Alphera launches new website to improve user experience

Alphera Financial Services has launched its new website to help improve the user experience for customers looking to self-serve their car finance online.

The new site features a new design that showcases the company’s new brand imagery and comprises a new content management system (CMS), reporting tools and improved search engine optimisation (SEO), the company said.

It also enables existing customers to manage their finance agreement online, following user numbers for Alphera’s self-serve platform – MyFinance – more than doubling in 2020 and continued to grow by 7.2% in H1 2021.

In 2020, Alphera website users increased by 80% over the previous year.

Preston Rogers, director at Alphera, said: “The last 18 months has shown that people are very comfortable with the accelerated move to digital platforms.

“Most of our website users last year were, in fact, private customers rather than dealer partners, so we felt our fifteenth year was the perfect opportunity to invest in a re-design and make our online presence as customer friendly as possible.

“We are committed to helping customers make informed decisions about their car finance products and our newly refreshed website helps us to achieve this by cutting through the jargon and presenting finance and insurance products to customers in a clear and transparent way.”

In 2020, Alphera surpassed 100,000 motor finance agreements during a 12-month period, with its 104,504 new customer contracts representing a 20.6% improvement over 2019.

This amounted to £1.8 billion in lending during 2020, a record figure for Alphera and a 24% improvement over the previous year (£1.45 billion).

Rogers said that, despite the challenging environment, the company reported its best ever results. The success was largely down to the speed it adapted and the diversity of its partners, he says.

For its franchise and independent dealers, Alphera said it continues to offer online services and information – including a revamped ‘partner portal’ as well as ‘content’ and ‘training’ hubs.

In March 2021, Alphera launched a new online finance and insurance (F&I) training programme, ‘Funding Essential Skills' - designed to help delegates understand finance products and deliver them to customers in a compliant way.

At the end of 2020, Alphera confirmed it would offer one rate of finance and one rate of commission from January 2021, in response to the Financial Conduct Authority’s ban on all discretionary commission (DiC) models.

The launch of the new website marks the company’s 15th anniversary in the UK car finance market.