The powersports sector in Canada is getting some reinforcements.
NetSol Technologies, a global business services and enterprise application solutions provider, recently signed a contract with Yamaha Motor Finance Canada for a further implementation of its LeasePak solution.
Peter Minshall, executive vice president of NetSol Technologies Americas, explained what the move means.
“Yamaha Motor Finance is a long-standing client of the company in the United States. Through its Canadian affiliate, Yamaha is looking to expand its regional commercial finance footprint,” Minshall said in a news release.
“Due to the client’s pre-existing relationship with NetSol and first-hand experience with our LeasePak product, it was natural for them to use the same product for their leasing and lending operations in Canada,” he continued.
Najeeb Ghauri is founder, chairman and chief executive officer of NetSol Technologies.
“It gives us great pleasure when existing clients continue to place their trust in us when expanding their operations in different countries or regions,” Ghauri said. “Yamaha is a blue-chip company and is world-renowned.
“By signing an agreement with NetSol to deploy our LeasePak platform in Canada, the client will be enabled with a superior, end-to-end portfolio management solution to ensure their operations are executed seamlessly and cost-effectively,” Ghauri went on to say.
Houston-based Auto Financial Group reinforced its Canadian leadership this week.
The company announced that Mark Caschera has been appointed vice president of AFG Leasing Canada in a move meant to bolster AFG’s mission to expand its program in Canada to meet the rising consumer demand for leasing.
AFG explained the program can allow credit unions to provide leasing options to their members looking to lease both new and used vehicles. AFG manages the residual value risk and the vehicle turn-in process, making the leasing experience more convenient for members.
“We are pleased Mark has taken this new position following several years in the role of general manager. He is very experienced in all aspects of auto finance and leasing and we look forward to his continued success expanding our program in Canada,” AFG chief executive officer Richard Epley said in a news release.
AFG Canada president Peter Birks added, “Mark has been with CULA and now AFG Canada four years and is a highly valued member of our team. He has been very successful in creating and maintaining strong relationships with both our credit union and auto dealer partners.”
More financing options now are available for dealerships and their customers in Canada’s rural provinces.
Last week, AFG Canada announced that Newfoundland and Labrador Credit Union (NLCU), a financial institution based in Newfoundland, has signed on to AFG Canada’s Leasing Program.
AFG said the partnership with NLCU further reinforces its mission to expand into new markets in Canada to meet the rising consumer demand for residual based financing, otherwise known as leasing.
AFG’s program will be available to NLCU’s member base of more than 20,200. The AFG program allows NLCU to provide leasing options to their members looking to lease both new and used vehicles.
AFG manages the residual value risk and the vehicle turn-in process, in an effort to make the leasing experience more convenient for members.
“The AFG Leasing Program will provide additional vehicle options to enhance our lending portfolio — it’s an innovative way to expand our offer at Newfoundland and Labrador Credit Union,” said Allison Chaytor-Loveys, chief executive officer at NLCU.
AFG Canada CEO Richard Epley added, “We welcome NLCU to the AFG Canada family and look forward to contributing to their success and exceeding their expectations with AFG’s superior customer service.”
To learn more about AFG Canada’s leasing program, visit www.afgcanada.ca.
Despite the challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic, LeaseCosts Canada still is tracking toward reaching its goal of vehicles listed on its online auto leasing marketplace.
Officials highlighted in a recent news release that the LeaseCosts Lease Takeover Network now has more than 5,000 vehicles listed. A year ago, LeaseCosts projected the company would get to 6,000 units by the fourth quarter, but estimations slightly diverged due to impact from COVID-19.
Along with the vehicle listing, the site also offers “cost-oriented” analysis tools for both new-car leasing and lease transfer.
“Although we are still on track to get close to the 6,000 units by the end of the year, the near future is still uncertain, and we need to be as cautious with our projections as we are with the health measures. While many of our customers face financial distress with their lease contracts due to job losses, businesses shutting down and a collapse of their plans, we have centered our effort on delivering value and increasing the exposure of their deals,” LeaseCosts Canada chief executive officer and founder Jorge Diaz said.
“We thought volumes were going to be low, but the opposite happened. You don’t take into account there may be an economic slowdown when you sign a four- or five-year car lease, but if it happens and you lose your job, then you need a Plan B,” Diaz continued.
According to Statistics Canada, the unemployment rate declined for the fourth consecutive month in September, falling 1.2 percentage points to 9.0%
However, Statistics Canada reported there were still 1.8 million unemployed Canadians in September. It’s that kind of backdrop that Diaz reiterated why LeaseCosts Canada can be helpful.
“Lease takeover services serve as a good backup plan for both car buyers and vehicle manufacturers when it comes to leasing. Most of our clients value the fact of having the option on the table, if ever needed, of transferring their lease contracts if something suddenly changes in their financial situations,” Diaz said.
“It is as if you had a community of potential buyers ready to take over your contract as soon as you need to. What is an issue for you may be an opportunity for someone in your area,” he added.
Diaz closed his latest update by looking ahead to what’s in store for LeaseCosts Canada
“For the upcoming quarters, we will be focusing on improving the customer experience and increasing the local visibility of the listings,” Diaz said.
“Our next strategic steps include new services related to system onboarding, better explaining the process and improving our live Q&A. Our customers come first, and our team members take care of them one at a time,” he went on to say.
For further information, visit www.leasecosts.ca.
AFG Canada announced that CUA, a full-service banking institution based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has signed on to AFG Canada’s leasing program. The partnership with CUA further reinforces AFG’s mission to expand into new markets in Canada to meet the rising consumer demand for residual based financing, otherwise known as leasing.
AFG’s program will be available to CUA’s member base of more than 20,000 customers.
“We are excited to partner with AFG to provide this new leasing product for Nova Scotians,” CUA president and chief executive officer Marie Mullally said in a news release. “It complements our existing range of flexible banking products and services and we’re looking forward to providing members with additional competitive options when they consider a new vehicle.”
The AFG program can allow CUA to provide leasing options to their members looking to purchase new and used vehicles. The new product builds on CUA’s 70-year history of helping everyday people get ahead with flexible products, personalized service and quick decisions.
AFG manages the residual value risk and the vehicle turn-in process, making the leasing experience more convenient for members.
“We welcome CUA to the AFG Canada family and look forward to contributing to their success and exceeding their expectations with AFG’s superior customer service,” said Richard Epley, chief executive officer of AFG Canada.
To learn more about AFG Canada’s leasing program, visit www.afgcanada.ca.
Fleet management company LeasePlan Canada and vehicle inspection company Alliance Inspection Management say they are committed to providing Canada with vehicle condition reports for commercial fleets to increase the transparency and trust in transactions.
A new partnership between those two companies reflects a continuation of that commitment.
LeasePlan Canada has selected AiM for off-lease inspections as part of the companies’ move to expand their presence within the Canadian market.
The deal calls for AiM to integrate its 50 mobile and fixed-site operators across LeasePlan Canada’s locations in the country. LeasePlan Canada says the new partnership will accelerate its ability to collect vehicle information across its Canadian fleet “so that fleet owners can make better-informed decisions and have more confidence in their transactions.”
“As the largest provider of off-lease inspections in the United States, we’re thrilled to expand this part of our business to Canada,” AiM’s senior vice president of sales and marketing Eric Widmer said in a news release. “Our alliance with LeasePlan Canada will eliminate time and friction from their vehicle remarketing efforts, and provide both buyers and sellers with a clear picture of vehicle conditions across their fleet.”
“AiM has developed into the trusted third-party vehicle inspection company for the auto remarketing industry,” said LeasePlan Canada remarketing manager Claudio de Angelis. “Everyone from auto manufacturers to dealers, consignors to auctions understand[s] that an accurate vehicle condition report impacts its value, and through our partnership, we’ll be able to collect data and report a vehicle’s condition to our customers.”
LeasePlan Canada contributes to the company’s worldwide operations of more than 1.8 million vehicles across 32 countries. AiM has performed more than 90 million vehicle inspections for auto manufacturers, rental fleets, dealers, auction companies, finance companies and consumers for the past nine years. AiM also provides floor plan audits, dealer inspections, and new car and auction inspections in Canada.
The music and information options for drivers who have a vehicle through Foss National Leasing & LeasePlan Canada just became much more robust.
SiriusXM Canada this week announced a new partnership with Foss National Leasing & LeasePlan Canada to offer the SiriusXM Fleet Program to its drivers.
The new partnership will provide Foss & LeasePlan drivers with access to preferred pricing on SiriusXM subscriptions — as well as complimentary trials on qualified, equipped vehicles — giving drivers access to more than 130 channels of commercial-free music, plus sports, entertainment, news, comedy and more.
“We are constantly seeking new ways to improve our drivers’ experience in the car and we know that being able to offer SiriusXM will do just that,” said Basil Marcus, director of new business development and marketing Foss National Leasing.
“All of our drivers spend a significant amount of time behind the wheel and having access to the diverse programming of SiriusXM will help to keep them entertained and informed,” Marcus continued.
Paul Cunningham, senior vice president of sales and marketing for SiriusXM Canada, added, “We are very excited to partner with Foss and LeasePlan, who are one of the leading fleet management companies in Canada and globally.
“Our fleet program is a new and emerging area of our business and we know that our incredible content provides great value for fleet drivers,” Cunningham went on to say.
To learn more about SiriusXM Fleet Programs, visit fleet.siriusxm.ca.
RVI Group’s latest quarterly report put a number regarding how much analysts expect used-vehicle prices to soften by 2020.
According to the latest installment of the RVI Risk Outlook, analysts first mentioned that real used-vehicle prices in Canada decreased in February on a year-over-year basis. In February, the exchange rate was $0.75 USD/CAD, down from $0.76 USD/CAD in January, while gas prices declined 4.5 percent from the previous month.
Analysts continued that Canadian GDP slowed down in the fourth quarter of 2016 to an annual rate of 2.6 percent. RVI Group pointed out that new-vehicle sales are starting the year strong, with 1.9 million units (SAAR) sold in the month of January.
So what about those wholesale prices?
RVI Group indicated real used-vehicle prices decreased 0.6 percent in February from the previous month, and are down 3.0 percent compared to the same time last year.
“We expect that a stronger Canadian Dollar, along with the growing supply of off-lease vehicles, will continue to put downward pressure on used car prices, which we are forecasting to decline by 10.8 percent by 2020,” analysts said in the report that can be downloaded here.
TREND Financial is a bit different than other players in the Canadian auto finance industry.
It’s all leasing. It’s all pre-owned.
The average age of the car when the lease is originated is six or seven years; when they come back, they might be a decade or older.
And one of the mantras for TREND Financial when it got started was flexibility, says chief financial officer Brent Sawadsky. But being reasonable and measured at the same time.
“When the company was originally set up, the idea was to try to find areas that other lenders weren’t lending into,” Sawadsky said in a September interview with Auto Remarketing Canada in the lobby of a Toronto conference center.
“And it sort of precipitated (into) eight different tiers,” he said. “And those tiers allowed us to do different things and to be flexible, and to do smart lending that other people saw too much risk in, that we saw less risk, understanding the asset thoroughly and then understanding human beings.
“People make mistakes. People also earn money that doesn’t necessarily always get reported in the standard channels,” Sawadsky said.
These folks may actually be credit-worthy and just need some help, he added.
Both Sawadsky and chief operating officer Eric Kaplan — who spoke with Auto Remarketing Canada, as well —have backgrounds in auto finance.
“Their needs were not being met,” Kaplan said of consumer demand when the company first started. “There was a significant opportunity for us just to offer a program that consumers wanted.”
The recession likely deepened the pool of potential customers needing TREND’s help, but one hurdle the company and other have had is the negative connotation of subprime lending, Kaplan said.
“When the word ‘subprime’ is used attached to mortgages, everyone now applies subprime to everything else … you do alternative lending, therefore you’re a subprime automotive lender,” Kaplan said. “Breaking through that stigma, then, is the same issue we have now.
“And the reason why we’re still able to get quite a bit of funding is we’re able to convince the lenders and convince our lenders that the optics of the industry are not necessarily correct,” he said.
There is some media, Kaplan said, that correlates subprime mortgages to subprime auto financing, and that the latter would have the same as the former. But a deep dive, he said, would show that they’re different.
Explaining the specific differences and earning their confidence, Kaplan said, “that’s kind of the hurdle we have to get through.”
Another point that Sawadsky said TREND drives home to its lenders and investors is this: it is here for the long haul and emphasizes smart financing. Again, making choices based on reason.
“We’re not going to build market share at the expense of credit,” Sawadsky said.
Some of TREND’s approach to safeguarding that is based on its team’s experience in the auto finance field and understanding of “human psychology,” Sawadsky said.
“Although we can look at numbers and all this information, you have to layer on top of it (questions like) what does the person do, where do they live, how do they think? What’s going to be their priority?” he said.
The approach for the consumer has to be that vehicle has to be the priority, Sawadsky, as a functional means of transportation, rather than a social status, for example.
As far as other processes, Kaplan said one of the company’s approaches is to in-house as many tasks as possible, including chores ranging from remarketing to skip-tracing.
Kaplan said this actually helps in portfolio management; instead of working with outside parties that may have their own objectives, schedules and other customers, TREND has found value in working its processes in-house.
In other words, “control the entire flow,” Kaplan said.
Customers using LeaseBusters and its FinanceBusters division to get out of or into a lease now have access to CARPROOF’s vehicle history reports.
The newly announced agreement between the companies aims to facilitate transparency in the lease takeover process. To that end, CARPROOF VHRs will now be available on LeaseBusters and FinanceBusters listings. New clients will have access to the reports as they enter the listing process, and existing clients can add a VHR to their current listings.
“Honesty and integrity are two of our guiding principles,” Jim Matthews, president and general manager of LeaseBusters and FinanceBusters, said in a news release. “Integrating CARPROOF into our listing process provides our customers with everything they need to know about the vehicle they are looking at, before they sign on the bottom line. It was a natural progression.”
“We are happy to expand our relationship with LeaseBusters,” says Mark Rousseau, president at CARPROOF. “CARPROOF was built to make used-car transactions more transparent, so the opportunity to lend this benefit to the leasing industry is exciting. It means that not only are we helping used car buyers, but now we can also help lessees be confident that the vehicle is a good value, with no surprises at lease return. Everybody wins.”
