tenant passports
-
Latest property news
New app to reduce identity checking workload for agents
A identity checking smartphone app has been launched that will remove the need for agents and landlords to manually verity a tenant or property buyer’s identification, and could help reduce the admin required for Right to Rent and Anti Money Laundering compliance. Yoti, which was launched last night in central London, has many applications but one of its key uses will be to enable landlords and agent to check tenants and property buyers and sellers identities more easily. The app, which is available on Android and Apple phones, requires users to jump through several identity-proving hoops. It also claims to have applications far beyond property including safer online dating, more secure age verification for pubs, off licences and supermarket, to prevent fraud, holiday rental scams and online shopping. £20m funding First set up in 2014, Yoti has approximately £23m in funding behind it provided by two of its founders – British businessmen Noel Hayden and Robin Tombs – and uses biometric information including face recognition and finger print identification to provide people – and businesses – with a way to provide and access sensitive information without a password or user name. It calls itself an ‘identity platform’ and its main…
Read More » -
Latest property news
RICS says tenant passports are solution to rental woes
Letting agents and landlords could soon be able to review tenants’ rent payment histories if proposals from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) for a national system of tenant passports becomes a reality, a direction of travel that industry leaders say the government has already embarked on. The RICS Rented Sector Policy Paper published today outlines a national passport system using a database of all the UK’s ten million social and private sector tenants, along with a similar database of landlords. RICS says this would help more vulnerable tenants because, by offering more details on a person’s payment track record, landlords and agents would have a greater understanding of them than currently offered by referencing checks. The idea is a more ambitious version of several local tenant passport systems already being trailed including in Kettering, Northamptonshire where the local borough council offers a voluntary tenant passport scheme for those moving from social to private rented sector housing. RICS says this enables potential landlords to see that they have been good tenants, even though they may have a bad credit history. “An ever-increasing proportion of the population is looking to rent. By 2025, we know that there will be a 1.8 million shortfall…
Read More »
