For nearly a decade the old guard of commercial equipment finance has, at best, lightly entertained the concept of as-a-service-type solutions for traditional commercial equipment asset classes.

We don’t talk about it often, but we watched an asset class fade from some significance in the industry to relative insignificance. In 2002, 63% of software “seat licenses” were financed by a financial services company or captive arm of a technology manufacturer. Despite meteoric growth in software sales in the 21 years leading to December 2023, today less than 1% of software sales are financed the way they were in 2002. Subscriptions have marked one of the largest shifts away from what our industry does and on to the balance sheets of the manufacturers.