Webinar: private lease, a no-risk way to improve employee satisfaction

Private leasing links lease providers directly with end consumers. Yet corporates too can turn the increasingly popular formula to their advantage: it's a no-risk way of attracting and retaining talent. 

How can your company benefit from private leasing? The question may seem surprising: doesn't private leasing link lease companies directly with end consumers? Yet corporates can turn the increasingly popular formula to their advantage. How? That was the subject of a webinar broadcast on Thursday 17 January. Click here or on the image below to see it in full. 

“Corporates can serve as matchmakers between lease suppliers and their own employees as end customers. In that configuration, everybody wins”, explained Fleet Europe Editor in Chief Steven Schoefs by way of introduction: “Employees get access to a cost-attractive mobility formula, suppliers get access to a substantial number of potential clients, and employers can add an incentive to their benefits package”.

Future growth

The webinar features three speakers, followed by a Q&A session. Octavian Chelu, Principal Consultant Fleet and Leasing at Frost & Sullivan, set the scene by giving an overview of the forces transforming the leasing business today. He provided statistics on the current popularity of private leasing (very high in the UK, but still very low outside the major, mature markets) and its prospects for future growth by 2022 (in the Netherlands and France, among other markets). 

One of the many reasons private lease is so popular – not just with its customers, but also with its providers – is that it has been shown to increase the market's appetite for operational lease, Mr Chelu said. He also provided insight into the various segments of private lease customers and into the potential of vehicle subscriptions to rival private lease in popularity. “There is a lot of room for private lease to grow,” he concluded.

Insider view

Lakshmi Moorthy, SME & Private Lease Director at Arval, presented an insider view of a lease company fully committed to offering the best of private lease formulas to its customers. Why? “Over the past few years, Arval customers have increasingly asked us not just for a company car programme, but also how to offer private lease formulas to their employees that are not eligible for company cars”.

That question often originates with non-eligible employees, interested in obtaining hassle-free mobility at fixed cost similar to their eligible colleagues. Companies are often happy to oblige: the admin is light, there is no financial risk, and the scheme helps recruit and retain talent. “But offering a private lease scheme is not a substitute for a company car programme. It is one component of your offer to non-eligible employees. It is important to keep in mind the substantial differences”.

Case study

Carsten Esbach, COO at BNP Paribas Germany, presented a case study: in 2016, his company started offering private lease formula to its employees. “We abandoned our salary sacrifice scheme to reduce the administrative burden, and private lease seemed to be a good opportunity to replace it”, he said.

And indeed, the formula has proven to be convenient and transparent, from the perspective of both the company's administration and of the employees benefiting from the scheme: “They get an attractive mobility solution, at a projectable monthly cost. Private lease has increased our employee motivation and retention”.