Challenge

To approve financially qualified renters, property management companies must be sure that the information they receive from applicants is accurate and authentic. As a platform designed to improve the rental process for both parties, Findigs wanted to give renters and property managers a fast and secure screening experience they could trust.

To help property managers make fast, confident decisions, Findigs needed to provide a holistic view of a renter’s financial health, including income sources and cash flow, as well as a way to verify their identity.

Typically, renters must exit an application flow to log in to their bank accounts, download all their financial data, and then manually upload it to an application platform. Findigs wanted to streamline the flow to make the application process as frictionless as possible.

And to ensure both owners and renters felt comfortable using the platform and confident in its security and accuracy, winning users’ trust was a top priority for Findigs.

Solution

From its launch, Findigs worked with Stripe, first implementing Stripe Checkout to accept payments. With an existing track record as a trusted partner, Stripe was a natural fit to help the company solve its need for reliable access to an applicant’s rental payment history and income so Findigs could make the rental process faster and safer.

Findigs used Stripe Financial Connections to seamlessly connect to renters’ financial accounts. Renters simply link their financial accounts during the application process and grant access to customer-permissioned data.

With a single Stripe integration and embedded authentication, Financial Connections allows Findigs to verify bank account ownership, check balances to confirm that users have sufficient funds, obtain data about renters’ cash flow and income, and more – all from a broad set of financial institutions.

Findigs knew renters had to trust the platform with sensitive information related to their housing search and wanted a partner with a recognisable brand associated with privacy.

“Providing a company with access to your personal financial data requires a lot of trust,” says Sebastian Hart, director of finance and business development at Findigs. “By partnering with a brand that consumers can recognise, like Stripe, we can help them feel comfortable sharing information, knowing it will be secure and protected.”

Results

By facilitating the secure sharing of customers’ financial data, Findigs has been able to streamline its income and identity verification process, reduce fraud, and power an underwriting engine designed to make renting as fast and easy as booking a hotel room.

14% increase in conversions and 100,000+ monthly connections

Since implementing Financial Connections, Findigs has seen a 14% uplift in people completing the process to verify their bank information, resulting in more than 100,000 bank connections per month. The company attributes this increase to applicant trust in how data is collected and transparently used during its quick and reliable account-linking process.

“We have a vision to create a magical consumer experience where everything is integrated and happening behind the scenes,” Hart says. “That’s what we want to do from an underwriting perspective, and Stripe enables us to create that experience.”

Connectivity to 90%+ of US bank accounts to promote financial inclusivity

It’s one thing to verify someone’s income when they have one job and one payroll source each month – but for freelancers and other gig workers with multiple income streams, this process gets more complicated. With Financial Connections, Findigs’s platform can easily obtain a more comprehensive view of an applicant’s income to assess whether they can pay the rent. Findigs instantly connects to over 90% of US bank accounts and reliably retrieves data at the user’s request, helping the company underwrite more people and expand its pool of renters. It’s a simple way to level the playing field for all types of income earners and increase access to housing.

Hundreds of hours in time savings

Compared to manually reviewing customers’ bank statements to verify income, Findigs’s support and underwriting teams save hundreds of hours each month with dependable access to real-time bank account data. This allows the company to focus on improving their core business of underwriting.