Member Article

Sovereign achieves best ever arrears with Rentsense

Rentsense has helped Sovereign Housing Association, a social landlord with over 38,000 properties, achieve their lowest ever arrears figures of 1.71%.

Rentsense is an analytical tool, which predicts those tenants who are most likely to fall behind with their rent. This helped Sovereign focus its efforts where it would have the most impact, reducing their arrears from 1.99% to a record low of 1.71%.

This meant the social landlord collected more than £500,000 additional rent, at a time when the social housing sector is facing a cut in revenues and on-going welfare reform.

“The sector is dealing with the increased financial pressures, for example universal credit and the benefit cap and with the reduction in rent starting in April 2016 it’s vital we maximise efficiency and minimise income loss through residents falling behind on the rent,” commented Luke Bingham, Regional Director at Sovereign.

Sovereign credits Rentsense with helping them embed efficiencies and work smarter within their income function.

“Rentsense has supported our income teams and allowed them to focus time and resource on case management rather than process. It has also helped improve the speed and consistency of our case management which in turn supports the resource pressures on our income teams.” Explained Luke.

The healthy arrears performance is also part of a wider and successful drive by Sovereign to further increase its financial resilience.

“Being a strong and effective organisation is the foundation of our strategy and with a rent roll of £210m its essential that our performance reflects our ambition,” commented Luke.

“Over 80 social landlords are now using Rentsense to embed efficiencies and deliver cost savings,” commented Paul Evans, Commercial Director at Mobysoft. “Our unique solution is helping landlords protect revenues and increase collection rates as many continue to face further financial pressures through government policy and welfare reform.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Adrian Mills .