Tom Allanson is chief executive of defi SOLUTIONS, the Westlake, Texas, company whose cloud software and managed servicing teams support captive auto lenders, banks, credit unions, and finance companies across North America.
Payments, Tax Software, And A Lending Mandate
Allanson came to defi SOLUTIONS from Fiserv, where he ran enterprise payment solutions. Before that he was chief executive of PerfectForms, president of digital, international, and commercial businesses at H&R Block, and co-founder and chief executive of TaxNet, which H&R Block later acquired. In October 2020 the defi board appointed him to succeed Bret Leech, with a brief to grow the company in origination and servicing. His background in payments and consumer software gave the board a leader who had run large technology businesses inside bigger financial groups.
The company he took on had already changed shape. Bain Capital Ventures had led a $55 million Series C in 2018, and in 2019 defi merged with Sagent Auto, the auto lending arm of the Fiserv and Warburg Pincus joint venture Sagent Lending Technologies. That deal added servicing, lease, and remarketing work, and offices in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and Amherst, New York.
High-Volume Auto Lending
defi now sells origination, servicing, and managed servicing, in which its teams run servicing operations for the lender. Its customers are often the highest-volume captive auto lenders, banks, and credit unions in North America. Allanson has kept the company pointed at that market: software for complex, high-volume auto and consumer programs, with the option to hand the operational work to defi if a lender does not want to build a servicing shop of its own.
