From Leasing to Leading: Enabling Multimodal Mobility

An article by Alessandro Floria, ARVAL, published in the white paper “The Mobility Revolution”.

Arval

Arval is a leading provider of long-term vehicle leasing and mobility solutions, founded in 1989. Fully owned by BNP Paribas, it operates under the Commercial, Personal Banking & Services division.

As of December 2024, Arval’s leased fleet reached nearly 1.8 million vehicles. Every day, around 8,600 employees across 29 countries deliver flexible, responsible travel solutions to clients—ranging from large international corporations to SMEs, freelancers, and private individuals.

Arval is a founding member of the Element-Arval Global Alliance, a global leader in corporate fleet management with 4.5 million vehicles in 55 countries. In 2024, Arval received the top EcoVadis Platinum rating, placing it in the top 1% of companies assessed for CSR strategy.

Arval Italia and the Challenge of Sustainable Mobility: From Leasing
to a Multimodal Ecosystem

Corporate and private mobility are both at a turning point. Faced with the climate emergency, regulatory pressure, and shifting in dividual behaviors, companies must fundamentally rethink how their employees and users move. This is not just about updating corporate fleets, but about initiating a cultural and systemic transformation toward a flexible, multi-asset, and shared model.

This transition requires thoughtful guidance and a willingness to challenge established habits. Innovative players like Arval Italia go beyond providing technical solutions—they prioritize understanding needs, offering strategic consulting, and co-designing tailored mobility strategies. It all begins with a structured assessment of mobility needs—both corporate and individual—including mileage, schedules, destinations, modes of transport, company culture, benefits, and organizational logic. This leads to a new approach to corporate mobility, no longer seen as a standardized benefit but as a modular portfolio of integrated, interoperable, on-demand, and sustainable services.

Building the future of mobility means moving beyond a single-asset mindset to embrace a more integrated, streamlined, and personalized ecosystem. It means helping companies move away from vehicle ownership and explore new usage and governance models. This new approach offers a portfolio of interoperable and flexible solutions tailored to real-time mobility needs—soon to be accessible via digital platforms and supported by employer-funded mobility budgets or credits. In this way, sustainability becomes more than an abstract goal—it turns into a concrete driver of competitiveness, wellbeing, and innovation.

Arval is moving in this direction, evolving beyond its traditional role as a vehicle provider to become a partner in building multimodal mobility ecosystems for companies and private users alike. Through a deep transformation, Arval is respon ding to growing demands for flexibility, sustainability, and digitalization. The first step was moving from classic long term leasing to more flexible options like monthly leasing, corporate car sharing, and e-bike rentals. The next goal: providing concrete solutions in the realm of Mobility as a Service (MaaS)—the present and future of mobility.

From Internal Testing to a new Corporate Mobility Offering

To credibly support the transition to sustainable mobility, companies must lead by example. That’s the principle guiding Arval’s approach: piloting innovations at its own facilities before offering them to clients. A notable example is the electrification of Arval’s company fleet. In 2024, 70 charging stations were installed at the Milan headquarters to support a full-electric transition of the fleet by the end of 2025. The initiative goes beyond vehicle replacement—it actively engages employees through dedicated panels to collect feedback, monitor usage with digital tools, and assess impacts on comfort, productivity, emissions, and satisfaction.

Driving Change with Consistency and Innovation

This “test & learn” approach is a hallmark of Arval’s strategy: only by experiencing solutions firsthand can a company design offering that are coherent, effective, and truly aligned with corporate needs. Today’s businesses seek partners capable of supporting deep transformations—logistically, culturally, and organizationally.

In a fast-changing landscape, Arval Italia stands out for its ability to combine strategic vision with hands-on experimentation. By testing solutions internally first, Arval builds a credible and scalable model of sustainable mobility. The challenge is not only technological but also deeply cultural: only a modular, flexible, and data-driven approach can guide companies toward a truly evolved mobility ecosystem. Arval is ready to lead this change—with innovation, listening, and co-design at its core.