Rental tech platform Goodlord has launched a PRO Referencing product for letting agents across the UK.
The PRO offering integrates with HMRC, payroll providers, and via Open Banking, rather than relying on documentation verification.
It claimed this will reduce the error-prone reliance on documents and instead enables the rapid and accurate verification of income by going direct to the source of the information.
Nishma Parekh, head of referencing at Goodlord, said: “We believe that Goodlord’s PRO Referencing will be a gamechanger for agents across the UK. Letting agents are under huge pressures to drive returns, add value, and protect landlords from risk.
“By focusing on verifying a tenant’s income through technology, rather than document verification, we believe that we have created the perfect blend of digital innovation and human expertise.
“This means a secure, speedy and seamless experience for agents and the ability to protect them from fraud.”
Goodlord’s State of the Lettings Industry report found that over 75% of agents are concerned about fraud in referencing.
PRO, which is integrated with the National Fraud Database (CIFAS), can spot nefarious applications, fake references and forged documents.
These digital-first capabilities are said to be backed up by a UK-based team of referencing specialists who provide customer support, manual checks across tenancy applications, and are trained in fraud detection.
The average reference turnaround time for PRO users is 1.5 days, while 25% of references are processed instantly.
