BREAKING PROPERTY NEWS – 25/10/2021
Daily bite-sized proptech and real estate news in partnership with Proptech-X. Today, Stanton looks at the MyIdentity trust scheme and Halifax’s new mortgage rates
Digital companies back MyIdentity trust scheme
Five identity service providers and one hub service have committed to the new MyIdentity trust scheme to make home buying and selling in the UK a safe digital process.
The five identity service providers are: Digidentity, Nuggets, OBiD, Thirdfort, and Yoti. Their involvement assures consumers will have fully inclusive choices to prove their identity.
The hub service provider is Mvine whose involvement assures the technical integration throughout the pilot.
The pilot runs from November 2021 to August 2022 and places the new scheme in pole position of private sector digital identity schemes in the UK.
The trust scheme, called MyIdentity, is set to become the central hub for consumers, to help them prove who they are once only in a secure digital way. Under the scheme, home buyers and sellers will no longer be repeatedly asked to give their details to all the parties involved in the chain of transactions.
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The move means quicker completions and more control over how they share their identity details and who they share their identity details with.
Stuart Young, managing director at Etive Limited, the company responsible for coordinating the scheme, said:
“The MyIdentity trust scheme has attracted five of the leading identity service providers to work together during the pilot. I expect we will be able to welcome more identity service providers into the pilot in the new year.”
“In addition, for the pilot of the MyIdentity trust scheme, we have secured the use of proven hub technology able to seamlessly connect the identity service providers and participants together.
This production grade technology provided by a British firm, Mvine Limited, means the pilot can focus on solving the needs of the users of the scheme rather than spending time ‘fixing the plumbing’ of the information technology” said Stuart Young.
The Residential Property industry, made up of estate agents, solicitors and conveyancers, financial intermediaries and mortgage lenders will recognise MyIdentity as the acceptable source of identity verification because everyone will work to one set of Government-backed standards.
For the Residential Property industry, the combined effect of reducing the number of identity verifications that a consumer has to go through means happier customers and lighter administration processes together with a better way of mitigating the risk of property and mortgage fraud.
Work on MyIdentity started in 2019 with input and consultation from over 100 organisations including the Government, regulators and representative bodies from the estate agency, legal, financial services, and identity service providers.
Stuart Young is a veteran of the space, founding Etive Technologies, a digital data management solutions company, simplifying digital identity management for residential property sales and land and property information. This is achieved through the Digital Log Book® and Property Log Book®.
Etive are designing and implementing the digital identity trust scheme for the home buying and selling process for England & Wales, known as MyIdentity®.
In June 2021 the scheme announced that Estate Agents, Licensed Conveyancers and Mortgage intermediaries operating in Chiswick, Battersea, Clapham, Putney, Wimbledon, Richmond, Kew, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Harrogate, and York are to be the first to benefit this year from trails of a new trust scheme to make home buying and selling a safe and secure digital process.
These geographical areas have been agreed by the trial participants in the Residential Property industry. Further areas may be added in 2022.
Halifax now lends at 5.5x income to borrowers with 25% deposit
In response to the spiralling cost of property, the lender Halifax is now offering a mortgage with a multiplier of five and a half times a person’s income, as long as they have at least a 25% deposit and want to borrow between £75,000 to a million pounds, and they also earn £75,000 or over.
Halifax have also increased their lending criteria across their lending book, for others on salaries of £75,000 plus. For example, borrowers who had in the past been able to enjoy multipliers of 4.5 times their income, can now have 4.49 times income as long as they require mortgages for half a million to £750,000.
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