Eric Andersen

CEO | Founder

Head of Partnerships and Sales Teams

SOAR is an intelligent platform owned by MorningStar Services. It was developed initially for the automotive and lending industries, and has since been adopted by numerous other sectors who want to better communicate, train, market and present their products and services. Eric Andersen is the founder of MorningStar and the SOAR platform.

Executive Summary and History

Eric has over 30 years of deep operational experience in automotive retailing, lending, F&I product administration and distribution, agency network development and management, dealership operation training, legal compliance, and automotive software technologies. For 15 years Eric served as an Executive Officer for the Lloyd Andersen Group of Companies (LAGC), founded by his father, Lloyd Andersen.

Trust Through Transparency

LAGC was entrusted with the administration of more than a billion dollars in loans, reinsurance accounts, and insurance premiums originated through LAGC dealers. LAGC authored state legislation designed to protect both consumers and dealers. The firm managed a wide range of complex projects, including legal compliance training and certification, as well as first-of-a-kind products and structures developed with insurance companies. LAGC also arranged lines of credit for automotive loans with Wall Street investment firms such as Solomon Brothers, and then created loan-guarantee insurance to guarantee the performance of those loans. Governments, insurance companies, investment bankers, and dealers placed their business with LAGC for one reason: Trust.

Integrity was displayed through transparency, resulting in trust. More than once, dealers received six- to eight-figure checks for underwriting profits – in some cases, money they did not expect, and LAGC could have easily kept. Investment bankers and insurance companies never experienced a dollar of loss amongst massive books of subprime loans, and only made money doing business with LAGC. Responsible management and detailed processes were applied to every business relationship. That was the culture Eric was trained in, and the foundation established for the rest of this career.

Experiential Knowledge and Expertise in Operations

Eric developed operations and processes across multiple verticals in the automotive and lending space, and was ultimately responsible for all sales results and co-responsible for product development for the following LAGC companies:

Lloyd Andersen & Company, Inc. Financial and Insurance Services (LA&Co) — Executive Vice President

LA&Co administered its own brands of reinsurance programs for partner dealers, providing innovative and creative structures not available elsewhere in the market. Responsible claims handling and new product development produced innovations such as service contracts and credit insurance programs with no dealer chargebacks, and involuntary unemployment credit insurance. Understanding of complex tax laws, combined with strategic wealth building strategies for mega-group auto dealers using innovative reinsurance structures, including offshore and onshore dealer or administrator-owned reinsurance companies, was LAGC’s forte. Comprehensive dealership operations and processes were designed and successfully deployed to maximize both dealership profits and the Dealer Principal’s personal income. Income development for the sales, F&I, and fixed ops departments was measured and reported continuously, as a reflection of the high standards first established by LAGC for account servicing.

Professional F&I Managers Association of America, doing business as College of Automotive Management (CAM) — Co-Founder and President

To provide better training than the competition, The College, co-founded by Eric, was established and published the first exhaustive resource on automotive dealership management, catalogued in the Library of Congress. CAM is the only F&I and sales management vocational school to have achieved federal accreditation. The College has since trained more than 10,000 individuals to excel in dealership retail operations, including sales, desking, F&I, special finance, leasing, internet sales, service writing, and sales management. Best practices were co-developed by Eric, as a result of his seven years of retail experience as a Finance Director and General Sales Manager in mega-dealerships. Additional process contributions were provided by dealerships like Galpin Ford (the #1 volume, profit, leasing, and Ford Motor Credit dealer in the world at the time).

A.J. Acceptance Corporation (AJAC) — Executive Vice President

A.J. Acceptance Corporation became the leading subprime lending program in the California market, originating hundreds of millions of dollars of asset-backed securities through partner automotive dealers. LAGC then began providing A and B lending options to their partner dealers. Today, many subsequent subprime lending programs utilize the same underwriting controls and processes established by AJAC. Dealership operations, advertising and marketing campaigns, and creative inventory sourcing were developed to maximize subprime profits within traditional dealership workflows as part of the partnership between AJAC and its dealers.

Auto Data Inc. (ADI) — Executive Vice President

ADI developed innovative loan decisioning software for dealerships to structure loans for prime and subprime lenders. Sales managers could spot-deliver vehicles with confidence, knowing deals were structured in line with approved lending guidelines, regardless of the customer’s credit profile.

Prospective Technologies, Inc. (PT) — Executive Vice President

PT developed several patented anti-theft systems for dealers and national automotive insurance companies including State Farm and Farmers.

Payment Protection Insurance Agency (PPIA) — Executive Vice President

PPIA marketed LAGC products, including licensed insurance products through F&I agencies, independent agents, credit unions, financial institutions, dealer associations, insurance companies, and a direct sales force. Eric developed operational processes for each distribution channel to maximize recruiting and sell-through results.

Distribution Channel Development and Management Experience

In addition to increasing sales and premium production in existing LAGC accounts, Eric's responsibilities included the development and management of multiple distribution channels. Channel partnerships included new dealer clients, credit unions, finance companies, aggregators (like CUDL), local, state and national dealer associations, insurance companies, and other auto industry vendors, brokers, and agents. In all cases the success was the result of fair agreements, transparency, and better processes applied to the business opportunities, thus achieving higher, measurable results.

MorningStar’s History

15 years ago (2008) Eric founded MorningStar Services to help dealers, F&I product administrators, lenders, and automotive industry companies streamline operations, reduce expenses, recruit and train, and increase profits.

Notable MorningStar Projects

SOARlmsi (SOAR) — Founder and CEO

To meet the needs of several clients operating in Automotive and Financial Legal Services, Merchant Account Services, F&I Product Administration, and Specialty Insurance Product Distribution, Eric with Co-Founder Kevin Keenum built an industry-first business process platform. This innovative tool automated Learning Management, Lead Generation, Lead Processing, Recruiting and Onboarding, and repetitive Presentations. The platform has trained more than 40,000 dealership employees, created thousands of extra website leads for dealers, increased CRM appointment set rates by 15-30% (better than AI alone), and made thousands of automated presentations for salespeople (vehicle addendums), F&I managers, account servicing reps, and legal compliance experts with full disclosures per FTC and CARs rules. Today, the SOARlmsi platform is enhanced with AI capabilities helping clients create content, develop automated business processes, recruit/onboard/manage teams, and deploy marketing campaigns at record speeds, with precision and ease.

College of Automotive Management (CAM) and College of Powersports Management (CPM)

MorningStar converted over 200 hours of classroom training for automotive management to digital assets for online delivery. Interactive features and custom notifications for skill development verification, including role play sessions, private feedback (coaching) in student files, daily training delivery (no log in required to learn), mobile-first displays, live activity reports, sentiment tracking, and measurement tools to track increases in profits and production for all customer-facing job descriptions in the dealership were built into the system. A similar project for Powersports dealers: powersportscollege.com, was also completed, providing the powersports industry with their own powersports-specific content and process applications.

Cargigi — Craigslist Posting Service for Franchise Dealers

To help Cargigi distribute its product and educate dealers on best practices for marketing used-car inventory, MorningStar, in conjunction with The Lloyd Andersen Group of Companies, built an automated recruitment and onboarding funnel to recruit agents that processed more than 4,000 industry applicants, contracted and trained more than 350 sales agents nationwide, and processed exactly 1,000 dealer agreements for the Cargigi brand in less than 30 months, becoming Cargigi’s number-one reseller. MorningStar’s success helped facilitate a successful sale of Cargigi to Ebay.

FusionZone Automotive — Dealership Website Provider

As chief channel partner responsible for national distribution of the FusionZone brand, MorningStar sourced and serviced more than $7 million of annual recurring revenue from its network of professional relationships (F&I agents, advertising firms, legal and accounting professionals, and industry trainers). MorningStar’s network delivered more than 300 dealerships in 26 months. Dealer marketing materials, demo processes, and account servicing processes were redeveloped by MorningStar to improve performance in each area. MorningStar’s unique distribution agreement with its sub-agent distribution network and FusionZone Automotive converted the MorningStar sales and marketing expense to FusionZone EBITDA at the time of sale, resulting in an increase of valuation of more than $10 million. All combined, this helped FusionZone Automotive quickly become the market leader in website conversions and lead generation, resulting in a successful and highly profitable exit to private equity.

Stellantis Financial Services — Financial Services Provider

Stellantis needed to recruit and onboard more than 150 new employees nationwide for multiple office locations and then train and certify them in lease underwriting, dealership F&I operations, and legal compliance regulations. MorningStar built an onboarding and training program platform on SOAR to automate the process, helping Stellantis reach its recruiting, training and staffing goals on time and under budget.

Insurian — Exclusive Master Agency of Vehicle Return Plans for Franchise Dealers

To help Insurian develop a marketing strategy and distribution plan for its innovative Vehicle Return Plan loan waivers, MorningStar developed unique advertising and marketing campaigns for dealership websites, appointment setting routines for dealership’s CRM and BDC departments, and automated presentations for sales/F&I teams to maximize policy sell thru rates. These campaigns helped dealers gain market share (measured) while increasing dealership website conversions by 25–50%, resulting in higher closing ratios due to a stronger “Why Buy and Finance Here” messaging that resonated with the market. More than 1,000 policies were generated in less than 90 days during the first dealer-group launch - through better processes and automated routines.