Lease return & remote laptop retrieval

Customer challenge

A large national insurer deployed 30,000 leased laptops to remote employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the leases neared expiration, the company faced three urgent challenges:

• Securely retrieving devices from employees across the country.
• Ensuring certified data wiping to protect sensitive information.
• Returning all equipment to multiple lessors on time to avoid late fees and penalties.

The solution

Iron Mountain designed a tailored lease-return programme that streamlined retrieval and safeguarded data integrity:

• Box programme: Provided secure, trackable retrieval of remote worker devices.
• Lease return management: Coordinated timely returns to three separate lessors, ensuring all compliance requirements were met.
• Value recovery services: Processed and remarketed corporate-owned assets, including data centre equipment, to maximise residual value.

Value delivered

• Scale & speed: Successfully returned 30,000 laptops over 18 months, with a peak of 22,000 units processed in just two quarters.
• Cost savings: Eliminated the need to hire 15–20 temporary contractors (estimated at $35/ hour), reducing labor costs significantly.
• Risk mitigation: Ensured certified data sanitisation for every device, avoiding security breaches and financial penalties.

Business impact

By combining efficient retrieval with compliance-focused processing, Iron Mountain enabled on-time lease returns, lowered operational expenses, and provided a repeatable model for large-scale IT asset disposition and value recovery.