Yup. One of my store’s SM and I spent all night last night looking through old bulletins and don’t see anything about it. They’re still training advisors that all BMW leases include GAP coverage. I can’t even imagine the backlash if that ended up not being the case.
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Don’t believe any word of mouth TBH, unless it’s in writing it ain’t worth jack.
Nothing against Scott or any broker trying to get to the bottom of this, just stating the obvious.
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Now that you mention it NY is an exception and even typical no-GAP waiver lessors like TFS have some language specific to the state afaik.
if I have a problem, some broker friend of Scott’s ain’t going to help me. It’s going to be someone reading my contract telling me to go F myself.
So BMW said if I want a Gap Waiver I have to buy that GAP product.
I wonder what happens to BMW one-pays without built in gap waivers hah.
Wouldn’t be the first time a big company had one department change a policy but not have an effective management of change process so the rest of the company keeps acting like the old policy is in place.
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The way i read it, is you only owe payments up to the day of the total loss, but there are a bunch of other things they can charge you for that arent the payments.
It might be equivalent to GAP, but its not a GAP waiver
Just opening a can of worms I see now on GAP
Notwithstanding the pending clarification from BMW, can’t GAP coverage be added to personal auto insurance? I thought I recall it being an option last time I renewed.
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For shits and giggles. I called BMWFS even though I dont have an active account with them anymore.
Their response did not inspire confidence: all leases automatically come with GAP regardless of what the contract says. We looked at my lease contract from 2020 and agreed “Gap Amount Waiver” was explicitly stated in that lease. They again said any other more recent leases without that clause would automatically have GAP. They recommend people call in to BMWFS to ask about their own contracts.
Yes, it’s pretty cheap. I added it just as a backup until this is clarified. ~$6.50/mo
When I’m fighting bmw over not paying extra on a total loss, I’ll quote this post, that quotes a phone call as proof that I did indeed have GAP 
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If I were working for BMW-FS, I’d kill standard Gap Waivers in a heartbeat. These things aren’t free, it’ll probably cost BMW $150 of value over a 36 month lease.
Imagine someone were rolling $20k negative equity into a BMW iX. Then they wreck the iX 2 months into the lease when it’s wildly upside down. Would that “lucky” lessee be free and clear of that negative equity since the lease has a standard Gap waiver?
Look around at all the above MSRP (+ADM) transactions happening. Look at all the people rolling negative equity into more expensive cars. The folks underwriting the Gap Waivers (eg Safe-Guard Products) would start charging a stiff premium to protect against the “Snowy Offramp Special” that people could use to get out of their leases.
BMW could save millions on a 2023 lease portfolio simply by killing the standard Gap waiver and charging people for it instead.
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Financially, removing gap coverage seems to be a logical organization move. But operationally, if true, this is fubar… how can such a big change be implemented with no notice to front line folks? 
. Can’t see the talking heads making changes like this without a ripple…
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Have you ever worked for a multinational megacorp? This would definitely be a screwup but to me it’s not at all mindblowing.
ETA: companies are much better at catching mistakes that cost the company money than ones that make the company money.
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I spoke with someone in the insurance department of BMW-FS… they are reversing course to what the previous BMW-FS frontline support rep told me.
This new person is saying section 27 (that OP posted above) is the new Gap waiver. They may have removed the letters G A and P and muddled the language a ton, but they insist section 27 is a Gap waiver for California residents.
I asked them to put on a BMW-letterhead some plain English to the effect that I have implied Gap coverage in my 2023 BMW i4 lease… but they said they’d have to get back to me on that one.
Regardless, all this talk with phone reps and over the Internet mean zilch until I get something in writing that normal arbitrator or contract interpreter would reasonably understand to be a Gap waiver on my lease.
Edit: I called Safe-Guard who administrates the BMW (guaranteed auto protection) GAP product. My vehicle VIN is not covered by that specific BMW-branded protection.
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Of course, left hand not talking to the right hand.
But when your sales channels have no clue of these changes (which are what the bulletins are for), you’re leaving a ton of people unnecessarily exposed. It may turn out to be nothing in the end, but it’s a lot of churn to deal with.
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If the change was made, this would be a good reason why they decided to make the change. Expecting a future with everyone in major negative equity.
FS is not a large company by any means. FS should not be thought of as the whole of BMW. They create financial product and push it to the distribution channel (dealership sales and management) and it has almost zero involvement with the rest of the company.
Which is why this role doesn’t even need to be done in house. Volvo, JLR, Mazda, etc etc don’t.
Or it could be the same reason they diluted the original CPO (2 extra years became one. Additional years needed to be purchased from the FI manager).
FI product is insanely profitable compared to the cars being sold. So managers are more than happy to have yet another FI product to sell in their portfolio.
FI has become such a key metric that average FI sales per transaction are discussed in earnings calls for the publicly traded dealerships.