Kinto UK outlines ambitious plans to double its fleet size

Kinto UK, the fleet management and funding provider, has restructured into three business units, just over two years after it was bought by Toyota for £100 million.

Formerly Inchcape Fleet Solutions, Kinto now has three distinct brands:

• Kinto Fleet UK, headed by Jennifer Davis, is the multi-brand leasing operation.
• Kinto One, run by sales director Neil Broad, the former Toyota/Lexus fleet and remarketing manager, offers funding for Toyota and Lexus vehicles, typically to smaller fleets and via PCH and broker channels.
• Kinto Mobility brings together a growing plethora of mobility services.

“We are moving from a traditional contract hire and fleet management business to a mobility business with more focus on the B2C (business to consumer) market,” said chief executive officer Matthew Rumble.

Kinto UK manages 51,000 vehicles, but has an aspiration to double that within five years on a “slow, sustainable growth pattern”, according to Rumble. By the end of this year, that means 55,000 units.

Growth is expected across all products and services, but will be greatest for Kinto Fleet and Kinto One.

“Within five years, we will be around sixth in the FN50 with 90,000 funded vehicles,” Rumble predicted.

“Covid gave us time to define and redefine our products. We are like a sports car in second gear; we’re waiting for the pandemic to end in order move up through the gears.”

The current portfolio is evenly split between full service leasing and non-funded fleet management, with light commercial vehicles accounting for around 20,000 of the total fleet.

Public sector makes up half the customer base, illustrating Kinto’s successful strategy in targeting this market via the Crown Commercial Service framework.

While Kinto Fleet UK will remain multi-brand, the business has an aspiration to increase the penetration of Toyota and Lexus cars “where it’s right for the customer”.

Rumble added: “Now, around 3-4% of the multi-brand fleet is Toyota and Lexus. We will grow this subtly by a few hundred products a year where it fits with our customers’ businesses. It will be a softly-softly approach, but our overall portfolio will remain balanced.”

Role of mobility

The third strand of the revamped organisation, Kinto Mobility, consists of a range of services either in pilot or coming soon:

• Kinto Share is an alternative to rental and pool cars, offering a car for a few hours. It is being trialled by a couple of customers.
• Kinto Join is a corporate car pooling scheme which plots each employee’s home address and incentivises staff for picking up colleagues on the way to work.
• Kinto Flex, due to for launch in Q3, is a flexible leasing offer from one-to-12 months.
• Kinto Go is a multi-mobility app powered by Mobilleo which merges all travel options, including ticketing, sets expenses policies and enables the company to select mode of transport by key criteria such as cost, time and environment.

“Under Kinto Mobility, we will have every product and service that will enable you to keep your fleet – people, goods and services – moving,” said Rumble.

“There will be nothing that we can’t answer in a tender because of this blend of services. It’ll offer everything from one hour to several years.”

The full package of mobility services is scheduled to be in market from spring 2023.

Kinto UK, like all leasing businesses, has been hit by the ongoing supply shortage caused by the semiconductor issue. It is supporting customers by carrying out policy benchmarking and rewriting contracts, but Rumble acknowledges that, across the industry, prices are rising.

“We can’t just quote and order,” he said. “It’s multiple quotes and multiple orders – up to 10 times for every vehicle at the moment. We don’t see the situation improving until next year.”

Customers on extension

He added: “We’re seeing supply times averaging nine months for cars and 14 months for vans and have around three times as many customers on formal extension as we would usually have.”

Vehicle shortages are affecting the speed of transition to electric, although Kinto has more than 5,000 full electric vehicles (EVs) on its books, and they account for around 35% of its order bank.

“Van customers aren’t quite there, but we are doing pilots and mapping drivers that could trial EV,” Rumble said. “A large proportion of customers are now interested in full electric.”