Claus Henneberger is General Manager of Philips Medical Capital Europe. With an Economics degree in banking, he has also worked for the Deutsche Bank Group, was Managing Director of Deutsche Financial Services Belgium for the Deutsche Bank Group and, earlier, was Managing Director of SG Equipment Finance Benelux, Société Générale Group, France
Acquiring up-to-date medical technology
New leasing and financing strategies:
Technology is central to the future of healthcare.
Technology is central to the future of healthcare. It provides the healthcare sector with a wide variety of tools to deliver improved care. At the same time technology also provides a wide variety of tools to manage the healthcare sector more efficiently and effectively.
Providing the technology to upgrade the healthcare industry will require a massive capital investment and present a major opportunity for the leasing industry.
Because of the limited time and capacity of many healthcare providers to focus on the details of their needed capital investment, the most successful leasing companies will be those competing on service - not price. These will be leasing companies that combine the equipment delivery with additional services, such as service agreements, system upgrades and remarketing services.
Flexible solutions during and after the contract term are essential. Why should a client commit to an inflexible solution with a long lease term, just to obtain a lower monthly instalment and the option to buy at the end of lease at a fair market value, when they could choose a flexible solution instead, enabling them to react to technological changes and leaving the remarketing to specialists?
These flexible leasing solutions are already established in markets where technological changes are rapid. IT leasing companies, for example, offer ‘Swap’ contracts, which enable their customers to exchange or upgrade their leasing equipment during the lease and return it End-of-Lease without further obligation. The leasing company will then remarket the equipment or resell them to specialised brokers. Today, more and more customers want this solution.
The required combination of expertise for success in the leasing industry will include an understanding of the general financial benefits of leasing coupled with an understanding of the productivity requirements of the healthcare system and an ability to package and explain leasing services that provide financial benefits, as well as productivity benefits, to the medical community.
These are the challenges medical equipment manufacturers are confronted with today - to satisfy their clients.
This article was published on 03/01/2006