Desplace: businesses modifying behaviour

Extended leases as businesses take ‘sit tight’ policy

I left the Honda CR-V behind at the beginning of the week to visit Christophe Desplace, the head of Network. Their office is right next to a train station and so is mine – an easy, simple journey.

I’d not met Christophe before. Network is a franchised broker business. Brokers agree to join the Network ‘club’ – providing they meet certain standards – and then all primary leasing business goes through Network to Leaseplan, the big leasing company that owns Network.

Christophe revealed to me their plans to make the ‘club’ even bigger – which should have benefits for small businesses wanting reliable support and advice for their business car requirements – see the news story Car brokers join forces to form broker ‘super group’.

I asked Christophe if he had seen any changes in small business behaviour in the face of the current ‘credit crunch’. He said two things were happening.

One, businesses were extending the length of their contract hire agreements. The business car need was there, but given the uncertain economic climate they weren’t agreeing to new cars on new contracts.

Second, businesses were keeping the cars for the length of the contract and avoiding any early termination fees. “We quite often see small businesses chop in their cars early to take advantage of a new model on the market. But now we’re seeing small businesses be more circumspect,” said Christophe.

The lease agreement on my CR-V is nearly up. Which is a shame because I’ve enjoyed the car very much. At the weekend we were down at Bewl in Kent for more sailing with my son, Matt. Once more the CR-V was the perfect all-rounder I value it for – business car during the week, tow car at the weekend.

In fact the day seemed to be going well. First race and Matt was up to third