A joint venture partnership between AIB and one of Ireland’s leading fleet management and personal leasing providers is helping to drive growth in electric vehicle uptake by Irish businesses and consumers. NifTiBusiness and Nifti Personal Leasing entered into the joint venture in December 2021 with the aim of enabling business growth and providing their customers with access to a wide range of electric vehicles to support their transition to a lower-carbon future.
Since then, NiftiBusiness has seen the number of electric vehicles ordered by customers increase threefold, reflecting the increased priority being placed on sustainability by businesses in Ireland.
The Nifti Personal Leasing proposition is being supported by AIB’s new personal leasing product. The product allows personal customers to lease a new car for a fixed monthly payment with no balloon payment or obligation to purchase at the end of the lease term.
“With the majority of customers who seek quotes expressing an interest in electric vehicles, personal leasing offers consumers the opportunity to drive an electric vehicle affordably,” says Jim O’Keeffe, AIB’s managing director of retail banking.
“Our joint venture provides business and personal customers with flexible vehicle leasing products to meet their rapidly evolving motoring needs,” he adds. “It’s great that an increasing number of businesses are ordering electric vehicles and are seeing the benefits of lower carbon emissions and cost efficiencies. Our new personal leasing product also supports consumers to make an affordable transition to greener vehicles. The partnership aligns with AIB’s strategy to offer innovative financial solutions to our 3.2 million customers and to grow our green lending, including to customers who want to make the switch to electric and hybrid vehicles.”
NiftiBusiness and Nifti Personal Leasing chief executive Catherine Guy says the business is delighted to work with AIB to provide a fully outsourced fleet solution for businesses of all sizes. “As part of our joint venture, we not only supply vehicles and provide finance we ensure that all aspects of fleet management are taken care of so that customers can focus on their business,” she says.
“With an increasing number of our customers considering their carbon footprint, we can support them to transition to electric mobility, while ensuring that their fleet costs and risks are well managed,” Guy adds. “In addition, with Nifti Personal Leasing we are now also able to offer personal customers the flexibility to lease new cars including electric vehicles which might otherwise not be affordable.”
One customer to benefit from the joint venture is La Rousse Foods. The leading premium fine foods company currently has a fleet of 14 electric vehicles from NiftiBusiness.
“In 2011 we began our sustainability journey with the introduction of our recyclable eco-boxes,” says La Rousse Foods operations manager Martin Lanigan. “It felt like a natural progression from there to look at our fleet of vehicles. We now have 14 electric vehicles in our fleet with NiftiBusiness and project that we will save around 32 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year when compared with our previous diesel fleet, and approximately 161 tonnes of CO2 emissions over five years. The reaction from our sales reps has been extremely positive. It’s also a great conversation starter with customers, they are keen to see the EVs and learn more about them.”
He advises other businesses considering making sustainable changes to assess where they are and set measurable targets for where they want to get to. “It’s important to embed sustainability as a mindset among everyone in your business and our relationship with Nifti has helped as it allows us to make these changes in a way that makes sense for our business,” he adds. “We are confident that we are doing everything in our power to operate as efficiently and sustainably as possible, continually raising the bar for ourselves – getting to a point is never our goal, finding the next one is.”