A new service designed to assess damage on salary sacrifice cars has been launched by Fleet Evolution.
ReturnCheck is designed to assess a car at the point an employee leaves a company, allowing the employer to recharge any damage costs to their final salary payment.
The service is available via a new app, and free to all Fleet Evolution customers.
The company’s founder and managing director Andrew Leech explained that the possibility of an employee handing back a damaged car after their final salary payment had been made was one of the few risks associated with salary sacrifice schemes.
He said: “We’ve introduced ReturnCheck to maintain our position of offering the lowest risk salary sacrifice scheme for electric cars anywhere in the UK.
“Salary sacrifice is inherently low risk but there are one or two areas that need careful attention, such as ensuring the terms of the scheme do not breach the National Living Wage or providing redundancy and leaver insurance. Our scheme covers all these eventualities.”
Leech said that having a damaged car handed back could potentially leave employers facing a repair cost they had no means of recovering.
He said: “With ReturnCheck, the employer notifies us of an employee leaving 30 days in advance. We then download the app to the employee’s mobile phone and, through it, assess the condition of the vehicle and whether any remedial work is required.
“If work is needed to repair the vehicle, we can provide an estimate to the employer who can recharge this to the employee’s final salary payment before they leave the company, so that the employer is not liable for the cost.
“This service also speeds up the repair process, allowing us to repair the vehicle in good time before it can then be allocated to another colleague or customer.”