Innovation and flexibility are key to fuelling growth in an already saturated contract hire market, delegates heard.

By the end of this year every other company car – equating to a million and a half vehicles – will be funded by contract hire but the market is large and growth is slowing.

This situation presents the industry with a series of challenges and threats, which were outlined by Jugo Strojanov, fleet analyst at Datamonitor.

The benefits of size include the ability to better negotiate supply deals with manufacturers and better vehicle remarketing streams. Also customers respond to innovation and flexibility such as new reporting and analysis systems, and offering green fleets, alternative fuel vehicles, and driver training will serve to win new customers.

There will continue to be consolidation in the marketplace but there is room for both large and small suppliers.

Strojanov said: ‘Larger companies do have shortcomings that they can’t pay that much close attention to smaller companies and do bespoke deals quite that well.’