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
PriceHubble, Europe’s leader in performance data solutions for real estate and finance, has acquired WhenFresh, the UK’s residential property data bureau, delivering data and decision engines to banks, insurers, the public sector and other Big Data users. This strategic milestone marks PriceHubble’s 6th acquisition to date, making it a leading consolidating force in Europe’s data proptech ecosystems.
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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.
London – 18 May 2023: The current ‘perfect storm’ of increases in household bills, mortgage/rent payments and inflation have caused the cost of living crisis that is affecting millions of UK households, leaving finance companies, mortgage lenders, utility suppliers, local authorities and others struggling to collect payments. This has put credit management, collections and other teams (whether in-house or outsourced) under growing pressure to undertake Income & Expenditure (I&E) reviews and agree resolutions/payment plans with ever-increasing volumes of customers, while observing TCF and vulnerable customer obligations, with the FCA’s more stringent Customer Duty regulations around the corner.
Enter stage left… the award-winning ‘Budgie’ smart assistant solution from Inicio.ai, which has been further enhanced and streamlined by the integration of WhenFresh data.
Budgie is an AI-driven, chatty assistant which can carry out customer I&Es at scale, for a fraction of the cost of a live agent. The Budgie assistant is now able to pre-answer (and validate) responses to key questions such as monthly rent/mortgage, energy bills and council tax outgoings in real time by pulling in WhenFresh data via API, thereby ensuring more accurate and frictionless results than ever before, to ultimately achieve better customer outcomes.
As part of the solution, WhenFresh is also able to monitor the book for real-time market activity, flagging customer properties as they come onto the sale or rental market, to trigger I&E reviews where changes in circumstances are imminent, identifying potential flight-risks and leveraging Budgie to capture new addresses and contact details.
Rachel Curtis, CEO of Inicio AI commented: “This is a really powerful partnership for us – our business clients want a way to complete an affordability assessment that is painless, accurate and auditable and we can deliver just that. For end consumers it provides a helping hand to complete a process they can find intimidating and embarrassing, at a time and place that suits them”.
Paul Rout, Senior Vice President at WhenFresh, said: “The UK’s leading home insurers, mortgage lenders and disruptors to the market see the significant value of the insight we provide in their lending decisions and insurance quotes. We also recognise the potential of these residential property data assets in the management of debt, and their specific role in timely and appropriate engagement.”
“Combining property data with traditional debt management data assets and processes creates powerful insights into debtors’ circumstances, leading to better, more affordable outcomes, in a cost-effective way, a process which Inicio.ai are very well placed to do.”
About Inicio.ai
Inicio.ai have created a unique AI agent that logs income and expenditure items from chat in real-time, answers questions and even fills in the I&E form, removing the burden of live calls, supervision and QA.
They use next generation conversational AI to deliver the experience and support of dealing with a human, but enables those in debt to avoid speaking to another person as this causes shame and is therefore something they avoid. Instead of agents spending over 30 minutes on the phone going over sensitive details sometimes requiring multiple different calls.
This is a simple and stress-free alternative and releases the agent to concentrate on more complex cases and vulnerable customers. Their multi-tenant, API-enabled SaaS platform offers instant on-boarding of clients with flexible integration options, using a simple interface that understands natural language 24×7.
This empathetic, supportive approach facilitates improved engagement and helps borrowers break free of debt into a brighter future.
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.
22nd November 2022, London:
InsTech – which describes itself is a leading network identifying and promoting the use of the best technology, data and analytics within insurance and risk-management around the world – has launched the second in its series of major reports on property intelligence in regards to insurance, and WhenFresh are again delighted to feature prominently.
As Ali Smedley, InsTech’s Senior Research Analyst puts it in the new report’s introduction:
‘Last year we released our first property intelligence focused report, Location Intelligence 2021 – the
Companies to Watch. It covered all aspects of property intelligence including location data, property
attribute information, catastrophe modelling and remote claims assessment. This year’s report focuses
only on the “where” and “what” of property intelligence – understanding where a property is located and
what it is made of to help insurers improve risk selection, underwriting and pricing.
‘We covered remote claims in a report released earlier this year. In early 2023 our next report will focus on “what risks do I face”. In relation to property intelligence, particularly focusing on hazard data and modelling. This report reviews the latest trends and technologies in acquiring information for geocoding, building characteristics and rebuild values, as well as profiling the companies we know providing solutions in this space.’
The report is available to download for free, here.
Whether you’re an in-house collections team, a DCA or a related service provider, the current “perfect storm” of rising inflation, interest rates and energy costs means that’s its more important than ever to when, where and how to focus your efforts to obtain optimum outcomes.
In each case within a portfolio, the debt amount and payment histories are known – and consumer credit reference data can be readily purchased – but this still only gives PART of the picture.
Enriching the portfolio with WhenFresh data provides instant, up-to-date insights on the PROPERTY relating to each debt: it’s value, occupation, type, size & shape, likely monthly outgoings, when/how it last transacted and other key indicators… so you a much FULLER picture to inform and optimise your collections strategy to achieve better outcomes.
For Example:
> Is the property a wholly owned or mortgaged asset – or is it a private or social-housing rental?
> What are the likely rental or mortgage payments?
> What is the value, shape and size of the property – does this match with what has been declared?
> What are the likely Council tax, electricity, gas and water outgoings for the property?
> Is the property listed for sale or rental – i.e. is there a potential flight risk?
WhenFresh can deliver all this data and much, much more… at individual property level, either via flat-file data enrichment or instantaneously via the WhenFresh API.
Click here to find out more about the full range of property-related data WhenFresh hold to inform and improve your Collections strategy.
Nottingham, UK, 15 February 2022
● WhenFresh and Connected Data partnership will inject valuable property related insight into key processes to enable timely and more appropriate customer engagement
● WhenFresh, creators of the UK’s ‘residential property data bureau’, is the latest leading UK data provider to partner with Connected Data
UK households are facing a ‘cost of living’ crisis and organisations across all sectors are preparing for record levels of debt. These organisations are striving to better understand where and when debt will occur, and to ensure they treat customers fairly whilst looking to resolve their arrears.
WhenFresh, an award-winning supplier of property data and related solutions to the UK’s leading home insurers, mortgage lenders, public sector and other big data users, has partnered with data driven technology company, Connected Data, to provide a valuable dimension to the way debt is understood and managed by organisations in the UK.
WhenFresh has created what it refers to as the UK’s ‘residential property data bureau’ by combining over 200 proprietary, private and public UK datasets (e.g. residential property attributes, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate, market and remote valuations data) with advanced analytics, all in one place.
With the aim of achieving positive engagement and fairer outcomes for indebted customers, this exciting partnership will enable organisations to better understand an individual’s circumstances and potential level of affordability through property related data. WhenFresh’s address level insight will enhance the in-depth intelligence Connected Data already provides on individuals, powered by its relationship with several leading data providers.
Paul Rout, Senior Vice President at WhenFresh, said: “The UK’s leading home insurers, mortgage lenders and disruptors to the market see the significant value of the insight we provide in their lending decisions and insurance quotes. We also recognise the potential of these residential property data assets in the management of debt, and their specific role in timely and appropriate engagement. Combining property data with traditional debt management data assets creates powerful insights into debtors’ circumstances, a process which Connected Data are very well placed to do.
“Connected Data is already disrupting the way UK organisations manage debt with a clear focus on ensuring positive outcomes for all parties. They were the natural choice for us as a partner and we are excited about the positive impact our partnership will have.”
Kirk Fletcher, Founder and CEO of Connected Data, said: “Our goal is to enable organisations to engage with their customers in an informed way with as much relevant insight on their circumstances as possible. It will always enable a better conversation and a fairer debt journey for the customer, as well as optimise an organisation’s processes.
“WhenFresh’s data provides a new and vital element to an organisation’s understanding of its customers’ circumstances. And they have a clear mission to ensure the person at the end is treated fairly. We are delighted to be partnering with them.”
As the latest data partner to work with Connected Data, the partnership with WhenFresh continues to highlight how the company is bringing innovation to the way organisations manage their debt portfolios. By integrating different datasets from multiple leading data providers, not only is Connected Data enabling organisations to achieve the most in-depth insight possible, but it is removing ‘data noise’ – a significant barrier for organisations seeking to better understand and connect with their customers.
Read more at CCR Magazine
About Connected Data
Connected Data transforms an organisation’s insight across its debt management process, simplifying the deployment of predictive data, removing data noise and identifying opportunities to prevent and reduce debt across its organisation. Connected Data works in partnership with UK leading data solutions providers to truly data enable debt management processes.
About WhenFresh
WhenFresh is a leading supplier of data to Financial Service sector, public sector and other Big Data users, including 8 of the top 10 UK banks and the Bank of England. WhenFresh has built the UK’s “Residential Property Data Bureau”, by bringing together over 200 proprietary, private and public UK data sources in one place. Via a single, simple integration, the WhenFresh API provides users with instant access property attribute, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate, market movement, ownership and remote valuations data, on a pay-as-you-go basis. WhenFresh were awarded Data Enabling Solution of the Year at the DataIQ Awards 2021 and feature prominently in a number of prestigious “Top 100” FinTech and InsurTech reports.