Each year the staff of Auto Finance News gathers a speaker faculty of prominent industry professionals to discuss and debate the most important issues in auto finance. The 2012 Auto Finance Risk Summit will have a speaker faculty representing companies and organizations from across the entire spectrum of auto finance.
Ken Baruth, Vice President Risk and Dealer Credit, Global Chief Risk Officer, Toyota Financial Services
Ken Baruth is Vice President Risk and Dealer Credit, Global Chief Risk Officer for Toyota Financial Services Corporation (TFSC) Group. Baruth is responsible for establishing and implementing risk based policies and risk based metrics for the 32 companies within the TFSC group. Baruth reports to TFS President and CEO George Borst. Baruth brings significant automotive captive finance expertise to the role including 30 years of experience working with Chrysler Credit, Ford Motor Credit and Toyota Financial Services (TFS). In his 25 years with TFS, Baruth has acquired extensive experience in operations, sales, and product development, as well as a strong leadership track record. He served in a variety of roles including Branch Manager in Boston then Los Angeles, and later as Regional Manager for the company’s Central region, followed by the Western region where he served until 2010. Additionally, Baruth served as Corporate Manager, overseeing product development and remarketing. He has been involved in various citizen action committees and currently volunteers as a guest speaker at a local university. Baruth is also active in supporting the Lazarian World Home Project, a non-profit dedicated to building homes throughout the world. Baruth holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Kansas State University.
Marcie Belles, Senior Editor, Auto Finance News
Senior Editor, Auto Finance News Marcie D. Belles joined Royal Media Group in 1996. Marcie spent nearly six years covering the auto finance industry, as managing editor of Auto Finance News. In 2001, Marcie won an award from the Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Foundation for her coverage of GE Capital Corp.’s exit from the auto finance business. She graduated cum laude from Yeshiva University in New York, and lives in Houston with her husband and two sons.
Pamela Birnbrich, Segment Risk Manager, Huntington National Bank
Vivian Chang, Associate Director, Origination Risk, Hyundai Capital America
Associate Director of Origination Risk for Hyundai Capital America. Vivian joined HCA in 2010 and is responsible for evaluating company Credit underwriting guidelines, developing Risk scorecards and managing analytics related to consumer retail and lease programs. Her prior experience includes VP/Senior Manager, Risk Management for HSBC Auto Finance, where she spent nine years focusing on various Risk functions from Credit policies, Collection strategies to Loss forecasting. Vivian holds a Master’s degree in Statistics from Iowa State University.
Mike Danzi, President, Wisdom Financial
Cristian deRitis, Director of Consumer Credit Economics, Moody’s Analytics
Cristian deRitis is a Director in the Consumer Credit Analytics group at Moody’s Analytics, where he develops probability of default (PD), loss given default (LGD), and loss forecasting models for individual consumer loan portfolios and industry aggregates; contributes to forecasts and analysis for CreditForecast.com; and writes periodic summaries of the consumer credit industry. His commentary on housing and mortgage markets, securitization, and financial regulatory reform often appears on the Dismal Scientist web site and in the Regional Financial Review. Dr. deRitis’ recent consulting work has included an evaluation of the efficacy and cost of the federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Plan, and he is frequently consulted on credit risk modeling and measurement as well as housing policy. He helped develop the company’s models to forecast the Case-Shiller and FHFA metropolitan house price indices and is a regular contributor to the firm’s Housing Market Monitor. Dr. deRitis also gives frequent presentations and interviews on the state of the U.S. housing, mortgage and credit markets. In his previous work at Fannie Mae, Dr. deRitis supervised a team of economists who developed models of borrower default and prepayment behavior as well as loss recovery rates. He has published research on consumer credit and credit modeling as well as on the costs and benefits of community mediation. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, where he focused on the impact of technological innovation on labor markets and income inequality. His bachelor’s degree in economics is from the Honors College at Michigan State University.
Teresa Eller, Consumer Installment Credit Risk Manager, M&T Bank
Teresa Eller, Consumer Installment Credit Risk Manager, M&T Bank. Teresa has 8 years of consumer risk management experience. Before joining M&T Bank, she was involved in model development and deployment for originations, delinquency, collections, and charge-off at SunTrust. At M&T she manages risk for consumer installment portfolios. In her pre-banking career, Teresa pursued broad interests in biostatistics and economics. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an M.S. in Biostatistics from Virginia Commonwealth University.
JJ Hornblass, Chairman, Auto Finance Risk Summit
JJ, the Chairman of this event, is also the President & Chief Executive Officer of Royal Media Group and a blogger on Auto Finance News.net. He founded RMG in 1995 and oversees all aspects of the New York based diversified media company. Prior to forming RMG, Mr. Hornblass was on the editorial staff of American Banker, the daily newspaper, and worked as an editor of a business magazine in Hong Kong. As a reporter and editor, Mr. Hornblass has won journalism awards from the National Press Foundation, Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Foundation, and the Reader’s Digest Foundation. He has a BS in Economics from Yeshiva University and a Master’s from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in New York City with his wife, two daughters, and son.
Bill Graham, Chief Executive Officer, RIFCO National Auto Finance
Michael Goins, Head of Deficiency Recovery U.S., TD Auto Finance
Michael T. Goins holds the position of Head of Deficiency Recovery, U.S. for TD Auto Finance and is based in Jacksonville, FL. Mr. Goins is responsible for all loss recovery and severely delinquent collection strategies inclusive of collection agency management, litigation, debt sales, severely delinquent (91+dpd), skip, repossession, repossession operations, and redemption/reinstatement activity. Mr. Goins has been with TD Auto Finance since 1998. Prior to joining TD Auto Finance he was Vice President of Recovery for Barnett Banks, Inc. – Florida, and started his finance and collections career with CIT Group in 1987. He has held industry advisory board positions and has spoken at various national conferences on topics including Loss Recovery, Debt Sales and Repossession Management. Mr. Goins holds a BS in Business Administration from Jacksonville University.
Andrew Kang, Director, Capital Markets, Santander Consumer USA
Andrew Kang is Director and Head of Capital Markets at Santander Consumer USA. He is responsible for overseeing the capital markets and structured finance functions of the company, including ABS, credit facilities and M&A finance. Prior to joining Santander, Mr. Kang was Vice President and Senior Manager at HSBC Finance Corporation responsible for home equity loan and auto loan ABS. Mr. Kang has also held positions at Capital One Finance Corporation in their Global Capital Markets group and at Thomson Reuters in their Quantitative Data organization. Mr. Kang holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia.
Tom Lazenby, Regions Bank Dealer Financial Services
Bruce Newmark, President, MarkOne Financial
Daniel A. Parry, Chief Credit Officer, Exeter Finance Corp.
Daniel Parry is a co-founder of Exeter Finance Corp, and presently serves as the company’s chief credit officer. Since beginning operations in 2006, Exeter has built a national auto finance platform and has raised nearly $1 billion in equity and warehouse financing. Formerly, Mr. Parry was Senior Vice President of Risk Management for AmeriCredit Corp, where he also held the position of Vice President of Decision Support. He has 14 years of non-prime credit risk management experience, and specializes in quantitative-based strategic risk management solutions. Mr. Parry holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Dallas, where he is also an advisory board member for the International Center for Decision and Risk Analysis. Daniel Parry is a regular conference speaker, panelist, and contributor to industry publications.
Vijay Patil, Director, Credit Risk and Information Management, Mitsubishi Motors Credit of America
Tom Redding, Director of Risk Management, First Investors Financial Services Inc.
Thomas P. Redding, Senior Vice President – Risk Management – Mr. Redding joined the Company in June,1998 as Senior Operations Manager. He was appointed Director of Risk Management in January 2000. Prior to joining First Investors, he served as Senior Operations Officer for Gulf States Acceptance for two years where he was responsible for developing and building an in-house servicing and collection platform. His previous experience includes servicing as SVP, Credit/Risk Management for Bank One-Texas, N.A. in charge of underwriting, risk-based pricing and scorecard development. In addition, Mr. Redding has over 16 years experience in commercial and consumer banking in the areas of lending, operations and risk management.
Eric Reusch, Office of Installment Markets, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Robert Riedl, CIO & Head of Risk, Consumer Portfolio Services
Brian Switalski, President, Southern Auto Finance Co.
