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Dan Berce: Looking Back on a Legendary Career

Dan Berce announced his pending retirement as GM Financial President and CEO to a crowded room of senior leaders in a way that only Dan could — concisely, directly and without fanfare.

His delivery was a reflection of his leadership style and his tenure as CEO. Thoughtful, precise, powerful and yet, understated.

It’s those attributes that defined Dan’s steady leadership over the course of more than three decades, anchored GM Financial and cemented its place as one of the world’s largest and most important captive finance companies.

In many ways, Dan’s consistency and unwavering commitment to the company he helped build enabled the business to grow and evolve while maintaining and nurturing the sort of people-first culture that sets it apart.

Dan’s career in auto finance began in 1990 when he assumed the role of Chief Financial Officer at a new, independent subprime lender in Fort Worth, Texas, called AmeriCredit. In 2005, Dan was named CEO.

Within a few years, an economic recession hit the United States. Layoffs followed, but Dan and his leadership team nimbly navigated the changing economy and AmeriCredit prevailed. To hear Dan tell the story in his calm, deliberate manner, one would never guess it was a test that every other business of its kind failed.

“AmeriCredit had weathered some storms before,” Dan said. “Those instances allowed us to develop pretty good, granular financial models. So, when we got hints of the Great Recession, we started running scenarios that helped us stay a step ahead of all the adverse effects in the market,” he said.

In fact, AmeriCredit was the rare independent U.S. subprime company to survive the recession.

As he often does, Dan attributed the company’s success in that turbulent era to its personnel. After all, it took talented workers to build the models, monitor the trends and adjust the strategy.

But the company also lost some outstanding team members to downsizing. Even now, it’s something that Dan and other leaders are still grappling with, although they recognize it was necessary.

It was the culture, renowned in Fort Worth and making waves in the industry, that attracted such important talent to the company in the first place. The preservation of the culture eventually brought back many of the team members who were let go during the recession.

Though he may never take credit, it’s widely understood that the culture cascaded from the top down, largely influenced by Dan’s humility, competency and relaxed but determined attitude. Culture remained a major key to the business’s success as it entered its next chapter.

In 2010, a newly reorganized General Motors formally purchased AmeriCredit, creating GM Financial. The company’s people and expertise, alongside its recession survival and scaling capacity, were some of the primary reasons GM began considering AmeriCredit for acquisition.

As Dan and team went to work standing up the prime loan and lease businesses that now make up the majority of GMF’s portfolio, expanding into Canada and rolling out a desirable floorplan product, a group of key GM dealers approached the manufacturer and expressed interest in once again having a full-spectrum captive lender.

By the end of 2016, GMF became the exclusive subvented loan provider and the exclusive lease provider for GM dealers. 

There was still work to be done. Dan and team were then tasked with convincing dealers, one by one, that the company could provide great products and services.

“The captive label didn’t guarantee relationships because we were still untested in their eyes. It was all about building, following through and never overpromising our abilities,” Dan said. “We worked to provide a level of service that was undeniable and unsurpassed, which helped establish new relationships, strengthened existing ones and delivered on that captive value promise.”

The continuity of the team, Dan said, and the ability to supplement with experts from other parts of the industry were some of the biggest drivers in getting dealer relationships off the ground in a way that was sincere and authentic.

Nearly 10 years later, executing the captive transition remains one of Dan’s most cherished career highlights.

“That was an arduous, difficult journey. At any step of the way, we could've lost the confidence of any of the key parties. But we followed our plan, kept our promises and came out the other end with everyone involved believing they made the right decision by investing in us,” he said.

Since acquisition, the company has grown from about 3,000 employees in the U.S. to nearly 9,000 across the globe. During the same period, its revenue grew from $1.4 billion to $15.9 billion, and its total assets grew from $10 billion to $141 billion as of Dec. 31.

GM’s backing allowed for greater growth and credibility, but from the beginning, GM’s board insisted that Dan and team operate autonomously. That arrangement was music to Dan’s ears and a testament to his reputation and trustworthiness.

GM Financial proved itself in those early years by delivering strong financial results and practicing balanced credit discipline that would’ve been difficult to achieve under pressure to meet aggressive sales goals set by the OEM. Operating with a high level of independence allowed Dan’s leaders to stay in place, and the company’s culture was able to continue thriving without intervention from the new parent.

“Unless we reached out to her, GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, really let us operate our own business and didn’t attempt to manage what we were doing,” Dan said. “The results speak for themselves. If we had stumbled, we might’ve gotten more help”.

GM Financial accounted for 20% of the GM enterprise’s full-year adjusted earnings in 2024 — an almost unbelievable impact created by a company that only came into existence when GM was already more than 80 years old.

Rather than take a victory lap, Dan simply acknowledged the figure and pointed to GMF’s captive value pillars of driving sales, enhancing customer loyalty and retention, contributing to enterprise profitability and providing support across economic cycles to explain how the company contributed so much to the GM enterprise results.

The company’s performance and development made Dan a person of great interest in the global auto finance landscape but never inflated his ego.

He’s been presented with dozens of awards from some of the most prestigious publications and industry groups, each time deferring the honor to the team around him. When he was named Auto Finance Executive of the Year in 2023, Dan shared a familiar line, emblematic of what’s most important to him.

“This award is a testament to what we have built together. It may bear my name, but more accurately reflects our many exemplary team members, accomplished leaders, resilient culture and outstanding commitment to excellence,” he said.

Beyond the dollars and cents outcomes of his tenure, Dan is known for his philanthropic spirit and his desire to empower team members to give back. He was one of the primary architects of the company’s community investment function, advocating for all team members to receive volunteer paid time off, which was novel when it was implemented.

In recent years, Dan greenlit the creation of the company's KEYS^® program, which provides free financial literacy resources throughout the country, addressing an increasingly important need.

He’s quietly made an enormous impact in North Texas communities through his work with local schools, charities, children’s hospitals and other groups focused on community health and wellness.

Those efforts are small indicators of the selflessly determined mindset that drove Dan’s career. The same mindset propelled his decision to finally retire in April.

Even though GM Financial wouldn’t exist in its current form without him, Dan is not interested in his own legacy. When asked about what he hopes to leave behind, Dan said his only wish is for GMF and its team members to enjoy continued success and prosperity.

“I’m really confident in the team I’m leaving behind. I believe in them. I know they’ll continue executing and running the business just as well as it’s been run for the last 35 years,” he said. 

By Jake Stevens, GM Financial

Jake Stevens uses his writing skills to help others make sense of complex topics. His second greatest passion, after auto finance, is cheering on the Crimson Tide.