Our new Credas Lettings service was designed help letting agencies reduce the time spent on onboarding and screening new tenants as well reduce their exposure to potential rogue landlords.
The new service comprises of two distinct products, a Tenancy Onboarding product and a Landlord KYC product.
Credas Tenancy Onboarding
The Tenancy Onboarding product will allow a Letting Agent to quickly and remotely onboard a new tenant by gathering information from the prospective tenant such as ID documents, references, bank statements, guarantor details and then an automated series of checks will be run to determine the prospective tenants Right To Rent status, credit status, guarantor and employment status and collate the results in to an instant Tenant Report.
Incredibly, the only two pieces of information required from the letting agent is the prospective tenants name and either an email address or mobile telephone number.
As one of the first ID verification companies in the UK to achieve the UK Government’s DIAFT certification, the new Credas Lettings service is officially certified under for the latest Right To Rent legislation.
Landlord KYC
The second product line within the Credas Lettings service is the Landlord KYC product. This is an instant report, available with a single button click, which will provide a compliance deep dive on a Landlord, confirming their ID, their address, checking they are not impersonating a deceased person, confirming via HMLR that they own the property they are renting, checking their bank account, the disqualified directors data base, PEP’s and Sanctions lists, checking for any negative stories in the media and screening for fraud alerts.
For very little cost and with a single button click, a letting agent can be reassured that the landlord they are dealing with is bona fide.
The entire service including invite emails, SMS, tenant, and landlord landing pages, and Reports can be completely branded for each client and the service also utilises Credas’ brand new eSign solution, allowing the agent to capture legally binding eSignatures on agreements or terms acceptances from tenants, guarantors and landlords, free of charge.
Data from CIFAS, confirms there has been a marked increase in both identity fraud and false applications with increases of 34% and 45%, respectively, over the last nine months in the Lettings sector.
Application fraud poses a significant risk to letting agents with previous research conducted by Credas identifying that rogue tenant costs on average cost £34,797 in loss rental, legal fees and damage to properties.
Tim Barnett, CEO of Credas Technologies, said:
“With demand for rental properties soaring, there is evidence that potential tenants are massaging their applications to appear more favourable candidates. In areas like London, a few months of missed rent is a significant sum that can’t be recovered so letting agents need to ensure that candidates are thoroughly screened during their onboarding.
Bad actors are also posing as the owner of the properties and subletting properties when they have no legal right to, putting the letting agent at risk. Letting Agents have a duty of care to their tenants to ensure the property they are renting belongs to their client.
There’s also the reputational risk of working with less scrupulous characters. Simple background checks on Landlords can confirm they aren’t on any.
We are extremely proud of this new product offering, which is slick, fully client branded, and has demonstrated that it can cut tenant onboarding down to just minutes instead of days or weeks and provide agents with a robust checking regime for very little cost to protect themselves against rogue landlords. Credas Lettings is a great example of how technology can be used to solve real-world problems and drive real efficiencies.”
Want to see a demo of our new solution? Click here
Image by standret on Freepik
