French captive financing companies flourish

2018 has been a good year for RCI Bank and Services and PSA Banque France. Both captive financing companies of Renault and PSA Groupe reported an increase in financing transactions.

For RCI Bank and Services, offering financial solutions for the dealer networks of Renault, Dacia, Alpine, Renault Samsung Motors, Lada, Nissan, Infiniti and Datsun, 2018 was even a record breaking year. Last year, it introduced almost 1.8 million financings, which is 1,6% over the 2017 figure.

The global financed amount also increased, by 1,5%, and is now at a record high of almost 21 billion euros for RCI Bank. This means that the average financed amount is just over 11,000 euro per vehicle, with 43% of all sold new Renault-Nissan-group cars financed through the captive bank.

While the volume of new vehicle financing slightly declined by 0.53% to 1,443,627 files in 2018, that of second-hand models increased by 11.1% to more than 355,000 contracts.

The sales of services also did very well, with 4.8 million service contracts sold, an increase of 11.1% compared to 2017.

RCI Bank and Services’ average earning assets amounted to 44.4 billion euros, an increase of 12% compared to 2017. Net banking income for its part reached 1.93 billion euros, up nearly 19%.

PSA Banque France, the financial company behind Peugeot, Citroën and DS on the other hand, reported satisfying results over 2018. The number of financings at all three brands significantly increased, in the private market as well as the professional segment.

The sales of the four PSA brands (including Opel) were 5,6% higher than in 2017, which is more than the French market growth that amounted to 3% last year compared to 2017.

At Peugeot, the financial contracts totalled 2.687 billion euros in 2018, which is 12.7% higher than the year before, of which 60% is generated from the private market.

PSA saw its financial production for Citroën cars climb to 1.4 billion euros, with 62% or 877 million euros of that total obtained in the private market.

DS, finally seeing its sales climb thanks to the DS 7 Crossback-SUV, saw a 29% financing increase in the private market and even 81% more financing contracts for professionals. In total, PSA Banque registered 180.2 million euros of financings for DS cars.

With the interest rates remaining rather low, the WLTP-issues getting resolved and new models with lesser emissions hitting the market, both captive banks foresee a profitable 2019 following the 2018 trends.

Picture: Renault