In the Autumn Budget 2017, the UK government announced the Rent Recognition Challenge – a £2 million Prize Fund, open to all, challenging firms to develop new applications, or build on existing ones, to enable rental tenants to record and share their rental payment data with lenders and credit reference agencies.
Why this initiative?
Currently, a history of meeting rent payments is not routinely recognized in people’s credit scores, and is not commonly taken into account when banks conduct mortgage affordability assessments. This increases the cost of borrowing for rental tenants, and creates a barrier to getting onto the housing ladder.
Rent payments are usually an individual’s largest monthly outgoings, and are therefore a significant indicator of one’s creditworthiness as a borrower. For this reason, it is right that a history of successfully paying your rent should be recorded and recognized.
How can one get involved?
The Challenge is now open to applications, and will close to applications on 9 March 2018. Development will run from April 2018 to October 2018.
Winning bids will be selected by a panel of leading figures from the FinTech sector. The competition will provide an initial round of grant funding to 6 promising proposals, who will receive £100,000 each to support the development of a prototype product. Next, the expert judges will select 3 to 4 teams, who will receive additional funding to bring their ideas to market.
The members of the expert panel are:
Chair: Al Lukies (Motive Partners, Rent Recognition Challenge Sector Champion)
- Charlotte Crosswell (CEO, Innovate Finance)
- Paul Smee (Director of Mortgages, UK Finance)
- Eileen Burbidge (HM Treasury FinTech envoy)
- Diederick Van Thiel (CEO, AdviceRobo)
- Neil Munroe (CEO, CRS Insights)
Applications can be submitted by sending the completed Application Form to rentrecognitionchallenge@hmtreasury.gsi.gov.uk, alongside any supporting documents.
Questions about the competition? Email rrcsupport@hmtreasury.gsi.gov.uk
