After a long hiatus from the IT equipment leasing business, HSBC
is now back in the game, with a new tie-up with the Finnish IT
services group, 3 Step IT.
HSBC is aiming to generate at least £30m in leasing volume over
the next two years with the 3 Step partnership.
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“We haven’t been in the IT leasing market, for a long time,”
said Paul Meredith, HSBC’s head of IT Finance. “To be honest we had
grown the business in so many other directions but this (IT) just
wasn’t priority.”
New business for HSBC is expected to originate from the bank’s
existing customer base as well through referrals from 3 Step.
“At the moment, the product will be delivered through our
existing sales force. The intention is not, at this time, to create
a specialist team looking purely at this. It’s giving the existing
guys another tool in their bag. So when they fund a customer’s
machinery say, they can also ask them about IT funding needs,”
Meredith said.
As a specialist in IT lifecycle management, 3 Step helps
companies with the entire process of IT systems implementation from
the point of acquisition to the end of a system’s useful life.
Crucially, it provides hardware tracking, data destruction and the
safe disposal of hardware at the expiry of its useful life.
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By GlobalDataAccording to Jon Davies, director at 3 Step IT UK, the lifecycle
approach to managing IT systems is not a new practise but it was
only in the past 24 months that it has become much more
prominent.
“The drivers behind it is really customers recognising that they
can have cost savings through standardisation,” he says. “The other
factor is the need for its environmentally conscious disposal and
the prevention of data leaks.”
But for HSBC, perhaps the strongest aspect of the partnership is
that 3 Step has the ability to take on residual value risk. Davies
notes that even a three-year-old PC has value to 3 Step – part of
its business involves refurbishing used IT equipment and reselling
them.
Clearly, this makes IT financing for a generalist like HSBC that
much easier. Potentially, it could also allow HSBC to offer
operating lease contracts for IT equipment to its customers since 3
Step is there to take on the risk.
