Voicescape’s primary sector research has revealed that social landlords have 25-50% of their arrears portfolio tied up in tenant repayment agreements – and they break more than 90% of the time.
It’s clear that organisations, and the sector at large, are carrying huge levels of unsecured debt – the scale of which most don’t even realise or have tools in place to recover. That’s why we’ve developed Agreements Manager: a first-of-its-kind solution, to help landlords reduce the mass of unsecured debt tied up in tenant repayment agreements and help bring tenants out of debt. Agreements Manager provides a level of visibility, control and positive tenant outcomes currently unavailable to hard-pressed social landlords.
Agreements Manager will be readily available from April 2025 for housing associations to integrate into their housing income management functions. But first, explore exactly why we’ve created this unique solution, and how income and finance professionals can leverage it for the new financial year and beyond…
Tapping into mass unsecured debt
Our sector research shows that tenant repayment agreements average £700, typically to be repaid in 2.4 years in line with the default court repayment value of £5.50 per week. Despite this, some agreements exceed £30 in weekly instalments, which can be unsustainable for tenants and also highlights the variability and challenges in managing agreements effectively.
We know that, for many landlords, unsecured debt often amounts to millions of pounds. Adding to the challenge, there’s frequently a lack of clarity on the number of agreements in place and their total value at any given time. This creates a significant amount of operational waste, slows down income collection, and normalises indebtedness across the customer base. What’s more, as the cost-of-living crisis continues, consistently failing payment agreements can intensify the pressure on tenant relations – leading to an increase in unsustainable tenancies.
Until now, there has been no dedicated technological solution designed to give landlords visibility into both the ‘big picture’ and the finer details – and the associated risk at a patch, area and organisational level – of these outstanding payment agreements. In a sector where it’s rising, landlords need practical solutions to reduce arrears debt through technology that can be deployed quickly and integrated seamlessly.
We continue to see these challenges as a catalyst for rapid and continuous innovation. Agreements Manager, therefore, forms the next logical step for housing income teams and a focused lens in our income suite of products.
Leveraging breakthrough income analytics
Voicescape Agreements Manager is powered by behavioural science, predictive analytics and AI to provide complete visibility and risk profiling. Landlords can thus draft and track agreements tailored to tenants’ needs while aligning with financial KPIs and organisational objectives.
- Dynamic risk profiling driven by AI – Uses Voicescape’s predictive models and machine learning to recommend agreements options to income officers. Landlords can then consult with tenants to formalise agreements based on tailored instalment values and durations.
- Behavioural insights and data analytics of real customer behaviour – Enables landlords to trust and leverage the AI as a decision support system to help triage and categorise agreements, making human oversight central throughout the entire process.
- Automated notifications and other alerts – Ensures continuous tenant engagement at scale while accurately predicting and monitoring the status and progress of every agreement.
- Agreements Manager can be integrated with Caseload Manager or launched within your organisation as a standalone solution.
Leveraging intuitive income analytics, this first-of-its-kind solution will help you build trust with tenants and provide tailored support around repayment agreements – reducing break rates and empowering your customers to become debt-free.
In our next blog post you’ll discover a deeper forensic evaluation of the transformative technical capabilities of Agreements Manager. Can’t wait until then? Book a demo with our team today.
Reduce break rates now, improve financial outcomes for all…
Visit our website to discover how you can reduce more debt with less risk, empower your teams and tenants, and be on the forefront of a better financial future for the entire social housing community.