FARMINGTON HILLS, MI – Daimler Financial Services Americas plans to re-engineer the company based on its new, smaller structure, which will result in better support to dealers and their customers.

The company will expand its current Westlake, Texas, customer service, collections, and remarketing operations of the Mercedes-Benz Financial business unit to include similar disciplines for the Daimler Truck Financial business unit by next summer.

The present employee base of approximately 440 at the Texas location will be expanded to include an additional 180 positions from the Daimler Truck Financial operations in Lisle, Ill., and another 35 employees from several Mercedes-Benz Financial locations around the United States.

As a result, those employees will be moving into a brand new three-story, 160,000 square-foot facility next summer in a Hillwood development near Ft. Worth, Texas, that will have the capacity for as many as 800 employees.

“The de-merger has given us the opportunity to take a clean sheet of paper approach to our operations and re-engineer the way we serve our dealers and retail customers in the U.S. market,” said Klaus Entenmann, president & CEO of Daimler Financial Services Americas.

“Co-locating the customer service and dealer credit operations of our two business units — Mercedes-Benz Financial and Daimler Truck Financial — will create a learning environment for our employees that will lead to professional growth opportunities. We need everyone to join us in this transition as we are focused on growing our business and building strong brand identities in this very competitive environment,” he added.

As a result of the de-merger, Daimler Financial Services Americas has emerged as a new company with new U.S. headquarters in Farmington Hills, Mich. Now it is concentrating on growing and servicing its loan portfolio, which comes from its business units’ support of the sales of Mercedes-Benz passenger cars and Freightliner, Sterling, and Western Star heavy-duty trucks.

Entenmann said these evolving changes will foster sharing of best practices and building upon the high level of service to dealers and their customers. He cited Mercedes-Benz Financial winning two J.D. Power & Associates awards in the Dealer Financing survey this year and Daimler Truck Financial scoring the highest among captive finance sources in the annual American Truck Dealers (ATD) satisfaction survey as examples of the company’s already high service levels.