MRI Tenancy Analytics Case Study: South Derbyshire

“Social landlords collect huge amounts of data, but rarely possess the financial knowledge or human resources to convert it into a user-friendly format. MRI Tenancy Analytics makes the unmanageable data useful in a number of highly valuable ways.”

– South Derbyshire District Council

MRI Tenancy Analytics is used by South Derbyshire District Council’s Housing Services to support and improve the delivery of a wide range of services for its tenants. At MRI Software, we’ve helped to gather and compile customer intelligence that represents a ‘flag in the ground’, producing data that assists the organisation in a number of ways.

The challenge

Social landlords collect huge amounts of data, but rarely possess the financial knowledge or human resources to convert it into a user-friendly format. The ability to gather and interpret this data using MRI Tenancy Analytics can provide a number of benefits to landlords, who face many challenges including:

• Identifying tenants in high financial distress
• Tenancy fraud
• Creating sustainable tenancies
• Supporting tenants through the rollout of Universal Credit
• Tracking down and recovering former tenant arrears

The solution

South Derbyshire District Council’s Housing Services team have been using MRI Tenancy Analytics to improve the delivery of services to tenants. With a growing number of households in the area, the ability to convert huge amounts of data into a useful, user-friendly format ensures that accurate customer intelligence assists the team on a daily basis.

South Derbyshire District Council has seen significant improvements across 6 key areas due to their work with MRI Tenancy Analytics:

Income management: Identifying those that are suitable for Direct Debit payments has resulted in increased revenue

Here’s what they had to say:

“MRI Tenancy Analytics was initially deployed to help the Council identify tenants already using Direct Debits to pay for other external services. Further campaigns are planned in 2019 to move people to Direct Debit where appropriate.”

Service delivery: Identifying areas of financial distress means that South Derbyshire District Council can focus on those tenants that need the most support

Here’s what they had to say:

“MRI Tenancy Analytics filters existing information to highlight those tenants in potential high financial distress. This information not only identifies those tenants at severe risk of defaulting on their rent payments, but also assists in the delivery of proactive assistance and support.”

Sustainable tenancies: Pre-tenancy checks mean that the right tenant can be matched to the right property, ensuring that the tenant can afford their home

Here’s what they had to say:

“We love the value of MRI Tenancy Analytics at the pre-tenancy stage. It’s very important to both the Council and our tenants that we foster sustainable tenancies and avoid tenancy failure in the first year. This can occur for a number of reasons, but more often than not is due to pre-existing financial distress.”

Future planning: MRI Tenancy Analytics enables the team to highlight those tenants who have a potential risk to being able to manage their tenancy. These can then be passed to the Tenancy Sustainment Officer who can help manage the situation with proactive assistance and support

Here’s what they had to say:

“Failed tenancies mean disruption to people’s lives, administrative costs and lost rental income, so it’s essential we put the right people in the right homes. MRI Tenancy Analytics allows us to better understand a potential tenant’s situation – bracketing them as low, medium or high risk.

Those highlighted as high risk are passed onto our Tenancy Sustainment Officer who will work with the tenant to improve their situation.”

Former tenant debt solutions: MRI Tenancy Analytics enables the team to trace previous tenants in arrears so that they can arrange instalment plans for payment

Here’s what they had to say:

“Tracking down tenants who skip tenancies early and leave unpaid rent or other unresolved issues has traditionally been a persistent problem for social landlords. MRI Tenancy Analytics has been really helpful in this area as it can identify these individuals once they put down roots elsewhere and provide a new forwarding address. With the help of MRI Tenancy Analytics, South Derbyshire District Council is actively tracing both current and aged former tenant debt”

Increased performance: The ability to efficiently highlight potential tenancy fraud means that South Derbyshire can spend their time investigating these instances and finding solutions, rather than identifying cases

Here’s what they had to say:

“MRI Tenancy Analytics is able to highlight and prioritise potential tenancy fraud, including Right to Buy applications, and to date has identified a number of cases which have been passed to our fraud team.”