HomeQ: making renting seamless with instant income verification
Finding an apartment to rent in Sweden is hard enough – and then having to chase down documentation that landlords need to approve your application makes the whole process an even bigger pile of stress. Here’s how Swedish rental marketplace HomeQ found a way to remove those hurdles – and simplify the application process for both tenants and landlords using open banking.
HomeQ, a popular rental marketplace in Sweden, wanted to make renting simpler for tenants and landlords.
Verifying a potential tenant’s income was an important part in screening candidates and helping landlords determine their suitability.
To improve the income verification process, HomeQ partnered with Tink – resulting in a seamless and safer digital application flow.
Renting a place in Sweden can be challenging for everyone involved. Tenants need to find a place that suits their needs (and that they can afford) in a high-demand, low-supply market – while landlords of course need to find tenants they can trust to take good care of their property (and make the monthly rent). HomeQ wanted to make the rental process easier for both parties. Launched in 2017, they’re now Sweden's largest marketplace for first-hand apartments. Their service lets tenants easily search for available apartments, and help landlords screen applicants to ensure a good match.
One of the main factors to help landlords screen candidates was analysing if they could comfortably afford the rent by verifying their income. The verification process was a bit cumbersome however, requiring would-be tenants to submit their payslips to be reviewed. HomeQ saw an opportunity to streamline this process by partnering with Tink.
A seamless and safer income verification flow
Beside the less-than-ideal user experience for applicants – who needed to chase down and then manually upload their payslips – the income verification process could be a real blocker, creating headaches for tenants and landlords alike. It could take days for applicants to get the right paperwork in order, and then a few more days to have it all reviewed and approved.
Annoyingly enough, the process wasn’t even foolproof in terms of preventing fraud, since the documentation submitted could be easily falsified.
But luckily, open banking provided a better alternative, making it possible for HomeQ to help landlords verify income in a quick, safe, and fully digital flow by tapping into the applicants’ bank account data.
Find your dream rental and apply.
After implementing Tink’s Income Check, applicants using the HomeQ app could have their income verified with just a few clicks. All they needed to do was authenticate with BankID (Sweden’s electronic identification system) to allow their bank data to be fetched and analysed – generating immediate results.
No paperwork needed, no more days-long processing periods. And fewer opportunities for fraud too. Since the verification is made based on secure, real-time data coming directly from the applicant’s bank account, landlords can be sure the information is solid.
Income Check in practice
Once they started using Tink’s income verification solution, HomeQ decreased their handling time and adoption rate in the digital application flow shot up from 10% to 40%. They also haven’t had any cases of fraud when the verification was done using Tink.
Now, they can get complete and up-to-date income information with a quick, digital, user-friendly flow. And of course, save a lot of time and resources – Tink does all the data collection and analysis in the background (using pattern recognition to identify income streams), giving HomeQ a neat report summarising the findings.
Curious to learn more? Read more about the benefits of using open banking to upgrade your income verification in our ‘income verification guide’. If you’d like to learn more about the technicalities of our Income Check product, you can check the Tink docs. If you already like what you’ve read and want to get right down to business – contact our sales team.
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