Ford Fleet Management broadens appeal with salary sacrifice launch

Ford Fleet Management is hoping to tap into a growing interest in the salary sacrifice market by offering a new multi-brand car scheme for the first time.

It’s a new direction for the fleet leasing and fleet management company, which launched just over four years ago with a focus on the complex needs of large corporate fleets. 

Partnering with public sector salary sacrifice veteran GMP Drivecare, Ford Fleet Management’s manager director, John Wright, says that the “time is right” to widen its product portfolio with a tax-efficient scheme for employees and employers.

“We started off primarily as a commercial vehicle funding business, and that’s what we’ve been doing for the last four years now,” Wright told Fleet News.

That early focus suited the joint venture between Ford and ALD (now Ayvens), but with an improved Ford electric vehicle (EV) line-up, he says that offering a salary sacrifice product now makes more sense.

He explained: “From a Ford point of view, they didn’t have a lot to get behind four years ago when we launched, so we concentrated on the vans. But the landscape is very different now.”

Ford has revived its famous Capri name for a new mid-size electric SUV with a coupe-like roofline.

The Polestar 2 rival joins Ford's VW ID4-based Explorer as part of an expanding line-up, which also includes the Ford Pum Gen-e.  

Like the Explorer, the Capri uses VW's MEB platform and shares a platform with the Skoda Enyaq Coupe and VW ID5.

Wright says the success Ford Fleet Management has enjoyed with electric vans, including the Ford E-Transit and Ford E-Transit Custom has equipped its team with the expertise and knowledge to advise customers.

“The expertise in our team is there, when it comes to the actual powertrain,” he said. “What we have to do now is engage with customers, both new and existing, to talk to possibly different parts of their business about salary sacrifice.”

Salary sacrifice continues to grow and reached its highest market share ever in last year’s FN50, totalling almost 83,000 units, accounting for 6.2% of cars on the FN50 risk fleet.

The funding type, which allows employees to ‘sacrifice’ part of their salary in return for a new car, has steadily been increasing its market share since 2020 and has nearly doubled since the Covid-19 pandemic.

In some cases, sal/sac is replacing traditional contract hire as more organisations look to offer flexibility and a more affordable route into electric or lower emission vehicles.

Hit the ground running

Having benchmarked its new salary sacrifice product against others in the market, Wright explains that there will be nothing “revolutionary” about its offering, instead it will be about listening to customers needs, as it has done in the van space, to ensure its giving customers what they want.

Wright said: “The one advantage of being a late entrant is you can, you can learn from what’s working and what’s not from everybody else… We can listen and we can hopefully learn.”

However, he says its partnership with GMP Drivecare will enable the business to “hit the ground running”.  

He explained: “The reason we chose GMP was, after looking at them and a number of their competitors, we wanted to work with somebody who understood the market.” 

Wright says that the business also liked the “transparent” way that GMP sets up its schemes, which reflected Ford’s values. 

Ford Fleet Management’s sales team will speak to summers and prospects, while GMP will do some of the “heavy lifting” in the background and schemes will be delivered through GMP’s salary sacrifice platform with Ford Fleet Management branding.  

Forged out of the NHS more than 25 years ago, family-owned GMP now serves more than a hundred NHS and public sector organisations, as well as offering a technology partnership programme for its specialist fleet and salary sacrifice platform.  

“We have been delivering these schemes for 15 years, which makes us one of the most experienced technology and service-providers in the UK today,” said GMP Drivercare’s Tony Murtagh.

“Salary sacrifice is the fastest-growing product in our sector,” he added. “Employers understand the advantages of employee benefits and cost-savings for the organisation, with significant contributions to carbon emissions to boost ESG programmes.

“This is an exciting partnership for many reasons. GMP and FFM have a common goal with an aligned customer-focus at the heart of what we do.”

Wright said the new salary sacrifice offering will be targeted at large national fleets with operations in the UK, with Ford Fleet Management taking the risk, noting that the number of employees was crucial in hitting that sweet spot.

It has not set any volume aspirations but is keen to engage with all of its existing customers and any new prospects.

Find out from Fleet News how to make your salary sacrifice scheme a success.