“Moving forward,” CDK said, “we expect to enable insurance service providers to provide insurance solutions in a more scalable way via our broad network of independent software vendors (ISVs) and our open platform.”
A private company since late 2022, CDK did not disclose how many jobs, if any, were affected by the decision.
CDK’s move to wind down Salty comes as the company pursues its ongoing “fit and focus” strategy to reorganize and boost efficiency. That has included job cuts and a decision announced in March to outsource an undisclosed number of its employees onto Genpact, a global business process company.
CDK acquired Salty in late 2021, gaining a Salt Lake City company that let consumers buy auto insurance digitally while also buying a vehicle. The idea was that auto insurance could become a new revenue stream for auto retailers, giving them additional ways to connect with customers once they bought a vehicle. A year ago, CDK CEO Brian MacDonald said he was “fully supportive” of Salty, a company founded in 2019.
In 2021, Salty worked with just over 500 franchised dealerships and said it would partner with Asbury Automotive Group Inc. to include Salty’s insurance technology within Asbury’s Clicklane digital retailing platform.
Automotive News could not immediately reach Asbury about the status of that project.
Jim Maxfield is Salty’s former chief sales officer, whose Purple Insurance merged with the startup before CDK acquired it and he departed. Maxfield said Salty’s demise is not surprising.
“The notion of embedded insurance … is proving not to be successful in retail automotive,” Maxfield told Automotive News. “The idea of taking a customer through the car-buying process and getting them to land on payment and then having the dealer say, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s more money involved called ‘car insurance,’ I think it gets in the way of selling a car.”
