Rental income is a vital financial resource for social landlords, supporting your financial commitments and the management and maintenance of housing stock. By promoting the use of direct debit among residents, social landlords have significantly increased the proportion of rent collected this way over recent years. However, managing annual rent adjustments and administrative tasks remains a significant burden.
Key Challenges in Rent Management:
Annual Rent Adjustments: Council and housing association rents typically increase every April based on inflation rates and government caps. This necessitates a considerable amount of administrative work to update and verify new rent rates.
Notifying Tenants: Tenants must receive at least four weeks' written notice of rent increases, creating additional administrative load as staff must send numerous notices and handle tenant enquiries and concerns about affordability.
Introducing Enterprise RPA’s Direct Debit Automation Solution:
Enterprise RPA has a proven track record of helping social landlords with automation solutions, effectively eliminating repetitive workloads. Our Direct Debit Automation Solution is specifically designed to address these challenges.
Automate Routine Tasks: Our solution uses robots to handle routine tasks, such as checking tenant details and adjusting rent balances. After verification, the system notifies residents of changes. Notices can be sent in batches, preventing the customer service team from being overwhelmed with enquiries.
Eliminate Administrative Errors: Manual processes are more prone to errors, such as incorrect rent amounts being debited. Our automated system eliminates human error, improving accuracy and reducing resident distress.
Customisable Rent Adjustment Rules: Rent adjustment rules vary for different tenant types. For social housing tenants, rents are usually based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) plus 1%. For Shared Owners, rents are linked to the Retail Price Index (RPI) plus an uplift of 0.5% to 2%. Our robots can be programmed to adjust rents according to these and other rules, ensuring compliance.
Tailored Solutions for Your Needs: We collaborate closely with our clients to develop a rules-based, configurable solution focused on accuracy and exception management. Unlike 'out-of-the-box' solutions, our approach is tailored specifically to meet the unique requirements of your enterprise.
Seamless Integration with Direct Debit Services: Many social landlords use outsourced direct debit services like Allpay. Our solution is designed to integrate with these providers, submitting rent adjustment data without the need for further amendments, saving time and resources.
Relieve Staff to Focus on Customer-Facing Tasks: By automating repetitive tasks, your staff can focus on more front-end, customer-facing duties, particularly during peak periods of rent adjustments. This allows them to better assist residents with financial difficulties, providing independent and confidential money advice.
Maximise Robotic Licence Use: Once you have a robotic licence, it can be extended to other automation processes, such as Universal Credit verifications and former tenant arrears collection. Our goal is to help you maximise the licence's potential, enhancing service through increased technological integration.
Adopt Enterprise RPA’s Direct Debit Automation Solution to streamline your rent management processes, reduce administrative burdens, and enhance service accuracy and efficiency for your residents.
With our proven automation solutions, you can ensure a higher accuracy rate, reduce human error, and allow your staff to focus on what they do best: supporting your residents.
Contact us now to learn more!
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