Member Article

Regenda Reaps Rewards with Rentsense

Regenda Homes Housing Association have embedded efficiency and reduced arrears by investing in Mobysoft’s Rentsense application.

Prior to using Rentsense Regenda Homes were having to manage their income officers’ weekly caseload manually, as the HMS was missing cases as well as recommending cases that required no action. This meant staff were only getting through around 50% of their caseload.

This situation had prompted Regenda to begin talking to Mobysoft as they understood Rentsense could deal effectively with caseload management, even when dealing with housing benefit payment cycles from multiple councils.

“At Regenda Homes we work with twenty-three different local authorities that pay on lots of different frequencies. This makes managing performance in your rent arrears challenging when you only want to see the cases that you want to action,” explains Kelly Farrell, Regional Financial Inclusion Manager at Regenda.

The outcome however has been revelatory: There has been a 36% caseload reduction and officers are now getting through their caseload. This has helped to reduce Regenda’s arrears to 2.4%, a reduction of £71,940 in the first year alone. What’s more the income team now have capacity to work on Former Tenant Arrears (FTA). It is also helping mitigate welfare reform and currently Regenda Homes have a 101.4% collection rate on their 424 Universal Credit cases. It’s not just these results that have helped validate Regenda’s decision to invest in Rentsense. Their external auditor has commented on Rentsense’s effectiveness, as Regional Director at Regenda Homes, Steve Blackburn explains:

“Operationally we have seen real benefits in terms of Rentsense’s ability to both create capacity within the team and crucially ensure that capacity is directed towards the most urgent accounts. Our views have recently been supported via a rent collection audit from our auditors KPMG who commented on the value of Rentsense and its sophistication compared to other arrears collection tools they have witnessed in the sector. I am sure the introduction of Rentsense contributed to us obtaining a substantial assurance rating for our collection approach.”

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