With a focus on continuous improvement, collaboration and maintaining efficiency, Matt de Aguiar continues to make an impact on Fleet Advantage’s company operations and culture. He was hired in 2019 as the director of corporate development. In 2022, de Aguiar was appointed as chief operating officer. In this role, de Aguiar is involved with a large variety of operational projects and has established quarterly strategy sessions to identify ways for Fleet Advantage’s customers to achieve their goals.

Additionally, de Aguiar is involved in company culture improvements, such as Fleet Advantage’s mentorship program, “lunch-and-learn,” and cross-department thought-sharing meetings. By using prior business experience, de Aguiar is able to provide knowledge of company culture and, in the process, has helped Fleet Advantage build an asset monitoring team with the goal of further setting the company apart from traditional financing sources.

The economic environment is the biggest challenge the equipment finance industry faces today, says de Aguiar. He believes the state of the economy is causing a new interest rate environment. As a result, he emphasizes the industry’s need to establish a clear outlook of the future and not lose creativity when navigating this new environment.

de Aguiar also notes the importance of utilizing cutting-edge technology, which can make many tasks more efficient. He believes that AI can assist in making large sets of data more digestible, which he says will enable companies to predict when to upgrade their equipment to achieve the lowest total costs and potentially begin to do proactive multiyear planning of asset acquisition versus reactive planning.

de Aguiar’s suggests the industry should start hiring top talent earlier by focusing on undergraduate recruiting and internships. He believes this will lead to an overall increased interest in the equipment finance sector and lend itself to the spread of knowledge about the industry.