13th February 2024: Buy-to-let lender Landbay has announced a new partnership with leading property data provider WhenFresh, a PriceHubble company, to assist and speed up its underwriting process.
WhenFresh brings together more than 200 proprietary, private and public datasets, including sources such as environmental, geographical and market data, to determine property attributes and risk.
WhenFresh data now assists Landbay in minimising risk and making informed decisions faster by building a complete picture of the property, which supports the latest range of automated valuation model (AVM) products.
Last month, Landbay became the first dedicated buy-to-let lender to integrate an automated valuation model to speed up offer times. During its extensive pilot, it found that it is on average, three times faster than a standard application and can also help reduce fees by on average £500.
Last month, Landbay became the first dedicated buy-to-let lender to integrate an automated valuation model to speed up offer times. During its extensive pilot, it found that it is on average, three times faster than a standard application and can also help reduce fees by on average £500.
AVMs are available on a new standalone range of five-year fixed-rate products, with a maximum property value of £750,000 at 70% loan-to-value (LTV). Rates start at 4.29% and are stressed at payrate, with Landbay’s variable fee structure also available for increased affordability.
Joel Vinnicombe, head of product at Landbay, said: “A key component to the success of using an AVM is additional robust, good quality data and we certainly have this through our partnership with WhenFresh. The strength and depth of their property data enables us to make those informed decisions very quickly and with real confidence.
“Landbay has always been a progressive lender, utilising technology and leading data providers to improve our service and inform our approach to lending. We are grateful for the team at WhenFresh and thank them for their expertise and ongoing support.”
Mark Cunningham, director & co-founder of WhenFresh, a PriceHubble company, states: “As the UK’s residential property data bureau, we are delighted to be playing our part in the launch of Landbay’s new AVM platform. When a lender wants to use more AVMs they need a data partner that can provide the right ancillary property data to make this a reality, so we are very proud to have supported Landbay’s journey to automated lending thus far, and to have helped them drive more value and to use a greater quantity of AVMs.
“With a shared passion for technology and innovation, we look forward to helping Landbay to continue to drive greater efficiencies to the buy-to-let mortgage process.”
WhenFresh Decisions-as-a-Service for Mortgage Lenders is a suite of 4 data-driven modules which enable mortgage lenders to make faster, better-informed property risk decisions through the full mortgage lifecycle, from origination through to book securitisation.
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About Landbay
Established in 2014, Landay is an award-winning mortgage platform, created in-house to support customers with better ways to buy-to-let. Landbay’s focus is on the broker and their clients. It brings together the best people and partners, leveraging its data, technology and market expertise.
Mortgage brokers who choose Landbay will find experts at the end of the line, smart technology designed for intermediary partners and fast decisions they can count on.
Landbay’s dedication to exceptional customer service, innovative technology and sustainable lending practices has been recognised with multiple prestigious awards and consistently high levels of customer satisfaction. Landbay is an FCA regulated company, a member of UK Finance and is based in London, UK.
About WhenFresh, a PriceHubble company
WhenFresh is a leading supplier of data and related solutions to UK Mortgage Lenders, Insurers, Public Sector and other Big Data users and has established itself as the UK’s “Residential Property Data Bureau” by bringing together over 200 proprietary, private and public UK data sources in one place.
WhenFresh creates bespoke data-driven decision engines and Apps, as well as supplying a vast range of data ingredients such as property attribute, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate and market data to its clients for a wide range of applications.
WhenFresh has been awarded DataIQ’s “Data Enabling Solution of the Year” and the Insurance Times Gold supplier award for “Excellence in Technology”, as well as featuring prominently in a number of prestigious Top 50/100 FinTech & InsurTech reports.
London – May 2023: Having launched the UK’s first National Cladding Dataset in February 2023 (See initial launch release here), WhenFresh has announced that the dataset has now more than doubled in size to provide the current cladding status of 1,122,004 individual properties within tall multi-dwelling units (MDUs) across the UK.
The National Cladding Dataset was launched in February, initially providing the cladding status of 485,234 individual dwellings within MDUs of 18m or more in height – but this has now been expanded to the current total of 1,122,004 dwellings with the addition of MDUs of less than 18m and, in particular, those of 11m-18m in height, which fall into the Government’s ‘Mid-Rise Scheme’ for remediation.
WhenFresh also stresses that this is a LIVE dataset, with monthly updates from the rolling program of property inspections that are carried out by the team of over 600 RICS qualified surveyors – employing both physical property visits and expert, remote/data-driven assessments.
This means that the cladding status of each of dwelling is constantly updated with additional dwellings also being added as inspections continue to be undertaken. The surveyor team has allocated each dwelling a cladding status, based on the following classification:
GREEN – Building has no cladding. (Specifically: EWS1 form recorded in Cladding Database with classification A1, A2 or B1 or considered to be out of scope as per RICS’s Cladding Guidance Note).
AMBER – Building potentially has cladding, merits EWS1 inspection. (Identified as potentially in scope, as per the RICS’s Cladding Guidance Note, no EWS1 form held currently).
RED – Building has cladding. (EWS1 form recorded in Cladding Database with classification A3 or B2, or other known adverse factors from alternative sources).
Due to the nature of the dataset and the rolling program of surveyor inspections, the cladding status of each dwelling is subject to change over time.
For example: A dwelling may originally have been categorised as AMBER, where the surveyor’s original inspection using a range of remote tools (e.g. satellite images, drone footage etc…) and data sources (e.g. building records) was not fully conclusive.
The cladding status of this dwelling may subsequently be updated to RED, following a surveyor visit as part of the rolling, physical property inspection program.
Then, once remediation work has been carried out and confirmed on the building in which this dwelling is located, the cladding status can be changed to GREEN.
In the brief time since the launch of the original National Cladding Dataset in February 2023, and the subsequent dataset expansion, driven mainly by the inclusion of MDUs of 11-18m in height, there have already been significant cladding status movements due to physical inspections or remediations, namely:
> 40047 dwellings have been updated from AMBER to GREEN cladding status
> 23933 dwellings have been updated from AMBER to RED cladding status
> 10019 dwellings have been updated from RED to GREEN cladding status
In addition to the RED/AMBER/GREEN cladding status classification, The WhenFresh National Cladding Dataset can also supply the following where available:
> The date on which the EWS1 was signed.
> The EWS1 classification: A1, A2, A3, B1 or B2.
> Any expert notes/covering letter provided by the RICS surveyors pertaining to each inspection.
The WhenFresh UK National Cladding Dataset can be appended at individual dwelling level, to any file of addresses (or UPRNs, UDPRNs, Title numbers etc…) for flat-file delivery, or can be accessed via the WhenFresh API, either in isolation, or in combinations with any of the 100s of other property data items WhenFresh holds.
Mark Cunningham, WhenFresh CEO & co-Founder states: “We expected the original cladding dataset launch to be well received, but we’ve been staggered by the level of interest from mortgage lenders, insurers, reinsurers and other parties. We’re therefore fully confident that the investments made in expanding the reach, breadth and depth of the dataset as it continues to evolve, will bring significant further benefits and risk insights for those who need to properly understand property cladding risk.”
30th March 2023, London: InsTech states its mission is “…to identify and promote the use of the best technology, data and analytics within insurance and risk-management around the world” and, having built up a follower network of over 20,000 people working for insurers, brokers, consultants, investors and technology companies from start-ups to the established global enterprises… it’s making a rather good fist of it!
The newest in InsTech’s series of insightful reports is entitled Property Intelligence: Understanding and Managing Natural Hazards and is currently available to download here for free, so grab your copy today.
The annual Zurich Innovation Championship has a rich heritage and has now entered it’s 6th year. We are told that there have been a bumper 477 UK entries this year, from which just a handful are ultimately invited to present their solutions at the “UK Super Day” Final on 21st March 2023 – so we are delighted and excited to see WhenFresh selected as UK Finalist for Zurich Innovation Championship 2023!
Zurich has often gone on to collaborate and work with the companies that reach the National Finals, with selected entrants going on to a Global Final.
WhenFresh is a leading supplier of data and decision engines to UK Home Insurers, Mortgage Lenders and other Big Data users – and has established itself as the UK’s Residential Property Data Bureau, by bringing together over 200 best-in-class proprietary, private and public UK data sources in one place.
Via a single, simple integration, the WhenFresh API provides users with instant access to a fully comprehensive range of property attribute, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate, market and valuations data, on a pay-as-you-go basis.
New datasets are regularly added – such as the recently launched National Cladding Database and, in recent times, WhenFresh has been awarded DataIQ’s “Data Enabling Solution of the Year”, the Insurance Times Gold supplier award for “Excellence in Technology”, as well as featuring prominently in a series of prestigious Top 50/100 InsurTech & FinTech reports.
To find out more about WhenFresh property data and related solutions, please contact us today. Or visit https://www.zurich.com/en/campaigns/zic to learn more about the championship.
News Release – 22 February 2023: WhenFresh has teamed up with an army of 600 RICS-qualified surveyors to create the first property-level cladding dataset, providing current cladding status for each of the 485,234 residential properties within tall Multi-Dwelling Units (MDUs) across the UK.
Since the tragic Grenfell fire on 14th June 2017 and the ‘cladding crisis’ that has since developed, the owners, mortgage lenders, insurers, and developers of properties in tall Multi-Dwelling Units (MDUs) throughout the UK with some form of cladding have found themselves facing massive, unforeseen financial exposure.
Whilst the news frequently reminds us how the affected homeowners find themselves as ‘mortgage hostages’, unable to sell and struggling to secure viable insurance, the exposure faced by the financial services sector has, until now, been much less well-documented or understood. However, the fact is that lenders, insurers, and institutional property investors have largely been ‘flying blind’ as they have not had the means to accurately assess their potential risk/exposure to this hugely significant issue.
Key property risk factors, such as flood and subsidence, have routinely been assessed when deciding whether to offer mortgages or how to price insurance premiums. However, prior to June 2017, cladding simply wasn’t something that anyone considered. This is why little or no information about cladded buildings had been captured, until now.
WhenFresh’s unique cladding dataset is the result of a major project started in 2020 (during the first pandemic lockdown) which initially involved a wide range of remote inspection tools and data sources (such as satellite imagery, drone footage, building and planning records, etc…), and has subsequently been enhanced on an ongoing basis by physical surveys and other inputs – all meticulously scrutinised by an army of over 600 RICS-qualified surveyors.
Now, following six months of in-market testing with a group of existing clients, WhenFresh has launched the unique dataset to the wider market, providing property-level cladding data for each of the 485,234 properties within MDUs of 18 metres or more in height throughout the UK. The surveyor team use their expertise to assign each property within these MDUs to one of three categories:
GREEN – Building has no cladding. (Specifically: EWS1 form recorded in Cladding Database with classification A1, A2 or B1 or considered to be out of scope as per RICS’s Cladding Guidance Note)
AMBER – Building potentially has cladding, merits EWS1 inspection. (Identified as potentially in scope, as per the RICS’s Cladding Guidance Note, no EWS1 form held currently)
RED – Building has cladding. (EWS1 form recorded in Cladding Database with classification A3 or B2, or other known adverse factors from alternative sources)
This means that mortgage lenders, insurers, local authorities, central government, housing associations, asset managers, and other parties are now able to readily access this unique cladding data alongside any other property data attributes they may need from WhenFresh, either in flat file format or via API in real time.
For example, a lender can now match their whole existing mortgage book to this new cladding dataset via WhenFresh, to carry out detailed analysis at individual property level.
Max Griffiths, Group Head of Quantitative Risk at Together Money states: “WhenFresh’s wall cladding dataset enabled Together to truly assess our limited exposure to external wall cladding risk across the full book. Working with the WhenFresh analytics team has enabled us to establish a clear set of actionable data points that support our prudent approach to lending, and their data enrichment has helped us in preparing data for securitisation issuances where additional reporting requirements around ESG has been required.”
WhenFresh co-founder and CEO Mark Cunningham adds: “We’re delighted to be able to bring this cladding dataset to market alongside our existing property data assets, not least as it provides key risk insights into these 485,234 properties which are jointly worth in excess of £50 billion. There are obvious applications for mortgage lenders and insurers of course, but we’re already seeing interest from local authorities, central government, housing associations, asset managers, and other sectors too.
“This new dataset provides lenders with the means to fully understand how their mortgage books are affected by cladding issues, down to individual property level, so they can identify where risks lie and make better decisions moving forward. New mortgage applications can also be pre-screened against this cladding dataset, and it has now become a key component of our WRAP service, where a wide range of data variables are applied to packages of mortgages being prepared for securitisation, to give surety to the buy-side.
“It is obviously a big deal for insurers too, as they can now better understand property risk across their existing policy portfolios and can access this cladding dataset, along with all the other data we make available via API, to drive more accurately priced, instant quotes for new insurance applications.”
To find out more about this National Cladding Dataset and/or to book a demo, please contact us today.
January 2023 – Digital transformation leaders WNS have partnered with residential property data specialists WhenFresh to launch a new AI-driven omnichannel ‘Quote & Buy’ platform in the UK, enabling home insurers to deliver improved customer experience and reduced acquisition costs.
The home insurance market in the UK has become highly commoditised, with insurers increasingly reliant on customer experience (CX) to differentiate their offerings. An insurer’s ability to make the customer’s ‘quote & buy’ journey as easy and painless as possible is often the key to winning and retaining customers, improving conversion rates and reducing acquisition costs.
The new WNS HIFFI solution enables insurers to deliver a greatly improved customer experience by providing consumers with much faster, simpler home insurance quotes across a wide range of channels, including WhatsApp, Webchat, Mobile Apps and IVR (Interactive Voice Response).
To obtain an instant, accurate home insurance quote, the consumer need only provide basic personal details and the property address via their preferred channel – then all necessary property attribute and risk data is instantly fetched from the WhenFresh API ‘behind the scenes’ without further manual input. The consumer can then easily accept the quote, make payment and choose their policy delivery preferences within the platform.
The whole process is much shorter and simpler than traditional, long-form insurance quotes, and the platform employs Artificial Intelligence (AI) to understand user intent and either resolve consumer queries or escalate to a live agent when needed.
Mark Cunningham, CEO & co-Founder of WhenFresh states “We’re delighted to be working with the WNS team and this is a perfect example of how digital transformation can be achieved by marrying cutting-edge technologies and accurate data. WhenFresh is the UK’s property data bureau, and our data already powers reduced question-sets for many leading insurers, but the WNS HIFFI solution adds the extra dimension of working across so many different channels to make the frankly rather dull process of obtaining home insurance simpler, faster and even more accessible than before.”
Whilst the customer only needs to provide a few basic contact details and the property address, HIFFI draws on over 30 property and risk attributes from WhenFresh via API, so the underwriting risk selection process is based on a comprehensive, robust dataset. HIFFI is also fully customisable and is an easily integrated, API-based plug and play solution for leading tech and underwriting platforms.
To find out more and arrange a demo, please contact WhenFresh or visit the WNS website.
About WNS (www.wns.com)
WNS is a global business, specialising in driving digital transformation for its clients across multiple sectors. In the insurance space, WNS partner with more than 55 global insurers, re-insurers, brokers and InsurTech companies to accelerate digital transformation – annually managing 30 million+ claims transactions, claims spend worth USD 13 billion and underwriting transactions over worth over USD 10 million. Our deep industry knowledge, leading-edge technology and analytical solutions, and integrated digital operating models help insurers scale faster and respond to changing market conditions. Our digital-first solutions improve risk mitigation, reduce indemnity spending, lower cost of service and enable superior customer experience.
About WhenFresh
WhenFresh is the UK’s leading supplier of residential property data to Banks, Home Insurers, Utilities, The Public Sector and other Big Data users – including 8 of the top 10 UK banks and the Bank of England. WhenFresh combines its own proprietary datasets with 100s of best-in-class private and public data sources in one place to create the UK’s “Residential Property Data Supermarket”. Via a single, simple integration, the WhenFresh API provides users with instant access individual, address-level property attribute, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate, market movement, ownership, title and remote valuations data, on a pay-as-you-go basis. In addition to providing raw data items, WhenFresh provides develops tailor-made, data-driven decisioning solutions and Apps for its clients and was awarded Data Enabling Solution of the Year at the DataIQ Awards 2021, as well as featuring prominently in several prestigious Top 50/Top 100 InsurTech & FinTech reports.
WhenFresh is the UK’s Residential Property Data Bureau and provides Mortgage Lenders with instant access to all the data they need to make faster, better-informed decisions throughout the full mortgage lifecycle, from initial application tight through to securitisation.
WhenFresh Decisions-as-a-Service provides instant, remote property risk assessment – complementing the credit bureau services which assess consumer credit risk – and is delivered via a suite of 4 modules:
LOOP – Equivalent to a digital ‘Property D.I.P.’ whereby each new mortgage application is instantly and remotely screened against lending rules, LTV criteria and Title issues. Typically 5-10% of applications are rejected at this stage and ‘loop’ back to the broker/applicant(s), before the lender has invested money and resource processing applications which would fail at a later stage.
PATH – Equivalent to a digital ‘Property F.M.A.’ this deep-dive, data-driven triage evaluates the property, valuation and title to assess current/future risk and inform the lender which ‘path’ to choose. This separates the 60-80% of properties where an AVM will be sufficient to move to an immediate mortgage offer, from the 20-40% where a desktop, drive-by or full physical survey of the property will be required.
WATCH – Live alerts across the portfolio to flag any issues which may impact each property’s value or risk.
WRAP – Property data enrichment to prepare & segment a mortgage book for optimum securitisation.
Each module can quickly and easily be tested against any lenders existing processes – so please click here to find out more and to book a call/demo.
25th October 2022: FinTech Global – leading provider of FinTech news, research, information services & events – has just published its 5th annual InsurTech100 report, featuring WhenFresh for the 2nd year running.
The InsurTech100 Report is described as “an annual list of 100 of the world’s most innovative InsurTech companies selected by a panel of industry experts and analysts… the companies every leader in the insurance industry needs to know about as they consider and develop their digital transformation strategies.”
WhenFresh CEO & Co-Founder Mark Cunningham states: “We’re delighted to have again earned our place in this prestigious annual InsurTech100 report, alongside a sparkling array of fellow innovators and disruptors in InsurTech & FinTech! Congratulations to all those who’ve been recognised this year and thanks again to the wise and learned panel of industry experts, analysts and insurers who have chosen to include us again, in such a competitive space. Our large, expanding portfolio of insurance clients are continuously challenging us to source new property-related datasets and tailor-made apps to help them make faster, better, less-risky decisions – and this helps keep up the cutting edge of innovation. We’re looking forward to another highly progressive year!”
The FinTech Global InsurTech100 2022 Report states:
“WhenFresh is an award-winning supplier of property data and related solutions, primarily to UK Home Insurers and Mortgage Lenders. It has created the UK’s “Residential Property Data Supermarket” by bringing together its own proprietary datasets with a huge range of best-in-class private & public property data sources.
Via a single, simple API integration, WhenFresh now provides users with instant access to over 2tn data items, including residential property attribute, risk, peril, topological, geospatial, environmental, climate, market and valuations data, on a pay-as-you-go basis.
WhenFresh customers include leading UK home insurers, 8 of the top 10 mortgage lenders, the Bank of England and disruptive players in insurance and lending, such as Uinsure, Locket, Twenty7Tec and MQube.
As well as supplying ‘raw’ data ingredients, WhenFresh develops customised Apps which enable insurers and lenders to interrogate its huge data assets easily and instantly via rules-based engines, to make faster, smarter, less-risky remote decisions.”
Congratulations to all the insurtech & fintech innovators featured in this influential report, which can be downloaded for free at: https://TheInsurTech100.com
To find out more about WhenFresh, try the new “Mini-Demo” below to see a selection of some of the residential property data items that leading Insurers & Mortgage Lenders most commonly call from the WhenFresh API to support their automated decisioning. WhenFresh are able to supply these data items and many, many more for virtually every residential property in the UK.
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Whether you’re an in-house collections team, a DCA or a related service provider, the current “perfect storm” of rising inflation, interest rates and energy costs means that’s its more important than ever to when, where and how to focus your efforts to obtain optimum outcomes.
In each case within a portfolio, the debt amount and payment histories are known – and consumer credit reference data can be readily purchased – but this still only gives PART of the picture.
Enriching the portfolio with WhenFresh data provides instant, up-to-date insights on the PROPERTY relating to each debt: it’s value, occupation, type, size & shape, likely monthly outgoings, when/how it last transacted and other key indicators… so you a much FULLER picture to inform and optimise your collections strategy to achieve better outcomes.
For Example:
> Is the property a wholly owned or mortgaged asset – or is it a private or social-housing rental?
> What are the likely rental or mortgage payments?
> What is the value, shape and size of the property – does this match with what has been declared?
> What are the likely Council tax, electricity, gas and water outgoings for the property?
> Is the property listed for sale or rental – i.e. is there a potential flight risk?
WhenFresh can deliver all this data and much, much more… at individual property level, either via flat-file data enrichment or instantaneously via the WhenFresh API.
Click here to find out more about the full range of property-related data WhenFresh hold to inform and improve your Collections strategy.
26 July 2022: Insurance data intelligence provider, Percayso Inform, today announces a new partnership with the UK’s leading supplier of residential property data, WhenFresh, to support the further development of Percayso’s property data capabilities for providers of household and SME insurance.
WhenFresh has combined its own proprietary datasets with hundreds of best-in-class private and public data sources in one place to create the UK’s “Residential Property Data Supermarket” for the UK insurance industry, mortgage lenders and other Big Data users.
Ian Lilley, Head of Partnerships at Percayso, says: “As we extend our services into both the household and SME commercial space, we want to be able to provide not just data but also analytical intelligence to our customers. WhenFresh shares the same ethos. The WhenFresh API gives instant access to over two trillion property-specific data items and can instantly return all the property attribute, risk, perils environmental and valuations data an insurance provider needs.
“There are a lot of synergies between our businesses. Like us, they’re constantly looking to add new datasets to anticipate market demand, but more importantly are willing to share their vast experience and knowledge to help analyse and advise on bespoke customer datasets. They’re more than purely a data supplier, rather a solutions provider. We’re looking forward to building a long-lasting partnership.”
WhenFresh CEO Mark Cunningham adds: “We’re delighted to be working with Ian and the Percayso Inform team to support their growth in the home and SME insurance sectors – and we’re sure our partnership will open some very interesting doors for both parties. Like Percayso, WhenFresh is a data agnostic business, so we often hold a number of different brands of data in the same category… so the user can choose their preferred option and/or other brands to suit their needs, in whatever format they require.
“Putting vast, readily accessible data assets, alongside the analytical capabilities and tools to deliver clear business improvements, into the hands of insurers, makes this a highly compelling proposition.”
Read the full Insurance Times article here
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About WhenFresh
WhenFresh is a leading supplier of residential property data to UK Insurers, Banks and other Big Data users. Combining its own proprietary datasets with 100s of best-in-class private and public data sources in one place, WhenFresh has created the UK’s “Residential Property Data Supermarket”. WhenFresh also develops tailor-made, data-driven decisioning solutions and Apps for its clients and was awarded Data Enabling Solution of the Year at the DataIQ Awards 2021, as well as featuring prominently in several prestigious Top 50/Top 100 InsurTech & FinTech reports.
About Percayso Inform
Percayso Inform’s insurance intelligence goes beyond traditional data enrichment, providing unique, real-time solutions at all stages of the insurance lifecycle and delivering a significant pricing advantage for insurance businesses.