Finance
Podcast: Ally Financial, Huntington originations rise in Q1
First-quarter bank earnings highlighted mixed results as some banks saw an uptick in auto originations and leasing volume, while credit performance largely improved.
Ally Financial’s auto originations increased 4.1% year over year as lease originations were up 28.6% YoY. The bank’s retail auto delinquencies declined 9 basis points (bps) YoY to 3.79%.
Across the regional banks, Huntington Bank’s auto originations rose 25% YoY, while U.S. Bank’s indirect loan and lease originations were down 27.3% YoY.
Fifth Third Bank, PNC Financial and Truist joined several auto lenders in reporting declines in delinquencies and credit losses in Q1.
Meanwhile, new-vehicle affordability hit the best level in 45 months in March but auto tariffs are expected to lead to price increases and contribute to lower sales in the coming months.
Prolonged tariffs are also projected to contribute to a decline in auto asset-backed securitization volume and increased delinquencies across securitized auto loans.
In this episode of “Weekly Wrap,” Auto Finance News Editor Amanda Harris and associate editor Aidan Bush discuss Q1 bank earnings and top trends across affordability and consumer health for the week ended April 18.
Subscribe to “The Roadmap Podcast” on iTunes or Spotify or download the episode.
Auto Finance Summit East 2025 is set for May 12-14 at the JW Marriott Nashville featuring fireside chats with Santander Consumer USA and Chase Auto. Visit autofinance.live for more information.
Editor’s note: This transcript has been generated by software and is being presented as is. Some transcription errors may remain.
Aidan Bush 0:22
Hello everyone and welcome to the road map from auto Finance News, the nation’s leading newsletter on automotive lending and leasing since 1996.
Today is Monday, April 21st. I’m Aidan Bush, joined by Amanda Harris. This is your weekly wrap up of key developments in auto finance for the week ending April 18, 2025. More banks reported their first quarter earnings this week, showing mixed results. Overall, some banks rose in origination and leasing volume and credit performance largely improved. One major bank ally, financial, mirrored these results. For more on that, I’ll hand it over to Amanda, who covered Ally’s earnings in depth.Amanda Harris 1:01 Great. Thank you, Aidan. Yes. So Ally Financial did have their originations on their auto book go up to $10.2 billion, which is up just 4%, just over 4%. Excuse me from last year, lease originations grew about 28.6% year over year. Might be seeing a bit of a trend. Chase Auto also saw about a 20% uptick year over year in leasing volume in the first quarter. So we’ll definitely keep an eye, but it seems like leasing is definitely picking up. Ally chief executive Michael Rhodes. Also said on the earnings call that he expects origination mix to shift and they saw retail origination up from last year, but was down from Q4. Ally also saw a record 3.8 million auto accredit applications come in during the quarter. That’s really good showing. There’s lots of demand and then credit performance was strong, delinquencies fell. Auto net charge us also decreased. We’re seeing that a lot mostly across most of the banks that reported as well. And Ally’s chief financial. Attributed those declines and delinquencies to improved payment activity and underwriting strategy, so they’re seeing more customers improve on their payments that they are making.
So they might become delinquent, but they are making those payments and at least staying trying to get back current and not going into those next delinquency buckets or into losses. So we’ll kind of see how that holds up, especially given everything in the market. On the commercial side, Ally’s Floorplan outstandings were down just about 12% from last year. That’s another area we’re going to have to watch, especially as dealers really are mindful of their inventory levels pre tariffs and we’ll kind of have to see how that plays out from an inventory and supply chain perspective down the road and how that plays out on their floor. Books all right. But that is all from me, Aidan. So what else should we be watching? Aidan Bush 2:52
Yeah. So many other kind of regional banks also reported their quarter one earnings including Huntington. So we can start there. Huntington Bank, which is headquartered in Columbus, OH, saw its auto originations climb from last year, right in line with Ally Financial. However, its credit performance was more mixed. So both net charge offs and their payments that were due for more than 30 days actually rose from last year. In contrast, U.S. banks, indirect loan and lease originations which mainly. Include auto. Uh fell about 27.3% from last year. It’s sorry, it’s net charge off ratio also rose slightly and there’s several other regional banks including truist and 5th, 3rd, who also reported their earnings in the past week. Both of these banks saw credit losses dip down from last year. Then kind of stepping away from earnings, April auto tariffs have continued to impact the industry. Tariffs may contribute to a decline. In auto securitization issuance. So Deutsche Bank actually lowered its auto asset back securitization volume forecast in line with a decrease in its new vehicle sales forecast, mainly amid tariff induced price hikes and supply chain disruptions. Data from JP Morgan Securities last week also showed auto asset backed. Sorry, auto asset backed securitization volume was still down year over year in April.
Lenders also worry that price increases may cause higher delinquencies and longer term loans, resulting in higher losses across asset backed securitization transactions. Automaker Ford already announced it would raise prices this summer if the tariff stayed in place. In the short term, though, tariffs and larger market uncertainty have brought this pull ahead effect. So increased demand for vehicles before those prices rise could support used vehicle sales and values, contributing to higher recovery values in the short term that will benefit losses across those ABS transactions on the consumer end, March was met with higher incomes, lower interest rates and lower new vehicle. Prices contributing to the best new vehicle affordability in 45 months. According to Cox, Automotive data used vehicle sales also climbed just over 12% from last year due to seasonal tax refunds and tariff headwinds, and inventory fell as a result. That just about wraps up this week’s episode. Thank you again for joining us on the road map. Follow us on X and LinkedIn and visit Autofinance News net for the latest updates. We’ll see you next time.
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Initial public offerings, better known as IPOs, may seem like big investment opportunities, but a financial adviser is warning they could be a risky addition to your portfolio.
Dan Cunningham of the investment management company One Day in July, said he recommends that people stay away when a company starts selling initial shares on the stock market.
Most recently, Elon Musk’s SpaceX became the biggest IPO ever, but Cunningham said people shouldn’t get caught up in the hoopla.
“They generate a lot of excitement, but when you look at long term results, IPOs have not been a good investment. So we really try to encourage people to stay away from the hype. You are really betting on the future and taking an enormous amount of risk by buying IPO shares in many cases,” Cunningham said.
According to Cunningham, the good news is that, over the long term, the market and most retirement funds that mirror it will balance out.
Copyright 2026 WCAX. All rights reserved.
DULUTH — The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is seeking both new operational leadership and a solution to financial filing issues that caused the organization to lose its federal tax-exempt status, which it has not held since 2022.
The organization is currently operating as a taxable nonprofit, confirmed Don Ness, the former Duluth mayor who serves as president of Homegrown’s
board of directors.
Ness and the board are working to discern whether there might be any outstanding tax liabilities in the wake of an apparent filing lapse.
“It’s a serious matter that requires diligence to do things right, and to correct past oversight, and to make sure that we are in full compliance with all tax and regulatory requirements,” Ness said. “The board is 100% committed to that course of action.”
As the Duluth Monitor first reported, Homegrown had its federal tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 after failing to make required financial reports for three years. The Monitor also reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has notified the organization it may be in violation of state law requiring the proper registration of soliciting charities.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“All but one of us have been on for less than a year,” Ness said of the current board members. “We’ve been committed to saying, ‘hey, we need to improve the points of accountability.’”
The organization will also require new operational leadership. Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned earlier this month, after leading Homegrown through four successful festivals.
“My contract ended at the end of May, and I knew a few days later that I did not want to continue in that position,” Jezierski said. “Simply put, it was the best thing for my mental health. It’s a job that requires many, many hours and a lot of work, and it can be very stressful as well.”
Amy Arntson / Duluth Media Group file photo
Murphy-Williams did not respond to an interview request for this article, nor did preceding Homegrown director Melissa LaTour. According to LaTour’s
LinkedIn profile,
she was Homegrown director from 2016 to 2022.
Jason Beckman, a recent president who is no longer serving on the board, responded to a News Tribune email but did not provide an interview availability before this article went to press.
Ness does not believe the reporting lapses were due to any ill intent. He praised Jezierski and Murphy-Williams for their success managing festival operations. “They cared deeply about the festival,” he said. “It’s amazing to see that our community continues to support this really unique and special festival.”
“Those guys run a hell of a festival,” said Scott Lunt, festival founder and a current board member. “I think they needed help with bookkeeping.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
By Jezierski’s account, issues with the festival’s tax status became apparent shortly after he became co-director. “We went to file taxes, they were rejected,” Jezierski said. “At that time we, of course, didn’t know why right away, but once we started pulling on that thread, we unraveled a whole lot of the problems that were going on.”
Jezierski said “it took a long time to try to get any sort of help” from the board, but said that by the time he and Murphy-Williams left the organization, “everything had been turned over to be reconciled” with a financial professional.
Ness, like Lunt, was deeply involved with Homegrown in its first decade but had not had an official role with the festival since then. After launching the festival in 1999 and running it on his own for several years, Lunt was “burnt out,” Ness remembered.
Derek Montgomery / Duluth Media Group file photo
After a transition period during which the festival was run in partnership with the Ripsaw newspaper, Homegrown established a nonprofit organization in 2006 with Ness as festival director. Ness subsequently stepped down when he was elected mayor in 2007.
By 2025, Ness was in his current position as executive director of the Ordean Foundation.
“I was approached by a couple of longtime music scenesters,” Ness recalled. “They said, ‘There are questions about (Homegrown’s) nonprofit status. There are questions about some governance issues. We’re concerned.’”
Ness agreed to join the board, and became president. The 2026 festival ran smoothly from an operational standpoint, but Ness found the financial reporting to be lacking.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“The last board meeting that we had prior to the (co-directors’) resignations was intended to be an overview of the festival that was a month before,” Ness said. “I certainly felt very uncomfortable with how little financial information we were receiving.”
Lunt also joined the board in 2025, marking his first time serving in that capacity. He said the new board has been spending significant time addressing the accounting and reporting issues.
“Every year at Homegrown time I’m like, ‘I should get more involved,’ and then I don’t,” Lunt said. “Then this board thing came up, and it was kind of sold to me as, like, four meetings a year. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ And now we’re meeting weekly.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
Although it’s unclear how the organization’s finances will look when the accounting and reporting issues have been fully addressed, along with any outstanding tax liabilities, both Ness and Lunt said they are confident the annual festival will continue without interruption.
“The organization will continue,” Ness said. “The festival will continue. Homegrown is in no danger in terms of its viability.” The financial documentation Ness initially received indicated budgeted revenues of about $140,000, against about $130,000 in expenses.
“Financially, I think we’re in a great spot. We have the money to hire the (financial) professionals, and we have (done so),” Lunt said. “We were hoping that we could get all this sorted out before it had to become more public.”
“We poured countless hours into this festival, and this is how it ends, with everyone talking about this,” Jezierski said. “It’s rough.”
“There’s a DIY ethos that is really at the core of Homegrown,” reflected Ness. “We’re throwing a music festival that isn’t waiting for some famous band from the East Coast to bless us with their presence. We are doing this on our own.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
That DIY spirit also means “you’re kind of passing wisdom down from person to person, and sometimes that’s imperfect.” Ness continued. “The ways that we do things evolve over time, because it’s not a buttoned-down corporate sort of thing. That can create its own set of challenges.”
“It’s self-supporting,” said Lunt about the festival. “It’s widely volunteer-run. You do need to pay a couple people, obviously, to keep track of some things, but it’s going to be strong into the future. It’s gone through its bumps before.”
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NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LUMIQ, an AI-native financial services company, today announced a strategic funding round to scale auto-decisioning for financial institutions across the United States and Southeast Asia. The round was led by Bajaj Finserv, one of India’s largest and most diversified financial services groups, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures.
Right now, thousands of customers are waiting for a policy to be issued, a loan to be disbursed, a claim to be adjudicated, because somewhere an FSI employee is drowning in decisions, held back by the risk of getting it wrong. Today, when e-commerce delivers the same day, banks and insurers still decide in weeks. We built LiteCone to take that burden: AI decides the routine cases, completely and accountably, so humans spend their judgment on the one case that actually needs it. This round lets us bring that to every financial institution in the markets that matter most.
Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ
From AI that assists to AI that decides
For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.
The results in production speak clearly. At a leading life insurer, LUMIQ’s LEO agent decides 75–80% of underwriting cases with zero human touch, reduced policy issuance cost by roughly 25%, and compressed turnaround from days to under eight minutes — running 24×7 with complete auditability. Across its client base spanning insurance, banking, and capital markets in India, the US, and Southeast Asia, LUMIQ now processes millions of decisions annually.
LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ
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