Rent-flex - a scalable digital service for the UK social housing sector to engage tenants impacted by Covid-19 by personalising their rent schedules to improve their ability to cope with income and expenditure shocks.

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Rent-flex is a service product which provides social housing tenants with the opportunity to develop personalised schedules of rent payments for the year ahead and agree these with their landlord.Tenants can underpay on the rent account when budget pressures are at their greatest and make overpayments in other months when things are relatively easier, using rent-flex to smooth cash-flow and avoid taking out credit at times when money is particularly tight (such as Christmas or during the long summer school holidays). There is no interest, or any other fee charged to the tenant and residents can re-flex at any time as their circumstances change.A previous non-digital pilot indicates that rent-flex is successful in both engaging tenants in order to provide them with financial and budgeting support to assist with current difficulties and helps them plan ahead and smooth cash flow in a much more cost-effective manner than consumer credit. This has long-term positive impacts for both the tenant and their landlord, whose debt collection processes improve because of the early warning provided to them by tenants experiencing financial problems.The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the vulnerability of the UK's social housing sector to rapidly rising rent arrears and there is an urgent need to develop more efficient and effective mechanisms to engage impacted tenants and improve their ability to cope with income and expenditure shocks. Social landlords also have large numbers of tenants who have long term health conditions and concentrations of tenants from BAME communities: both groups which have been identified as at greater risk because of the pandemic. For example, 25% of tenants eligible for the rent-flex scheme within Optivo have BAME identities.The traditional mechanisms for debt collection in the social housing sector, such as outbound chasing of arrears, and enforcement action including court-based processes to recover possession of properties, are likely to be unsustainable given the large numbers of households negatively impacted by Covid-19\.The development of a digital rent-flex solution to assist Covid-19 impacted households offers an opportunity to develop a new, improved, approach to rent management and collection built on a longer-term, and positive relationship of trust between tenants and their landlords. One which provides for personalised rent payment schedules to be provided to tenants in return for improved engagement and communication of financial difficulties, allowing for earlier, and less costly, interventions.The rent-flex scheme has been developed by a consortium involving:\*Well Thought Ltd (brand and marketing expertise)\*The Centre for Responsible Credit Ltd (not for profit research into credit and debt amongst low income communities yielding insights into needs and engagement barriers)\*Optivo Housing Association (a major social landlord with over 45,000 properties in London, the South East, and Midlands)\*Mortar Works Ltd (a new Fintech company providing state of the art digital solutions) and\*HACT (an innovation agency providing future oriented solutions, projects and products for UK social housing).