Viewpoints: Volvo Financial Services and CHG Meridian

Nils Jaeger, president of Volvo Financial Services EMEA, provides a captive’s view of the region.

Volvo Financial Services provides retail solutions in the Baltic and Nordic region for our Volvo Truck & Renault Truck customers, our Volvo Construction customers, and also for our Volvo Bus customers. In addition, we provide financial solutions to our dealer channel in the two regions.

We are currently seeing fierce competition on price (i.e. rate), with banks actively participating in the market. Volvo Financial Services, however, is uniquely prepared to respond to competition due to our long-term relations with dealers and customers, and our ability to bundle finance with other offerings from the Volvo Group, which third party lessors cannot do.

We are experiencing increasing demand for bundled offers in both regions. The markets in both regions are positive, although of course there are differences between countries. In our view, there is currently more growth in the Baltics, though the Nordics represent a bigger opportunity due to market size. Volvo Financial Services is fully present in the Baltics, while most original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) work in the region with partner banks – again underlining our dedicated proposition to our customers.

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Christian Gardsmoen and Frank Schreiber of technology management provider CHG-MERIDIAN provide an independent’s view of the region.

Market differences

We do not see the Nordics and Baltics converging in any way. CHG-MERIDIAN Finland has recently completed a VAT-registration in the Baltics; this might lead to new potential customers and will serve existing customers even better. Overall, the Baltics are still a separate region in many ways.

The markets overall

CHG-MERIDIAN sees substantial growth potential in the Nordics – due to having a fairly small market share right now. Traditional financing is becoming an increasingly obsolete product, while extended IT solutions – including financial services – are becoming more and more relevant and interesting for customers, from our perspective.

Growth for the sector

Northern markets are maturing in some ways and we see an increase in the length of the use of IT equipment. On the other hand, more and more IT solutions are now sold ‘as-a-service’ and here financial services is a key element of solutions for customers. CHG-MERIDIAN is not convinced that the market for technology-financing will grow considerably in the future, but our market share will grow. CHG-MERIDIAN expects strong growth in the healthcare sector – where funds are limited and needs are increasing dramatically the next decades, especially in the ‘as-a-service’ niche.

Operational changes

Especially in the funding sector CHG-MERIDIAN sees a lot of possibilities of supporting the solution-orientated business approach with more flexible funding / financing models in future, which have been developed in the past six months – together with our funding partners in the Nordics. Furthermore, to support further growth in the Nordic region, CHG-MERIDIAN registered in Sweden as a financial institution and became an official member of the local leasing association.

A visible market presence

Further to the 2014 acquisition of Norway-based ACENTO Group, in February 2016 the ACENTO branding was absorbed into CHG-MERIDIAN’s brand. In all the countries of the Nordic region – Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark – employees and customers can now experience the new brand image of CHG-MERIDIAN’s global presence and strong brand promise: ‘Efficient Technology Management’.

Christian Gardsmoen, executive vice president Sales, Northern Europe

Frank Schreiber, executive vice president Finance, Northern Europe