The challenges taking place across the PropTech space
We look at the various challenges taking place across the PropTech space with insights from Alexander Siedes, CEO and Founder, Homeppl.
One of the top challenges within the PropTech industry includes discrimination within data. We have been joined for a podcast on this subject by Alexander Siedes, CEO and Founder of Homeppl, a company that brings equality of opportunity to people and allows businesses to transact with more consumers safely.
Solving a problem
After changing careers and countries various times, Siedes decided to solve a problem that he experienced. Every single time he relocated from a country or into a new market, Siedes found that he experienced financial discrimination for no good reason. “I was discriminated against because of the way the system works that rely heavily, if not solely on credit reference agencies to assess someone’s risk,” he added.
Companies such as Experian or TransUnion aggregate consumers data by striking commercial agreements with domestic lenders and domestic utility companies. When added to a database, you become invisible, causing you to be flatly discriminated against when you’re trying to access basic products like renting a property and paying for it monthly.
This is why Siedes created Homeppl “so that we can give equality for people, create financial inclusion, with fair access to every single person to be able to choose the financial product that they want based on their true financial abilities.”
Homeppl aggregates the data directly from the consumer and then applies a unique technology to cross-reference and analyze it. Siedes explains that “we mainly talk about our unique fraud detection tests that include real-time decisions of documents and analysis, behavioral analysis, data enrichment, and financial algorithms around the consumers’ transactions over the last 12 months.
The tech at Homeppl looks to achieve two main outcomes. Firstly, they wish to provide great inclusion. “We have more than 96% approval rate, which is 25% higher than any other company out there that does what we do,” said Siedes. Secondly, the tech enables Homeppl to enhance its clients’ protection against fraud and default. He explains, “we have picked up that up to 5% of our client’s assets are subject to fraud, which is one in 20 different properties that they market over there.”
The company allows for people who are deemed subprime, who have odd credit, international or self-employed, to receive fair access and opportunities to get the property they want. At the end of the day, renting a property is equivalent to a basic human right. Siedes strives to ensure that people have the right property that meets their financial abilities and fits their general needs.
Avoiding fraud
Siedes has one message of advice, “use a company that knows what they’re doing, and that needs to be a company that is tech enabled that has the technical solutions to tackle and combat the online fraud that exists.” Most of the players within the industry would rely on a human eye or the naked eye to look at the applicant’s bank statements or pay statements to see whether it has been forged or not. “That’s not the right way of doing it. Unfortunately, that’s how you get to the 0% ability to pick up fraudsters,” explains Siedes.
One of the solutions for this can be an assistant that automatically can look at the metadata and see what was used to create the document, who created it and when it was created, and analyze the domain of people trying to give a reference.
To hear more advice and information on the challenges taking place across the PropTech space, listen to the full podcast here.
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