General Motors Co., the largest U.S. automaker, said it plans to launch this year a pilot program through its captive lender, GM Financial, to make loans to dealers to buy new vehicles from the company.

GM Financial has already hired a person to oversee the program, and is adding employees to begin making the loans, Dan Berce, the unit's president and chief executive officer, told Bloomberg News.

The pilot program is part of GM's efforts to re-create a full-service captive finance company, which has been attempting to do since selling a majority stake in its GMAC unit in 2006.

GM aims to provide 10 percent to 20 percent of the floorplan loans to its dealers "within a year or two," Berce told the publication. Most of that financing is now provided by the U.S. government-controlled Ally Financial Inc., which handled about 82 percent of GM dealers' floorplan loans in 2010's fourth quarter. Ally, based in Detroit, formerly was the automaker's GMAC unit.

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