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SEARCHThe increasingly important profit center continued making gains in the first quarter, according to StoneEagle data, ancillary products proving more popular as consumers hold onto their buys longer.
Ancillary F&I products are gaining more traction with consumers, reaching as high as a 20% penetration rate for paint-and-fabric protection in the first quarter.
Pexels/Luke Miller
Auto dealers’ finance-and-insurance revenue is becoming more crucial to shoring up profits as the market normalizes from pandemic-era peaks.
A first-quarter StoneEagle report shows solid growth in F&I sales as consumers strapped by overall inflation see the need to protect the vehicles they keep longer nowadays.
F&I per-vehicle retail in the quarter jumped about 8% to $1,986, based on anonymized data StoneEagle compiled from products used by its customer base, which it said represents more than half the U.S. auto retail industry. That translates to about a 3% year-over-year jump in average F&I revenue per dealer to more than $211,000.
Products per deal, meanwhile, rose about 2% to 1.6.
The only F&I metric to show a decline in the quarter was average deal count per dealer, which fell about 4.5% to 106, StoneEagle said, citing normalization from last year’s first-quarter shopping surge when consumers sought to beat trade tariff inflation.
“Even with fewer deals moving through the average dealership, F&I income still increased year over year as dealers relied more heavily on F&I to help balance affordability pressure and lower front-end gross, reinforcing F&I’s role as the foundation of stability and profitability for dealerships,” “said StoneEagle CEO Cindy Allen.
Though average dealer front-end profit per deal is down by more than half from Covid-era highs and by 21% from January 2025, that’s still about a third higher than before the pandemic, StoneEagle reported.
Ancillary F&I products are gaining more traction with consumers, reaching as high as a 20% penetration rate for paint-and-fabric protection, 75% above 2020’s level, according to the report.
Vehicle service contracts and gap protection still sell the most, VSCs gaining to a 45% penetration rate in the quarter and gap rising to 40%.
“As consumers finance larger balances across longer ownership cycles, products tied to vehicle protection and negative-equity exposure are becoming a more important part of the F&I conversation,” said StoneEagle Chief Product Officer Colin Snyder.
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