Interviews
22 May 18

Juan Loperena, TIP Mexico: Challenges for LatAm vehicle lessors

With almost 25 years in the Mexican market, TIP México is one of the leading companies in terms of the leasing of transportation equipment and vehicle fleet management.

 

Holding strategic alliances with manufacturers and equipment dealers, the company’s assets are made up of trailers, side-loaders, heavy and light trucks, refrigerated vans, automobiles, and others.

 

Join Global Fleet as we talk about challenges and other issues in and around Mexico with Juan Loperena, the company’s CEO as well as one of the newest members of the Global Fleet advisory board Latin America. 

 

Global Fleet: What is one of the main challenges in Latin America’s fleet management market?

 

Loperena: One of the main challenges for a global company doing business in Latin America is corruption. This bad practice is still one of those challenges the region has been facing and, for the most part, we have not been able to solve it.

Moreover, unstable regulatory environments and a lack of long term strategies caused by the constant changing of presidents in the region results in new policies and rules, something that can also be quite a challenge.

 

Global Fleet: Speaking of public policy, how will the outcome of the NAFTA negotiations affect fleet management and vehicle leasing in Mexico?

Loperena: The impact will depend on whether or not the new Rules of Origin will generate inflation in the car production process. This would result in price increases for end users and in turn reduce the demand for new vehicles. 

If prices increase too much, new car sales will drop significantly and this will hurt the auto leasing market.


TIP México vans (Source: TIP México)

 

Global Fleet: Vehicle theft has been increasing in Mexico, something that could increase TCO for fleet managers. What is the best way to deal with this?

Loperena: Vehicle theft has been around for a long time. Technologies such as geo-tracking can help recover a stolen vehicle as you can track its path up until the place where it has been stored or shut down.

Many thieves, however, have found ways to remove tracking systems from cars which obviously makes tracking and recovering more difficult. 

One very important thing customers need is a 24/7 tracking and recovery service with an option to call and get immediate help. The first minutes after a vehicle has been stolen are vital to increasing the chance of recovery.

Global Fleet: How do you see ride hailing services such as Uber. Are they competitors or do they bring opportunity?

Loperena: First of all, I’d like to say that Uber Mexico has lost it’s track to some extent and this is due to various reasons.

However, there are many competitors showing up in the market that offer similar services. [Cabify, 99, Laudrive] and we do not see any of them as competitors. In fact, they are potential customers.

Global Fleet: So, what could actually threaten your business?

Loperena: There are a couple things that could threaten the vehicle leasing industry as well as traditional car ownership. One is the growing trend of shared car ownership and the other is self-driven vehicles. More shared vehicles mean less demand for new cars.

Authored by: Daniel Bland