Cios Verify was created with the hopes of streamlining the rental process for both landlords and tenants alike
Alongside co-founder Victor Peter, CEO Terry Wang launched Cios Verify on Oct. 6 — a free tool to help renters, particularly those who don’t have the credit history or experience that many more-practiced renters would, get pre-approved by landlords for rentals in their community. Their mission: to help make the renting process easier for everyone.
Through a partnership with fintech provider Plaid, Cios — a spin on the Irish word for to rent — Verify matches tenants with local landlords based on their preferences and proven financial budgets for housing. It allows tenants to create and access verified reports by connecting their bank accounts with Cios.
According to Wang, trust is at the heart of the system.
“If people trusted each other more on that side, we could expedite so many of these processes,” said Wang in an interview with the Fulcrum. “We want to create more trust on that side, the benefit of both tenants and for landlords.”
Cios Verify works by having prospective tenants connect their bank or financial institutions. Based on your monthly income, Verify pre-approves tenants and securely shares results with local landlords and rental owners.
By using financial statements instead of solely employment history, Cios Verify hopes to make it easier for those who earn their income through non-traditional means of freelancing, contracting, and self-employment to find rental properties in their area.
Wang hopes the new tool will help streamline the rental process, and help tenants and landlords alike sleep easier knowing it has been verified by the service.
“All this data is out there, it’s available, right? Why are we filling out these forms? And why are we going through these processes? And why are we making landlords and tenants spend hours on this stuff?” Wang explained. “Rental applications… really, the thing is, you spend hours on them and at the end of the day, they’re not really they’re not actually very effective.”
Currently, Wang estimates the process for approval and matching tenants with landlords through Cios Verify will take roughly 30 days. Long term, they hope to bring this down to within a week.
“Within the next year, we want to shorten that data, but then five days, ideally within one,” said wang. “What we’ll be able to do with this verification product, hopefully, is save a lot of that middle paperwork step.”
Wang graduated from the Telfer School of Management at the U of O in 2021 with a Bachelor of Commerce, and partnered with the U of O’s Startup Garage, started Cios alongside CTO Peter in early 2022.
For now, the Verify service is available in English nationwide, and the co-founders hope to have French support available sometime in the near future.
