Built by people who do this every day.

Written from inside the F&I office.

The content here is written and overseen by Michael Aufmuth, who has worked in automotive retail since 1997 and spent most of a decade and a half building and running dealership finance departments before co-founding Elite FI Partners. The writing comes from that hands-on work, not from a brochure. His full background, the scope and boundaries of his experience, and everything he has published here are on the author page.

How we create and maintain this content, keep education separate from commercial help, and handle sourcing and corrections is set out in our Editorial Standards. How the comparisons, calculators, and pro formas are built, and what they are and are not, is described in our Methodology.

Elite FI Partners, the firm behind this resource, offers F&I products, training, and dealer participation program assistance. That commercial relationship is disclosed openly, and this site is kept education-first: when you want implementation help, that work lives with the firm at elitefipartners.com.

The principles behind everything here.

Education before recommendation

Every option is explained clearly before anything is recommended. A dealer should understand a structure well enough to question it.

Transparency over persuasion

The goal is to make fees, reporting, and performance visible, not to argue anyone into a program. Clarity earns trust; pressure spends it.

Every structure, not one

Retro, CFC, Super CFC, NCFC, and DOWC each fit a different dealership. The honest answer starts with your numbers, not a favorite product.

Facts, not assumptions

The point is to help dealers decide based on their real production and statements, not on a template or a best-case projection.