Bud named among winners of first stage of £2m rental payment challenge

PERSONAL finance app Bud has been named among the winners of the first stage of the government’s Rent Recognition challenge.

The £2m prize is seeking solutions to incorporate rental payments into a tenant’s credit score.

Bud, which lets users manage accounts from a range of providers in one place including peer-to-peer lenders Zopa and RateSetter, is one of six firms who will receive £100,000 each to develop a prototype and three or four of the finalists will get further funding to bring their ideas to market later this year.

The other winners are CreditLadder and RentalStep, which already let users record rental payments on their credit report; tenant deposit replacement scheme Canopy; app developer META Labs and rentals website Movem.

The competition was first mentioned in November’s Autumn Budget, following concerns that mortgage lenders fail to consider rental payment history as evidence of affordability as it does not show up on a credit report.

Winning bids were selected by a panel of leading figures from the fintech sector, including Al Lukies of Motive Partners, Charlotte Crosswell, chief executive of Innovate Finance and Paul Smee, director of mortgages at UK Finance.

Entrants were asked to outline the consumer journey and how data will be accessed, used and protected as well as any market research to support the product and an idea of how much it would cost to develop.

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