FOI and Housing Associations

The Freedom of Information Act (FOI) came into force in 2005 and demands that individuals have the right to information, the right to confidentiality and the right to effective administration.

As such the act means that members of the public can demand information at any given time and it must be readily accessible. Considering today’s government is planning to consult on extending the FOI still further, this should give those Housing Associations with limited grip on their documents serious cause for concern.

A housing association typically holds vast amounts of information about each resident – past and present – and each property, making management of the sheer number of documents a trial in itself. It is therefore critical that a system and a set of robust processes are in place to manage such information, allowing administrators easy access to relevant material as requests are made.

Many housing associations are not however sufficiently equipped to easily produce information as requested, and are falling short when it is being demanded. Not being able to produce such information sends out the clear message that Housing Associations are not forward looking, not up to date and are simply inefficient when it comes to the management of documents. Above this, the simple time cost of manually trawling through documents in order to satisfy an FOI request can be enormous.

Housing Associations must realise that it isn’t difficult, costly or disruptive to manage information in such a way that enables ready compliance with the Act – even if the legislation is extended. Culturally it doesn’t have to be difficult either – in a society when information is readily available (the Google Corporation is after all now a verb), it will be nothing short of an anachronism that any organisation cannot access the right information immediately.

Housing Associations must therefore evaluate their processes ahead of more stringent requirements coming into force. The question is not just whether or not the FOI is appropriate to Housing Associations. In a way this doesn’t matter – from an operational and forward-looking perspective, the ability to comply should be a given. 

Further Reading:

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/blogs/data-overload/6519921.article 

The Invu solution for Housing Associations - Adactus

The latest edition of Housing Technology has picked up on Adactus Housing and its use of Invu. (Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/Adactus-in-HT.)   This Housing Association has over 12,000 housing stock in the North West and recognised a compelling need to improve value for money, improved service and control amongst other issues.  Remedying these issues revolved around document processing and with Invu’s growing reputation and adoption in the HA sector Invu was selected. Adactus pinpointed the Finance department as the first port of call for a multi-staged project across the group. It’s much more than a simple secure repository – automated workflows, intelligent content extraction and integration with the finance system make this a pro-active solution. The Invu deployment has been a close engagement and a genuine collaboration to ensure deliver of a solution which fits the Adactus ambitions.

The finance process has been streamlined to the point where authorisation is quicker and matching against the finance system (QLf) is straightforward. There’s no measures yet on how much more speedy authorisation is but the level of control on exposure levels is much firmer now and this is a major step forward. There’s more details in the Adactus case study and we’re delighted that the Adactus solution is attracting the interest of other HAs in similar circumstances. It’s a project which has created a pattern which other HAs have now taken up and these are now being rolled out. Others have been keen to follow and we hope to see many more.  

If you’re interested in finding out how the Adactus solution might work for you then please get in touch: http://www.invu.net/about-us.aspx 

The Mortgage Market Review & You

As the governance, risk and compliance bandwagon rolls on, and the ongoing need to evidence suitable ‘Know Your Customer’-oriented processes, so the Mortgage Market Review (MMR) consultation paper arrived in late December.

But for the typical IFA, what does it mean to day-to-day processes and workflows? Following the MMR, the ability to build and assess a full and complete profile of a potential borrower in order to ascertain the risk to the lender becomes a necessity. And rightly so.

After all, squeezing interest rates and deposit thresholds in order to mitigate against the damage caused by unexpected losses will only get the lender so far in the current economic climate.

Know Your Customer is increasingly being about understanding the risk of potential customer’s appetites. However, lenders should be aware that when MMR legislation is blended with Anti-Money Laundering legislation will surely mean that it is only a matter of time before there is a high profile case where the lender is seen to be misleading borrowers. As a result, the manner in which documents are created, edited, stored and presented is absolutely crucial – in fact, business critical.

Brokers, wealth managers and other investment houses are increasingly putting systems in place to ensure that relevant checks are not only being made with regard to records, content and document management, but that also provide financial organisations with security against auditors and any potential customer complaints.

As with much of corporate best practice, it is considered a nice-to-have until legislation insists upon it. Well, in the case of IFAs and best practice document processing, that time has surely arrived.

Document & Content Management for Housing Associations: A White Paper

Most of the white papers we’ve produced to date have been generic in kind – that’s not to say that they’ve not had focus, but they’ve been as applicable to a manufacturer as to a constructor or a charity. We’re taking a slightly different tack with the latest off the production line. This is sector specific , notably Housing Associations and other Social Housing providers. That’s not to say that some of the points we make aren’t valid elsewhere of course, but the focus is on a group of organisations which is of increasing importance to Invu. The number of HAs that we deal with continues to rise and rise.

The Social Housing sector faces all manner of pressures, from keeping costs down to service levels to financial control. Document and content management can play their part in alleviating these pressures by acting as so much more than simple passive repositories. This is mature technology which can be optimised to deliver even more value and this paper sets out to explore the options. It’s borne out of our experience to date and, in particular, where we’ve been back to existing customers to explore how they can benefit from work we’ve done for other HAs with the latest versions and technologies at our disposal. For example, the Adactus invoice processing, workflow and QLF integration project has delivered a solution which is of genuine interest to many other HAs. Great news and those customers taking the solution on board will see real benefits, from ROI, service level improvements and that critical financial control.  

Why not download the whitepaper http://www.invu.net/info/whitepapers.aspx and see if your organisation can reap the benefits too?