Features
27 juil 18

Daimler FS to become Daimler Mobility in 2019

Daimler Financial Services (Daimler FS) will be renamed Daimler Mobility in the first half of next year. The change is part of Project Future – Daimler Group’s strategic reorientation.

Why the new name? “Because in our business division, we finance and insure mobility. With the new name, we make a strong statement about the future of mobility”, says Bodo Uebber, Member of the Board of Management at Daimler.

Mobility portfolio
With around 13,000 employees and – as of June – 23.5 million customers around the world, Daimler FS already represents the mobility portfolio of its parent company Daimler Group. That portfolio includes services such as car2go, moovel and mytaxi. Daimler is also involved in Flixbus (pictured), Taxify, Turo, Via and other digital mobility services. 

Daimler FS is doing very well. The company further increased its new business in Q2 2018, with 501,000 new leasing and financing contracts worldwide, totalling €18.3 billion (up 2% over Q2 2017). Q2 transactions totalled 42.4 million, in more than 110 cities worldwide – a 61% growth compared to Q2 2017. 

Contract volume
At the end of June, Car2go had 3.2 million users (+23% year-on-year), moovel had grown to 5 million customers (+71%), and the various mytaxi providers to 15.3 million customers (+70%). The portfolio of Daimler FS as a whole included more than 5 million vehicles, equivalent to €146.7 billion in contract volume (5% more than at the end of 2017). In insurance, Daimler’s business division brokered 579,000 contracts by Q2 2018 (+11%).

The excellent results show that “financial services remain fundamental to our business division”, said Mr Uebber, who’s responsible for Finance & Controlling and Daimler FS. Subject to the agreement of the competition authorities, Daimler FS will integrate its services to the planned mobility joint venture with BMW, announced at the end of March.

Business models
With its portfolio containing a variety of business models, Daimler FS in recent years has grown from a provider of vehicle financing into a provider of integrated mobility solutions. Its range of services includes financing, leasing and insurance, but also digital solutions for the processing of payments (Mercedes pay), as well as various app-based services (moovel, car2go, mytaxi).

“Renaming Daimler FS to Daimler Mobility underscores the transformation of our business division into a mobility services provider”, says Klaus Entenmann, Chairman of Daimler’s Board of Management. “It’s expected that the revenue in this market will reach a significant, three-digit-billion-dollar volume in the next decade. Daimler will play a crucial role in this regard”. 

Project Future
The change to Daimler Mobility is part of Project Future, Daimler Group’s strategic reorientation. However, other entities of the Daimler FS business division – including Mercedes-Benz Bank (in Europe), Mercedes-Benz Financial Services (in the U.S.) and Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance (in China) – will remain unchanged, maintaining their own, successfully established brand names. 

Daimler Mobility will play a crucial role in Daimler’s CASE strategy, taking the lead in the Group’s Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electric mobility. For example, in Amsterdam, Madrid and Stuttgart, car2go customers can already experience mobility from fully electric fleets. And in 2019, Daimler and Bosch will offer an automated shuttle service in a yet to be revealed Californian city, and to be operated by Daimler Mobility Services. The project will intelligently connect such mobility services as car-sharing (car2go), ride-hailing (mytaxi) and multi-modal platforms (moovel).     

Authored by: Frank Jacobs