Left to right: Eason Tee, Chief Strategy Officer of iBilik; Seng Hee Lee, CEO of iBilik; Erick Hamburger, Group CEO of CTOS Digital and Tracy Gan, COO of Data Systems.

The wholly owned subsidiary of CTOS Digital Berhad, CTOS Data Systems Sdn Bhd, recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with iBilik.com, Malaysia’s largest online accommodation provider for room rental, homestays and short-term rentals.

The MoU will ease the vetting process on legitimate landlords and tenants by integrating a number of CTOS products into the iBilik.com platform such as CTOS eKYC digital onboarding solution, CTOS reports and CTOS tenant screening.

This collaboration will also see iBilik.com contributing tenants’ payment history to CTOS to better showcase prompt payment behaviour and help minimize thin file issues. With most iBilik.com tenants being students and young renters, the positive rent payment records will help them build credit history to access credit facilities.

“Initiating change through big data and digital solutions is the mantra of CTOS Digital,” explained Erick Hamburger, Group CEO of CTOS Digital Berhad. “This partnership provides a much-needed extra security for tenants and landlords alike. From a greater perspective, this also allows consumers a new route to building a credit profile, reducing the number of Malaysians who struggle to obtain credit from financial institutions due to a lack of credit history. At CTOS, we are always finding new ways to demonstrate responsible financial behavior so that lenders can confidently extend credit to more consumers.”

Mass digitalisation of the economy in the last few years and the pandemic have led to the majority of house-hunting being carried out online, which causes new issues to arise.

Recent news reports have shown that scams involving illegitimate properties for rent are on the rise, and Malaysia has notably had issues with landlords reticent to let out their properties for fear of non-payment or damage by rogue tenants.

The integration of CTOS eKYC will allay these fears, as both tenants and landlords will have the certainty that the person that they are dealing with has been verified as legitimate. At the same time, CTOS credit reports will allow landlords to vet prospective tenants and their ability to maintain rental payments.

Lee Seng Hee, Chief Executive Officer of iBilik.com, concurred, stating “To be the preferred choice for customers, we are constantly innovating to redefine standards within the industry. By ensuring the rental process is quick, easy and safe through the inclusion of CTOS services, we can look forward not only to serving current landlords and tenants but also those who previously felt reluctant to rent in view of the associated risks. With this collaboration, our IoT-enabled end-to-end rental management system has now become even more seamless.”

(10 November 2022)