By Gareth Vaughan
Nissan is establishing a finance company in New Zealand in a move that may be a blow to Heartland Bank.
And in a separate move ANZ subsidiary UDC Finance announced yesterday that it took over the provision of wholesale and retail financing for motor vehicles - and motorcycles - across Suzuki’s New Zealand network of 80 dealerships last month from Heartland.
Peter Fadeyev, a spokesman for Nissan Motor Company (Australia) Pty Limited, told interest.co.nz Nissan was finalising plans to establish its own financial services company in New Zealand.
"Details about this new company will be shared in a forthcoming announcement," Fadeyev added.
His comments come after Nissan Financial Services New Zealand Pty Limited was registered with the Companies Office on May 3.
Currently finance, lease and insurance products and services are provided through Nissan's New Zealand franchise dealerships by a division of Heartland. However, Heartland is declining to comment on what Nissan's move to set up its own finance company in New Zealand might mean for the country's newest bank.
Asked the same question Fadeyev said; "I envisage I should be able to address this when our official announcement is made."
Heartland, formed through the merger of Marac Finance, CBS Canterbury and the Southern Cross Building Society in January 2011, gained Reserve Bank approval to become a bank last December. The other vehicle brands it provides finance for include Holden and Isuzu.
CEO Jeff Greenslade last year outlined what he called Heartland's "hero product strategy", focusing on small and medium sized businesses, the rural sector and the retail and consumer sectors. The "hero products" are ones where Heartland believes it can be a market leader, Greenslade said, and include motor vehicle financing. This was low risk, targeted the household sector, and performed in a similar way as residential mortgage customers do for the big banks.
According to the Motor Industry Association, Nissan ranked fifth in new passenger car and commercial vehicle registrations last year with 6,379, or 6.33% market share. Suzuki was seventh with 5,429, or 5.39%. And the MIA recently said April new commercial vehicle registrations of 2,235 were the highest April sales since 1982 when 2,754 commercial vehicles were sold, and were a 38% increase on April 2012. The MIA also said year-to-date commercial vehicle registrations are 41% higher than in the equivalent period of last year, with new passenger car sales of 5,908 vehicles in April 8.8% higher than in April 2012.
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5 Comments
The "hero products" are ones where Heartland believes it can be a market leader, Greenslade said, and include motor vehicle financing. This was low risk, targeted the household sector, and performed in a similar way as residential mortgage customers do for the big banks.
I am surprised this type of lending is low risk - my understanding is that GMAC (now Ally Bank) brought GM down.
The Japanese are blowing a hole in the value of the Yen and any punter thinking of buying a heap should wait until the dust settles....imported Japanese cars etc could well fall 20% in price if not more...some of the effort to sell will go into cheap if not free finance offers.
Yes Wolly, Nissan will be looking to make the margin off financing, rather than from manufacturing cars - Kiwis will pay over the top regardless - we have no legislation to stop such rapacious moves - nevertheless, such were the actions that caused GM to need a US government rescue.
You will now be able to get ripped off three times by the same company.
1) when you first buy a vehicle
2)When you get finance
3)When you trade it in and then the circle starts again.
Losing Nissan and Suzuki doen't appear to have damaged Heartlands share price at all.
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