13th February 2024: Buy-to-let lender Landbay has announced a new partnership with leading property data provider WhenFresh, a PriceHubble company, to assist and speed up its underwriting process.
WhenFresh brings together more than 200 proprietary, private and public datasets, including sources such as environmental, geographical and market data, to determine property attributes and risk.
WhenFresh data now assists Landbay in minimising risk and making informed decisions faster by building a complete picture of the property, which supports the latest range of automated valuation model (AVM) products.
Last month, Landbay became the first dedicated buy-to-let lender to integrate an automated valuation model to speed up offer times. During its extensive pilot, it found that it is on average, three times faster than a standard application and can also help reduce fees by on average £500.
Last month, Landbay became the first dedicated buy-to-let lender to integrate an automated valuation model to speed up offer times. During its extensive pilot, it found that it is on average, three times faster than a standard application and can also help reduce fees by on average £500.
AVMs are available on a new standalone range of five-year fixed-rate products, with a maximum property value of £750,000 at 70% loan-to-value (LTV). Rates start at 4.29% and are stressed at payrate, with Landbay’s variable fee structure also available for increased affordability.
Joel Vinnicombe, head of product at Landbay, said: “A key component to the success of using an AVM is additional robust, good quality data and we certainly have this through our partnership with WhenFresh. The strength and depth of their property data enables us to make those informed decisions very quickly and with real confidence.
“Landbay has always been a progressive lender, utilising technology and leading data providers to improve our service and inform our approach to lending. We are grateful for the team at WhenFresh and thank them for their expertise and ongoing support.”
Mark Cunningham, director & co-founder of WhenFresh, a PriceHubble company, states: “As the UK’s residential property data bureau, we are delighted to be playing our part in the launch of Landbay’s new AVM platform. When a lender wants to use more AVMs they need a data partner that can provide the right ancillary property data to make this a reality, so we are very proud to have supported Landbay’s journey to automated lending thus far, and to have helped them drive more value and to use a greater quantity of AVMs.
“With a shared passion for technology and innovation, we look forward to helping Landbay to continue to drive greater efficiencies to the buy-to-let mortgage process.”
WhenFresh Decisions-as-a-Service for Mortgage Lenders is a suite of 4 data-driven modules which enable mortgage lenders to make faster, better-informed property risk decisions through the full mortgage lifecycle, from origination through to book securitisation.
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About Landbay
Established in 2014, Landay is an award-winning mortgage platform, created in-house to support customers with better ways to buy-to-let. Landbay’s focus is on the broker and their clients. It brings together the best people and partners, leveraging its data, technology and market expertise.
Mortgage brokers who choose Landbay will find experts at the end of the line, smart technology designed for intermediary partners and fast decisions they can count on.
Landbay’s dedication to exceptional customer service, innovative technology and sustainable lending practices has been recognised with multiple prestigious awards and consistently high levels of customer satisfaction. Landbay is an FCA regulated company, a member of UK Finance and is based in London, UK.
About WhenFresh, a PriceHubble company
WhenFresh is a leading supplier of data and related solutions to UK Mortgage Lenders, Insurers, Public Sector and other Big Data users and has established itself as the UK’s “Residential Property Data Bureau” by bringing together over 200 proprietary, private and public UK data sources in one place.
WhenFresh creates bespoke data-driven decision engines and Apps, as well as supplying a vast range of data ingredients such as property attribute, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate and market data to its clients for a wide range of applications.
WhenFresh has been awarded DataIQ’s “Data Enabling Solution of the Year” and the Insurance Times Gold supplier award for “Excellence in Technology”, as well as featuring prominently in a number of prestigious Top 50/100 FinTech & InsurTech reports.
2nd January 2024: The licensing of HMOs (Homes of Multiple Occupancy) is a ‘hot topic’ for Councils up and down the country, where potentially significant revenues from undeclared and therefore unlicensed HMOs are lost and unscrupulous landlords are failing to comply with their statutory obligations.
To meet this challenge, WhenFresh has developed an innovative unlicensed HMO targeting solution to help Councils identify and prioritise investigations into potential unlicensed HMOs – to ultimately recover lost revenues, enforce landlord compliance and protect tenants.
One of the first local authorities to adopt the WhenFresh unlicensed HMO targeting solution is Coventry City Council and, by comparing their existing HMO licensing information against the candidate file supplied by WhenFresh, rental properties which appeared likely to be unlicensed HMOs were identified and prioritised for investigation.
Coventry City Council has already realised a 10x return on investment through fines and collection of additional licensing revenue, from completing investigations into only just a small proportion high priority cases delivered by the WhenFresh solution, with a success rate of 95% to date.
The WhenFresh unlicensed HMO targeting solution is also helping to expose portfolios of multiple unlicensed properties owned by individual landlords, from single investigations.
Paul Rout, SVP of Consultancy at WhenFresh states: “By using our own rich property data assets, supplemented by inputs from Equifax, Royal Mail, Zoopla and other data partners, we’ve been able to develop the means for Councils to focus their investigations on the HMOs within their areas which are most likely to be unlicensed. This enables their often-overstretched resources to recover lost licensing revenues and increase future licensing income very much more efficiently and cost-effectively than ever before. It’s a pleasure working with the Coventry City Council team and they’re already producing exceptional results. Long may that continue – and we look forward to helping plenty more local authorities to achieve similar outcomes.”
About the WhenFresh Unlicensed HMO Targeting Solution
The WhenFresh Unlicensed HMO Targeting Solution delivers the following information on residential properties within Coventry City Council’s area:
1 – Classification of residential property into owner-occupied, social rental and private rental properties;
2 – An aggregated HMO candidate ‘Risk Flag’, whereby rental properties are scored and prioritised by high to low likelihood to be HMO. This prioritisation is based on a range of factors including:
> Property attributes – property type, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, receptions etc…
> Property transactions – rental history.
> Third party data inputs – including Equifax, Royal Mail, letting process data etc…
> EPC Data – Energy Performance Certificates.
3 – As part of the solution, WhenFresh also delivers EPC data (where available) including current and potential EPC ratings to identify whether properties can be let.
In summary, the data-driven WhenFresh solution has already enabled Coventry City Council to recover significant lost revenues, drive up efficiency and success rates by focussing its resources on priority investigations into the most likely unlicensed HMOs.
To find out more about the WhenFresh unlicensed HMO targeting solution, please call Paul Rout on 020 7993 5818 or visit www.WhenFresh.com/HMO-Discovery
September 2023 – As well as being a regulatory requirement in certain sectors, the EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) rating data for any individual property (or a full mortgage book, for example) can be a key indicator to current and future risk, condition and value. EPC ratings are also important in the context of ESG and sustainability.
WhenFresh, the UK’s Residential Property Bureau, now provides fast, flexible access to EPC data with supporting carbon output and energy usage data, at individual property level.
Our accessible EPC data can be matched to the property Title Number, Address, UPRN or UDPRN and data can either be accessed instantly via the WhenFresh API or via a Flat-File data append (e.g. to a full mortgage book). Read More…
12th September 2023: “An innovative measure of landlord property transactions shows the UK private rental sector has likely been shrinking for at least the last two years, but less quickly than other indicators suggest”, states the Bank of England, describing it’s newly published analysis.
The report is based on property data supplied by WhenFresh and data partners Zoopla & Land Registry. Visit the Bank of England Overground to read the analysis…
About WhenFresh
WhenFresh ( www.WhenFresh.com ) is a leading supplier of data to the UK Financial Services, Local Authority, Utilities and other sectors and has established itself as the UK’s Residential Property Data Bureau, by bringing together over 200 proprietary, private and public UK data sources in one place.
WhenFresh creates bespoke data-driven decision engines and Apps, as well as supplying ‘ingredients’ including property attribute, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate, market and valuations data to its clients for a wide range of applications.
26 July 2023: Capita has partnered with WhenFresh to integrate a comprehensive range of property attribute & risk data items within its OmigaDigital platform to further enhance and streamline its mortgage origination offering.
Capita has been delivering mortgage origination and servicing solutions to lenders for over 30 years and helps 1 in 14 of all UK homebuyers to finance their property purchase.
WhenFresh is the UK’s Property Data Bureau, with a platform that enables instant, remote property risk assessments for lenders, in much the same way as mortgage applicant risk can be assessed using consumer credit bureau data.
Better-Informed Lending Decisions
The partnership between Capita and WhenFresh means that Capita’s existing and forthcoming clients can now benefit from access to a suite of property data assets within the OmigaDigital platform with no additional integration requirement, to enable faster, better-informed and more cost-efficient lending decisions.
For example, the WhenFresh LOOP service is used to screen new mortgage applications as they arrive. As soon as an address is entered into the OmigaDigital platform, the property can instantly be remotely screened to ensure it meets lending rules and LTV criteria. The property title deed is also checked for any obvious issues (such as flying freehold).
Typically, 5-10% of properties are rejected at this stage and are immediately looped back to the broker/applicant before additional time and resource is wasted processing an application which would be rejected when the ‘red flag’ ultimately surfaced, potentially much further down the line at the surveying or conveyancing stage.
A further WhenFresh data-driven decision module integrated within Capita’s platform is PATH, which is equivalent to an instant, remote ‘digital FMA’ of the property and informs the lender which path to take next in processing the application.
Where the property clearly passes these deep-dive checks (typically in 60-75% of cases), the lender is informed to proceed directly to making a mortgage offer, using an AVM if required – and without the need to wait for a costly, time-consuming physical survey/valuation visit.
Where the PATH module identifies that further property checks are needed (typically in 25-40% of cases), the lender is informed of the potential areas of concern, so an informed decision can be made as to whether to undertake a desktop, drive-by or full physical survey/valuation.
Streamlined Mortgage Application Processing
This ‘triage’ significantly streamlines mortgage application processing and saves time, money and resources – ultimately delivering a much better service for the customer.
Mark Webster, head of mortgages at Capita Experience, said:
“We are excited to partner with WhenFresh to further build on our award winning and highly automated mortgage origination platform. This partnership will ensure that our clients have access to the latest technology to further improve efficiencies and accuracies in the customer journey.
“Mortgages, and financial services more broadly, are key growth areas for Capita Experience as we continue to deliver for our clients and their customers.”
Mark Cunningham, WhenFresh CEO and co-founder Mark Cunningham, added:
“We are delighted to partner with Capita Experience. Our businesses are very clearly aligned, both as advocates and established practitioners of digital transformation, so it’s a great fit and the beginning of what we expect to be a successful and long-term partnership.
“Mortgage lenders have long been voracious consumers of data, but primarily in terms of assessing consumer credit risk. Now that these remote, instant property risk assessment modules are available within Capita’s well-established and widely-used platform, lenders can immediately start benefiting from faster, better-informed lending decision.”
About WhenFresh
WhenFresh is the UK’s leading supplier of residential property data to Banks, Insurers, Utilities, The Public Sector and other Big Data users – including 8 of the top 10 UK banks and the Bank of England.
WhenFresh combines its proprietary property datasets with 100s of best-in-class private and public data sources in one place. Via a single, simple integration, the WhenFresh API provides access to address-level property attribute, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate, market movement, ownership, title, and remote valuations data, on a pay-as-you-go basis.
WhenFresh also develops bespoke data-driven decisioning solutions and Apps for its clients and has won Insurance Times and DataIQ Awards, as well as featuring prominently in several prestigious Top 50/Top 100 InsurTech & FinTech reports.
21/07/2023: Leading general insurance (GI) quotation provider Source Insurance have enhanced their partnership with property data experts Whenfresh.
This recent data enrichment comes as part of Source Insurance’s technological optimisation, supporting their quotation process with additional property information and risk data.
Supporting Advisers
Source Insurance continue to utilise this data to further support their advisers with their general insurance acquisition. Adding enhanced auto-population and information on an individual property basis will improve accuracy around risk profiling to influence quote price.
Gathering a host of risk attributes from the property address alone, Whenfresh data works to support advisers by auto-populating an essential part of the GI quotation. Powered through an API, this data streamlines the quotation process on both the adviser platform (The Source) and the referral platform (Source Go).
Best-in-class property data
Chris Lynch, IT Director at Source Insurance explains “Renewing our partnership with WhenFresh not only allows us to continue offering best-in-class property data to our users, but also allows us to extend this to some of the more complex and difficult to answer questions for advisers and policyholders, including wall and roof data. This will improve both the speed and accuracy of our quotation process, making it easier than ever to work with us.”
Mark Cunningham, CEO & Co-Founder of WhenFresh, adds “It is a real pleasure to be working with the team at Source. They are highly ambitious and have developed very smart technology. It’s a prime example of how digital transformation should work, by combining innovative technologies with comprehensive and accessible property attribute and risk data. It makes the entire process of delivering lightning fast, accurate and competitive home insurance quotes truly quick and simple for all parties – rather than the arduous, long-winded test of stamina and patience we’ve all had to endure!”
WhenFresh is the UK’s leading supplier of residential property data to Banks, Insurers, Utilities, The Public Sector and other Big Data users – including 8 of the top 10 UK banks and the Bank of England.
WhenFresh combines its proprietary property datasets with 100s of best-in-class private and public data sources in one place. Via a single, simple integration, the WhenFresh API provides access to address-level property attribute, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate, market movement, ownership, title, and remote valuations data, on a pay-as-you-go basis.
WhenFresh also develops bespoke data-driven decisioning solutions and Apps for its clients and has won Insurance Times and DataIQ Awards, as well as featuring prominently in several prestigious Top 50/Top 100 InsurTech & FinTech reports.
London – May 2023: Having launched the UK’s first National Cladding Dataset in February 2023 (See initial launch release here), WhenFresh has announced that the dataset has now more than doubled in size to provide the current cladding status of 1,122,004 individual properties within tall multi-dwelling units (MDUs) across the UK.
The National Cladding Dataset was launched in February, initially providing the cladding status of 485,234 individual dwellings within MDUs of 18m or more in height – but this has now been expanded to the current total of 1,122,004 dwellings with the addition of MDUs of less than 18m and, in particular, those of 11m-18m in height, which fall into the Government’s ‘Mid-Rise Scheme’ for remediation.
WhenFresh also stresses that this is a LIVE dataset, with monthly updates from the rolling program of property inspections that are carried out by the team of over 600 RICS qualified surveyors – employing both physical property visits and expert, remote/data-driven assessments.
This means that the cladding status of each of dwelling is constantly updated with additional dwellings also being added as inspections continue to be undertaken. The surveyor team has allocated each dwelling a cladding status, based on the following classification:
GREEN – Building has no cladding. (Specifically: EWS1 form recorded in Cladding Database with classification A1, A2 or B1 or considered to be out of scope as per RICS’s Cladding Guidance Note).
AMBER – Building potentially has cladding, merits EWS1 inspection. (Identified as potentially in scope, as per the RICS’s Cladding Guidance Note, no EWS1 form held currently).
RED – Building has cladding. (EWS1 form recorded in Cladding Database with classification A3 or B2, or other known adverse factors from alternative sources).
Due to the nature of the dataset and the rolling program of surveyor inspections, the cladding status of each dwelling is subject to change over time.
For example: A dwelling may originally have been categorised as AMBER, where the surveyor’s original inspection using a range of remote tools (e.g. satellite images, drone footage etc…) and data sources (e.g. building records) was not fully conclusive.
The cladding status of this dwelling may subsequently be updated to RED, following a surveyor visit as part of the rolling, physical property inspection program.
Then, once remediation work has been carried out and confirmed on the building in which this dwelling is located, the cladding status can be changed to GREEN.
In the brief time since the launch of the original National Cladding Dataset in February 2023, and the subsequent dataset expansion, driven mainly by the inclusion of MDUs of 11-18m in height, there have already been significant cladding status movements due to physical inspections or remediations, namely:
> 40047 dwellings have been updated from AMBER to GREEN cladding status
> 23933 dwellings have been updated from AMBER to RED cladding status
> 10019 dwellings have been updated from RED to GREEN cladding status
In addition to the RED/AMBER/GREEN cladding status classification, The WhenFresh National Cladding Dataset can also supply the following where available:
> The date on which the EWS1 was signed.
> The EWS1 classification: A1, A2, A3, B1 or B2.
> Any expert notes/covering letter provided by the RICS surveyors pertaining to each inspection.
The WhenFresh UK National Cladding Dataset can be appended at individual dwelling level, to any file of addresses (or UPRNs, UDPRNs, Title numbers etc…) for flat-file delivery, or can be accessed via the WhenFresh API, either in isolation, or in combinations with any of the 100s of other property data items WhenFresh holds.
Mark Cunningham, WhenFresh CEO & co-Founder states: “We expected the original cladding dataset launch to be well received, but we’ve been staggered by the level of interest from mortgage lenders, insurers, reinsurers and other parties. We’re therefore fully confident that the investments made in expanding the reach, breadth and depth of the dataset as it continues to evolve, will bring significant further benefits and risk insights for those who need to properly understand property cladding risk.”
30th March 2023, London: InsTech states its mission is “…to identify and promote the use of the best technology, data and analytics within insurance and risk-management around the world” and, having built up a follower network of over 20,000 people working for insurers, brokers, consultants, investors and technology companies from start-ups to the established global enterprises… it’s making a rather good fist of it!
The newest in InsTech’s series of insightful reports is entitled Property Intelligence: Understanding and Managing Natural Hazards and is currently available to download here for free, so grab your copy today.
The annual Zurich Innovation Championship has a rich heritage and has now entered it’s 6th year. We are told that there have been a bumper 477 UK entries this year, from which just a handful are ultimately invited to present their solutions at the “UK Super Day” Final on 21st March 2023 – so we are delighted and excited to see WhenFresh selected as UK Finalist for Zurich Innovation Championship 2023!
Zurich has often gone on to collaborate and work with the companies that reach the National Finals, with selected entrants going on to a Global Final.
WhenFresh is a leading supplier of data and decision engines to UK Home Insurers, Mortgage Lenders and other Big Data users – and has established itself as the UK’s Residential Property Data Bureau, by bringing together over 200 best-in-class proprietary, private and public UK data sources in one place.
Via a single, simple integration, the WhenFresh API provides users with instant access to a fully comprehensive range of property attribute, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate, market and valuations data, on a pay-as-you-go basis.
New datasets are regularly added – such as the recently launched National Cladding Database and, in recent times, WhenFresh has been awarded DataIQ’s “Data Enabling Solution of the Year”, the Insurance Times Gold supplier award for “Excellence in Technology”, as well as featuring prominently in a series of prestigious Top 50/100 InsurTech & FinTech reports.
To find out more about WhenFresh property data and related solutions, please contact us today. Or visit https://www.zurich.com/en/campaigns/zic to learn more about the championship.
News Release – 22 February 2023: WhenFresh has teamed up with an army of 600 RICS-qualified surveyors to create the first property-level cladding dataset, providing current cladding status for each of the 485,234 residential properties within tall Multi-Dwelling Units (MDUs) across the UK.
Since the tragic Grenfell fire on 14th June 2017 and the ‘cladding crisis’ that has since developed, the owners, mortgage lenders, insurers, and developers of properties in tall Multi-Dwelling Units (MDUs) throughout the UK with some form of cladding have found themselves facing massive, unforeseen financial exposure.
Whilst the news frequently reminds us how the affected homeowners find themselves as ‘mortgage hostages’, unable to sell and struggling to secure viable insurance, the exposure faced by the financial services sector has, until now, been much less well-documented or understood. However, the fact is that lenders, insurers, and institutional property investors have largely been ‘flying blind’ as they have not had the means to accurately assess their potential risk/exposure to this hugely significant issue.
Key property risk factors, such as flood and subsidence, have routinely been assessed when deciding whether to offer mortgages or how to price insurance premiums. However, prior to June 2017, cladding simply wasn’t something that anyone considered. This is why little or no information about cladded buildings had been captured, until now.
WhenFresh’s unique cladding dataset is the result of a major project started in 2020 (during the first pandemic lockdown) which initially involved a wide range of remote inspection tools and data sources (such as satellite imagery, drone footage, building and planning records, etc…), and has subsequently been enhanced on an ongoing basis by physical surveys and other inputs – all meticulously scrutinised by an army of over 600 RICS-qualified surveyors.
Now, following six months of in-market testing with a group of existing clients, WhenFresh has launched the unique dataset to the wider market, providing property-level cladding data for each of the 485,234 properties within MDUs of 18 metres or more in height throughout the UK. The surveyor team use their expertise to assign each property within these MDUs to one of three categories:
GREEN – Building has no cladding. (Specifically: EWS1 form recorded in Cladding Database with classification A1, A2 or B1 or considered to be out of scope as per RICS’s Cladding Guidance Note)
AMBER – Building potentially has cladding, merits EWS1 inspection. (Identified as potentially in scope, as per the RICS’s Cladding Guidance Note, no EWS1 form held currently)
RED – Building has cladding. (EWS1 form recorded in Cladding Database with classification A3 or B2, or other known adverse factors from alternative sources)
This means that mortgage lenders, insurers, local authorities, central government, housing associations, asset managers, and other parties are now able to readily access this unique cladding data alongside any other property data attributes they may need from WhenFresh, either in flat file format or via API in real time.
For example, a lender can now match their whole existing mortgage book to this new cladding dataset via WhenFresh, to carry out detailed analysis at individual property level.
Max Griffiths, Group Head of Quantitative Risk at Together Money states: “WhenFresh’s wall cladding dataset enabled Together to truly assess our limited exposure to external wall cladding risk across the full book. Working with the WhenFresh analytics team has enabled us to establish a clear set of actionable data points that support our prudent approach to lending, and their data enrichment has helped us in preparing data for securitisation issuances where additional reporting requirements around ESG has been required.”
WhenFresh co-founder and CEO Mark Cunningham adds: “We’re delighted to be able to bring this cladding dataset to market alongside our existing property data assets, not least as it provides key risk insights into these 485,234 properties which are jointly worth in excess of £50 billion. There are obvious applications for mortgage lenders and insurers of course, but we’re already seeing interest from local authorities, central government, housing associations, asset managers, and other sectors too.
“This new dataset provides lenders with the means to fully understand how their mortgage books are affected by cladding issues, down to individual property level, so they can identify where risks lie and make better decisions moving forward. New mortgage applications can also be pre-screened against this cladding dataset, and it has now become a key component of our WRAP service, where a wide range of data variables are applied to packages of mortgages being prepared for securitisation, to give surety to the buy-side.
“It is obviously a big deal for insurers too, as they can now better understand property risk across their existing policy portfolios and can access this cladding dataset, along with all the other data we make available via API, to drive more accurately priced, instant quotes for new insurance applications.”
To find out more about this National Cladding Dataset and/or to book a demo, please contact us today.