NISSAN Finance looks set to notch up its busiest September ever – showing that the car maker is performing strongly in a recovering market.
Last weekend, Nissan Finance accepted 339 new car finance proposals – by far the highest figure for the third weekend of September – and 76 agreements ahead of the same weekend in 2011.
In fact the last three weekends have represented the highest ever levels of acceptances (357, 343 and 339 respectively) with the exception of one weekend in March this year (391) and one weekend last September (352).
Steve Gowler, Managing Director of RCI Financial Services Ltd., better known simply as Nissan Finance among dealers and their customers, told us: ‘We’re obviously very pleased. It’s good to be doing good volumes of business.
‘It reflects, I think, the fact that the UK retail market is actually quite strong but it also reflects the fact that Nissan is growing and improving its market share.
‘The finance schemes that we’ve got out there are appealing to customers. They’re taking them up and they’re buying cars on that basis.
‘It’s working well for Nissan, it’s working well for us, and it’s working well for dealers because these schemes are attracting people into their showrooms. It’s win-win for everyone.’
Gowler explained that of course dealers aren’t obliged to use Nissan Finance when putting their customers into new or used cars – but if the customer is buying through a manufacturer-backed scheme, his company does get involved in the deal.
Not absolutely exclusive
‘For the cars that don’t have a finance offer attached to them, dealers can play with whoever they want to play with,’ he told us.
‘We have to compete with, for example, Santander’s motor finance operation, and Black Horse, which is Lloyds Bank’s motor finance operation.
‘We can’t be absolutely exclusive because that would be anti-competitive. Nissan can’t say to the dealers they have to work with us but the subsidised schemes are only available through us.
‘The figures that we’re talking about specifically are accepted new car proposals – applications made to us by dealers on behalf of the end customer. We accept in excess of 90 per cent of all proposals that are put to us.
‘Looking at September so far, and obviously we have still got a few days to go, it does appear to be our highest month ever – or at least since we started recording these figures for new car proposals.’
Gowler said the ‘standout models’ tended to be Qashqai and Juke. He said: ‘They tend to work very well on the finance schemes. Our penetration into Nissan sales is very strong on those two.’