
  NFS mitigates this risk by matching interest as much as possible. Almost seventy percent of our 
  
  portfolio is on a match-funding basis. Another risk is credit risk. Fortunately, our portfolio is 
  
  improving. The economy is getting better, and we’ve had success with a low-interest, 2.9 percent 
  
  APR program. Because this is a competitive rate, it has attracted customers with good credit 
  
  ratings who otherwise would have opted for bank financing. 
  
  We have also improved our scoring system for credit analysis. We have a new system that 
  
  can automatically process 60 percent of all credit applications. Turnaround time for the credit 
  
  decision used to take three to four hours, but with continuous improvement of our system it 
  
  takes just 14 minutes. If the dealer submits the data online, turnaround is reduced to four 
  
  minutes. This has really increased customer satisfaction. In addition, having a centralized system 
  
  ensures that our credit standards are consistently applied. 
  
  The above improvements have reduced our loss ratio to below 0.3 percent. More importantly, 95 
  
  percent of applicants are approved for financing. The challenge is to reduce the loss ratio and rejection 