Financial leasing company teams up with 58.com

LSS Financial Leasing Co Ltd in Shanghai signed an agreement with online information service company 58.com on Tuesday, in order to establish an online platform for automobile purchasing and financial services.

The online to offline (O2O) platform will be designed to channel the demand for cars with the financial leasing business, which LSS was able to focus on, according to CEO of 58.com Yao Jingbo.

"Drivers, who answer calls on the freight transport's ordering platform of 58.com, should firstly have a truck themselves. Then, they will only need a passport to become a registered member," he said.

Hu Lielei, general manager of LSS, said the team was determined to build a complete industrial chain for automobile finance.

"Customers only have to visit the offline automobile store once before getting all other processes done on the internet," he said.

LSS Financial Leasing, founded in 2015, was a subsidiary to China's automobile giant Brilliance Auto Group, whose total assets reached 140 billion yuan ($20.6 billion), according to the company's official website.

Hu said LSS had now cooperated with more than 200 dealers across 100 cities in China, sporting an average 30 percent growth in its monthly turnover.

Qi Yumin, chairman of Brilliance Auto, said the financial leasing of automobiles would be an important way to promote the ordering of cars online under the wave of internet and shared economy.

"It's necessary to establish cross-industry cooperation for automobile enterprises since most people would now search for information on the internet instead of coming into the 4S store," he said.

The project has already started trial operations in 16 cities across China, which includes Tianjin, Chengdu, the capital of Southwest Sichuan province, and Suzhou of East China's Zhejiang province.

The project's first customer, a man surnamed Gao, registered truck driver on 58.com, purchased a new heavy motor vehicle through the LSS-58.com platform in April.

"I saw the LSS advertisement on the official website of 58.com, stating a low down-payment and no interest rate, which was very attractive to me," he said.

Gao added he handed in all required materials on the internet and only visited the offline store once to take the truck.