Movem is lobbying for data privacy, and has a seat at the table to make it count.
Credit scores are like bottle openers; you only consider how important they are when you realise you need one. As a young tenant, I had neither an interest in my credit score, or a reason to learn more about it.
But you do have a credit score, and it’s following you around like an episode of Black Mirror. It has the power to stop you getting a mortgage, and can cripple your chances of ever owning a home.
I won’t bore you with a lecture on the importance of saving. Instead, I want to briefly explain credit scores, so I can talk about some more interesting stuff:
- How and why credit scores are tracking your every move.
- How the government is spending £2,000,000 to help renters.
- What our commitment is to helping tenants in the long term.
________
You’re being tracked…
Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs), are companies that hold huge amounts of data on you and track you throughout life. They know when you borrow money, pay a loan, pay direct debits and much more.
As an example, phone companies will send information each month to these CRAs, letting them know if you’ve paid your bill on time.
CRAs use this data to give you a score, which reflects how ‘credit worthy’ you are. When you try and borrow money, the lender will look up your credit score, and typically use it to decide if you can borrow money or not, and at what cost.
But here’s the crazy bit: paying rent on time — your biggest regular expenditure — has no impact on this score.
Take a moment to consider that. Your phone bill is tracked. Your credit card payments are tracked. Your car loan is tracked. Even that waxwork model of Ainsley Harriott you bought on finance is being tracked.
But your rental payments aren’t. Although that’s all about to change.
________
The government is investing £2m to help tenants
In 2017, the HM Treasury announced that enough is enough, and tenants should start benefiting from paying rent on time.
They set aside £2m, and encouraged companies to compete for funding to build a product that helps tenants boost their credit scores, by simply paying rent on time.
Movem has been selected as one of six companies to receive funding, support and more importantly a seat at the table to really drive this technology forward.
We’re proud, excited and thankful for the opportunity to make a difference.
________
This is your data, not ours, or theirs…
We will be updating Passport to include ‘credit-boosting’ functionality before July 2018. And the best bit: it’s going to be entirely free for everybody.
Agencies and landlords will not be charged more than they do today. For tenants, it will remain free, and available to everybody we reference.
In addition, we believe that tenant data should never be sold to third parties. With this new technology, some companies will offer a free service to tenants, and offset the costs by selling their data to the highest bidder.
We won’t. This is your data, not ours, or theirs.
Let us be clear. Here are our commitments to push this technology in the right direction:
- Credit-boosting functionality will be free, and not subsidised by selling data to third parties.
- We’ll educate all of our users on the benefits of boosting their credit score.
- The opportunity to boost their credit score will be offered during the referencing process, and not require any additional registration or commitments.
- Available to all of our users by July 2018.
If you’re interested in learning more about Movem, and how we’re helping tenants build their credit score, please email me on peter@movem.co.uk.
