Rita E. Garwood,
Editor-in-Chief,
Monitor
Sudhir Amembal had been teaching accounting at the University of Utah for four years when the department chairman informed him that he would need to earn his Ph.D. if he wanted to continue teaching. Amembal refused.
Concurrently, Terry Isom found himself in the same position. When it came to teaching, both he and Amembal continually ranked among the top five of 80 faculty members in the College of Business, yet they were asked to leave.
“Given that teaching was a passion, Terry and I looked each other in the eye and said, ‘Now what do we teach in the real world — in the commercial world?’”
After conducting some research, they discovered that at the time — in 1978 — nobody in the United States was teaching commercial courses for the equipment leasing and finance industry.
“We didn’t know much,” Amembal says. “We researched, studied and learned and then offered our first seminar in our conference room with seven attendees: four of them were planted! And after that, we’ve trained 80,000 people in the last four-plus decades. So, we discovered the equipment leasing industry in our passion for teaching.”
Over the course of his career, Amembal has run a leasing company, chaired 20 consecutive world leasing conferences and authored or co-authored 17 industry publications. But the one thing he has enjoyed the most remains teaching.
“Teaching has given me all the joy in the world and all the rewards in the world for a very simple reason,” Amembal says. “In the early days in the U.S. and elsewhere, when my team and I taught, I knew that dispensing knowledge was important. Dispensing knowledge allows people to climb their career ladder and it facilitates growth in the industry. So, knowing that, and then seeing the light bulbs twinkle in the attendee’s eyes would give me twice as much joy as teaching in the academic world.”
Beyond teaching, Amembal notes five career highlights for which he is most proud and humbled:
A simple review of this list clearly demonstrates the impact that Amembal has had on the industry.
“Just knowing that we contributed to industry practices was an accomplishment I’m proud of,” Amembal says. “Our contribution has been more than dispensing information by increasing the level of leasing knowledge and the awareness of lessees and lessors around the world. This, in turn, gave rise to a meaningful dollar increase in leasing volume.”
The industry has changed a great deal over the course of Amembal’s career, particularly when it comes to technology. “We’ve moved from the Hewlett-Packard 12C calculator to artificial intelligence and fintech,” Amembal says.
And throughout the years, the industry has remained resilient. Amembal has created a chart that shows the five phases of leasing: the simple finance lease, the creative finance lease, the operating lease, new products and maturity.
“After maturity, if you follow the typical economic curve, generally comes stagnation — where many industries go this way, or the economic cycle goes this way — but our industry has not,” Amembal says, noting the industry has grown by “leaps and bounds” as securitization, income funds, venture leasing, managed services and other products have been introduced along the way.
When he reviews the advances the industry has made when it comes to new products, Amembal hopes to see the industry return to true leasing — fair market value (FMV) and operating leases.
“The finance lease is a loan equivalent,” Amembal says. “Even in the United States, a mature market, a market that has developed substantially, most of the products are loan equivalents. The true lease commands a small percentage of the total volume. What I would really like to see is that true lease, the operating lease, the fair market value lease, come into play more often.”
Amembal states that true leases offer customers 30 benefits. And notwithstanding the progress the industry has made, the operating lease has fallen by the wayside as far as its market share is concerned.
As Monitor celebrates its 50th year serving the equipment finance industry, Amembal is celebrating his 45th. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, his team shifted their work from onsite to online and Amembal has just finished creating five e-learning courses.
“I want to make those available to the industry,” Amembal says. “Not on a license-per-user basis, I just want to make it extremely affordable.”
Amembal doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon. “I’m going to continue working because this is my passion. It has been my passion for the last 45 years. I will quit when I’m either not wanted or not needed. And at the very least, I’m hoping to mirror your 50th anniversary. Life is in balance today. In other words, work, family and friends, taking care of myself, and service. So with those four parts of my life, work will continue to be a critical part given what I do within the equipment finance industry on a global basis.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rita E. Garwood is editor in chief of Monitor.
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