Award Applications

What we do:

We replace the cash deposit paid by property renters with a micro-priced insurance product costing a minimum risk premium of 5% of deposit value; the more data you share with us, the better your individual rating. The insurance policy is paid for by the tenant with the landlord listed as the beneficiary. With the landlord still protected up to the deposit value for the same damage and missed rent as a traditional deposit. We use insurance to help a real social problem of the cash burden of renting a property.

Our risk rating algorithm enables micro risk rating and pricing. We are a data and technology enabled platform and aim to incorporate on-demand tech enabled insurance based products for renters. 100% of the customer acquisition and policy distribution is on the app.

From a tenant’s perspective, we can save them having to pay for background checks, contract signing fees and most importantly the large cash burden of the rental deposit. Tenants can suggest to landlords and agents to use our platform, all tenants along with the landlords must agree to our platform for it to work. The power of implementation in these cases however still resides with the landlords.

For UK letting agents, tenant agent fees will be banned soon. We can save agents the onboarding costs and perform all background checks for free. We decrease the time taken for client onboarding and therefore property letting, so they could gain an edge over other agents.

Landlords benefit from free tenant referencing (risk and affordability profiling), no cost of deposit ring-fencing costs and the ability to accept/reject pre-qualified renter, either through our web portal or on-the-go from our mobile app.

Renting a property is a lengthy process with paperwork and lengthy background checks often taking days. With our platform, each tenant is checked and given an individual risk rating within 15 minutes. We make the rental process faster and more efficient.
We screen tenants for Agents for free as well as much more efficient deal flow and lower administrative costs associated with administration of tenant references and deposit handling.

We are providing tenants with an identity: RentPassport™. Good behavior gets rewarded. Paying bills and rent on time can improve your rating with us, with better ratings mean cheaper prices in the future.

We have a partnership with Experion, meaning that paying rent on time will improve your credit score to help each tenant eventually buy their first property.

3-Way Agent, Landlord & Tenant rating. Good behavior means a better reputation and potentially: greater revenues for agents, greater yields for landlords and lower premiums for tenants.

The property rental market is not tightly regulated: some landlords don’t protect deposits, no market standard of tenant checks and there is not a main source of either tenant or landlords.

Our year:

Our iOS app was released on the UK App Store on January 30th

We were in the Accenture FinTech Innovation Lab during Q1 of this year, we were selected from the InsurTech stream to pitch on the graduation day of the programme. During the Lab we developed closer relationships with insurers and met with mentors to further develop our proposition.

We have an agreement with OP Bank in Finland. We are working with them to launch our product in Finland later this year, beginning with Helsinki.

Global Problem:

“Generation Rent” is a global phenomenon. In Beijing and Shanghai there are 22 million renters. In Manhattan, the median rent for 2016 was $3,405 per month. Rents are increasing, forcing more and more to rent as the real cost of renting soars due to comparatively low wage growth. In the UK market alone, there are over 22m renters. Renting plays into a trend for valuing experiences over possessions.

With a spending power hitting trillions of dollars, millennials are a force to be reckoned with in the market. 64% of millennials are renting and will spend £53,000 on rent before age of 30.

We have built "Insurance" as a service versus standalone commodity product, providing not only the insurance but also a technology platform for property management.
We have some competition, but we have a unique platform, which gives people a reputation. Good behavior can lead to lower future costs.

Our History:

Our CEO, Tahir, began researching the property market 15 months ago and left his job at KPMG in February 2016 to follow his passion – working with Generation Rent and to build a platform that also works for the benefits of Renters.

We completed our prototype in June 2016 and following demos with Insurers, we started building our platform in August 2016.

We now have HISCOX, leading global insurer, as our Insurance partner as well as exciting partnership with Experian to build a unique value proposition for Renters. We have our Appointed Representative license and version two of our app is now available on the iOS app store.

Our risk rating algorithm enables micro risk rating and pricing. We are a data and technology enabled platform and aim to incorporate on-demand tech enabled insurance based products for renters. 100% of the customer acquisition and policy distribution is on the app.

We are initially targeting large private rental sector landlords. We will open our platform for general use in the future. We aim to learn from our initial clients and work with private rental sector companies to refine our product further, trouble shoot any issues that arise and further test the platform.

We currently have four full-time employees in London, our CEO, CMO, Lead Developer and Principal. We also have 6 outsourced developers, but plan to expand bringing further developers on-board in house.