LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y. -- Nissan Motors Acceptance Corp. has securitized about $80 million of electronic contracts originated and stored on the DealerTrack e-contracting system.

Separately, Standard & Poor’s Corp. has tentatively agreed to a template for legal opinions that it will accept from DealerTrack financing sources along with transaction-specific information to support its ratings of securitized electronic contracts on an ongoing basis.

This standard language opinion, which DealerTrack is making available to all financing sources in its e-contracting program, describes in detail how the DealerTrack system facilitates each of the legal requirements giving the owner of an electronic contract control of the “authoritative copy,” similar to protections given to a holder of a paper contract under the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).

DealerTrack’s e-contracting technology is integrated with its online credit application processing network. It enables dealers to pre-populate, complete and submit retail installment sales contracts (including digital customer signatures) electronically to financing sources. This results in faster, more accurate completion of contracts and funding for the dealer as soon as the same day.

With e-contracting, the consumer receives a paper copy of the contract, but the "authoritative copy" contract remains in electronic form and is stored securely in DealerTrack’s vault. As an alternative to using DealerTrack’s vault, the financing source can create its own storage system or outsource this storage function to a third-party vendor.