Banking on the Future of the American Automobile

Challenge

In the early 2000’s General Motors, the largest domestic automobile company created one of the country’s largest and most profitable online banking and financial services platform.

GM’s original business challenge sought to profitably leverage over 25 million GM automotive, insurance, OnStar, and mortgage consumer relationships into a new online banking and diversified financial services platform.

Solution

Ascension consultants played critical strategic roles developing the original business model and driving the commercialization of the online platform into non-banking product offerings including online brokerage, tax preparation, and fractional investments.

Initially the service was launched as the GMAC Bank and later renamed the Ally Bank as GM expanded the role of the bank to include automotive lending linked to its massive dealer base.
Ascension guided expansion into new products including educational loans, corporate charge cards, and commercial payment processing for many GM operating divisions.

The Ascension support also included the development of important third party, strategic product alliances with Ameritrade and ShareBuilder.com.

Impact

After only two years on the market GMAC Bank attained over 10,000 customers, $400 million in consumer deposits, and assets of $3 billion.

Today Ally ranks as the #1 online bank in America. It has now been spun off from GM and operates as its own stand-alone company.