AI ambitions vs. legacy IT trap
Four in five asset‑finance leaders want to add AI for credit scoring and fraud detection — but nearly half of IT budgets are still eaten by legacy maintenance, slowing cloud and AI rollouts. That gap is why cloud‑native SaaS migration pathways and embedded ML matter now. (finance-connect.com)
NETSOL Technologies published the commissioned research on March 17, 2026 and flagged "data readiness and accessibility" as a primary blocker for AI rollouts in asset finance. (netsoltech.com) FIS announced a SaaS, cloud‑native Asset Finance platform combining origination, servicing, collections and remarketing in late 2025 to win business from captives and banks seeking faster cloud migrations. (secure.businesswire.com) NETSOL’s Transcend platform has been marketed to OEMs and captives as an AI‑first digital retail and asset finance stack, underscoring vendor moves to package embedded ML for credit and remarketing use cases. (leasinglife.com) Solifi customer rollouts show practical SaaS migration outcomes: Access Capital migrated from on‑premise to Solifi ABL in 2023 to gain daily reporting, a borrower portal and near‑real‑time data streaming. (solifi.com) Merchant West Group completed a Solifi SaaS upgrade after green‑lighting the project in April 2023 and reported the migration finished on time and within budget while adding real‑time account administration and portfolio insights. (solifi.com) Equipment lenders are adopting AI for residual‑value forecasting to tighten depreciation modelling and protect end‑of‑term remarketing margins, with industry coverage noting predictive AI use in equipment valuation in January 2026. (equipmentfinancenews.com) Auto finance pressure points cited by industry analysts include surging dealer inventory and volatile off‑lease supply—off‑lease volumes were reported more than 40% lower in recent years—fueling demand for ML‑driven inventory intelligence and faster digital retailing. (automotive-fleet.com) Independent vendors are building floorplan‑focused verification and anomaly detection tools (including AI‑verified proof‑of‑presence and immutable audit trails) to reduce audit friction and liquidity risk in dealer wholesale lines. (anvllabs.io) CFO and industry surveys show the macro funding dynamic: finance leaders are increasing tech budgets (68% reported higher tech spend in Q1 2026) even as separate banking studies report as much as 70% of IT spend tied to legacy maintenance, squeezing transformation dollars. (grantthornton.com)
