ALD has seen fleet growth in excess of 20% each year for the past two years and now stands at 73,000 vehicles. This has been founded on developing its core business services division alongside strategic white-label partners, a broker division and an established dealer services division.

As a result of its deal with Lombard, ALD anticipates funding more than 30,000 new vehicle contracts over the next five years. However, a lot of LVM’s business is based in the small business sector, which has been hit particularly hard during the downturn.

As a result, it has seen its risk fleet fall over recent years, which has not been helped by the uncertainty surrounding its future. It operated a risk fleet of more than 90,000 vehicles in 2009, which slipped to 81,800 vehicles in 2010 and then 70,621 units in 2011. Lombard confirmed last week that its risk fleet now stood at around 58,000 cars and vans.

Baldock told Fleet News that Lombard and RBS had explored “a number of options” regarding the future of LVM before deciding to opt for a white label option with ALD.

Negotiations started in October 2011 and as the deal was announced last week a communications plan was immediately actioned to try to ensure all of LVM’s existing customers were kept up to speed with developments.

All LVM customers have been written to, while information is available on its website and relationship managers have been speaking directly to those affected.

ALD marketing manager David Yates said: “We have been in discussions with Lombard to understand the needs of the LVM customer portfolio and we are confident that we will satisfy the majority of their current requirements after the new operation is launched. This process will take approximately three to four months.”

Baldock told Fleet News that given the four-month gap between the new scheme’s launch and this announcement he hoped it would “ensure the smoothest transition possible”.

While that will be cold comfort to the 98 staff that face losing their jobs at LVM, the company is looking to redeploy some within its other businesses as it endeavours to keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum.