Innervision specializes in lease portfolio management services for lessees – many of which have an international presence, or are intending to go global.

The company was founded in 1992 and Kennard, now director and owner, joined in 2006 following some 12 years working in IT leasing with CHG-Meridian.

During 2014 Innervision made great strides in improving its client reach both globally and across a broad range of different industries. The company arranged leasing for a wide variety of assets ranging from vehicles to plant & machinery, office and IT equipment - on an international basis.

“Some 27% of new leases were arranged in the UK, 33% in mainland Europe and 39% in the US,” Kennard explained to Asset Finance International. “The remainder were arranged in Asia which proves our ability to serve large corporate clients in a variety of global territories.”

He added: “Our clients’ lease portfolios have also continued to expand rapidly and we now manage a portfolio in excess of £750 million. In 2014 we placed over £100 million of leases globally.”

Innervision’s principal purpose is to optimize its clients’ portfolios through auditing and renegotiating its leases. Its independent objective advice means it is able to negotiate new deals with the best rates and options and, importantly, it ensures 100% compliance, with particular relevance to whatever the impending lease accounting changes might bring.

Free from distraction

For Innervision’s clients, Kennard stressed that the benefits are: avoiding the spiral into chaos from mislaid, forgotten and unmanaged leases; the ability to access accurate, up-to-date management information constantly online; saving time and money on administration and being free from the worry and distraction of lease management.

Innervision’s international team is based in the UK, although it also has a satellite office in The Netherlands.

The company attracts customers by referrals and in-bound marketing – especially by widely-circulated thought leader articles and white papers.

Kennard anticipates a flood of new business when the Boards determining the future capitalization of leasing reach some sort of conclusion later this year. He does not predict a large-scale rejection of the product when leasing is forced onto balance sheets, since he fully acknowledges leasing’s other wide-ranging benefits, but he does envisage a growing demand for compliance on a large scale.

Even more promising

He said: “We expect 2015 to be another exciting year within the leasing industry, with a number of key milestones to anticipate such as the impending IFRS changes to the global accounting standard, improvements and growth within the UK and global economy, and continued low interest rates. This coupled with our new marketing approach, website redesign and improvements to LOIS means 2015 is already looking to be a more promising, if not more challenging year than the last.

LOIS (Lease Optimization & Information System) is Innervision’s cloud-based proprietary lease management software which is undergoing a massive upgrade at the present time. It underpins Innervision’s services and is structured to manage every aspect from quotation to lease management and reporting online.

“LOIS,” Kennard explained, “Assists in reporting, monitoring and managing all clients’ lease agreements. It gathers all critical and relevant lease details in one place, accessed through our website portal and allows centralised collation which enables efficient analysis, tracking management and financial reporting of all leases.”

The upgrade, LOIS LITE, is the single largest investment that the company has ever made and, when completed, will provide a cloud-based software-as-a-service which is aimed to anticipate the growing demand from lessees as the lease accounting decisions are finally made.

Kennard stressed that Innervision provides a full lease management service, including arranging and negotiating new lease facilities. . Innervision has strong relationships with most of the major leasing companies and high street banks whose services can be called upon if required.

“In the case of clients operating overseas,” he added, “we endeavour to place business on a local level wherever possible.”

At entry level

Looking to the future Kennard has set the company firmly on organic growth with expansion of its core business and stimulated by the intended changes to the way leasing is capitalized being finalized. The development of LOIS LITE should give Innervision “a greater amount of customers at the entry level”.

In 2014 Innervision joined with Quartz Finance in an agreement to work together to improve the breadth and quality of services they can jointly make available to their respective customers.

Quartz, established in 2004, works with UK, mainland European and global technology companies helping them to use receivables financing to generate revenue, increase margins, optimize cash and create competitive advantage.

Kennard confirmed that the teamwork between the two companies continues to work effectively. Globally, he confirmed that the big focus for 2015 is on India – and a little later, China.

He said: “Innervision continues to be an ambitious and growing company. We have superb people, a loyal and expanding customer base as well as an excellent reputation amongst our funding partners. 2014 was great and 2015, with our ability to solve lessee’s new lease accounting problems, will be even more exciting.”