Giving a voice to landlords and property managers

Michelle Dickens is the CEO of the TPN Credit Bureau, which looks after about 30% of the residential market and 80% of listed funds.

- Timothy Rangongo

In contract theory and economics, information asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party holds more or better information than the other. The lack of a full picture precludes the other party from making accurate decisions.

It is common practice in the rental market for prospective tenants to furnish copies of their bank or income statements that are vetted for affordability when applying for a rental. However, three months’ bank or income statements do not quite provide that full picture, which is where the TPN credit bureau enters.

When one of her tenants was not paying their rent on time in the nineties, Michelle Dickens, CEO of TPN, thought “how do we as an industry share negative experiences about our delinquent tenants with each other?”

The answer to the question led to the birth of a credit bureau with a focus on the rental market.

The TPN Credit Bureau specializes in vetting tenants for rental properties. The dedication to this niche market has allowed it to create specialized systems helping landlords or property managers (including estate agencies) make better decisions on which tenants to place and assisting them in collecting rent each month.

In 1999, the first version of the software was written and TPN went to market in 2000, signing its first deal that May. “The idea was to give a voice to landlords and estate agents,” Dickens tells finweek.

TPN officially registered as a credit bureau just after the promulgation of the National Credit Act in 2005. The business was then pivoted from only collecting negative information to collecting all information on tenants, such as rental payment profiles.