Hammock, a new neobank built specifically for landlords, has raised £1 million in seed investment from Fuel Ventures and Ascension Ventures, ahead of the planned launch of its current account in the coming weeks.
The bank's platform aims to provide landlords with a real-time view of their rental properties, tracking payments and expenses and offering reporting on the financial wellbeing of each house or flat.
Previously operating on open banking rails, plugging into landlord's bank accounts to monitor rent collection, Hammock is launching a current account in the coming weeks with a view to expanding into money and lending services.
This industry in the UK is reportedly worth £85 billion a year, buoyed by so-called 'generation rent', with young people likely to live in rented accomodation for far longer than in the past as they struggle to save the necessary funds for a mortgage deposit.
Hammock will be targeting the UK's two million landlords with a promise of saving them time and reducing inefficiencies and uncertainties.
These will have been escalated in recent months owing to government regulation introduced to protect tenants against eviction amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.
Landlords would also have found it harder to fill empty properties as lockdown restrictions placed severe limitations on their ability to conduct viewings.
Among the UK's two million landlords is the Hammock CEO, Manoj Varsani, who describes the headaches caused by rent collection, bookkeeping and so on.
"We wanted to alleviate this by developing new tech that automates the mundane duties of managing property portfolios and provides insight into how well each house or flat is performing," he says.