Collateral Score

Combine mileage and region-adjusted market values, depreciation forecasts, title and recall signals, and an explainable collateral risk tier in one response. This is a vehicle assessment: borrower credit checks and loan approval remain in your system.

Who uses this API

Lenders, credit unions, auto finance platforms and portfolio servicing teams use Collateral Score for origination reviews, collateral monitoring and loan-book re-scoring.

Use cases

• Origination: compare available collateral values and risk signals before funding.
• Loan-term review: inspect projected retail value at maturity alongside your own lending policy.
• Portfolio monitoring: re-score up to 500 vehicles per batch and route flagged results for review.

Score one vehicle

Send POST /v1/vehicle/collateral-score with your API key in the key query parameter and a JSON body. Open the same interactive playground used by the other product guides:

Parameters

curl -X POST 'https://api.carsxe.com/v1/vehicle/collateral-score?key=YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"vin":"3TMKB5FNXRM012539","mileage":42000,"zip":"20878","loan_term_months":48}'

Keep API keys in your server environment. The example VIN is free and never counted; other VINs use your account's Collateral Score allowance.

Read the response

This illustrative response excerpt shows the shape, with synthetic values; it is not a live appraisal:

{
  "success": true,
  "vin": "3TMKB5FNXRM012539",
  "current_values": {
    "retail": 32000,
    "wholesale": 28500,
    "trade_in": 27000,
    "msrp": 35000,
    "confidence": "high",
    "publish_date": "2026-10-01"
  },
  "lending_recommendation": {
    "risk_tier": "A",
    "suggested_max_ltv": 120,
    "manual_review_recommended": false,
    "reasons": [
      "No risk flags raised.",
      "Depreciates slower than 75% of its segment."
    ],
    "rationale": "No risk flags raised. Depreciates slower than 75% of its segment. Not assessed: accident history.",
    "confidence": "high"
  },
  "data_gaps": ["accident_history"]
}

The interactive API reference contains the complete response schema, including nested forecasts and flags.

Interpret risk and missing data

The current rules return suggested maximum LTV in percentage points: 120 means 120%. Tiers are evaluated from most severe to least severe; reasons identify the rules that fired.

These are collateral recommendations, not loan approvals. Apply your own policy and review the reasons, confidence and gaps together.

• Unknown is null, not false. An unavailable signal cannot trigger its rule. A tier of A does not prove that all risks were assessed.
• Accident history is not currently available. risk_flags.accident_count is null and accident_history is listed in data_gaps. Title-brand records do not provide accident history.
• Forecasts are bounded by the curve. Projections beyond available data return null; the API never extrapolates. curve_source identifies a model curve or a segment fallback. The base is always current retail value.
• Confidence has separate meanings. Valuation confidence reflects value completeness and mileage adjustment. Recommendation confidence reflects assessed data gaps. Accident-history and depreciation-curve gaps do not alone lower recommendation confidence, so always inspect data_gaps even when confidence is high.
• Partial coverage is explicit. Gaps can include vehicle_history, recalls, depreciation_curve and segment_percentile. A recalls outage produces a gap instead of failing the whole score.

Batch portfolio scoring

Submit 1–500 vehicles to POST /v1/vehicle/collateral-score/batch. Each vehicle uses the same inputs as a single score. Only one batch can run per account at a time.

curl -X POST 'https://api.carsxe.com/v1/vehicle/collateral-score/batch?key=YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"vehicles":[{"vin":"3TMKB5FNXRM012539","mileage":42000,"zip":"20878","loan_term_months":48}]}'

A successful submission returns 202 with success, batch_id, status and total. Save batch_id and poll using the same account's key:

curl -G 'https://api.carsxe.com/v1/vehicle/collateral-score/batch' \
  --data-urlencode 'key=YOUR_API_KEY' \
  --data-urlencode 'batch_id=YOUR_BATCH_ID'

Poll until status is completed, then inspect succeeded, failed and the per-vehicle results. A completed batch can include failures; check each result rather than assuming all vehicles scored.

Completion webhook

Optionally include webhook_url in the submission JSON. It must be a public HTTPS URL; redirects are not followed. Completion sends event collateral_score.batch.completed with batch_id, status, total, succeeded, failed and timestamp. Retrieve the actual vehicle results with the authenticated batch-status request.

Webhooks are sent once and are not retried. Keep polling as a fallback and use the authenticated status endpoint to verify completion.

Batch billing

The example VIN is free. Usage is checked up front for every other submitted vehicle. Plans that allow overage are billed one Collateral Score call per successfully scored vehicle when the batch completes. Hard-capped and prepaid plans are charged for every non-example vehicle at submission, before the 202 response.

Errors

See the Errors guide and the operation-specific API reference for response details.