Asra Housing Group has been using Mobysoft’s RentSense software to reduce its rent arrears from six per cent in 2012 to just under four per cent by March 2015, representing around £1.65 million.
In 2012, Asra Housing was using its housing management system to manage arrears, but was experiencing several issues. Simon Cousins, income manager, Asra Housing Group, said, “Income officers had too many weekly tasks. This was compounded by the fact that officers were spending lots of time managing their escalation processes rather than the arrears and deleting a large number of actions. This meant that a large number of accounts were not getting looked at regularly.”
There were also problems with the data from Asra Housing’s systems because its management team was unable to get a clear insight into performance. Emma Conlon, head of income, Asra Housing Group, said, “We needed to improve income performance because our arrears were at six per cent but we couldn’t analyse the data coming our way.”
In late 2012, Asra Housing reviewed its arrears performance, systems and processes. The review’s findings recommended that systems and processes needed to change if it was going to meet its incremental arrears targets of 4.4 per cent for 2014, four per cent for 2015 and 3.8 per cent for 2016. The findings also recommended using Mobysoft’s RentSense software which was then implemented in March 2013.
After one year, arrears had fallen from six per cent to 4.4 per cent, and by March 2015 they had reached 3.8 per cent, ahead of the housing provider’s four per cent target for the year, and is now at just 3.6 per cent.
Conlon said, “There was a bedding-in period, but within six months we were seeing dramatic results. Since we started using RentSense and changed our processes, our arrears have fallen by around £1.65m.”
While Asra Housing’s main focus was on reducing its arrears, it has also found that use of RentSense has helped its income team get through their weekly caseload and created spare capacity within the team.
Conlon said, “We originally focused on arrears, not creating income officer capacity, but we are now increasing the officers’ patch size by about 400 which has allowed us to reduce our FTE.”
