Fleet management specialist Fleet Alliance has appointed Mark Roberts to the newly-created position of salary sacrifice product manager.

Roberts was the customer relationship director for at Zenith for corporate and salary sacrifice sales. Roberts will be focusing efforts on the SME sector which Fleet Alliance believes is currently under-served.

Current taxation rules in the UK are beneficial for electric cars, which makes them very popular as both company cars and as salary sacrifice cars.

Under salary sacrifice, a portion of the employee’s gross monthly salary is sacrificed for a fully maintained lease vehicle. The employee still pays company car tax - currently just 1% of the car’s list price -  but the tax savings on the sacrificed portion of the salary make it a highly tax-efficient vehicle acquisition method.

“Our main focus will be the SME sector, where many of the larger leasing providers don’t want to play. We will provide customers with the tools to research and obtain quotes for EVs, for which there is an ever-growing depth of choice from the manufacturers. As an all-inclusive package, once you’ve picked a car, you just need to charge and go.”

Salary sacrifice as a method of funding company vehicles has become increasingly popular thanks to the tax savings achieved for both employers and employees. It also offers a useful employee recruitment and retention tool, as it can be offered to all employees.

Andy Bruce, Fleet Alliance chief executive, welcomed Mark Roberts to the business, saying:

“We see Mark’s appointment as pivotal in our development plans for our salary sacrifice solution, which we believe is perfectly positioned to capitalize on what is an extremely advantageous tax environment for electric cars. We are seeing a huge number of enquiries from businesses that are not currently customers who want more information about salary sacrifice and the opportunities that exist. They may still operate company cars but want help in making electric vehicles available to a wider cross-section of employees.

“This is at the heart of our core competence and will be hugely important for us and our growth ambitions going forward.”

Volkswagen Group Products Start To Dominate Salary Sacrifice Charts

The expanding range of electric vehicles available from Volkswagen Group companies is also helping drive uptake of salary sacrifice funding.

A recent report from Fleet Evolution, a salary sacrifice and fleet management specialist, confirmed that its orders were up 150% in what was proving a record-breaking year for salary sacrifice.

It said that Volkswagen Group vehicles were beginning to dominate the choice list of salary sacrifice takers. The Audi Q4 e-tron knocked the Tesla Model 3 from top spot.

“What is becoming increasingly apparent is the domination by Volkswagen Group of our EV order bank, with an array of new models coming increasingly to the fore,” commented managing director Andrew Leech. “At one time the Tesla was the only game in town. But our customers are now faced with a much wider choice of models, many of which are from mainstream manufacturers and are very competitively priced.”

Leech said that VW Group products took six out of the top 10 places in its order bank.

Top 10 Salary Sacrifice Cars

Source: Fleet Evolution