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Fraud, miss-selling and malpractice cases have been on the increase during the recession causing a serious re-think about the regulation of the motor finance industry. In the meantime brokers are strongly advised to provide warnings to customers about the dangers of signing a legally binding contract without reading and understanding the terms and naively basing the decision to take finance on rate or APR alone. I Read more »

It wasn’t that long ago when you could return a car at the end of a lease in pretty average condition and the leasing company would overlook anything other than serious damage. These days they send out specialist inspectors to check over the car and seem to charge for anything that doesn’t conform to showroom condition, in one case they counted the number of stone chips on the bonnet and argued that there were Read more »

A report out this week shows a drop in leased vehicles of 10% this year. The reasons are fairly obvious with larger companies making redundancies and having to make better use of resources, fewer vehicles are now required.. One van can now do the job of two and one salesman can cover a larger area as a result of decreases in sales and customers. Having said that Read more »

Things are not getting any easier for us brokers or our funders. I heard yesterday that a large part of the Audi range is now on Feb/Mar 2010 delivery for orders placed now. Most funders will price fix for 3 months from the date of order which means that the monthly rate will be held as long as the vehicle can be delivered within the 3 months. However, if delivery is beyond this, rates may be subject to review as a Read more »

The importance of using a broker rather than a bucket shop for lease cars has been highlighted again this week following the consolidation of the leasing industry. Where your lease provider may have been merged or taken over by another provider you may find yourself subjected to end of lease charges that you may not have received by the original provider who may have been fairly relaxed about defleet recharges. Read more »

Finally, it’s happened, a company has brought out an insurance policy to cover the ever growing end of contract refurbishment charges for cars and vans that will be returned to the leasing company at the end of the lease. The cost of the policy will range between £290 and £350 for a standard family sized car and it will cover vehicle damage over and above fair wear and tear up to £1,500. This may seem like Read more »

 Contract hire is still by far the most popular method used to finance vehicles according to members of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association. Contract hire of cars has remained pretty static over the last 5 years, consistently hovering around 1.3 million mark. LCV’s (vans) have dropped slightly over the years from 180,000 to 176,000. Contract purchase and personal contract purchase have both dipped over the last year. So it seems that businesses and consumers continue to understand the benefits of contract hire, long may it continue. By Graham Hill

 If you are a regular reader of my articles you will know that I don’t regard those expert advisors that write in the media about car finance very highly. In fact I regard most as being daft as a house brick. But whilst an article that appeared in the Independent didn’t really change my views there were a couple of points over which I had to agree, as painful as it was! The reporter suggested that the scrappage scheme cash may run out by mid October which is a feeling shared and hoped for by Read more »

One of the effects of the recession is that apparently greenhouse emissions are substantially down as a result of cost savings and people traveling less miles in their cars and vans. Whilst this is great news for the environment and has helped to stabilize fuel prices it may also have a positive effect on the lease cost of cars on either contract hire or contract purchase. If you find that you are now traveling substantially fewer miles in your car you should Read more »

Following on from the warning about crooks a warning has been issued by the Finance & Leasing Association regarding another fraud that is on the increase. Bogus rental and lease companies are being set up that provide criminals with access to what appear to be legitimate insured and taxed vehicles. The vehicles are obtained fraudulently on finance then sublet with Read more »