New business levels for European leasing returned to growth in 2013, up 1.9% on 2012, according to Leaseurope’s preliminary survey of the market.
Leaseurope labelled the data ‘encouraging’, and said it confirmed the positive findings of its own earlier surveys such as the Leaseurope Index for Q4 2013 and the Business Confidence Survey of December 2013.
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According to the trade association body, the auto leasing segment contributed significantly to the positive figures, growing 5.2% compared to 2012.
Despite falling by 1.0%, leasing volumes for equipment registered a slight improvement on 2012 results, which saw volumes drop by over 2%.
Real estate leasing continued to struggle, and witnessed a decline of almost 13%, accompanied by poor performance in many European markets.
The 2012 figure for total new business volume, including real estate, published by Leaseurope was 241bn while equipment and vehicle finance totalled 225bn.
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By GlobalDataJurgita Bucyte, Leaseurope’s adviser in statistics and economic affairs, said: "All in all, we can see that the European leasing market is on the rise, notably in some of the more vulnerable economies, where leasing volumes show signs of recovery and are rebounding from the low levels of past years."
She added that growth accelerated in the last six months of 2013: "In comparison to the results of our survey on European leasing activities in the first half of 2013, the preliminary annual figures show that there was a considerable improvement in new volumes within the second half of the year, particularly with respect to equipment leasing (which decreased by 7.1% in H1 2013 compared to H1 2012)."
Although the European picture appears positive, Leaseurope warned significant divergences in growth remained at national level.
While more mature markets, such as the UK, confirmed their role as engines for growth, Southern European markets continued to under-perform, despite stability seemingly achieved by some, notably Spain and Portugal.
Bucyte said: "Given the growth of European investment projected for 2014, in particular investment in equipment, the outlook this year seems quite positive for our industry."
