All articles by Charles Wheeldon
Charles Wheeldon
Roelofs joins specialist team
Chartered accountant Christian Roelofs will become the newest addition to Grant Thornton UK LLPs leasing and consumer finance business, when he joins the firm on Monday as one of its asset finance specialists. Roelofs leaves Macquarie Bank to take up his new role, where he will be tasked with helping drive further growth within Grant Thorntons niche financing sector, and bringing a corporate finance and M&A focus to the team
AFS rate drop
Multi-marque finance provider Alphera Financial Services has announced a new flat interest rate, starting at 3.25%, for hire purchase and personal contact plans, continuing until the end of September. Alphera director Spencer Halil said: “We recognise that the car sales market is tougher this year, particularly on new cars, so we want to offer our partners the chance to boost sales. The first part of the year proved extremely difficult for finding new customers and, having invested heavily in customer relationship management training, we now want to work on creating offers that are attractive to both our partners and their prospective customers
Burlington Credit enforcement service north of the border
The service complements its High Court writ of delivery product for enforcement of County Court return orders in England and Wales and makes the company the only asset repossession service provider to offer a full post-judgment enforcement service, to recover assets subject to court orders, across the UK mainland Business development manager Adam Wonnacott said: We are launching the service in conjunction with an authorised sheriff officer, whose services we have retained under contract, so Burlington are not sheriff officers as such, but we do have the capacity to provide sheriff officer services.
SAF gains further traction with accreditation of 3 new groups
Three top UK dealer groups have been awarded approved status in the FLAs Specialist Automotive Finance (SAF) competence test scheme in the past month: Arnold Clark, Marshall and Rybrook. With Jardine Motors also expected to be accredited by the end of July, 22 of the UKs 30 largest dealer networks will be able to display the SAF kitemark in showrooms.
Motability exposé
Non-profit car leasing company Motability Operations has faced criticism following a Sunday Times investigation into alleged abuse of the Motability scheme by dealers and relatives of the severely disabled. The newspaper alleged relatives of those entitled to use their disability benefit to lease Motability vehicles were using the cars themselves
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Tough times continue for dealers as registrations fall in June
New car registrations fell by 6.2% in June, compared to June last year, to 183,125 units the 12th successive month that registrations have been lower than the corresponding month a year ago However, the drop is lower than that for registrations in the first half of 2011 compared to H1 2010, which at 1,029,638 is 7.1% down.
Car finance market share hits two-year high
A total of 56% of new car sales used motor finance in the year to May 2011 the highest market share since March 2009 the Finance & Leasing Association reports. In May, the new and used car finance markets for consumers both grew, with the number of new cars sold on finance up by 3% compared to May 2010, and the number of used cars sold on finance up by 6%.
Gale’s back in sales
After a two-and-a-half year secondment to an operational role, Robert Gale has returned to a sales role as northern sales director for Santander Consumer Finance. After 23 years working in sales for Lombard, First National and then Santander, Gale was appointed head of GE Money Auto in Leeds when Santander Consumer Finance acquired it in January 2009 He was asked to run the integration of the GE book and business into Santander, a process which has now been completed.
Cherry picking buyers force used car values down in June
Average wholesale used car values fell by 2.5% (£168) to £6,640 in June, the third consecutive monthly fall, reports Manheim Remarketing. The fleet sector fell by 2.5% (£155) to £6,100 and manufacturer stock values fell by 3% (£346) to £11,279
Bridford: prestige sales back to form
The prestige car market improved in June after a subdued couple of months, according to specialist luxury car funder, Bridford Financial Solutions. After arranging a record £4.4m in March, which helped the company notch up a record first quarter of £10.2 million, April and May were slower, with sales down 50 percent. Business in June, however, was buoyant, topping £3 million, including finance arranged for a £425,000 Ferrari F40, a £97,000 Porsche Cayenne Turbo, and for a number of the new Bentley Continental GTs, which cost around £140,000