Every year, CBS publishes the price change of operational lease prices of cars. What is striking is that the CBS index figure is now (2022) more than 15% higher than Fleet Support's comparable index figure. This gap has continued to widen in recent years. Fleet Support argues that fleet owners could face substantially higher costs if indexed to the CBS index figure.
Prices have been rising across a broad front for a long time and this is certainly true for cars too. Not only purchase prices have been raised sharply. This increase also applies to fuel/energy, interest, maintenance, tyres and (damage) repairs, among others. These factors directly affect the lease rate. CBS annually records the lease price increase – or decrease – in operational lease rates based on calculations from leasing companies. However, this is a theoretical “basket” of cars. They are not the average leasing rates actually deployed by leasing companies to customers.
That is also the big difference with Fleet Support's index figure. This figure is based on the actual use of leased cars in the year under review. With more than 60,000 leased cars under management from dozens of customers and leasing companies, it is the largest, leasing company-independent, database in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the difference between CBS index figure and Fleet Support index figure has increased to over 15% (2022).
Especially for fleet owners who have made a price assurance agreement with the leasing company based on the CBS index figure, this has now become a potentially costly problem. Fleet owners may face steep price increases as a result. The result is higher costs for the employer or less choice for the employee. Indeed, if leasing budgets are not adjusted, the employee will not be able to choose a comparable car and will have to settle for a lower class.
Price assurance methodology makes the difference
“Fleet owners would do well to think about what price assurance methodology they want to adopt. Choosing the CBS index figure could be a very expensive one”, says Jaap van Daalen of Fleet Support.
“Fleet Support's index figure has also risen faster in recent years than in previous years, but significantly less than that of the CBS. And that is remarkable”, says Van Daalen. “We think this difference is largely caused by the fact that Fleet Support's index figure is based on more than 60,000 leased cars actually deployed by dozens of (mostly large) customers, rather than the theoretical car basket used by CBS. This is why many of our customers use the Lease Rate Monitor, a pricing methodology that uses our own index figures. In doing so, we save millions of euros for our customers every year.”
