Impel and SelectFI Announce Strategic Partnership to Bring Industry-First Financing Intelligence to Automotive AI Agents
Advanced conversational commerce capability addresses most frequent customer questions without the need for handoffs to
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New York, NY, Aug. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Impel, the global leader in Automotive AI solutions, and SelectFI, a fintech company built on predictive payment technology for auto financing, announced today a strategic partnership that creates a first-of-its-kind financing intelligence. The partnership integrates SelectFI’s payment prediction engine with Impel’s AI Operating System, enabling dealers to deliver accurate, personalized financing offers through webchat, SMS and email interactions, without the need for human staff intervention. This new conversational commerce capability, which manages consumer consent, executes soft credit pulls, and delivers individualized payment estimates, is available to dealers through Impel’s Chat AI, Sales AI, and VinVision AI solutions.
Impel and SelectFI announce partnership
With shoppers now researching, comparing, and deciding almost entirely on their own before ever speaking with a salesperson, one of the largest gaps remaining in the car buying process is financing. Based on an analysis of nearly 50 million Impel AI conversations across 8,000 dealers, financing-related questions are among the most common shopper inquiries, accounting for nearly 15% of total requests. Until now, dealers had two options for addressing this consumer need: offer simple online payment calculators that provide broad estimates based on average interest rates and assumed credit scores, or hand off the shopper to a human staff member for a lengthy follow up conversation. Unfortunately, customer-facing estimation tools were not designed for accuracy at the individual shopper level, and as a result, they create significant distrust and ill-will when actual deal terms differ from initial estimates. Handing off early-stage shoppers to dealership staff or forcing them to commit to a full credit application introduces unnecessary friction and creates a hard roadblock for many consumers, negatively impacting sales conversion rates.
Impel’s integration with SelectFI provides a fully AI-native solution that overcomes the challenges associated with responding to these early-stage financing inquiries. Rather than redirecting shoppers to an application form or dealership staff member, Impel’s Automotive AI agents are now able to intelligently engage with prospective buyers, accurately predict monthly payments, and align deal structures to lender terms for each individual shopper, before a credit pull or a bank conversation ever happens. At the heart of this new intelligence layer is SelectFI’s custom prediction model trained on actual lender decisioning data. Payment estimates are returned by term with a confidence level attached, so Impel’s AI agents can be precise when the data supports it and appropriately careful when it doesn’t. The experience requires only consent capture and a soft credit pull, with no impact to the shopper’s credit score — giving consumers a precise monthly payment without the commitment of a full credit application, which has historically been the point where online financing conversations stall out.
“We believe that real numbers belong at the beginning of a car deal, not the end,” said Andrew Sweet, CEO of SelectFI. “Partnering with Impel puts our prediction engine directly in front of shoppers at the exact moment they’re deciding whether a deal works for them. Their Automotive AI agents are already being used by more dealerships than any other technology provider, and this integration ensures that prospective buyers, sales staff and finance directors are all working from the same accurate payment in the first three minutes instead of the third hour.”
How it Works
SelectFI’s purpose-built API suite, connected to Impel’s centralized Knowledge Bank, provides AI agents with capabilities covering payment generation, compliance and deal jacket management, and prediction modeling. Sales AI and Chat AI call this API in real time whenever a shopper asks real time questions. As a result, dealership AI agents can respond to financing questions 24/7 with precise, individualized numbers instead of general guidance — closing a gap that has historically ended in a handoff to a human. In addition, SelectFI’s payment calculator is now embedded directly in the digital dossier shoppers receive with every VinVision AI lead response, letting them adjust credit score, down payment, and terms to model the deal that works for them. As shoppers adjust those inputs, the enhanced lead information they generate is automatically pushed to the dealer’s CRM system, giving sales and finance teams a running start on deals that have already been shaped by the shopper’s own numbers.
In early pilots, dealers who added these new financing “skills” to their AI agents were able to convert 25 – 35% of financing inquiries into qualified showroom appointments. Daniel Kim, Director of Operations at Barnes Crossing Auto Group commented, “Financing questions used to be a dead end for us. Our AI would hand them to the sales team and a lot of the time the conversation just stopped there. Now the agent answers the credit, payment and trade questions directly, in real time – so when the customer does get to a salesperson, the financing conversation is already started instead of starting over.”
“Our massive data set of AI conversations provides us with an unprecedented ability to identify the greatest consumer needs and the most impactful opportunities for improving dealer performance. These unique insights provide our teams with a North star that guides our product development and innovation efforts. This partnership with SelectFI directly addresses financing inquiries – one of the largest gaps remaining in the car buying process,” said Devin Daly, CEO and Co-Founder of Impel. “By enabling our AI agents to handle complex payment questions in a fully automated conversational experience, dealers will be able to reduce process friction, shorten sales cycles and increase staff productivity. We’re thrilled to be working with SelectFI to deliver a better customer experience and greater business results for the growing number of dealerships that are embracing AI to transform their business.”
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About SelectFI
SelectFI is a predictive financing platform that lets dealers put a real payment in front of a shopper in the first three minutes. By matching the shopper and the vehicle against actual lender decisioning data, we surface the most accurate financing scenarios — so sales quotes a payment it won’t have to walk back, and F&I receives a deal that’s already structured and trust never has to be rebuilt with the customer. To date, SelectFI has structured and predicted hundreds of thousands of deals for independent and franchise dealerships across the country.
About Impel
Impel is harnessing the power of AI to transform automotive retailing and has become one of the largest vertical AI companies in the world. The company’s industry-leading Automotive AI Operating System helps more than 8,000 retailers and OEMs unify the entire customer journey — fueling faster decisions, deeper connections, and measurable impact at every step along the way. To date, Impel has delivered more than 42 billion shopper interactions, influencing over $12 billion in sales and service revenue across 51 countries.
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