Rent Recognition Challenge: Using FinTech to help renters
The Challenge is a £2 million competition to develop applications that help renters boost their credit scores, access credit and get on the housing ladder.
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The Challenge is now closed to applications.
What is it?
In the Autumn Budget 2017, the 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 are we doing it?
Currently, a history of meeting rent payments is not routinely recognised 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 recognised.
How do you 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.
An application form is available to download from this page. Applicants should also refer to the Assessment Criteria document provided when filling out the Application Form.
Our Partnership Firms
As part of the Hogan Lovells FinTech Mentors Program, each of the 6 competitors will receive up to 10 hours of free legal advice from the firm, access to online FinTech tools, meeting space and events plus supporting PR as program members.
Each competitor will also receive expert PR mentoring from Prosek Partners, an award-winning, global financial services PR firm.
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)
Last updated 14 February 2018 + show all updates
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Updated with the expert panel members.
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Competition is open, updated with application form and assessment criteria.
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First published.