Corporate/Commercial registrations – Understanding its influence

How is the Corporate Car market defined?

We should first define just what channels go together to comprise that Corporate/Commercial Car market for Passenger Cars. The main four channels which would include various sub channels are True Fleets, Rent-a-car (RAC) or Short- term rentals (STR), Dealerships, and Manufacturer registrations.   

How has the Corporate Car market developed over the last 10 years?

Moving from being the minority channel back in 2011 the Corporate Car market for the EU27 + UK* has continued to expand its footprint, moving from 6.6 million registrations in 2011 to 8.9 million in 2019. Despite the contraction to 56% in 2020 (6.5 million registrations) it should continue to grow – the contraction came largely a result of fewer RAC and Dealership registrations caused by the pandemic. We see the growth in the Corporate car space will come as a result of the less mature markets becoming more active through True Fleets and Leasing & Long-term rental.

Looking at brands in the corporate car market, Volkswagen currently dominates the Corporate Car market by a healthy margin but the rest of the top 5 are only separated by a little over 60,000 registrations.

Italy markets dynamic still favours the Private market!

Italy’s Corporate car market percentage is the 3^rd lowest of EU27* + UK markets (only Ireland and Cyprus are lower). Corporate car registrations have improved over the last 10 years, moving from 590.000 to 830.000 between 2011 to 2019. The narrowing gap was heavily influenced by dealership self-registrations and long-term rental, though RAC also had a role to play. Over 2020 the Corporate car market saw a heavy contraction losing an approx. 6% of its market share over 2019, RAC played the most prominent role with its volume down by more than half of 2019 total.