Dramatic pricing changes trending in Italian leasing 

The Italian vehicle leasing sector has undergone some dramatic pricing changes over the past two years. In its European Leasing index survey, research and benchmarking provider Experteye lists the following trends for the Italian leasing sector: rising residual values (RVs), falling budgets for servicing, maintenance and repair (SMR), and dropping rental prices. 

Forecast RVs for leased cars have improved 12% since August 2013, and 30% for LCVs over the same period. These positive figures reflect Italy's confidence in its economic future.

SMR budgets have fallen by 13.3% for cars and 14.7% for LCVs. Combined with improving RVs, this means Italian fleet manages have seen their car contract hire rentals drop by 6.9% for cars and by 7.9% for LCVs over the past 2 years.

“Our monitoring of the Italian leasing sector has revealed dramatic shifts in the pricing elements that make up their contract hire rentals – and looking at the past year from August 2014, and the most recent quarter from June 2015, it appears to be continuing”, said Rick Yarrow, Experteye's Managing Director, of the latest European Leasing index survey. 

The improvement in Italy’s outlook is encouraging because, according to Experteye, forecast residual values as a percentage of new car prices have still not recovered since the recession.

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