Best Salary Sacrifice Broker 2026: Inside The Electric Car Scheme's Broker News Award Win, and the Full Trust Stack Behind It
Image source: The Electric Car Scheme
Best Salary Sacrifice Broker 2026
At the Broker News Awards 2026, held at Coq d'Argent in the City of London on 23 April, The Electric Car Scheme was named Best Salary Sacrifice Broker. The category was introduced specifically to recognise brokers that have built expertise in what the awards describe as "the fastest growing method of funding cars" in the UK. Entries were judged independently by an expert panel, which rules out the self-selection problem that affects some smaller industry lists.
The award follows a Best Innovation in Broking win at the same event in 2025 for The Charge Scheme, the salary sacrifice product that extends 20-50% savings from the car itself to home, workplace and public EV charging. In other words, this is not a first award for the business from this awarding body, and it is not a standalone marketing claim. It is the fourth consecutive year of Broker News recognition, building on Best EV Broker 2024 finalist status and Rising Star of the Year shortlistings.
For HR and reward leaders shortlisting providers right now, the relevance is simple. The firm that a trade-press judging panel has just identified as the best in its specific category is also the firm you can put in front of your CFO and procurement team without having to caveat the claim.
What "Best Salary Sacrifice Broker" actually tests
Broker News is the trade publication that covers UK leasing brokers, and its annual awards are audited by independent judges drawn from across leasing, fleet and finance. A salary sacrifice broker is scored on technical competence, how the scheme is structured for employers and employees, growth trajectory, service levels, and innovation. It is not a popularity contest, and entrants submit detailed evidence that judges interrogate.
Three things tend to separate credible winners from also-rans. First, employer protection: what happens when an employee resigns, is made redundant, goes on long-term sick leave or takes parental leave. Second, commercial competitiveness: whether the provider can actually source cars at market-competitive rates rather than from a single captive funder. Third, breadth: whether the scheme can handle new and used EVs and the charging piece that sits alongside the car.
Those three axes map directly onto what The Electric Car Scheme has built. Complete Employer Protection from Day 1 has no exclusion period, no excess, and covers resignation, redundancy, illness, parental leave and damage from the day the car is on the driveway. The multi-funder pricing engine sources from several UK leasing partners, so employers and employees see competitive rates rather than a single funder's margin. And the proposition spans new and used EVs with 14-day delivery, plus salary sacrifice on charging through The Charge Scheme.
The full trust stack: awards, accreditations and certifications
Awards are the visible tip of the trust pyramid. What sits underneath matters more for anyone signing a multi-year scheme contract.
Regulatory accreditation
The Electric Car Scheme Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under FRN 968270, and is an Appointed Representative of Marshall Management Services Ltd (FRN 667174). It is a credit broker, not a lender, a distinction that matters when employers are reviewing the risk profile of a provider. Being FCA-authorised means the firm is subject to the Consumer Duty, Treating Customers Fairly principles, and the full weight of regulatory oversight.
The business is also a member of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA member 10608). BVRLA members commit to a code of conduct, submit to regular audits, and are bound by published service standards. Not every salary sacrifice provider in the UK is a BVRLA member. For procurement teams running a due-diligence checklist, membership is one of the most useful short-listing filters because it confirms the basics of how lease contracts are written, how deposits are handled, and how disputes are resolved.
Quality and information security
The Electric Car Scheme is officially ISO 9001 (Quality Management) and ISO 14001 (Environmental Management) certified, and holds Cyber Essentials certification. The two ISO standards are audited annually and govern how the business documents processes, handles customer data flows, measures environmental impact and drives continuous improvement. Cyber Essentials, backed by the UK National Cyber Security Centre, is frequently a hard requirement for larger employers and for public-sector procurement frameworks.
These certifications answer the single question IT security and enterprise procurement teams always ask: does this supplier have the governance and technical hygiene to handle employee data, payroll integration and multi-year service delivery without becoming a risk. A certificate on the wall does not replace a proper vendor review, but the absence of one tends to end the conversation.
B Corp and sustainability credentials
In January 2024, The Electric Car Scheme became the first EV salary sacrifice scheme in the UK to achieve B Corp certification. The B Corp assessment is notoriously strict: the business has to demonstrate verified performance across governance, workers, community, environment and customers, and recertify every three years. For employers running EV salary sacrifice as part of a broader ESG or Net Zero strategy, pairing an electric car benefit with a B Corp-certified provider gives the story a second, third-party-verified layer.
The business is also a signatory to the Good Business Charter, a member of the Association for Renewable Energy & Clean Technology (REA), and a supporter of the Better Business Act. Those are not the same thing as the regulated accreditations above, but they reinforce the positioning. The business has not just checked the EV box; it has built the organisation around it.
Independent industry recognition
Beyond the Broker News awards, the shelf now includes Best Salary Sacrifice Provider from Car Sloth in 2024 and 2025, EV Salary Sacrifice Provider of the Year 2026 from SME News, Best Company Car Programme at the 2025 Business Motoring Awards, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy of the Year at the 2025 BusinessGreen Women in Green Business Awards, and an Innovation Award at the 2025 National Sustainability Awards. Trustpilot sits at five stars across thousands of verified reviews, which is the metric that tells you how the product lands on the driveway, rather than in the boardroom.
Why HR and procurement should care
Salary sacrifice is a three-to-four-year commitment that sits inside payroll, HR and finance at the same time. The provider becomes a de-facto extension of the benefits function. When something goes wrong with a lease, the employee rings HR first and the provider second. That is why the criteria listed above matter.
An FCA authorisation tells you the business is regulated. BVRLA membership tells you it is operating to the sector's published standards. ISO 9001 and 14001 tell you the processes behind the scenes are documented and audited. Cyber Essentials tells you the employee data flow meets the UK baseline for information security. B Corp tells you the organisation has been assessed end-to-end for how it treats its people and the planet. And an award voted by independent trade-press judges tells you that peers and assessors, with nothing to gain, have looked at the field and picked this one.
None of these individually is a reason to sign a contract. Together, they remove the most common procurement objections at once, which is what speeds up a scheme rollout from a six-month evaluation to a six-week one.
What keeps The Electric Car Scheme ahead
Stripping away the trophies, the reason a judging panel can reach this verdict in 2026 is product design, not marketing.
Complete Employer Protection from Day 1 is the headline differentiator. Most competitors apply a three-month exclusion period at the start of the lease, during which resignation, redundancy or long-term absence is not covered. The Electric Car Scheme has removed that window entirely, along with any excess the employer would otherwise carry. For a finance director modelling worst-case scheme economics, that is the single biggest change to the risk curve.
The multi-funder pricing engine is the second. Instead of sourcing from a single captive leasing book, the business writes through several UK funders and competes them. That shows up in live deal pricing and in the breadth of models available. It also explains why employees often find the same car is cheaper here than on the comparable scheme a friend is using at another firm.
Used EVs on salary sacrifice widen the entry point, because they bring the monthly cost below where National Living Wage affordability checks would otherwise bite. The Charge Scheme extends the 20-50% tax saving from the car to home, workplace and public charging, typically saving the employee hundreds of pounds a year. There is £0 set-up cost for the employer. Delivery runs at 14 days on used stock.
The client list is the other reliable proof point. Holland & Barrett, Leeds Bradford Airport, Millwall FC, TopCashback and Time Out Group PLC have all moved their workforces onto the scheme. Those are not pilots. They are live, multi-year deployments.
The tax maths has not changed
Alongside the award, the underlying economics for employees are unchanged. A fully electric car on salary sacrifice attracts Benefit-in-Kind at 4% of list price for the 2026/27 tax year, rising to 5% in 2027/28, 7% in 2028/29 and 9% in 2029/30. Even at 9% in four years' time, an EV on salary sacrifice will still sit well below the 25-37% BiK rates applied to most petrol and diesel company cars.
The combined Income Tax and employee National Insurance saving for most drivers sits between 20% and 50% compared with leasing the same car personally. Additional-rate taxpayers earning above £125,140 can reach the upper end of that range; basic-rate taxpayers typically land between 20% and 30%. Any provider claiming 60% savings is folding employer National Insurance savings into the employee headline, which is a category error.
For employers, the current Employer Class 1 National Insurance rate sits at 15% with a £5,000 secondary threshold, which makes EV salary sacrifice more cost-efficient for employers than it was before April 2025. Every pound an employee sacrifices is a pound the employer does not pay NICs on.
The bottom line
A new category at the Broker News Awards 2026, judged independently, has named The Electric Car Scheme the UK's Best Salary Sacrifice Broker. Beneath the headline sits a credible stack of FCA authorisation, BVRLA membership, ISO 9001 and 14001 certifications, Cyber Essentials, B Corp status and a full shelf of other industry awards. For HR, reward and procurement teams evaluating providers in 2026, that combination answers the trust question without extra legwork. The product still does the heavy lifting day-to-day: Complete Employer Protection from Day 1, multi-funder pricing, new and used EVs, salary sacrifice on charging, and 20-50% tax savings at a 4% BiK rate for the 2026/27 tax year.
If you are an employer thinking about launching a scheme, get an employer guide and indicative pricing or speak to the team directly. If you are an employee whose workplace already runs the scheme, run the numbers on a specific car using the instant quote tool. Either way, the trophy on the shelf is the easy part. The work that earned it is in the detail underneath.
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Last updated: 24/04/2026
Our pricing is based on data collected from The Electric Car Scheme quote tool. All final pricing is inclusive of VAT. All prices above are based on the following lease terms; 10,000 miles pa, 36 months, and are inclusive of Maintenance and Breakdown Cover. The Electric Car Scheme's terms and conditions apply. All deals are subject to credit approval and availability. All deals are subject to excess mileage and damage charges. Prices are calculated based on the following tax saving assumptions; England & Wales, 40% tax rate. The above prices were calculated using a flat payment profile. The Electric Car Scheme Limited provides services for the administration of your salary sacrifice employee benefits. The Electric Car Scheme Holdings Limited is a member of the BVRLA (10608), is authorised and regulated by the FCA under FRN 968270, is an Appointed Representative of Marshall Management Services Ltd under FRN 667174, and is a credit broker and not a lender or insurance provider.
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