workingtogetherHomeLet Agent’s Newsletter Issue 13 2009

Tenant’s Contents Insurance + winnersOn to a winner with HomeLet

Rent Guarantee renewals on ConnectMaking it easier for you to do business

Email a reference to your tenant via ConnectTenant applications easier than ever

Your new Literature Catalogue enclosedIt’s free and easy to plan your sales promotions with eBrochures

Exciting changes ahead…

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Welcome to this edition of Working Together, the HomeLet newsletter. This includes our regular feature by HomeLet Managing Director, John Boyle, which focuses on the current lettings market and details exciting changes we’re making within HomeLet. We welcome any feedback that you may have on any of our features. We take all of your comments into consideration so please don’t hesitate to send your thoughts to marketing@homelet.co.uk

This edition...

In the last newsletter I mentioned that we’re making a range of improvements to enhance the service that we provide to you. There’s a similar theme in this edition of the newsletter, which only reiterates the fact that we’re fully committed to evolving our business and providing you with innovative solutions for your business. The changes we’re making range from the release of new products to new referencing criteria. At HomeLet we’ve developed a structure that allows us to easily implement these changes, changes which often come about following feedback from you, our customers. We understand just how important listening to your feedback is, that’s why we’ve been talking to some of you to gauge your experience of our service. This helps us to understand where we can improve and where changes have made a big difference.

We’re currently making a number of improvements to Connect – the online system you use for referencing and insurance. One major change that you’re hopefully aware of is that you can now renew your Rent Guarantees online via Connect, which has already received some excellent feedback. This facility has certainly made the Rent Guarantee renewals process more manageable and accessible. This in turn makes it easier for you to offer your landlords an improved service, adding value to your business proposition. In the past you would have needed to email, call or fax us, but now Rent Guarantee renewals are instantaneous – see page four for more details.

With many tenants continuing to struggle with their financial obligations Rent Guarantee is rightly becoming less of a ‘nice to have’ and more of a necessity, especially for landlords with geared investments. Many landlords who’ve struggled with arrears in the past know that it’s not just lost rent, it’s also the time and cost of obtaining vacant possession of their property. Although there are predictions that the economy could move out of negative growth in early 2010, economists are warning that the rate of unemployment could take up to five years to recover, so it’s still going to be a tough time for tenants.

I regularly see emails and letters from our customers that have been sent to our Claims and Legal team which thank them for the exceptional service that they’ve received. In return the quality service that we provide reflects back to you. By providing Rent Guarantee you’re able to offer your own customers more and ultimately add value to your own service proposition.

As we enter the fourth quarter of the year it’s expected that sales activity in the housing market will continue to improve. This will no doubt continue to influence the private residential sector as more reluctant landlords chose to re-enter the sales market rather than renew the tenancies that they currently have in place. A fall in the number of rental properties coming on to the market could lead to less choice for tenants and those who are priced off the housing ladder.

There will be regional variations but many areas could see a marked increase in rents as lettings stock decreases.

Another implication of increased home sales could be a slight reduction in competition, as estate agents shift their focus away from lettings back to sales. There’s no doubt that some estate agents will choose to leave lettings behind but many will continue offering both sales and lettings services. Competition will always remain high for letting agents and you need to offer a service that provides landlords and tenants with value for money. Don’t forget that our products can help at a time when many businesses are feeling the squeeze by adding value to your bottom line – see page two for details of our successful agents. We’re delivering more commission than ever on Tenant’s Contents Insurance +. So if you’re not already, why aren’t you offering Tenant’s Contents insurance to your tenants?

Exciting changes ahead...

John Boyle,Managing Director of HomeLet

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Welcome to this edition of Working Together, the HomeLet newsletter. This includes our regular feature by HomeLet Managing Director, John Boyle, which focuses on the current lettings market and details exciting changes we’re making within HomeLet. We welcome any feedback that you may have on any of our features. We take all of your comments into consideration so please don’t hesitate to send your thoughts to marketing@homelet.co.uk

John Boyle,Managing Director of HomeLet

Tenant’s Contents Insurance + Winners

It’s been three months since we launched our new insurance product for tenants - Tenant’s Contents Insurance + and it really seems to be working well for you. The added protection this product offers your tenants and sharers along with reviewed pricing and postcode areas has been a hit all round.

With Tenant’s Contents Insurance - size really doesn’t matter! Only complete around 14 references a month? If only half of your tenants buy our insurance you could earn over £1,900 in commission over 12 months.*

Or, if you’re one of our larger customers you could easily be earning that every month* – one of the Letting Agents who took part in our Tenant’s Contents challenge has done just that!

Why not try your hand at incorporating Tenant’s Contents Insurance + sales into your processes? It really could be easier than you think. If you feel you and your team could benefit from some training on how to incorporate the sales into your process, contact your HomeLet representative today.

Plus, don’t forget that there is a range of leaflets and brochures to help you promote Tenant’s Contents Insurance + available on eBrochures, HomeLet’s online literature ordering system. See the enclosed literature catalogue for more details.

* Please note, the amounts quoted are based on Premier Agents who receive 25% commission. The amounts quoted are the total you can expect to receive for a 12 month policy, however if your tenant pays for their policy in monthly instalments, that’s how you’ll receive payment from us.

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In June and July we set some of our agents a challenge to improve the number of Tenant’s Contents policies they sold over a period of six weeks; we set the bar and asked each of the agents to go above and beyond the sales they’d made in the six weeks previous to the campaign. Across the board there were some significant increases in the number of policies sold and working insurance sales into your process obviously works for many of you. It can be really simple, so if you’d like some ideas on how this could work for you, just contact your HomeLet representative.

With a team night out on the cards courtesy of HomeLet each of our selected agents worked hard ensuring they were

in the running. Each region of the UK covered by one of our Account Managers had a winner and Lighthouse Property Services in Lincoln were the lucky winners for Caroline Harrison our East Midlands Key Account Director.

Lighthouse Director Jacqui Todd said: “We’re delighted with this new product from HomeLet and are looking forward to our night out courtesy of them. The fact that we’ve managed to win this incentive just goes to show that many tenants find this a valuable necessity in today’s cash-conscious climate.”

Pictured above from left to right: Fiona Jenks – Lettings Negotiator, Caroline Harrison - HomeLet Key Account Director and Jacqui Todd - Office Manager.

We’ve been listening to you and made a few more changes to Connect to improve the service that you receive. We know that even small changes can have a big impact on our referencing service, so we’re continually implementing changes to increase the efficiency of Connect and to make it easier for you to use.

Here’s a summary of just some of our most recent improvements…

Information pages – To make things easier all of our information pages, such as policy summaries and application forms, now open in a new window. This means that you can view, print or save them and then close the window - without leaving Connect.

We’ve also altered the size of the information boxes so you can now enter as much information as possible and let us know about the things you think will be relevant to each application you make.

Connect icon on your desktop – Did you know that you can have a Connect icon on your desktop and log in from there quickly and easily every time you need to use Connect?

If you’d like to know how to do this please speak to your HomeLet representative who’ll be more than happy to help, alternatively call our friendly technical support team on 0845 345 2348.

Postcodes – Many of you have told us that you’d like to be able to quickly and easily check missing or new postcodes to help you find an address. We’ve now added a direct link in Connect to the Royal Mail website. This means that if you enter a postcode that we don’t recognise or if a tenant has missed their postcode, you can search Royal Mail to find the right one.

If you find a postcode that we’ve not got on Connect, but that appears on Royal Mail please call us on 0845 111 2222 and we’ll add it to our system.

Completing a reference the easy way! – To make it even easier to log an application through Connect and to save you time, you can now send an application to the tenant by email. To do this you simply fill in some details on the property to let and then click on ‘email to applicant’ in the drop down menu. This allows them to fill out their details online saving you time and is ideal when prospective tenants can’t make it in to your office.

Coming soon… Just some of the things you’ve asked us for!

Back button – You’ll be able to go back out of the screen you’re working on to amend information on previous pages. Simple but effective!Email Assessor – When you have information such as scanned images of payslips, you’ll now be able to send these attachments via the email assessor on Connect as well as dropping us a message about an ongoing reference.Printing application forms – You’ll be able to print the details of each applicant entered via the tenant summary page this is to avoid the tenant having to complete an application form, allowing your tenant to sign whilst they’re in the office with you - making it quicker and easier to complete your applications.Automatic online Case Complete Form – When you complete an insurance policy through Connect if you’re an Appointed Representative, you’ll now be automatically prompted to complete an electronic Case Complete Form.

We’ll keep you posted about these new changes and welcome feedback to help us improve on our service. So, please contact us today, by emailing customerfeedback@homelet.co.uk with your comments and any suggestions that you have.

Connect - We’re continually making improvements

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Pictured above from left to right: Fiona Jenks – Lettings Negotiator, Caroline Harrison - HomeLet Key Account Director and Jacqui Todd - Office Manager.

Rent Guarantee renewals on Connect

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Great News - You can now manage your Rent Guarantee renewals through Connect, this means that you can:u view all your upcoming renewals u renew your Rent Guarantee policies online u instantly receive renewal certificates u lapse a policy on expiry, if you know cover is no longer required

We love to hear from you!

Your feedback is very useful, so please speak to us!

Following your feedback about recent changes to processes and products within HomeLet we’d like to ensure we continually improve the products and services we offer you. So, from now on we’re going to regularly call a select number of agents, tenants and landlords every month to understand how our changes affect them and help to improve the service they receive from us.

Our customer care team will make contact with a small random selection of customers shortly after they have spoken to us or transacted with us to ensure that

we get feedback from their most recent experience with the HomeLet team, this allows us to understand the problems faced by our customers and to make swift tactical and longer term changes, as a result improving the service.

So, even if you don’t receive a phone call from us, but feel like you’d like to let us know about the service you recently received from HomeLet or any of our products and services then contact your HomeLet representative or email customerfeedback@homelet.co.uk

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Nicola Leaney from Orange Property Management says:

The introduction of the new facility has simplified the renewals process for us. It makes it much easier for us to incorporate Rent Guarantee renewals into our own process and offer our landlords extended protection. In the past we’d have to wait for an email but now we can instantly renew policies and then save or print off renewal certificates. We can also view all of our up coming renewals through Connect making it easier for us to manage and plan when we need to contact our

landlords about their renewals.

To help you make the most of this great new feature we recently emailed you a useful help guide, if you’ve not received the help guide or have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact one of our Rent Guarantee renewal experts on 0845 142 0264.

To make sure you receive important information from us why not add our email address, info@homeletnews.com to your Safe Senders list? Look at our article on page three to see about our other improvements to Connect!

HomeLet is a trading name of Barbon Insurance Group Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Registered in England number 3135797. Registered office address: 4-9 Highview, High Street, Bordon, Hampshire. GU35 0AX

You’ll remember in the last edition of the newsletter that we told you we’d changed all our 0870 telephone numbers to 0845 numbers. Just before we switch off all our old numbers we thought we’d remind you of the new contact numbers.

Referencing helpline: 0845 111 2222Referencing fax number: 0845 142 0265Insurance helpline: 0845 117 6000Rent Guarantee Renewals: 0845 142 0264Rent Guarantee helpline: 0845 111 2222 Rent Guarantee claims line: 0845 155 6499Landlord’s and Tenant’s Insurance claims: 0845 112 0492Emergency Assistance claims line: 0845 113 9191Technical support team: 0845 345 2348Compliance helpline: 0845 113 9015New Agent line: 0845 155 7999

If you still have any of our old telephone numbers then please ensure that you update your phone lists or speed dials, we’d hate to miss your call.

Why not cut out this section and keep it as a handy reference?

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Literature OrderingWith this issue of Working Together, we’ve also included a copy of our literature catalogue to remind you about the full range of flyers, postcards, brochures and leaflets which are available to HomeLet agents free of charge.

Don’t forget – you can earn up to 25% commission by promoting HomeLet’s insurance products, so ordering free literature and running your own campaign could be the perfect way of creating a new income stream for your business. Or why not encourage your staff to get involved and let your commission pay for your office Christmas Party this year!

Re f e r e n c i n g u p d a t eAs you know we work hard to ensure that your references are returned to you as quickly as possible. In the last customer survey the majority of our agents listed ‘speed’ as the most important factor when it comes to referencing. So we’ve been doing everything we can to make sure that our turn-around times are quicker than ever before. But, to keep you up to date on how we’re doing here are some key figures on our completion rates:

91% 78% of all references are completed of all references are completed within 72 hours within 6 working hours

Both of these figures include Comprehensive references and references that are sent to us by fax. Remember that on average customers who use Connect to process references receive their referencing reports a full four hours before those who use fax to process their references.

Have you switched to Connect yet? Look at our article on page four to see how Connect has improved recently.

Rent Guarantee renewals on Connect

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We love to hear from you!

Have you got our number?

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