BMW
Group Financial Services (BMW GFS) has restructured its
management team and subsidiaries following a strategic review, BMW
GFS chief operating officer Richard Schooling told Motor
Finance.
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Schooling recently took up the role of COO after spending many
years as commercial director of BMW GFS’ multi-marque fleet
subsidiary Alphabet, which manages over 40,000 vehicles. In his new
role Schooling is responsible for marketing, pricing, analytics and
operations for all five subsidiaries of BMW GFS, namely retail
captive BMW Financial Services, Alphera Financial Services, which
offers consumer motor finance to customers buying cars of makes
other than BMW or MINI, fleet lessor Alphabet, and BMW’s banking
and insurance business lines.
The strategic review of BMW GFS had convinced management that
significant cost savings could be achieved through integration of
back-office functions, Schooling said, as well as bringing the
operations of the five divisions closer together and allowing them
to explore cross-selling opportunities and to share expertise. He
emphasised that no jobs have been lost as a result of the changes,
and explained: “We didn’t want five silos replicating [back-office]
activities – but we also needed five distinct bespoke
businesses.”
In Schooling’s view, there is a “steady erosion” of boundaries
between “fleet and personal leasing, and retail and commercial
finance”, which the restructuring was designed to address. For
example, he said, all three finance divisions carry out vehicle
remarketing, and whereas before each division used to undertake
remarketing separately, now BMW GFS has “one single group
remarketing strategy”, including auction, online sales, and sending
cars back into the dealer network, to allow it to maximise returns
efficiently. Closer relations between business units also allows
knowledge to be shared more effectively, he said, as, for example,
“fleet research can be used to help the retail business”.
Schooling added that the reorganisation of BMW GFS would
allow it to improve its customer offering, while “enabling us to
structure for future long-term growth”.
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