Competition is hotting up among deposit protection providers to persuade more lettings agents to use digital tech to protect tenant deposits.

Using technology called an API that connects digital platforms and their tech together, it can reduce the process of tenancy deposit protection from a five or six-stage process to a single click.

All three of the government-approved schemes are pushing APIs at the moment. One of those, MyDeposits, says its API enables ten minutes to shave off the time it normally takes to protect a rental deposit which, for an agency process dozens of tenants every day or week, is a significant time saver, along with parallel cost reductions too.

“There are two types of organisations using APIs – tech and hybrid agency platforms like Goodlord, for example, as well as larger corporate estate agencies who have built their own in-house platforms,” says Kate Mutter-Bowen of MyDeposits (pictured).

‘the norm’

She says MyDeposits has seen a surge in the number of companies offering agents tenancy process automation and that therefore API-based deposit protection is likely to become ‘the norm’ sooner rather than later.

“I think that is ultimately the future for tenancy onboarding particularly as more and more letting agents are looking to tech to help reduce costs and ensure compliance.

“We have developed our technologies to seamlessly integrate with your systems to deliver speed and efficiency through the deposit process.

“With our platform, your property management system will automatically protect deposits in our system and generate custom proscribed information, saving you and your teams hours in unnecessary administration.”

Matt Trevett, MD of the DPS said: “We do have API technology to help streamline the deposit submission process for larger agents and we’re working with a number of software providers to integrate this with their platforms.

“We’re actively working with both industry software providers and our agent clients to broaden the use of this technology in the future.”

Purplebricks problems

Deposit protection compliance is already high on the agenda – as Purplebricks found out recently when it was revealed that a glitch within its internal systems had led to thousands of tenants not receiving the statutory communications about their deposit protection, exposing the agency to fines of up to £9 million.