Trends in the markets for financial services

We anticipate that automotive financial services will prove highly important to global vehicle sales in 2021, particularly in the context of the ongoing challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. We expect demand to rise in emerging markets where market penetration has so far been low. Regions with already established automotive financial services markets will see a continuation of the trend towards enabling mobility at the lowest possible total cost. Integrated end-to-end solutions, which include mobility-related service modules such as insurance and innovative packages of services, will become increasingly important for this. Additionally, we expect that demand will increase for new forms of mobility, such as rental services, and for integrated mobility services, for example parking, refueling and charging, and that the shift in the European leasing business initiated with individual customers from financing to lease contracts will continue. We estimate that this trend will continue in the years 2022 to 2025.

In the mid-sized and heavy commercial vehicles category, we anticipate rising demand for financial services products in emerging markets. In these countries in particular, financing solutions support vehicle sales and are thus an essential component of the sales process. In the developed markets, we expect to see increased demand for telematics services and services aimed at reducing total cost of ownership in 2021. This trend is also expected to persist in the period 2022 to 2025.