Leasing companies across Europe are looking for the same two things. New areas to grow in, and ways to stay relevant to customers whose expectations have changed.

The list of ideas differs from company to company. Used leasing. Flexible terms. An all-inclusive monthly price. Employee schemes. A connected fleet. Few have all of them on the list. Most have one or two at the top.

What they share is the obstacle. It is rarely strategy. It is the system underneath.

The core does its job

A leasing core system is built around one idea: one car, one customer, one long contract. Three or four years, a fixed instalment, a return date.

Around that idea sits everything a finance company depends on. Accounting. Credit. Dealer processes. Reporting to the regulator.

These systems are good at what they do. They are stable, audited and connected to the rest of the company. That is also why they are hard to change.

What does not fit

Much of what customers and employers now ask for breaks the idea of one car and one long contract. Here are five examples we meet often.

Used leasing. A car that comes back after three years has many good years left. Leasing it again, instead of sending it to auction, keeps both the customer and the margin. But now the same car has a second contract, a new price and a new condition report.

Flexible terms. A customer who can pause, extend or swap is a customer who stays. For the system it means a contract that changes shape during its life, and a car that is sometimes between customers.

All-inclusive. Insurance, service, tyres and charging in one monthly price. For the customer it is simple. Behind it are several suppliers, many small costs and an invoice that still has to make sense.

Employee schemes. More employers offer cars as a benefit, paid through salary. It is a growing segment, and it brings a third party into every contract. The employer needs a portal. Payroll needs the deductions. The tax rules differ from country to country.

A connected fleet. Cars can report their own mileage, battery status and location. That makes it possible to act before a contract runs over its mileage, and to decide earlier what should happen to the car when it comes back. But a core system knows the contract. It does not know the car.

No company needs all five. Each of them still asks for something the core was not built for: more changes per contract, more parties, more payments, and more moments where the car is the asset and the contract is temporary.

The two usual answers

Replace the core. A core replacement is counted in years. It touches accounting, risk and every dealer integration. While it runs, the product roadmap waits.

Run it on the side. A separate tool and a few spreadsheets get a pilot live quickly. They also create a second customer base that collections, customer service and the dealer network cannot see. The product works. The organisation around it does not know it exists.

Neither answer is wrong. Both are slow in their own way.

Add a lane

Think of the core as a road that already carries traffic. You do not close the road to add a lane. You build the lane next to it, and let cars change lanes where it makes sense.

For a leasing company it looks like this:

• The core keeps the contracts it has, and the processes built around them.
• New products run on a platform made for them, with their own contract logic, customer journey and payments.
• A car that reaches the end of its first contract can move into a second cycle instead of leaving the fleet.
• What the core needs to keep the books and the reports complete is sent back to it.

"Most leasing companies do not have a strategy problem. They know where they want to grow. They have a sequencing problem, and replacing the core first is the slowest sequence there is."

Hans Kristian Aas, CEO and Co-founder, Casi
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What changes, and what does not

Three things matter most to the people who have to approve a project like this.

No migration. Existing contracts stay where they are. Nothing has to be moved before the first new product can launch.

Use what you have. Accounting, credit, dealer processes and regulatory reporting keep running where they run today. The new lane adds what is missing. It does not rebuild what works.

One experience for the customer. The customer sees one brand and one way in, whichever lane the car is in. That there are two systems behind it is an internal matter.

Start with one lane

The advantage of a lane is that you can build one at a time.

Pick the idea with the clearest case. For some that is used leasing, because the cars are already on their way back. For others it is an employee scheme, because one employer agreement brings many contracts. Launch it in one market. Learn what the customers do with it.

Because the new platform is priced as a fee per active contract, cost follows volume. A slow start is cheap. A fast one pays for itself.

When the first lane carries traffic, the second is easier. The connection to the core is already in place.

The hard part

It would be wrong to say this is easy. The work is in the connection between the two.

Flexible contracts are the most demanding. A contract that can change ten times in its life has to land correctly in the books every time. That takes a clear agreement on which system owns which fact, and it pays to settle it early.

It is still a far smaller job than replacing the core. And it can be done one product at a time.
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Where Casi comes in

Casi's platform was built for this from the start. Flexible and multi-cycle contracts. New and used cars. Bundled services. Employee schemes. Telematics from the providers a fleet already uses.

It runs today for car manufacturers and their finance companies across the European markets. Some started from zero. Others moved an existing fleet across. The cars can sit on the customer's own balance sheet, with a finance partner or with a third party.

Which lane would you build first?

If your core system does its job, and the list of ideas still is not moving, we would like to hear which lane you would start with. Reach out. We are happy to show you how it can be done.