Why we rent our lending software instead of selling it
There is no large upfront licence fee to become an Argos client. Here is why we built it that way, and what it means for your budget.
One of the questions we are asked most often by finance companies looking at Argos is a simple one. Do we buy the software, or do we rent it?
The answer is that you rent it. There is no large upfront licence fee, and no capital outlay to become an Argos client. You pay a monthly investment that covers the modules your business actually uses, the support you need, and the scheduled updates that keep the system current.
That is a deliberate choice, and it is worth explaining why we made it.
The traditional model works like this. You pay a significant sum upfront for a licence, you go live, and for a while everything is fine.
Then eighteen months or two years pass. The software has not moved, but your business has. Legislation has changed, your product mix has shifted, and the version you bought is starting to show its age. At that point you are faced with another round of investment just to get back to the current.
For a mid-sized lender, that cycle is hard to plan around. In lending, running old software is not just an inconvenience. It is a compliance risk.
The cost is lumpy, it arrives at awkward times, and it makes it tempting to stay on an old version longer than you should.
When you rent, updates are part of the arrangement rather than a separate negotiation. Your system does not quietly fall behind while you wait for a budget cycle to come around.
It also changes the shape of the cost. Instead of a large capital outlay followed by periodic upgrade projects, you have a predictable monthly figure that sits in your operating budget. That is far easier to forecast and far easier to explain to your board.
And because you only pay for the modules your business requires, a lender running a straightforward consumer book is not subsidising features built for a wholesale floorplan operation.
There is one more part of this that we feel strongly about.
Support fees are included in your monthly investment. You and your team can call or email us as much as you need to, and there is no metre running in the background. That covers remote assist sessions too.
We do this because of what happens when support is billed by the hour. People stop asking. A small question that could have been sorted in five minutes gets worked around instead, and six months later it has turned into a habit, a workaround, or a reconciliation problem.
We would much rather your team picked up the phone.
The exception is work that is genuinely a separate project, such as consultancy or formal training. That sits outside the monthly investment, and we will always tell you upfront when something falls into that category.
If you are comparing lending platforms at the moment, it is worth looking past the headline figure and asking a few follow-up questions.
What happens in two years when the software needs updating? Is that included, or is it another project? What does support actually cost once you are live and your team is using the system every day? And are you paying for modules you will never turn on?
The answers to those questions usually matter more over a five-year period than the number on the first page of the proposal.
If you would like to talk through how this would work for your operation, we are happy to have that conversation.
There is no large upfront licence fee to become an Argos client. Here is why we built it that way, and what it means for your budget.