CLEARLY enjoying his role as current Chair of the BVRLA Leasing Broker Committee and CEO of Rivervale Leasing Vince Pemberton hosted an all-encompassing industry update session at Fleet Procure Live! on 13 May.
“This year is my first year as Chair,” Vince said in his introduction. “I’m really enjoying it and I really want to share best practice, really give something back to the broker community.”
There was so much to hear on the latest hot topics that the discussion ran well over the allotted hour, but when Broker News caught up with him afterwards, he felt the panellists hadn’t held back. “The message was trying to get across to the brokers how important they are in this ecosystem. There were some great panellists in there, literally legends of our industry and giving straight direct answers.”
Now his eyes are on the 2026 BVRLA Leasing Broker Conference on 8 October, once more at MTC Coventry – more detail in the next few weeks.
For now, read on for a summary of the three-part Fleet Procure Live event with well-known panel members from the BVRLA, leasecos, funders and OEMs.
BVRLA & broker market update
Amanda Brandon, Director of Membership Engagement, BVRLA and Simon Tebbutt, Member Services Director were put on the spot about the latest issues, what’s new for Brokers at the BVRLA and what members feel it could do better.
Regulation and clarification
Has commission disclosure genuinely improved outcomes? “It’s probably fair to say that the outcomes for the consumer weren’t brilliant,” said Amanda. “Everybody had tried to move really quickly, and systems had to be changed quickly.
“That journey is much smoother. It is much easier for the consumer. It’s probably a bit more labour intensive for yourselves as brokers, but in terms of outcomes, in terms of transparency, I think we’re pretty much there and we’re in a reasonably good place.”
The view was echoed in the room, that commission disclosure was the new normal, just as consumers had long had with mortgages.
Vince moved onto compliance; the discussions he’d had with how pricing should look and asked about the BVRLA auditing compliance. “We’re not here to try and trip you up,” Amanda said. “That’s not what the audit programme is about, it’s about supporting the funder – making sure that they have a really clear picture of your business operations.” She added that the BVRLA was open to offer detailed guidance to brokers if any issues were amber flagged.
Simon emphasised the value of training for compliance and audit. “The inspection, the guidance, the training, it all works hand in hand. We would always encourage everybody to really embrace that, work with us as a team to be able to get the most out of it because it will ensure that it puts you in the best stead.”
ESG and sustainability pressures
ESG. Practical challenge or commercial opportunity? Asked Vince.
Amanda: “I think it’s a really good opportunity to sort of show your work as a broker in terms of how you can help your customer with their reducing their carbon footprint, looking at what the options are. I think electric vehicles in particular provide great opportunities for that.
“There’s probably a lot of SMEs out there at the moment that you’re dealing with that are just not even thinking ESG, but they will be thinking about cost. And I think, you know, cost of fuel in the last few weeks and months has obviously maybe brought this back to the forefront again.”
With many corporate customers wanting to see a broker’s ESG policy – and if it’s updated – what was the BVRLA doing to help them navigate ESG complexity?
Amanda said that having partnered with a company providing the ability to come in and assess and audit ESG a few years ago the BVRLA could look at revisiting this to some easy to understand guidance on how to work out their carbon footprint
Why is broker market data so disjointed?
Simon: “Looking at our leasing broker aggregations of data for our Outlook reports, we work with a number of funders, and we get really good quality data. We receive data from leasing brokers. Clearly that’s based on disclosed information and we’re able to pull that together. But we also know that it’s not the full picture because the models that everybody’s operating is changing rapidly.”
Vince acknowledged that a lot of brokers are quite protective over their data but stressed how important a clear breakdown is to show OEMs the importance of brokers. “Let’s go back to BCH, BCH and finance lease and car and band. I still struggle to understand that there’s some funders that are technically classed as captives.”
The fact that some funders don’t align themselves with the BVRLA complicates things, he added, but to reassure brokers – some were worried they might be put into a higher tier of membership – who do want to share data, he suggested a simpler questionnaire and to emphasise that the data goes to a third party and is kept anonymous.
“We don’t see the data,” said Amanda. “If we’re sending you something that doesn’t fit right or you’re not willing to share, tell Vince, tell us as well. We’ll change it, we’ll adapt it, we can make it work.”
BVRLA membership value and what’s coming up
Simon himself came up with a tough question to the audience. Are brokers receiving full value from membership?
Vince asked the room for a show of hands. Not many went up. Now was Simon’s turn to sell the benefits but also to acknowledge what could be done better.
“We’ve got the aspiration of being that indispensable resource for members. And we know that we’ve got a journey to be able to go to be able to do that. You know, we want to be the organisation that has real tangible return on investment of the value on the membership fee. We need to be able to more clearly articulate the value that’s in there.”
These are the main points he wanted to cover:
Training: “We introduced a new platform at the start of this year, and we’ve got over 2,000 people already using it. By the end of the year, our aspiration is to get 3,000 leasing and broker staff using the platform. We’re learning and we’re adapting really, really quickly. We had some great feedback around our SAF [Specialist Automotive Finance] module, for example, that’s been reworked, approved by the FLA, sits upon the platform now.
“There’ll be some HR modules that we’ll be dropping into that. But any of our members can have a chat with us about branding that as your own platform and you can be enabled to add your own training onto the platform as well.
“For us, real direct value is that we want to be able to provide a couple of e-licences for every single member, whether you have a couple of people working for you or many 100, it’d be equitable value.”
Fair wear and tear guide: Vince put it to Simon and Amanda that different funders have different variations of fair wear and tear guides. He said that while brokers should be pushing for the BVLRA fair wear and tear guide to be applied there was a notable cost to include the link.
Simon announced that on renewal, the generic fair wear and tear guide would be free of charge to all leasing brokers with the requirement that the broker is on the learning platform as there will be a short e-learning module which will be available to help people to use it.
A broker-branded fair wear and tear guide will still be available and the BVRLA is working with a partner to set up a customer-facing AI tool for looking at returns readiness.
Support service expansion: The BVRLA has introduced a HR support service online and as a telephone service for members to be able to access free of charge.
Simon said there’s an IT partner coming on board that can help with anything from cyber security and apprenticeships coming in customer service.
“But the most important bit is for members to use us. We’ve set up the team internally to be able to help. Amanda’s now got a centralised team and we’re going to be opening up ways to be able for members to be able to contact us much more easily, going to get the help, support that they need. to really get the most out of membership.”
Last question to the BVRLA: If you were running a broker business today, what would concern you the most, knowing what you do?
Simon: “I’d be really thinking about to set myself up for success. And for me, it really is thinking about how technology can really help ensure that the team are getting the most out of those customer interactions. And importantly, using technology to be able to protect customers in the right way.”
Amanda: “The thing that we’re seeing from the FCA now is there’s a lot around complaint handling. That’s the real focus. They’re still looking at PCH a little, but I think from a broker point of view, is the customer at the heart of everything you do? I’m confident that it is, but are you absolutely sure?”
Funders Panel
Vince called four big names to the stage, Broker News Partners Nickie Conde (Leasys), Ben Faulkner (Arval), Chris Swallow (Novuna Vehicle Solutions) and Richard Chadwick from Alphabet.
How attractive is the broker channel?
Who would disagree with this? While the panel were as one acknowledging the importance of the broker channel, each had their own take on why.
Richard Chadwick was first up: “It’s the only way in the UK that you can really properly reach a mass market of individuals in BCH and small businesses, it’s very expensive to try and deal on your own. When you’re looking for your own direct corporate business, that’s a big team of people, lots of tenders, a lot of hard work, we can just outsource that to you guys and do it with a much smaller team.”
“I pretty much second that,” said Arval’s Ben Faulkner. “The smaller customers, the SMEs, you guys, as I used to do when I was a broker, you guys do it best. The broker market is very attractive to us as funders. We’ve all got an objective, and we have our corporate side and our broker partner side, and it all goes towards the budget.”
And a personal note from Novuna’s Chris Swallow: “I’ve been around forever, 20 years in the broker sector and I think everyone here is all my family really, and I think it’s so important to me personally.”
Leasys’ Nickie Conde, now working with brokers and in retail with dealers, joined the agreement: “For me it’s such an exciting area of business to work in. The agility, the development, the entrepreneurialism is why I’ve come back time after time to continue working.”
Is it all about volume? For you or the broker or both?
“Because broker channels for all the big funders now are so big, yes, volume is an important number,” said Alphabet’s Richard Chadwick. “But there’s a requirement, certainly in our case, to have maintenance contracts, it’s a big thing for us. We’re probably sure for most of these guys as well. But you want credit quality, you want the proper handling of the customer, no complaints.”
“It’s got to be sustainable,” Nickie added. “Without the quality that comes along with the numbers, you get asked a lot of questions from those above, from all our bosses. To keep this sustainable and keep it working for everybody, the balance has got to be right.”
Fixed commission?
While all the panellists broadly agreed that fixed commission was a positive move, there were some reservations.
Vince: “Where I think it’s been a good thing, in the PCH market where you know if you’ve got a fixed commission then it’s all down to what the guys offer in the way of service and quality and all the rest of it which it’s going to drive our businesses forward.”
Chris: “For me it creates a level playing field for everyone. I think those small, medium-sized brokers and in a lot of cases certainly a standard business can compete with the big brokers. It’s the right customer outcome.”
While Ben agreed that broadly fixed commission was a good thing, he wasn’t 100%. “I personally don’t particularly like it as much. I think there should be a level of flexibility, so fixed toward a point or maybe just max commissions. Fixed restricts the market on some of the products that they need to maybe sell, or they feel they want to give a customer a better price because they can, but they’re not allowed to. I see it a little bit like price fixing.”
“I agree with both for different reasons,” said Richard. “Generally, it’s worked, it’s fair, it’s easy. The problem is, between the funders, there isn’t quite the same approach. In some cases, different funders have different roles, even by a broker. You’ve got complications of people receiving bonuses that are or are not disclosed in some cases.”
Nickie: “The only slight query I have is we shouldn’t always assume you’re looking to increase profit in a deal. There are many times where you’ll be talking to customers about budgets and you’re trying to move a deal down to get to their price point and you’ve lost that flexibility to do that.”
Photo by Ruthson Zimmerman on Unsplash
Where is real growth – salary sacrifice, BCH or PCH?
Nickie Conde from Leasys began: “I think for me it continues to be PCH. I think the BCH market is quite established. For me, picking one of the three is PCH.”
Chris Swallow of Novuna Vehicle Solutions agreed but made an interesting point about salary sacrifice. “I won’t say it’s run its course, but I think certainly the entry to the EV market, the cheaper Chinese brands, you can get a cheap EV now online and you don’t necessarily have to sal sac it. You can get a much better deal to be honest. I think nowadays you just go online.
“Generally, I think PCH is where the growth is. And again, because they’ve cut the costs of EVs everyone’s going to start adopting BEVs going forward. Most people will lease a EV and not buy one. So I think PCH is definitely growth.”
Alphabet’s Richard Chadwick added: “I think it’s that they don’t want to take the risk of ownership, they’re not sure of new brands. so they’re moving into a model of ‘I’ll just rent it.”
What frustrates most about brokers?
Chris: “The biggest frustration for me is probably they need to think like us a bit. We are a business, we’re not immune to losing money and when they take advantage of cheap deals, they overheat the market, particularly when they’re doing their own CTP. They need to understand the consequences of that. In three years’ time when we lose ten million pounds on residual values, it’s going to bite them as well.”
Nickie: “I would like that longer term thinking, I think, with campaigns and when deals are presented because we can’t just think about that volume today, we have to think about what that does in three years.”
And a delicate matter frustrates Richard: “I quite often walk into a broker and they will tell me chapter and verse about these other guys and I know that’s happening in reverse. There is a thing about commercial sensitivity. I’ve watched deals fall apart because some people just have to tell somebody. We’re all going to benefit, but you decide that you want to call someone else up and tell this secret. And I would just say, please, you know, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.”
Speaking up for the broker side, Vince had a counterpoint: “I’ve also had the other side where you guys have said ‘‘So where do we sit?’ but I do genuinely accept that. The other one is that one of the big advantages of a leasing broker is how agile they are if there’s a deal on the go. But sometimes it’ll fall into the abyss when you’re waiting for one of you guys and we’re sat there waiting and waiting and waiting. So that’s the frustration.”
What separates top tier broker partners?
Ben: “What separates the top is the ones that will engage, the ones that want to engage, and the ones that do engage, and just keeping up to date with all the compliance.”
For Vince it was the effectiveness of back office support after the deal, and Richard reminded Nickie that she’d coined a memorable term for it.
“My call to car ratio,” she confirmed. “If you are getting more phone calls from a broker partner than you’re doing cars or vans, something isn’t quite right. A back office is as important as anything that is done up front because you can deal with the deals in the world, talk about volume, etcetera, but if we can’t get those vehicles live on the system properly and paperwork is getting on a mess, it’s a real, real problem.”
OEMs & Dealer Groups
Andrew Burgess of broker supplier Greenhous Group was joined by supporters of the Broker News Awards Marco Capozzoli (Vertu Fleet) and Claudio De Freitas (BYD).
Are brokers now a strategic route to market? Or is it just volume?
Marco was first with his view: “I think it’s a very important channel for every OEM and I think it’s important for dealer groups from a supply perspective. You can’t disregard the broker channel and its importance to every OEM. In fact, VWFS is a classic example of being a captive finance. VWFS are now looking at the broker channel as a route to market to support their brands. That never would have been spoken about 10 years ago.”
BYD, with its volume ambitions has been clear about the importance of brokers from the outset. “It’s all about balance and ensuring we have the right mix across all the channels,” said Claudio. “Whether that’s retail, contract, broker, and that’s always pivotal for us, and that’s been my view since day one. Brokers have a reach that dealers don’t have, that OEMs don’t have. They have thousands of customers, they have amazing marketing, and they have their own direct channels in websites.”
Vince asked Andrew: “You have conversations within the group. You work with a number of OEMs. How do you think the OEMs are interested in the sector?”
“Over the last few years consumer trends have changed the way that people are purchasing vehicles,” Andrew said. “There is far more of a switch to PCH. A lot of this is done online, a lot of research is done online, and as part of that journey, people tend to lease the vehicles via a broker online as well. As a dealer, we just don’t have that reach
“From the OEM side of things, it used to be that tactical was always done at the end of the month just to hit a target. But we’ve seen that some of the deals that we’ve put together now are arranged at the start of the quarter. So there’s a lot more planning involved, which is great from a dealer perspective.”
How do you balance direct sales, retail and broker channels?
Marco: “A retailer sees a broker as a threat, yet most retailers will sell the car through the captive finance’s deal to a broker to sell their car. There is actually no threat. When you look at PCH, you actually, as a brand or as a dealer are getting an incremental opportunity through broker.
“The reach is quick, agile, websites, the whole journey. Our average age of a purchaser in a Vertu dealership is 55 years old. The average age of a PCH buyer is sub-40. So it’s hitting a market that retailers don’t touch when everyone in retail sells a PCP.”
For BYD, Claudio acknowledged the massive investment its dealers had made in showrooms and the value of direct customer interaction, but balancing this with brokers as an outlet. “What we’ve actually started doing, which I think is unique to how most OEMs work, is I give the retailers the exact same deal that a broker has. It has no disruption to the broker deal because the broker deal is marketed, it’s online, it’s direct, it’s our customer base, and the retailers could sell to their local business.”
Why does the industry struggle with speed?
“OEM, dealer, broker, funder, I’m a firm believer in collaboration,” said Marco. “Everyone works together, and also sustainability. But remember, at the very end of it the dealer is the person that touches the customer, so the part of the dealer is very, very important. That goes back to the point of speed. If you deal with a proper fleet dealer, you should get the speed, you should get the agility and everything that you want.”
Claudio: “I’ve no issues on speed. We move fast. Brokers move fast when needed, and the right funders will also move at lightning speed.”
How critical has the broker channel been in EV adoption?
“The negative is it’s a hyper-competitive market space,” Claudio began with. “So there’s a lot of brands that have come into the market and the way to sell cars fast and hit the shares and hit the targets that they need is to go by brokers. Therefore, the buying power becomes much greater, which drives the price down, which is a race to the bottom. Which is high discounts, which is worse RVs.
“On the positive side, it means that those cars are accessible to a wider audience. There’s about 20% of share of electric vehicles through the broker channel? Yes they’ve played a part, a good part on it, but also with some implications which are very disruptive to the wider contract hire channel.”
“I think brokers ideally have better knowledge of the products than the dealers do, so are integral to selling the new product. They have more information about whole life value, sal sac, benefits to the customer. brokers are generally selling a panel of different EV products and a dealer, or an OEM might have one specific EV within that group.”
“There’s also a wider point here,” Marco added. “The whole ZEV mandate has driven this demand, so the manufacturers are under pressure, they’ve got to hit targets, they’ve got to move cars. What’s the quickest way to do it and the easiest way to do it?”
Are structured broker partnerships the future?
Andrew Burgess, Greenhous Group: “I think from a broker perspective, it helps kind of build a bit of confidence. You want a broker to invest in infrastructure, in marketing, And having that structure in place helps them put a budget together and kind of justify those costs.”
Claudio De Freitas, BYD: “We’ve had a broker programme pretty much since we started engaging with the broker channel. We’ve got a select number of broker partners that we work with and collaborate with.”
Where does CTP (Commit to Purchase) fit in?
Claudio: “It can work. I wouldn’t say it is the way everyone should operate because it’s disruptive and it can be very expensive business. But from a certainty, guarantee, and forecasting side for all parties involved, it has its place.”
“On the flip side of that, for us it’s high risk,” said Andrew. “If you get the deal wrong, then it’s a very costly exercise. In terms of if you’re going to commit to purchase and buy the vehicles back, again, the market’s always moving.”
Marco: “If you look at the way that the broker channel has evolved, most CTPs today are lined up with a top FN50 funder.” He said that the days of a dealer group wanting to risk a CTP with high interest rates and storage costs that was not something it would want to get involved with. “If the broker has a deal with an OEM direct and they’ll speak to a panel of funders and then they’ll get a deal secured from a dealer point of view that’s excellent. Ultimately, you’re on a 14 day payment term or whatever. Then it’s just out of storage and hoping that the broker sells through.”
If broker business disappeared tomorrow, how would it affect you?
Last question and quite a thought!
Claudio: “There’s still going to be that the same number of customers are still going to be out there looking to buy a car. But you’d have to completely pivot and change how the industry works. You’d always have to then start to look like other European markets because the broker sector is unique to the UK.”
Andrew: “There’d be a massive impact to us. A lot of what we do is centred around churning vehicles quickly and brokers make a huge part of that. We would just have to completely reconsider the way that we go to market.”
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Russell Hayes’ early career was 14 years of motoring journalism in print (for What Car?), television (for Top Gear), as well as online. Since 2007 he has authored 12 motoring history books on subjects including TVR, the Earls Court Motor Show, the Volkswagen Golf and Aston Martin – see Russell Hayes on Amazon. However, he’s not forgotten how to be a motoring journalist and now writes for UK consumer motoring sites – not to mention Broker News. When he’s not writing, Russell can be found in the cinema or planning his next travel adventure.
