Leasing giant Lombard Vehicle Management is to roll out its internal affinity scheme to its business customers in around 18 months’ time.
Affinity schemes give businesses a way of offering employees who don’t qualify for a company car access to a vehicle at a preferential rate. It works by using the business’s volume buying power to typically negotiate a better price than is possible by the employee going to their local dealer.
Lombard, the UK’s fourth largest lease firm and part of Royal Bank of Scotland, operates a fleet of almost 120,000 vehicles.
LVM boss Saul Parsonson believes affinity schemes are one area of growth for leasing firms.
“We have a website called ‘Your Car’ for our employees,” he said. “We need to replicate that system for others, it offers cars to people without access to a company car.”
Although Parsonson did not name which of LVM’s customers would use the site first, he said: “We’re negotiating with three businesses right now. The front end of the website will be the company’s branding in most cases, or it may be RBS branding.”
The scheme roll-out is part of Lombard’s “organic growth” plan.
“The past four years have been strong, and we’ll grow 9% this year,” said Parsonson.
