CareGard® Warranty Services
Reference material on how vehicle protection programs are structured, administered and evaluated. Written for the dealers, agents and OEM partners who have to make decisions about them — not as marketing, and not as a sales tool.
Most of what is written about vehicle service contracts is written to sell them. These guides are an attempt at something else: an accurate account of how this business actually works, including the parts that are inconvenient to explain.
01
A due-diligence guide for choosing who will stand behind the contracts you sell. Separating the obligor from the administrator from the insurer, reading financial backing, understanding what claims data does and does not tell you, and the questions worth asking before signing.
For dealers and agents
02
Vehicle protection sold through a dealership and coverage marketed directly to consumers are frequently described as the same thing. They differ in who is obligated, how they are regulated, how they are priced, and how claims are handled. This explains the differences and why they matter.
For consumers, dealers and agents
03
A factual map of how third-party administrators are structured, owned and capitalized — captive, independent, insurer-owned, private-equity-held. What each model optimizes for, what it makes harder, and what it means for the people who depend on them. Ranks no one.
For dealers, agents and OEM partners
04
Three of the largest administrators in automotive F&I have rewritten what their leadership benches look like, and their own org charts show it. What changed, why it changed, and how to read an administrator's leadership structure as a diligence input.
For dealers, agents and OEM partners
05
An explainer on dealer reinsurance and profit participation: the money flow with a worked illustrative example, the structure menu, the 2025–2026 tax developments, and how to read a cession statement. Names providers that publish programs and ranks none of them.
For Dealer principals, dealer CFOs and agents
06
A reference guide to branded F&I programs, from co-branded and private-label to agency- and dealer-owned obligors. Written for independent agents first, it covers who is obligated, what must be built, how compensation works, and what surfaces at termination.
For Agents, dealer groups and OEMs
07
A statute-sourced reference to VSC and GAP cancellation rules in California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan. It also explains how refunds move on payoff, repossession and total loss, how the dealer chargeback is computed, and what federal enforcement has said about refund failures.
For Dealers, F&I Managers, agents and consumers
08
Follows one F&I transaction end to end through the DMS, aggregators, lenders and the administrator, and documents who owns each piece of the plumbing today. Covers the DMS access litigation and state dealer-data laws, the amended Safeguards Rule, state privacy laws, SOC 2 reports, and data portability on termination.
For Dealer principals, CFOs and controllers, IT leads, F&I directors and agents
09
A layer-by-layer guide to F&I technology — digital retailing, menus, rating, eContracting, administration, claims, reporting and portals — naming the vendors from their own published material. It sets out what AI in F&I and claims is actually documented as doing in 2026, the regulatory frame, and the diligence questions that separate real capability from marketing.
For Dealers, agents, F&I Directors and program Managers
These are reference documents, not thought leadership. They are structured so you can read one section and leave, and they cite their sources so you can check the work rather than take our word for it.
Two commitments govern how they are written. They make no comparative claims. Where other companies appear, the information comes from those companies' own public disclosures and is reproduced factually, without ranking or characterization. Every figure is sourced. Where a number is CareGard's own, it is identified as company-reported so you can weigh it accordingly.
Each guide is reviewed annually. Where a document depends on data that changes — regulatory requirements, market structure, published rosters — the access date is noted in the text.
Nothing here is legal, tax, financial or investment advice, and none of it substitutes for your own diligence or your own advisors. Reasonable people in this industry disagree about several of the questions these guides address. Where that is true, we have tried to say so rather than present one view as settled.