Subaru and Esanda to join forces
December 30, 2008 by Matt Brogan
In response to the current financial climate, Subaru Australia and Esanda today announced a new retail and wholesale automotive finance partnership.
Esanda, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of ANZ, will become a partner in the co-branded Subaru Finance, which will be available to the Subaru network of 108 retailers.
“We are delighted to be forming this partnership with a quality organization like Esanda,” said Nick Senior, Managing Director of Subaru Australia, “To have reached this milestone in just two months is testament to the synergies between the organisations. It is also a reflection of the quality of the Subaru book and the brand’s strength.”
“This partnership is a means of addressing both the immediate and future needs of the Subaru retail network and the company, from both a retail and wholesale perspective,” says Andrew Sinclair, Subaru’s National Manager – Corporate Sales and Financial Services, “Based on Esanda’s broad industry knowledge, it represents a real opportunity to grow our finance offerings.”
“Our negotiations took place during a time of great turmoil in both the finance and automotive sectors. However, we remained confident that due to the quality of our book and brand, and the commitment of the Esanda management team, we could reach our mutual goal in a timely manner. Our long-term partnership with Esanda ticks all the boxes.”
“Esanda and Subaru Australia, a well recognised and highly regarded dealer network, fit well together,” Esanda Head of Dealer Relationships, David Hannah said, “After the withdrawal of GMAC, it is pleasing that Esanda can work quickly to create a strong partnership which will benefit Subaru dealers and customers.”
“Our business has continued to grow in an uncertain environment and has been strengthened in 2008 through the introduction of Esanda Edge,” Mr Hannah explained, “Esanda Edge allows dealers to offer competitive finance rates to customers with applications approved quickly within the dealership. This makes the process of buying a car easier for the customer and helps dealers sell more cars.”
Esanda has been in the auto finance industry for more than 50 years and is one of Australia’s largest providers of retail finance through vehicle car dealerships. The new agreement will span three years.
Print it: 
*****PRIMO!*****
Subaru [FHI] should just do their own bankroll inhouse finance with its own funds.
Make more $, seeing they are uncontiable[sp!] and already do its own dealerships, its the next steep
CHEERS,
f-0
The management costs on the smallish volumes when lending margins are so tight is the issue here.
When sales were booming, you could afford to have a 0.5% higher rate than the competition because the sales would still occur. Now that the money has tightened, people are more likely to shop around for the best finance package and 0.5% more would not cut it.
Thats good news. People forget how small Subaru is as a company, the fact that Australia is Subaru’s third largest market, behind Japan and the US, when they sell on average 3000 cars a month here shows how tiny they are. Yearly sales are around 1 million vehicles, thats less than half the size of suzuki. So I guess making their own financing arm in the current economic situation would be simply too expensive and not worth the risk. I mean GMAC recently had to be bailed out, so its not a great market to be in at the moment.
Clever company making AWD their own.
It really will be a pointless exercise if they do not offer competitive finance rates; And I would not call Esanda finance competitive. In fact no deal you can get from a dealer has ever been competitive really. You would ne much better off organising your own finance. And the research to find a more competitive rate would take all of a 60 second google search.
unfortunately it doesnt say much about Australians if this is Subaru’s third biggest market.
Forza, yeah Toyota-esque reliability in cars that actually handle, highest average resale values, how stupid australians must be to buy them.