Group Lease Public Company Limited or GL was established on May 6, 1986, to serve the automobile hire purchase business in Bangkok and provincial areas. In 1990, a new group of shareholders acquired the business and focused on the hire purchase business of motorcycles while slowing down the hire purchase of automobiles. Later, the Company expanded into hire purchase of other products such as trucks, machineries, and printing presses as well as expanded into financial leasing, factoring contracts, asset financing and personal loans. Since the year 2004, the core business of the Company has been concentrated on the hire purchase of motorcycles.
In 2007,a new shareholder, APF Group, completed a takeover bid and became the major shareholder, which it still maintains today. During the first four years after APF’s takeover, the Company focused on improving the business in Thailand as that was the Company’s only market at the time. In 2012, the Company decided that expanding outside of Thailand and focusing on the ASEAN market was the best avenue for increasing shareholder value and profitability for the firm, so the Company reorganized management and began a rapid expansion into the ASEAN market using their recently created new business model, which they first deployed in Cambodia. In 2015, the Company followed up its successfully entry in Cambodia by entering fellow ASEAN country Laos. The business model was continually improved upon and transformed GL to be a ‘Digital Finance Platform Provider.’ This creates a new market for us, especially for the consumer durables suppliers and consumers, through GL’s own distinctive Platform which is a unique combination of a POS network and E-Finance system network.
In 2016, due to multiple successful new market entrances, the Company decided it should not restrict itself by focusing only on the ASEAN market, but should be open to opportunities globally. Thus, while we continue to expand in our local ASEAN market, including Myanmar and Indonesia in the past year, we have also expanded into non-ASEAN Sri Lanka. Moving forward, we look to bring our ‘Digital Finance Platform’ to many new markets across the globe and become a truly global company.