By 2025, BPI Century Tokyo group’s goal is to become the No. 1 player in the auto leasing space, where it ranks second to date.
Diamond, which was put up by the Buenaflor family in 1980, offers complementary services such as short-term car rental, maintenance and repair factory, business process outsourcing fleet management, and 24-hour service. Companies that require at least 300 or 400 cars, such as those to service marketing and sales teams like fast-moving consumer good companies and pharmaceutical firms, are the ones that usually find merit in leasing vehicles, he says.BPI Century Tokyo’s leasing operations are mostly in Luzon, but if its clients have businesses in Visayas and Mindanao, the leased cars are shipped to wherever the customers are.
The shift in majority control is seen to allow the venture to take more advantage of Tokyo Century’s expertise in auto-related businesses, particularly full service operating lease, while still leveraging the BPI network. “We were very attracted to Diamond, because they have fleet managers to manage around the 6,000 cars that they have,” Limcaoco says. “That’s not even cars that they own. These are cars owned by corporates who said: please take care of this fleet for us.”
The group has brought many of the Japanese firm’s specialized businesses to overseas markets, although the focus is different in each market.