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What Does Our Consumer Duty Calculator Do?

Since July 2023, when individuals are buying a car or a van from a dealer or broker (the 'supplier') the supplier must;

• provide you with information about their products and services that you can understand;
• make reasonable attempts to gather information on your needs and requirements;
• provide products and services that meet your needs and offer fair value; and
• provide the customer the support they need when they need it.

This is know as the 'Consumer Duty'.

In practical terms this means that the supplier must make sure that the product being offered to you, such as a finance arrangement for a car or van, meets your needs.

In order to do this the supplier must ensure that they assess your needs and requirements and that the product offered meets those requirements.

This includes assessing your requirements for funding, taking account of your needs and your means to pay (your 'budget'), and whether your circumnstances render you 'vulnerable'.

In this context, 'vulnerable' means:

".. someone who, due to their personal circumstances, is especially susceptible to harm, particularly when a firm is not acting with appropriate levels of care."

There's an extended explanation about the meaning of 'vulnerable' customers and you can click on this link to see more.

*firm means the supplier.

The Consumer Duty rules cover both retail 'personal' customers and small businesses (such as sole traders or small limited companies with a sole director/shareholder - often called 'one-man-bands').

What Does The Calculator Do?

Our calculator will compare the cost and cash-flow impact to you of buying outright vs leasing, personal contract hire (PCH), personal contract purchase (PCP) and hire purchase.

By blending information about your savings with finance calculations we can work out whether or not you should buy your next new car from savings or use finance.

Taking account of monthly finance payments, your savings/investment interest rate and your rate of tax we can calculate the cost and cash-flow impact of using finance rather than buying outright.

If it's cheaper and more cash-efficient to buy outright we'll tell you. And if you could be better off using a finance plan, or if you can't afford to pay cash, we'll work out the best finance from the products we offer.

Getting Started

Your Personal Profile

To begin you'll need to set up some information about you.

How much data you need to provide will depend on whether you have the savings available to pay cash for the car.

If you don't have the savings available to buy outright then we just need some details about your preferences for finance repayments.

In other words, we need to know if the total cost of finance or the lowest monthly payment is more important to you.

If you do have the savings then we'll look at whether it could be better to use your savings to buy the car or use finance instead.

We'll need some extra data to do that, but we'll take you through what's required step-by-step, mainly information about the savings or investment return you could get on your spare cash and whether you pay tax on your savings.

This is to calculate the effect on you of tying up your savings in a car rather than using finance for it.

If there's any information you're not sure about then just use the example data we provide - you can always go back and change the details at any time.

We won't keep any personal data you provide. Once you leave our site and close the browser window the data will be erased from our servers, but remember that your web browser may keep browsing data for a period of time and this is beyond our control.

If you leave your computer, tablet or phone for a while when using our 'Lease or Buy' analyser your session on this web site will eventually 'time-out' and we'll then wipe the data to help prevent someone else from seeing it (but please don't rely on that - just close your browser window and come back to us later).

Car Selection

Next we'll ask you about the car you want.

You can select a standard car from the manufacturer lists of model ranges.

Finance

Once the vehicle is selected we'll ask you about finance. You can select the period you expect to keep the car (up to 5 years) and the annual/total mileage you will travel and we'll match the finance to your selections.

You're Ready To Go!

Once you've completed the personal profile, vehicle and finance selections you're ready to see the analysis results.

Understanding The Results

Depending on your data selections we'll show you:

• the lowest monthly payments for finance for your car from the choices we offer;
• the lowest total cost for finance for your car from the choices we offer (not necessarily the same as the above)
• the cash-flow impact on you of buying outright from savings compared to our finance alternatives;
• the cost impact of using finance compared to buying outright; and
• the effects of personal taxation on the calculations.

We will re-state the priorities you expressed as part of your personal profile and the data relevent to that profile, then;

• show the total costs of finance for each funding method;
• show the monthly payments required for each funding alternative;
• explain the cost difference between buying outright and each funding method;
• (optionally, depending on selections) show the cash-flow impact of buying outright and using finance;
• indicate which finance method appears to meet your stated requirements.

Remember that the finance methods examined are not exhaustive.

Other finance options may be available. You should always take steps to identify if alternative methods to those in our examples might be better for your needs and requirements.