Leasing company Arval has announced five new products with the aim of broadening its offering to customers.
At its 2018 conference in Paris, the firm took the wraps off Arval Electric Vehicle, Arval Car Sharing, Arval For Employee, My Arval and Arval For Me.
All are due to arrive in the UK during the next 12 months or so, and come on the back of a successful 2017 for the firm, which saw its global fleet increase by 7.4% to more than 1.1 million vehicles.
CEO Philippe Bismut said, “2017 was another great year of success and encouraging achievements. We are now announcing the launch of groundbreaking offers, which will contribute to the transformation of the market and accelerate the broadening of our global offering.”
According to Bismut, Arval is moving away from working solely with corporate customers, and will now also target those companies’ employees and individuals.
For its Electric Vehicle product, Arval has teamed up with Renault, Nissan and charging firm NewMotion to offer a comprehensive set of fleet EV services that are now up and running in the UK. These include installing charge points at the driver’s home and workplace, and a mechanism to ensure the cost of electricity used when they charge at home is billed to their employer. There’s also an electricity payment card, and a service that allows the driver’s vehicle to be replaced by a petrol or diesel car for short periods, if they need to complete a long-distance journey for which an EV might not be suitable.
Explaining the firm’s approach, Arval marketing director Hugo Salaun said, “Our main focus was to identify the barriers to EV adoption and try to find a solution for each of them.”
Another service already available in the UK is the Arval For Employee leasing scheme for drivers without company cars. This allows them to have a car, either leased directly from Arval or through their employer via salary sacrifice, and gives them the option to keep the car by leasing or buying it when they leave the company.
Next in line is the My Arval software system, which consists of a mobile application for drivers to manage their cars, due to arrive in April, and a digital portal for fleet managers, due later in the year, which Arval says will give them everything they need to manage their fleet in one place.
For drivers, My Arval allows them to view information about their vehicle and book maintenance. Managers will be able to access a wide range of information including contracts, vehicle specifications, driver information, servicing, maintenance and repair details, invoices, mileage, duration and social feeds.
Next up will be Arval Car Sharing, set to launch in the second half of 2018. This is a platform that allows companies to make their pool-car fleets available to employees via a mobile app. Employees can book the cars as and when they need them for a set period of time that ranges from a few minutes to a few days. They can potentially also book the cars for private as well as professional use.
Explaining the benefits of this system, Arval new business general manager Christophe Conegero said, “For our customers, it’s possible to optimise fleet management and also to boost employee satisfaction. For employees, it’s possible to access cars for professional and
personal use.”
The final product on the slate is Arval For Me, a system designed to offer Arval’s servicing network to private-car owners, although Arval says a big early target market will be the employees of corporate customers.
Bismut added, “I strongly believe that these new offers, based on our digital know-how, will help our clients take up their challenges and make a sustainable, decisive contribution to the green transformation of our sector.”
