Mortgage Brain has introduced an electric car salary sacrifice scheme from Fleet Alliance for all staff.

The Worcestershire-based mortgage solutions provider, which also has offices in London, Croydon and Ipswich, is jointly owned by Barclays, Lloyds Bank, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander. The company has been supplying mortgage technology for almost 40 years, and also has a smaller, London-based events and media business, dubbed AE3 Media.

The group, which has around 100 employees, introduced the Fleet Alliance EV salary sacrifice scheme to allow staff access to environmentally friendly vehicles for the first time under a corporate scheme, replacing the previous mileage allowance system.

The scheme offers a wide choice of electric cars, both new and used.

Alastair Brown, chief financial officer, said: “We are running at about 10% take-up but expect that to go to 20% quite quickly. And we have been nothing but impressed since engaging Fleet Alliance to provide a salary sacrifice EV benefit to our employees for the first time.

“From helping me understand the tax implications, configuring the set up and creating all launch comms and a launch event, they have supported us in being able to offer a very valuable benefit that everyone can access.”

Popular picks for the scheme to date include models from BYD, Jaecoo, Tesla, Porsche, Hyundai and BMW.

Brown said that he had also signed up to the scheme.

“With the help of Fleet Alliance, we now have a new Hyundai Ioniq 5 that all of the family love. So much more space, a fun drive and we even managed to put our personal registration on it, too.

“To cope with home charging, we have now installed the Pod Point charger through the scheme so are benefiting from big savings on all of our driving.”

And Brown said the firm’s CEO has just taken delivery of a Porsche Taycan through the scheme, admitting he would not have even dreamed of driving the car before the salary sacrifice solution was introduced.

Employees have been encouraged to participate in the scheme with presentations from Fleet Alliance account managers providing information about the low rates of Benefit-in-Kind taxation for vehicles with zero emissions. And early termination insurance, built into the monthly lease rates, gives peace of mind too.

The cars are managed through Fleet Alliance’s proprietary cloud-based fleet management and reporting platform, e-Fleet, which helps manage every aspect of the fleet in real time, regardless of funder or fleet provider.

Drivers can use e-Fleet to research, compare and order their next vehicle directly from an associated app, and can source vehicles specific to their current grade or salary bracket while checking specification, BiK and whole-life cost.

The platform also provides convenient and accurate mileage recording to allow the close monitoring of mileages and to keep up with all servicing requirements.

Fleet Alliance CEO Andy Bruce highlighted that the EV salary sacrifice scheme is accessible to businesses of all sizes, from large corporations to SMEs.

“It’s the perfect way of introducing a corporate car scheme for the first time. From an environmental perspective, it encourages staff to make the transition to electric cars and helps reduce the corporate carbon footprint while assisting the business in meeting its ESG agenda.

“Rentals are kept as low as possible by the use of competitive tendering and a panel of up to eight lenders, a real bonus at a time of escalating costs in many areas,” he added.