Rental payment data now appears on the credit reports of more than 1.2 million tenants from across the UK, thanks to an initiative inspired by Big Issue Invest.
Credit reference agency Experian developed the Rental Exchange alongside our social investment arm in 2010 in a bid to level the playing field for the UK’s 14.8 million renters. If a tenant kept up with the rental payments, that data was not recorded on their credit file, limiting their access to a mortgage or fair credit.
The golden opportunity ahead? Ensuring that tenants can not only share their rent payment data with credit service providers, but that their data is recorded, recognised and taken into account by lenders! https://t.co/pFlPQfVe0h#makerentcount@JustineGreening@BigIssueInvesthttps://t.co/VK6ZXelxMQ
— John Bird (@johnbirdswords) October 24, 2018
The Rental Exchange allows tenants to view their rental payments on Experian’s CreditExpert and statutory credit reports with more than 150 social housing providers, local authorities and letting agents reporting data in the initiative to date.
“We set out eight years ago with the aim of creating a fairer playing field for people accessing credit because we recognised that people in poverty were routinely penalised,” said John Montague, managing director, The Big Issue Group.
“The Rental Exchange has succeeded in making more inclusive data available to credit service providers, and it is this data which has the potential to reduce levels of financial and digital exclusion and improve the circumstances of some of the poorest in our society.”