Even though there are some complexities in practice, but basically leasing has similar nature regardless prevailed regulation in any country. Basically, leasing transaction can be separated into two main categories: financial leases and operating leases. Financial lease represents a longer term lease commitment in which the sum of the rents due will approximate the equipment’s purchase cost plus profit of the lessor (full pay out). Meanwhile, all lease transaction which is not fitting with the financial lease can be put into operating lease category.

Within the two broad categories, are some basic variations. The most popular variation in major Asian countries is  leverage lease, beside other service lease and non leveraged lease. These variations are sometimes incorrectly considered to be separate types of leases rather than descriptive forms of the basic types. For example, finance leases can be leveraged leases or non leveraged leases, and service leases can be financial or operating in nature.

This posting will briefly explain three of leasing categories, ie financial lease, operating lease, and leveraged lease.

1. Financial Lease

Financial leases are considered long term leases because the primary lease terms usually run for most of the equipment’s useful life. Typically, the total cash flow over the term—from rents, tax savings, and the end-of-lease equipment (residual) resale or re-lease value—will be sufficient to pay back the lessor’s investment, take care of the administrative expenses, pay off any equipment-related debt obligations and commissions, and provide a profit (full pay out).

Because they are entered into by lessors as long-term financial commitments, finance lessors usually impose a substantial repayment penalty for a lessee’s early lease termination in an amount that will assure the lessor of a return of its investment and a profit, at least up to the date of termination.

Under financial lease, the fundamental ownership responsibilities, such as maintaining and repairing the equipment, paying for the necessary insurance, and taking care of property, use, and sales taxes, are placed on the lessee. So, financial lease can be compared with loan in that the lessor, like a lender, is involved only in asset funding.

In financial lease, lessee bears a major risk of lease item obsolescence, so that common lease item in financial lease are the items which has quite significant resale value compared with it’s brand new price.

2. Operating Lease

When full pay out condition is not fulfilled in lease transaction, the lease is called an operating lease. Operating lease can be span a few months to a few years, although some are as short as a few hours.

Because the lease terms are relatively short, an operating lessor usually cannot earn much of its equipment investment back through the rents from one lease transaction; thus, it must either sell or re-lease the equipment on attractive terms to be profitable.

Their short lease terms and easy cancellation provisions make operating lease attractive to users in several situations, especially if the user has planning to use the lease item in short period only. For this kind of transaction, it seems similar with rental transaction.

Other benefit for using operating lease to lessee is if residual value of item is very much depreciated or the item is related to fast changing technology. By using operating lease, the risk of obsolescence is born by lessor instead of lessee. So that, lease rent of operating lease is usually higher compared with financial lease.

3. Leveraged Lease

Both financial lease and operating lease can use this kind of variation. In a leveraged lease, lessor only cover some major percentage of purchase amount, let say 60% up to 80% of it. This leveraging generally enables lessor to provide a lessee with relatively lower rents while at the same time maintaining its return.

This kind of lease transaction is commonly used in Asian countries. Since the country risk is considered higher compared with other developped countries, lessor only take some portion of financing, and lease term will be set for shorter period (usually 3 years only). As consequence, credit risk will be lower and lease rent doesn’t reduced significantly due to shorter lease term.

There are a lot of variation of lease transactions, but in basic those three lease categories already covered the definision of leasing.

Tags: lease, Leasing

Buying a new car for personal uses is the thing we usually do periodically, in line with increasing of our income and lifetime period of current car. It’s good if we can buy it by cash, but in most case we have to buy it by using auto financing due to limited cash on our hand.

Instead of get rush going to car dealer and experience unexpected bad things after that, here is some easy step by step tips to do for best auto financing :

1. Set up maximum monthly budget of loan repayment

Setting up a budget is important thing, to ensure our capability in making good loan repayment. Once we have certain amount of fixed budget, then we can start to choose our dreamed car by choosing the one which suitable with our budget. We can do simple simulation using online car loan calculator, compare several different set of car price, down payment, and term of loan. With this kind of simulation, we have one comprehensive picture about the most suitable car to purchase under current budget. Please see this basic budgeting post if you still confused how to set up the budget.

2. Find a good lender

We can find them fast and easy by online. By sending some basic information, we can get offering from some different online lenders just in minutes. Then, make a comparison between them. Two factors should be noticed when choosing a lender. The first is quality of lender, by checking their reputation as a company comparing with other lenders, popularity among other borrowers, and variation of financing program they provide. Second thing is their competitiveness, including offered interest rate and other charged fees. Several things will determine interest rate offered by lenders, but the most dominant factor is our credit score rating.

3. Enjoying car windows shopping before auto financing approval

When we have decided a lender, just send our loan application and waiting for their approval. Usually it needs a couple of days. While waiting for the approval, we can do car shopping by visiting car dealers, collecting offering letter from them, and choose the best dealer. Once our application is approved, then we have decided from where we will buy the car.

4. Ensure that we have loan payment protection insurance

We can’t expect the future anyway. This protection is important to secure our loan repayment in case something happened to us and we cannot continue to perform monthly repayment. Some lenders provide such protection together with their financing package. If our lender doesn’t provide it, go online and find good reputable insurance company easily.

5. Maintain good repayment performance

Yes, we have a new car now. Further important thing to do is to maintain good repayment performance until the end of financing period. It’s necessary to maintain good personal reputation since today is not the end of the world. With good credit score, we can get easy loan approval from good lender for any loan we need in the future, and enjoy lower charged interest rate.

Tags: Auto Financing, Loan