IARA Conference Management Committee Outlines Roundtable / CAR Sessions

IARA’s keynote address, which will be delivered by ARI’s Chief Operating Officer Bob White, will be kicking off the first day of the Conference of Automotive Remarketing (CAR) at Caesars Palace Las Vegas on March 6.

The IARA keynote address will be open to all CAR attendees.

Immediately following the keynote address will be a Consignor Forum, which will be moderated by Rene Abdalah, SVP at RVI Group. The forum will mainly focus on residual forecasting and how properly analyzing residuals impacts remarketing portfolios.

Current confirmed participants for the Consignor Forum, along with Abdalah, are James Crocker with Merchants Fleet Management, Layne Weber with Avis Budget, and Mike Scott of Consumer Portfolio Services.

“With the continued increase in off-lease volume, it’s key that remarketers are monitoring the market and paying attention to residual values to make sure the right values are being placed on those leases,” said committee co-chair and CarLotz Managing Director – National Accounts Brent Garrett.

The session following the Consignor Forum will be the IARA’s main roundtable discussion. This year, the roundtable will focus on reconditioning, valuation, and optimization. Doug Turner with America’s Auto Auction and Kurt Madvig with ADESA will be moderating this discussion.

“There are some technologies that are coming out in the next year that will reduce some of the pain points that consignors are experiencing. This will be a forum for people to talk about some of the challenges they’re facing, like being able to justify the ROI in recon. This discussion on recon will focus on that, as well as ways to optimize and justify the recon dollars and validate the recon dollars consignors are putting into vehicles, in order to make better investments,” said Jessica Strack, IARA Education Committee co-chair and senior product manager – client engagement and product performance at Cox Automotive.

The first day of the CAR will be capped off with IARA’s consignor-only panel, geared toward the consignors in attendance. Paul Seger, VP asset remarketing for Element, will lead this session.  

The following day, the IARA Industry Town Hall Discussion will act as the penultimate session of the CAR. In this session, Andrea Amico of Jack Looper Logistics will moderate a discussion on data privacy and security. Faye Francy, executive director at Auto-ISAC will also be joining Amico in leading the session. The session will look at what the industry best practices to safeguard all of the data and information held in vehicles are.

“It’s a hot topic that will continue to come up at our conferences given how much technology is being built into vehicles these days,” said Garrett.

A CAR graduate dinner will be held at Carmine’s Italian Restaurant in Caesars Palace on Tuesday night. This dinner is meant to celebrate the attendees who have earned the designation of Certified Automotive Remarketer.

The Summer IARA Roundtable will be held at Marco Island, Fla. on Aug. 21-23.