BMW Group in the UK has issued a warning to the motor finance sector in the UK to work on better price transparency and fairness in the light of investigations by UK regulators into practices in other industry sectors.
Following a critical investigation into the practices of some energy market price comparison sites in October, Spencer Halil, General Manager, Group Brands at BMW Group Financial Services, is advising the motor finance sector to “check its own house is in order”.
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Earlier this year, a number of energy sector price comparison platforms were criticised for seemingly hiding the best deals from consumers as part of marketing relationships with the suppliers, BMW said. Although the approach was deemed technically compliant, Halil warns that consumers are unlikely to be tolerant of practices which are not transparent.
Halil said: “It doesn’t matter what sector you are in, customers expect transparency and fairness. If products are hidden, hard to find or explained poorly, then these expectations will not be met. This is especially the case when more expensive alternatives are promoted to deliver higher commission payments.
“At BMW Group Financial Services, we believe strongly in the need to provide our customers with both transparency and fairness. The recent changes to our business model, affecting the way in which our products are provided through our retail networks, will deliver this.
“We have simplified our pricing structure, capped our rates at a fair and reasonable level and implemented the same structure across all of our BMW and MINI centres so that customers will get a consistently high level of service wherever they are in the country.”
