By sharing rental data, social housing providers will play a key role in helping their tenants gain access to basic services and more affordable credit.
Capita is the first software provider to support the Rental Exchange project - a scheme driven by Big Issue Invest and Experian to help the social housing sector address the financial, digital and social exclusion challenges faced by many social housing tenants. The Rental Exchange is a secure and compliant way to include a tenant’s payment history in credit reports, with their permission, strengthening their credit history and helping them qualify for lower-cost credit deals and basic financial services, such as current accounts.
As one of the leading software providers to the housing and social housing marketplace, Capita has developed a solution to specifically support the scheme. Capita InSight’s Rental Exchange is a new module that now forms part of Capita’s reporting and business intelligence tool Capita InSight, which is already used by many housing providers.
This means that it can be plugged into Capita’s housing management systems and the information related to tenants’ rental payment behaviours can be taken out easily and accurately, and fed directly into the Rental Exchange.
This information can then be factored into future credit reports to significantly improve the level of insight available to credit providers when it comes to assessing affordability.
Capita InSight’s Rental Exchange module has a high degree of automation, so that housing associations do not have to spend time, resource and effort on manually creating monthly reports. The tool is compatible with Capita’s existing housing software platforms and is free of charge to housing providers that currently use Capita InSight.
Capita and Experian are also working in close partnership to offer full support and help for housing providers using the system.
Roger Birkinshaw, Housing Director for Capita’s Software Services Business, said: “One of the barriers for housing providers to engage in this scheme is the challenge of setting up a process to regularly share the rental data. They do not have the capacity to spend valuable time reviewing data. The Rental Exchange is a fantastic initiative and we are proud to be helping towards tackling financial exclusion by developing an automatic data extraction solution to enable the smooth exchange of this information.”
Jonathan Westley, Managing Director of Consumer Information Services at Experian UK & Ireland, commented: “Capita has been extremely proactive and supportive, developing a module specifically for this cause. Capita is playing a significant role in helping us get closer to our goal of closing the information gap that stops social housing clients accessing affordable credit and basic services, such as current accounts.”
Solihull Community Housing was the first social housing landlord to go live with Capita’s Insight Rental Exchange.
Chris Deery, Head of ICT at Solihull Community Housing, said: “We have wanted to be a part of this project from the start as we knew it would really help our tenants. The partnership between Capita and Experian has significantly helped speed the process along. Furthermore, Capita has demonstrated a real sense of corporate social responsibility by being the first major software provider to fully embrace this scheme.”
The Rental Exchange is a partnership between Experian and Big Issue Invest (the investment arm of The Big Issue) with the aim of helping the social housing sector address the financial, digital and social exclusion challenges faced by many social housing tenants.
