Innovation Enabled: How We Helped Prep LeaseSurance to Revolutionise SA Rental Property

Advanced risk profiling, accurate pricing and streamlined claims processes – this is how Octoco helped enable LeaseSurance to scale its groundbreaking “no rental deposit” PropTech revolution

LeaseSurance is ushering in a revolution in the South African property industry – a safe, secure and effective way for landlords to do away with rental deposits.

It’s a potential game-changer in a property market where upfront cash deposits present a significant financial hurdle, limiting the pool of prospective tenants and driving up administrative costs for landlords.

Yet, despite the successful validation of LeaseSurance’s innovation, getting it 100% market-ready and prepped to scale required extensive optimisation due to the unique nature of both the industry and the way LeaseSurance needs to deliver its solutions.

This is how we at Octoco helped get LeaseSurance ready to scale…

About LeaseSurance

LeaseSurance is a phenomenally innovative PropTech solution that provides insurance-backed alternatives to traditional cash deposits in the rental property sector.

Founded in 2021 with a team of experienced professionals in property management, LeaseSurance addresses the financial and administrative burdens associated with tenant deposits for landlords and tenants alike, namely:

  • Financial barriers: Cash deposits pose a high upfront cost for tenants and often force landlords to reduce requirements or offer concessions.

  • Coverage gaps: Typical deposits rarely cover unpaid rent, utilities, and damages, leading to losses and disputes when tenants leave.

  • Administrative burdens: Managing deposits, calculating interest, and processing refunds add considerable workload for property managers.

In response, LeaseSurance developed a comprehensive insurance model where, instead of paying a rental deposit, the tenant agrees to a small additional fee, paid monthly with their rental, which is then used to purchase the landlord adequate coverage in the event of damages.

It’s a much sweeter and simpler solution, removing the cost barrier and administrative burdens all at once, while ensuring adequate risk cover. 

And LeaseSurance was able to quickly secure Bryte as the underwriter, with their market being B2B: the coverage is for the landlord, not individual tenants, allowing LeaseSurance to target large established landlords and property managers with a large footprint.

Critical Success Metrics

In order to build a viable and scalable solution that would be attractive enough in the real world, LeaseSurance needed to keep costs low and provide real value to landlords (LeaseSurance also offers them secure, reinsured policies tailored to their portfolios).

The solution thus needed to deliver a few key features:

1. Data-Driven Risk Profiling

LeaseSurance required advanced data analytics to assess tenant behaviour to be able to customise pricing, to manage risk and ensure a sustainable claims ratio.

2. Low-Cost, High-Volume Administration

A key drawcard for the tenants would be the cost reduction, so margins need to be as low as possible, meaning LeaseSurance would only be able to function with significant uptake. This means administration costs would have to be kept at an absolute minimum, requiring automated technology-driven workflows to streamline policy management, reducing administrative costs and supporting scalability.

Starting a Revolution

After initial successful validation and pilots with a technology partner, it was clear that LeaseSurance was onto a winner. 

Scaling it, however, would require truly robust risk-profiling tech and remarkable admin automation, which is why LeaseSurance founder Paul Schaefer brought in the Octoco team in March 2024…

Challenges & Opportunities

LeaseSurance needed a robust system to calculate risk profiles for buildings, accurately price premiums, and streamline the claims process for landlords implementing its deposit alternative solution. 

When the Octoco team joined, the system needed core functionality, automation, and a user-friendly claims filing process.

Key challenges included:

1. Risk Profiling & Premium Calculation

LeaseSurance required more precise risk assessment capabilities for each property, enabling tailored premium pricing and comprehensive coverage options for landlords.

2. Claims Management Complexity

The solution needed to allow landlords to file claims quickly, with automated reconciliation of tenant transactions to determine claim amounts. This required seamless categorisation of diverse data points, reducing the manual workload in claims submission and calculation.

3. Inherited Technical Limitations

When Octoco stepped in, LeaseSurance’s previous technical partner had left a solution with an extremely high operational load and limited scalability, mainly due to data Import Inefficiencies.

The platform was initially designed to process monthly Excel spreadsheets from a specific property management software solution. The spreadsheets contained essential data for buildings, leases, and tenant transactions, stored in an S3 bucket (an external storage resource offered by AWS), and the data was pulled from there via an API.

The problem with this is that it causes:

  • Performance lag: The import process was slow, often timing out before completion.

  • Data inconsistencies: Errors in file formats, incorrect filenames and incomplete transactions frequently disrupted imports.

  • Reliability concerns: Monthly uploads introduced a single point of failure, impacting data accuracy and freshness.

Octoco’s Solutions for LeaseSurance

To ensure data-driven profiling and attain the level of admin automation required, Octoco undertook a full-scale rebuild, ensuring long-term scalability, efficiency, and reliability. Working with Albert van Urk, LeaseSurance’s appointed CTO, Octoco structured solutions into key phases, each aimed at overhauling specific pain points in data import, claims management, and overall platform functionality.

Octoco began with an extensive scoping phase to set a sustainable foundation. By focusing on scalability and flexibility, they outlined a clear roadmap for immediate and long-term needs, avoiding short-sighted solutions that would limit future growth.

Specific steps included:

1. API Integration and Data Import Overhaul

Replacing the cumbersome, error-prone Excel imports, Octoco leveraged the management platform (MRI Property Central)’s API to pull real-time data directly into LeaseSurance’s database. 

This transformation enhanced data freshness and consistency, eliminating the previous single point of failure associated with manual uploads. 

Key actions included:

  • Endpoint selection & data mapping: Octoco reviewed API documentation to map essential data fields (buildings, leases, transactions) to LeaseSurance’s database for accurate integration.

  • Parallel processing: Using AWS Lambda and SQS, Octoco enabled scalable, serverless data processing to handle high volumes without bottlenecks.

  • Automated data retrieval: Lambda functions were scheduled nightly to update data automatically, improving timeliness and reducing manual effort.

2. Enhanced Data Processing and Claims Automation

To support automated claims processing, Octoco created a Claims Portal that uses data-driven automation, providing landlords with streamlined claim submissions and real-time transaction reconciliation. 

Core features of the portal include:

  • Automated lease management: Lambda functions automatically manage lease activations, track tenant vacancies, and calculate cover amounts for waiver leases.

  • Comprehensive claims management: The system automates claim calculations, expiration tracking, and payment processing, minimizing manual input. Key claim states, such as Approve, Reject, Hold, and Pay, are managed through an intuitive interface that displays real-time financial calculations.

  • Data export and payment processing: The portal allows for easy export of claim data and transaction reports, while templated payment files facilitate efficient payouts.

3. User-Friendly Interfaces and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Octoco built user interfaces that make complex data accessible and easy to manage. 

Additionally, a multi-tiered role system ensures secure, role-specific access to data:

  • Defined user roles: Each role has specific permissions, enhancing security and streamlining user experiences.

  • Customisable search, filtering, and sorting: Interfaces were equipped with robust filtering options to help users quickly locate claims, transactions, and balances.

All in all, these steps enabled LeaseSurance to make more accurate and precise risk and pricing decisions, with significantly streamlined claims and admin processes – vital for the company’s sustainability.

Implementation

LeaseSurance started conversations with Octoco in January 2024, and after initial scoping, work started in March 2024 and was completed in August 2024.

That’s a total of 5 months to make a big difference in LeaseSurance’s ability to service existing clients, take on new clients and be able to scale the solution in a broader market.

Although this is only Phase 1 of the entire planned project, LeaseSurance has seen some tremendous results…

The Results

“The results are immediately visible to us working with the system,” says LeaseSurance founder Paul Schaefer. “The quality and capability of our product is now at a whole new level.

“We are able to service our existing clients much more accurately, with more speed and with the level of ease and automation that makes it financially viable for us.

“In particular, we’re able to help existing clients as they increase their portfolios much faster and more efficiently than before. And onboarding new clients is much easier and more efficient.”

Although Paul knew from the start that they’d need to rebuild, he says that it was definitely in their favour to use Octoco for it specifically. And, in their case, one of the shareholders had worked with Octoco on another project in the past, and recommended us for LeaseSurance.

“The most important aspect of dealing with Octoco, for me and my team, was that they were able to learn our business, inside-out. They’re not just another agency or tech company that builds flashy things, they take the time to fully understand your business’ needs and then recommend solid solutions to get the right things in place.

“From the first few meetings, I could sense they were a really good fit for us, and it turned out very well. I can highly recommend Octoco for when you are serious about tech-enabled solutions.”

Need help streamlining your tech product? Book a strategy session with Octoco’s expert team for tailored CTO support, hardware and software engineering.