Don Winkler sees things differently from most folks. Always has.

The 50-year-old Winkler has overcome learning disabilities including dyslexia on his way to becoming CEO of Finance One Corp., the consumer and commercial finance subsidiary of Banc One Corp. of Columbus, Ohio.

Through hard work and the use of memory cues, he has learned several languages, including Greek. He points to his toe, for example, to remember part of the Greek word for 'automobile'.

While working in Greece for Citibank, Winkler gained a business reputation as an innovator. Among changes he made: moving the office of one of his bank presidents to the middle of the bank lobby to better hear customer complaints.

Winkler joined Banc One in 1993. The financial giant's latest merger, with First Chicago NBD, is a blockbuster that is scheduled to take effect by year end. Banc One accounts for about 54 percent of the partners' combined assets of around $279 billion.

Auto lending is on the front burner at Banc One. In fact, not counting the Big 3 captives, Banc One is one of the top two or three auto lenders in the United States in terms of assets and the number of dealers signed up.

> Winkler spoke with Staff Reporter Jim Henry in New York in early August. Edited excerpts follow.

How is the merger coming with First Chicago? Was the auto business part of the motivation for the merger?
First Chicago, if you look strictly at autos, is about one-quarter our size. The only real overlap is in the state of Indiana, and we will probably close a couple of facilities there. We're going to focus on this industry.

You had a bunch of mergers before First Chicago, right?
There were 69 different banks that make up our indirect lending business. To tell you the truth, I was surprised how big our auto business was. I asked how many dealers we had signed up, expecting to hear 2,000 or 3,000. The answer was 10,556! We've tried to take advantage of that (size), particularly as the Huizengas of the world come into the business.

How big is big?
We have about $18 billion in assets, before the First Chicago merger, and we do about $11 billion in originations per year. About $1.6 billion is in floorplan and real estate. The rest is in retail lending and leasing. We have 31 (auto finance) offices around the country. We work Saturdays and Sundays, when the dealerships are open. And we have 16 custom (that is, the upper end of subprime) branches, with about $440 million in total assets. We want to put that part of the business together nice and slow. Typically, we do that with dealers where we have a long-standing relationship in new cars.

Are you worried about the high rate of bankruptcy lately?
In a word, yeah. I'm an advocate of putting people through a fair test for ability to pay before allowing them to declare bankruptcy. You and I, the people who pay our debts, are both paying a hidden tax of about $400 a year. People can declare Chapter 7 without any kind of a screen. I'm not talking about people who are poor here. We are growing so fast. If we don't do something, we're going to regret it.

Are your delinquencies way up?
Charge-offs in the (subprime) industry are 8 to 12 percent (for banks). No wonder. You've got banks saying to dealers, 'Give us your rejects.' At least 2 to 3 percent of that is due to bankruptcies alone. If I let it go in our industry, we would be 8 to 10 percent, too. We run no higher than 4 to 5 percent. For prime customers, it's much lower than 2 percent.

Do you do a lot of leasing?
Our portfolio is about half leasing. We've been in the lease business a long time. We're very conservative. We don't do many 24-month leases.

Do you want to do more? It's next to impossible to compete with the captives on subvented leasing, isn't it?
We specialize in specific models where we can have some sort of competitive advantage (vs. the captives), as best we can tell. We have avoided the cocaine of 24-month leases, the fiasco that other people have been caught in.

Are you looking to sign up more dealers, or do more business with the dealers you have?
The latter. We're comfortable with the formula we have. We have about 500 wholesale customers who have been with us 20 years or more, in floorplan, real estate and retail. That's one reason I've kept the 31 offices, to have a presence in the market. There's no substitute for that. On the other hand, the trend in the industry is that mom-and-pop dealerships will go away.

Sad, but true. My father owned a mom-and-pop grocery store, so I know what that's like. (But) we've got to stick pretty close to getting our costs down. Our internal focus is to streamline the infrastructure. Basically, to provide the best price. Externally, one of our major efforts is CarCare ONE (the service and parts credit card).

That's what gives our differentiation in the market. Our guys are not order takers. Our guys don't wear white shirts. They talk the dealer talk.

By permission of Crain's Automotive News, 1400 Woodbridge, Detroit, Michigan 48207-3187.
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