COMPANIES with poor credit histories are being targeted by a new contract hire group which launched this month.

Karma Vehicle Contracts (KVC), the contract hire division of Private & Commercial Finance Group (PCFG), will provide contract hire and contract purchase products to fleets that have been refused credit in the past.

Jon Gilbert, former head of operations at Lloyds TSB Motorent, is the group's new general manager.

He said: 'Our goal is to fund the ever-increasing broker market, specifically for customers with difficult credit histories.

'We believe we are quite unique in the market at present, taking a different credit underwriting view to our main competitors, who we are not aiming to compete against.'

Karma plans to focus on small and medium-size businesses with fleets of no more than 10 vehicles, providing finance on both new and used vehicles through a network of brokers. Gilbert described what he believes to be Karma's typical customer.

He said: 'The typical KVC customer is expected to be a small 'lifestyle' based business that for one reason or another is not considered attractive by mainstream funders.'

KVC has introduced a new IDS Fleetware system in a bid to cope with new business demand. It allows brokers to generate instant contract hire quotes over the internet and then manage proposals through to documentation and is currently being rolled out to KVC's brokers.

Gilbert said: 'It gives us an amazing amount of functionality but above all, its web-based quotes browser is perfect for our market. It gives our brokers the ability to produce a quote for any vehicle on any of our products quickly and efficiently and process a deal with the minimum of fuss.'

The group is already planning new projects despite only launching this month. A new car supermarket backed by PCFG is set to open later this year.

KVC will provide contract hire and contract purchase on stock vehicles, using the retail sales channel for remarketing ex-lease cars.

Robert Murray, managing director of PCFG's Business Finance Division, added: 'We believe that now is the right time to expand our portfolio of products to include contract hire and that our 10 years' experience of successfully underwriting in the small and medium enterprise sector will enable us to write business for customers that other finance companies might, for whatever reason, choose to decline.'

  • Subscribe to Fleet News.
  • Get the news delivered to your desktop