Turin, 4 April 2023. Credite Agricole announces the purchase of 100% of the shares of FCA Bank, which is reborn under the banner of CA Bank. The operation is intended to give a major boost to energy transition, placed at the center of interests of the newborn bank. Credit Agricole Auto Bank plays the role of independent and leading multi-brand operator in Europe for the financing and leasing of vehicles and the mobility sector.
The new bank
Credit Agricole Consumer Finance officially becomes the sole shareholder of the mobility bank, following up on the intentions expressed at the end of 2021 to acquire FCA Bank and Leasys Bank. The newly formed CA Bank arises which the only independent mobility bank with operating modes typical of a captive. The services will also be disseminated in entirely digital form, thanks to the recently developed integrated network of cutting-edge platforms. The announcement was made during a presentation conference inside the Mole Antonelliana in Turin, a non-random location. In fact, the Piedmontese capital will remain the European headquarters of a group that currently has 1900 employees in Europe, of which 500 in Italy alone. However, there is no shortage of investment plans, with the aim of growing to reach 10 billion euros in loans in 2026.
With the creation of Credit Agricole Auto Bank, the bank’s core business also changed. Contrary to the first mobility financial services of the last century, whose objective was to support the sale of the car and its democratization, the purpose of CA Auto Bank is promote access to green mobility. The choice of terms should be underlined, as mobility implies a much wider field of action than the car industry. In Turin, services were also announced in the naval sector, agricultural machinery, light and heavy commercial vehicles up to caravans. CA Auto Bank therefore aims to lead the energy transition of mobilitymaking access to low-emission vehicles ever more democratic and within everyone’s reach. Important tools in this will be systems such as deferred payment, rental and leasing, but the top management of the group announce the arrival of new financial offers. One of these will consist of a flexible financingwhich will make it possible to change technology during construction, to overcome the resistance of the most skeptical of electric and hybrid cars. “We want our solutions to become for green mobility what installment payments were for the traditional car”, the comment of Giacomo Carelli, CEO of CA Auto Bank, previously CEO and General Manager of FCA Bank.
Battery-powered car technology is constantly evolving, with great uncertainties even on the purchase price five years from now, a scenario that leads potential customers to prefer the rental formula. An important task in this falls to Drivalia, the mobility company of the CA Auto Bank group dedicated to leasing and rental which has taken the place of Leasys Bank. In Turin it was declared that the fleet will increase from the current 50,000 vehicles to 200,000 units by 2026, the year also in which the fraction of electric and plug-in hybrid models will rise from 30 to 55%, with the aim of reaching 80 % in 2030. The spread of battery-powered mobility, however, cannot go beyond the enhancement of the charging infrastructure. For this reason, the company will continue to invest in its electricity infrastructure, which will have 3500 charging points in Europe by 2026.
The origins
“Today is an important day because our future is born here in Turin, again. He was already born 100 years ago ”. The words of the CEO Giacomo Carelli refer to SAVA, the anonymous company for the sale of motor vehicles. Born in Turin in 1925 in the Lingotto factories, SAVA was the first financial system for mobility in Italy, at a time when animal-drawn carts outnumbered cars. The car was perceived as the future, but it remained an unattainable object of desire for most. In the same year, the first car was sold on installments, the FIAT 509, with the installment sale triggering the virtuous circle at the basis of the birth of mass motorisation. SAVA continues to be the protagonist with installment payments even in the economic boom of the 1950s, in which the car was increasingly a necessity, but also a status symbol, with turnover increasing by two and a half times. In the 1970s the rental formula spread thanks to SAVA Leasys and the car economy reached global scales. In 2006, thanks to the collaboration with Credit Agricole, Fiat Auto Financial Service was born, bringing together the four existing creditor banks, then changing its name to FGA Capital in 2009. This led to the birth of the FCA group in 2014 and, a year later, of FCA Bank, whose turnover doubles in 2022. In the meantime, agreements are signed with external brands such as Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin, Ferrari and Maserati, while the Leasys Mobility Store is also founded in 2019. Growth is such that at the end of 2021 Credit Agricole announces its intention to move from partner to sole shareholder, a project that takes shape in 2023, resulting in the newly formed CA Auto Bank.
The role of Credit Agricole
He attended the Mole Antonelliana launch event Stephane Priami, president of CA Auto Bank and CEO of Consumer Finance. Priami tells how the idea behind CA Auto Bank stems from an internal investigation at Credit Agricole in 2019, in which the four trends of an evolving market: the slow transition from the concept of car ownership to shared use; the path to the green economy; digitalisation, with the prospect of selling one car out of two online by 2030; the new players in the industry, with the emergence of new brands such as DR Automobiles, Fisk, Tesla, BYD and others. It becomes clear that the goal must be to play a central role in the long-term car rental market, including in the electrified form, encouraging the evolution of dealerships from captive to multi-brand, becoming increasingly pan-European and independent. It was therefore important for Credit Agricole to recover 100% of FCA Bank, in order to be able to operate freely in the long-term rental sector.
“We are proud of the birth of CA Auto Bank and of integrating 100% of its activities, together with those of Drivalia, within the Crédit Agricole Consumer Finance group. This is a unique opportunity for us, which greatly contributes to our ambition to be a leader in green mobility in Europe” he has declared Stéphane Priami. “The mobility sector is experiencing profound changes, both in terms of energy transition and usage. In this context, the skills, experience and professionalism of the CA Auto Bank and Drivalia teams will be a fundamental asset, combined with the entrepreneurial culture and strength of Crédit Agricole”. It echoes him Giacomo Carelli: “This new beginning is the natural evolution of the project we have been carrying out so far. The history of CA Auto Bank begins almost a century ago, with the birth of SAVA, one of the first financial companies in Europe, created in 1925 in Turin with the aim of helping people buy a car. About a hundred years later, through the various incarnations of society, our vocation has remained the same. Today it applies to green and sustainable mobility, the mobility of the future”.
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