Welcome to the first episode of Tower Talk, a new podcast from NCC where President and CEO Brian Skutta sits down with the people shaping retail automotive to talk through what's actually happening on the dealership floor. In this episode,

Brian is joined by Ed French, a 54-year veteran of the retail car business and longtime compliance and operations consultant, and Jason McCall, who helped build one of the industry's earliest dealer compliance programs. Together they unpack two forces every dealer is feeling right now: fraud and affordability.

The conversation covers why fraud is growing and diversifying, what synthetic ID and bust-out fraud look like in the real world, and why the smartest dealers are moving fraud to the front of the deal instead of the end. From there, the discussion turns to affordability — tightening LTVs, payment-sensitive buyers, and how surfacing credit and fundability early protects both the dealer and the customer experience.

Whether you run a single rooftop or a dealer group, this one is built to help you think differently about how the modern deal comes together.