Sheraz Dar
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Latest property news
HM Treasury backs three rental fintech firms with £1.4 million
HM Treasury has today revealed the three fintech services it’s decided to back with £1.4 million to develop their platforms and ultimately help more tenants build up their credit scores and get on to the property ladder. The cash is the final phase of an initiative called the Rent Recognition Challenge, which was in part a political reaction to a e-petition that gathered over 140,000 signatures and called for rental payments to be included in tenants’ credit histories. This e-petition was debated in parliament and soon afterwards HM Treasury announced its ‘challenge’ which has spent a total of £2 million helping fund the growth of six fintech firms. Three of these including the UK’s largest rent recognition platform CreditLadder plus Bud and Rental Step, are the finalists in the challenge. CreditLadder is believed to have received the largest cheque, for £500,000. Scrutiny Today’s announcement follows scrutiny of each firm’s presentations by a panel of leading figures from the Fintech sector including Al Lukies of Motive Partners; Charlotte Crosswell, CEO of Innovate Finance and Paul Smee, Former Director of Mortgages, UK Finance. “Our service was the first in the UK to enable tenants to have their rent recognised by a leading…
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Latest property news
Tenant creditworthiness platform CreditLadder passes 1,000-branch mark
Rental payment recognition platform CreditLadder says it now has over 1,000 letting agent branches who have tenants on the service, making it the most widely available in the UK’s rapidly growing market for creditworthiness improvement, it claims. Started up in 2016 and based in London, until recently CreditLadder was alone in the private rented sector but it’s been joined by several competitors since after, in December 2017, HM Treasury announced a £2 million Rent Recognition Challenge to help kickstart innovation within the creditworthiness sector. These include Bud, Canopy, MoveMe and RentalStep, all of which are now involved in a feisty battle for market share, and a slice of the £2 million government funding. As The Negotiator reported last month, Canopy recently signed a deal with the John Lewis Partnership to help its employees improve their credit scores. Rent default Many of these services, including CreditLadder, claim their service helps letting agents differentiate themselves in crowded rental markets, enables agents to offer landlords a ‘value add’ to their service, and that tenants using them are less likely to default on their rent. This helps agents and landlords attract more reliable renters, it is claimed. “We’ve always believed good behaviour should…
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Latest property news
A Question of Property: Sheraz Dar, CEO of CreditLadder
The government is pulling out all the political stops to fix the UK’s ‘broken’ housing market and that includes helping more people to get on the property ladder. As part of this billion-pound push, HM Treasury last week announced that six tech firms had been chosen to compete in a £2 million race to develop a tech platform that will help tenants achieve home ownership more easily. CreditLadder.co.uk is one of them. It’s an online service that enables tenants to report their rental payments to Experian for free with the minimum of form filling. Its basic service is free for renters to use but the site charges agents a small fee to offer its service to tenants. Its website was the first in the UK to use Open Banking technology to enable tenants to report their rent. Tenants give CreditLadder permission to ‘read’ their bank account every month and verify that the rent has been paid in full and on time. CreditLadder is also the first in the UK to enable customers of Monzo and Starling Bank to report their rent to Experian. The Negotiator caught up CEO Sheraz Dar, who has a track record in both tech and property,…
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Latest property news
First tenants sign up to Open Banking rent-reporting service
The recent Open Banking initiative that promised a ‘revolution’ in the way bank account data can be used by third parties is already making inroads into the private rented sector, it has been claimed. Proptech firm CreditLadder says the first tenant has now signed up to its Open Banking-enabled rent reporting service and that over a thousand tenants have followed suit. The company, which calls itself a credit improvement platform and has processed £14m of rents since it launched, asks tenants to allow their bank account statements to be read each month by CreditLadder. It then notifies partner reference agency Experian, the largest in the UK, about each payment including whether the rent was paid on time and in full. This payment track record is then added to their credit history by Experian. Letting agents The service, which is being offered to tenants for free, generates its income both through a premium tenant service and a paid-for package for letting agents. CreditLadder says it already works with 700 agents branches in the UK. “When CreditLadder launched its Open Banking service last month we were acutely aware that the take up maybe held back given the newness of the technology,” says…
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Boarder controls
The electronic ‘tenant passport’ is proptech’s challenge to traditional referencing. Andrea Kirkby asks if this a game-changer.
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Open Banking makes its debut in the rental market following new service launch
Online rental payments platform CreditLadder says it is the first in its sector to launch an Open Banking service that enables tenants to improve their credit score without the need for a lengthy sign-up service or their landlords’ permission. These restrictions were a key criticism of the tech sector by Lord Bird when he launched his draft Creditworthiness Assesssment Bill recently in the House of Lords. CreditLadder says it has already processed rental payments worth £14 million since starting up in 2016 and claims to be the first service of its kind in the UK to integrate its tech with the Open Banking ‘revolution’. Nine banks in the UK now offer an Open Banking feed or API that enables third parties such as CreditLadder to plug into and read the amount and date of transaction going into people’s bank accounts, if they give permission. The nine banks offering this so far are Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Natwest, RBS, Santander, Nationwide, The Co-Operative Bank, First Direct and TSB. Individual tenants can sign up to the service, but it is also open to letting agents to offer tenants as an ‘add-on’ to their lettings proposition. Credit history CreditLadder records rent payments…
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Student lettings app launches promising to improve student credit scores
An online-only student lettings agency that The Negotiator revealed was preparing to launch has now gone live, although with a new twist to its business model. SPCE, which has an inventory of 50,000 student rooms across the UK and partnerships with six universities plus institutional property investment firm Hines, says it is to also offer students the opportunity to improve their credit scores via credit agency Experian. Other unusual features of its service include enabling landlords and tenants to rate each other and the use of single tenancies rather than joint agreements. SPCE, which enables student to find and sign contracts for properties, set up rental guarantors and talk to their landlord all through a single app (pictured, right), is burning through the £280,000 it received from funding platform Seedrs earlier this year. It also about to launch an online service and dashboard for landlords. “Not only are we going to make it easy for students to find desirable properties and for landlords to locate new tenants, but we are also going to make communication between both parties throughout the tenancy absolutely effortless,” says CEO Leon Ifayemi (pictured, left). “By enabling students and landlords to receive ratings we are also…
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Latest property news
MPs back move to add rental payments to tenants’ credit scores
Millions of tenants may soon be given a leg up onto the property ladder following a debate in parliament yesterday afternoon led by MP Paul Scully (pictured, right). An all-party selection of MPs sat down in Westminster Hall to debate an e-petition raised earlier this year calling for on-time rental payments to be recognised as evidence that mortgage re-payments can be met. Created by Plymouth roofer Jamie Pogson (pictured, left) during a ‘rant on the way to work’, the ordinary-sounding petition 186565 went on to be signed by over 147,000 people and gain its day in parliament. The debate included several high-profile MPs including Stephen Barclay, the Economic Secretary to the HM Treasury, who spoke on the government’s behalf. He gave Pogson and the millions of tenants desperate for any help on to the property ladder a strong signal that lenders may soon be compelled to add tenants’ rental payment to their credit histories. Stephen Barclay said he agreed that rental payments should be one of the key pieces of information included in credit files, and that he would talk with interested MPs with a view to proceed with a solution. “A gentle nudge to encourage the credit referencing sector…
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Latest property news
City firms bid to replace tenant deposits with insurance passport
A tenant deposits platform backed by two major City firma has launched with the aim of competing with the current cash deposit schemes. Backed by both Hiscox insurance and credit score provider Experian and accessed via an iPhone app, InsureStreet says it will issue renters with a digital ‘RentPassport’ that validates their profile and then provides them with an instant insurance quote to cover their deposit. Tenant deposits Instead of paying a cash deposit, renters make a one-off payment for an insurance policy that covers them for the duration of the rental contract. InsureStreet claims that in most cases, this insurance premium will be less than a tenth of the cost of a deposit, and that the system will reward good tenant behaviour by offering lower premiums at renewal. The app is free for agents, landlords and renters to download and use, the company says. But what’s not clear is whether the premiums paid by renters for the insurance will be included in the looming letting fees ban. The Negotiator asked CEO Tahir Farooqui (pictured, below) about this. He replied that: “We absolutely support the letting fees ban and so do many of the property partners we are engaging with” which would indicate…
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