The government has announced an interesting challenge for Fintech companies: a £2m competition to develop a more effective solution for establishing the credit worthiness of first time buyers.
The aim is to create a software programme to include a tenants rental payment history within their credit scores which is in turn used for mortgage applications. The inability to obtain an effective credit score can be of concern to first time buyers by creating an additional hurdle within their mortgage applications.
Currently, credit scores for tenants are based upon banking history, utility bill payments, credit and store cards and do not include rental payments. Although these can be complex to create because rental payments are invariably paid to individual landlords whereas utility bills, cards, etc are held by only a few organisations.
Hammond acknowledged in his Budget speech that we were on the brink of a technological revolution; this call to arms to the Proptech industry to solve a part of the UK’s housing crisis is a clear sign of confidence in digital disruption being a force for good in the UK property market.
Creditworthiness and rental payment data – The government will launch a £2 million competition, to support FinTech firms developing innovative solutions that help first-time buyers ensure their history of meeting rental payments on time is recognised in their credit scores and mortgage applications. Mortgage lenders and credit reference agencies are often unable to take rental payment history into account as they do not have access to this data. This competition will support firms to solve this problem.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/autumn-budget-2017-documents/autumn-budget-2017
