"With the private rental sector now representing 19% of all households in the UK, this new OFSI guidance represents a major shift for the industry"
- Tim Barnett - Credas
Announced by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, new guidance comes into play on 14 May 2025 and will affect the estimated 2.9 million homes rented through letting agents. Letting agents will have to screen all tenants and landlords for potential sanction breaches, resulting in millions of additional checks a year causing a huge disruption within the market.
Ahead of the changes, Credas Technologies has announced that it has launched a suite of products under its new Credas Lettings offering.
Credas Lettings will support letting agents in conducting both tenant and landlord checks to ensure compliance by streamlining the IDV and sanctions screening process. Landlord checks will range from a standard sanctions-only solution to a more enhanced product that includes ID verification, sanctions-only checks, bank account verification, and checks to ensure the Landlord owns the property they are renting. Credas Lettings will also empower agents to easily verify a tenant's right-to-rent and sanction status without needing to run any additional checks.
“With the private rental sector now representing 19% of all households in the UK, this new OFSI guidance represents a major shift for the industry," explained Tim Barnett, CEO at Credas, "Agents must now oversee financial transactions and carefully assess individuals and businesses with more scrutiny. We have created our lettings offering to focus solely on the sanctions capabilities letting agents need, removing the burden on agents.”
One major problem agents will have is their existing book of tenants and landlords. To ensure these tenants and landlords are checked against the sanctions, letting agents can ‘bulk upload’ current tenants and landlords, eliminating the need to contact them directly and saving agents a significant amount of time.
As part of the Credas Lettings solution, agents will benefit from a dedicated lettings portal – including separate branding and segregation of data – to ensure ease of use. This results in easier training, fewer mistakes, and a clear overview of all data and invites for portal admins.
Another element that saves letting agents valuable time is the ability to remediate false positives quickly and efficiently – a potential new challenge for agents when checking for sanctions. Reviewing these false positives is a time-intensive activity, and Credas+ eliminates the time this task takes.
“At Credas, we are dedicated to providing agents with the resources and expertise needed to navigate these changes effectively,” Barnett added. “Alongside time savings, streamlining processes, and removing the risk of false positives, it also gives agents peace of mind that a tenant is not impersonating the landlord and unlawfully renting out a property.”
