Our team
James Owusu
Founder & CEO
Josef Van Niekerk
Head Of Software Engineering
Yazad Bajina
Business Development Director
About Us
"The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking."
Building Trust One Check At A Time
By now, you know how tedious the process of confirming your identity and financial ability for a property transaction is. You need to provide identity documentation and bank statements so often, it is mind-numbing, to say the least, and email simply doesn’t cut it anymore.
So, there is a better way to do this. Just imagine a process where all your information is kept securely and confidentially while, at the same time, providing the other party to the transaction with the necessary comfort that you are who you say you are and proving you can complete the transaction.
Fortunately, this process already exists. We know because we built it. We build it by using feedback from people who often do this like tenants, landlords, buyers, and sellers. They must provide some form of identity confirmation and bank statements to several parties throughout an entire property transaction. And they are not the only ones.
Just think about the last time you had to provide proof of your identity to someone and share your bank statements. We built this for you.
Our Values
Integrity
We place integrity first in whatever we do. As such, we always act with integrity in our interactions with both internal and external stakeholders.
Innovation
Whether we create a new product, solve a problem for a customer, or help a member of the team, we love to innovate in everything we do.
Trust
We strive to build trust with everyone we interact with and communicate our intentions clearly to reach mutually beneficial outcomes.
Simplicity
We don’t use jargon and we put ourselves in our customers’ and partners' shoes to ensure the message we want to share is clear and simple.
Our Timeline
Rebrand
Armed with feedback from Estate Agents and partners, we decided to expand our verification checks to cover the property industry. These checks include ID verification, AML checks, Land Registry confirmation, credit history, financial checks and more. We rebranded to Checkboard to hone in on the broad capabilities of our checks.
01 June 2021
Fundraise
With a new tested business model, we approached several Angel Investors, Cornerstone and SFC Capital. They collectively helped us raise in excess of £600k to improve our proposition and introduce new features.
23 March 2021
Launched
After initial testing, we launched an app and tried it out with different parties in the property industry. We received feedback which indicated Estates Agents and Landlords preferred to be present however they liked the quick verification we did. Using this feedback we reworked our business model to focus on the verification process.
01 June 2020
Founded
Checkboard was originally founded under the brand name of CubicLease to provide property rental automation. We built a system to enable renters to view properties without the physical presence of an Estate Agent. Renters had to complete a quick 5 minute verification process before viewing the property.