Yoho is a first. And firsts deserve a proper explanation.

You set your Security Funds aside before you move in. They sit in the Yoho Segregated Client Account at a Tier 1 UK bank, and Yoho releases one month's payment to your landlord on each Contractual Rent Date — so nobody has to find a UK guarantor.

In the paperwork: the Yoho Tenancy Passport is a Digital Guarantor service, Yoho is your Third-Party Guarantor and Escrow Administrator, and your landlord signs a Yoho-backed Side Letter covering the monthly payments.

Yoho does not source properties or negotiate tenancies on your behalf, is not a party to your Tenancy Agreement, and does not carry out your Right to Rent check. See how it works for the full six-step journey.

About 15 minutes of your time. The rest is waiting on your landlord.

Nothing leaves your account before that point. Full walkthrough →

Your Passport is valid for 60 days from issue. If you don't sign a Side Letter in that window, the platform fee is refunded in full. Security Funds only settle once your Side Letter is signed by your landlord — until then, nothing leaves your account except the platform fee.

Most UK landlords and letting agents who deal with international students or first-time renters already accept tenant-funded financial arrangements as an alternative to a traditional UK guarantor. Yoho provides a standardised framework landlords can recognise: Security Funds held in the Yoho Segregated Client Account at a Tier 1 UK bank, with scheduled monthly Release Events landing in the landlord's verified payout account.

The Side Letter your landlord signs explains Yoho's role and the underlying mechanics in plain language. You can also share Yoho's landlord page with them ahead of conversations.

If a particular landlord declines, your Passport is not tied to one property — you can present it to a different landlord within the 60-day search window.

A UK guarantor service typically asks a third party — often a family member with UK income, or a paid guarantor company — to promise the landlord they'll cover the rent if you don't pay. The landlord relies on that third party's promise and credit standing.

Yoho works differently. You pre-fund your own Security Funds upfront, held by Yoho as Escrow Administrator in the Yoho Segregated Client Account at a Tier 1 UK bank. Yoho releases scheduled monthly payments from your Security Funds via FasterPayments. The landlord doesn't rely on anyone's promise — the funds are already there.

Your Security Funds sit in the Yoho Segregated Client Account — a segregated client money account at a Tier 1 UK bank, ring-fenced from Yoho's corporate balance sheet and held on trust as client property. FSCS protection comes from the FSCS scheme that the bank participates in: eligible deposits at the bank may be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, subject to the FSCS rules (see "Is my money covered by the FSCS?" below).

Yoho cannot move these funds for any purpose other than the scheduled monthly Release Event on your Contractual Rent Date, or to refund you under the terms of your Side Letter. See the full security architecture →

Only after your landlord has signed the Side Letter and their payout bank account has passed a UK Confirmation of Payee (CoP) check. Your money does not move while the arrangement is still being set up.

Once funded, your Security Funds stay in the Yoho Segregated Client Account and are released one month at a time on each Contractual Rent Date.

No. Security Funds are not a deposit and cannot be used for damage, dilapidations, cleaning, or any non-rent obligation.

Yoho Security Funds cover monthly rent only. They are released on each Contractual Rent Date as scheduled monthly payments to your landlord. Yoho does not adjudicate, hold, or release Security Funds for any other purpose.

If your landlord takes a separate tenancy deposit at the start of the tenancy (the traditional 5-week-rent maximum under the Tenant Fees Act 2019), that must be protected in one of three UK Tenancy Deposit Protection (TDP) schemes. That's a separate arrangement from your Yoho Tenancy Passport. Damage and end-of-tenancy condition matters are governed by your Tenancy Agreement, not by Yoho.

While your Passport is running, there is nothing for you to pay and nothing for your landlord to chase. Your Security Funds are already in the Yoho Segregated Client Account, and a Release Event goes to your landlord’s nominated account on every Contractual Rent Date. There is no claim to make, no policy exclusions and no arrears chasing.

Your Passport covers the number of months you bought — not automatically the length of your tenancy. If your tenancy is longer than your cover, the Release Events stop once those months are used up.

We do not leave it to the last minute: we contact you and your landlord before your cover runs out. There are three usual routes from there:

• Pay your landlord directly — standing order or Direct Debit, supported by the payment record from your covered months.
• Rent protection insurance at renewal — a clean payment record plus a landlord reference usually opens this up at renewal referencing.
• A new Passport — This is always the tenant's own choice - it cannot be made a condition of the renewal or of granting the tenancy.

Choosing cover that matches your tenancy from the start avoids the question entirely. If you are not sure which length fits, ask us before you buy.

Your Security Funds were never Yoho's money. They sit in the Yoho Segregated Client Account, held on trust and separate from Yoho's own accounts, and Yoho does not use them to run the business.

Because of that separation, your Security Funds are not intended to form part of Yoho's own assets or to be available to pay Yoho's business debts. If Yoho stopped operating, the trust terms would continue to govern how your Security Funds are dealt with — subject to applicable law, the bank's account terms and any directions of a court or insolvency office-holder. That is how the structure is written; it is not a promise about a particular outcome in every circumstance.

NatWest's own account terms also say the bank will not use money in an account that belongs to someone else to settle a debt the account holder owes the bank. Full wording: Terms, section 6.2.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme protects eligible deposits at UK banks. iThe FSCS protects eligible deposits at UK banks up to £120,000 per person, per bank (limit set by the PRA, in force since 1 December 2025). The Yoho Segregated Client Account is held at NatWest, so eligibility is assessed under the FSCS rules for that account. Check at fscs.org.uk. NatWest, where the Yoho Segregated Client Account is held, is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority.

Whether — and how much — FSCS protection applies to money in that account is decided by the FSCS rules, and can depend on the capacity in which the funds are held and who the beneficial owner is. Yoho does not guarantee FSCS protection.

What Yoho does control is the part above: keeping your Security Funds on trust, separate from its own money, and releasing them only as scheduled. Wording as it appears in your contract: Terms, section 6.2.6.

Two different things get mixed up here: the bank that holds the money, and Yoho, which administers it.

The Security Funds arrangement is a contractual trust and segregated-funds arrangement. What you are relying on is that structure — the trust and the segregation — together with the contractual rules on when Security Funds may be released or returned, set out in the Terms and your Side Letter. The two questions above walk through each part.

Yoho's handling of your personal data is subject to UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and Yoho is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ZC080431).

Your landlord receives a one-click link from Yoho. They review the Side Letter (a bilateral agreement between Yoho and your landlord under which you are named as a beneficiary under the UK Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999), sign it electronically, and add their own payout bank account directly in Yoho's dashboard. Their account must pass a UK Confirmation of Payee (CoP) name check before any payout can be made; you never enter or see your landlord's bank details.

The Tenancy Agreement between you and your landlord is separate and unchanged. Yoho is not a party to it.

The Side Letter expires automatically at the end of its validity window. Nothing leaves your account in that period, because funding only happens after your landlord has signed.

If your landlord is close to signing and you'd like more time, you can re-issue a fresh Side Letter from your dashboard with a new validity window — your Passport itself remains valid for the 60-day search period. If the window expires without a signed Side Letter, your refund is handled under the Yoho cancellation policy.

Yoho currently supports single Tenant Passports. If you're renting jointly with flatmates (a joint tenancy where everyone is named on the same Tenancy Agreement), each tenant typically needs their own Yoho Tenancy Passport covering their share of the monthly amount — or one tenant can hold a Passport covering the full amount if that's the arrangement you've agreed.

If you decide later to leave the joint tenancy, UK tenancy law normally requires all joint tenants to agree to a notice. Yoho's Release Event mechanic applies only to your individual Passport, not to the wider tenancy.

If your joint tenancy is complex (HMO with separate rooms, multiple Tenancy Agreements), please contact our team before signing up — we'll help you map the right Passport structure.

That usually means their referencing platform has no box for Yoho — not that the landlord has said no. You are not asking the agent to approve a company. You are telling them how the tenancy is funded, and asking the landlord to decide.

Copy this back to the agent, on the same email thread:

Then tell us what the agent said. We will speak to the agent or the landlord directly if that helps.

Each Release Event goes to your landlord's nominated account on the Contractual Rent Date. If that date is a weekend or bank holiday, it goes on the next banking day.

Late. A release can be delayed if we need more information, bank details or supporting evidence. If that happens, you and your landlord are both notified and it is dealt with promptly. If for any reason the Security Funds held are not enough for a full Release Event, the available amount is released and both of you are told about the shortfall.

Disputed. Either you or your landlord can raise a Dispute Flag in writing, naming the Release Event and the reason. Yoho may pause that release, tells the other side, asks you both for evidence, and tells you both the outcome. A Dispute Flag pauses the money; it does not change either side's rights under the tenancy, and Yoho does not decide who is right — that stays between you and your landlord.

If you signed up yourself: yes, while your Side Letter is still unsigned and your Security Funds have not started arriving. You simply pay or receive the difference between the two tiers' platform fees — there is no separate change fee. Once the Side Letter is signed, your Passport is locked to that tenancy.

If a letting agent or landlord invited you: the coverage period is fixed by the tenancy they have already signed, so the tier cannot be changed here. If the tenancy itself changes, ask them to re-issue the invitation.

No. One Passport, one tenancy — it covers your full coverage period. The only exception is if you want more of your monthly payments to run through the Yoho Segregated Client Account than your current Passport covers — in that case you can buy an additional Passport for that arrangement.

There are three main refund scenarios.

No property found in 60 days. Platform fee refunded in full, or less the £49 Identity Verification Fee if your identity verification has already been carried out.

Side Letter expires before landlord signs. Your refund is handled under the Yoho cancellation policy. Security Funds never settled, so nothing to return on that side.

Tier change before the Side Letter is signed. The platform fee is recalculated to the new tier and the difference is topped up or refunded — no separate change fee.

Once the Side Letter is signed and your Security Funds have settled, refunds follow the end-of-tenancy reconciliation schedule in the Side Letter.

You have a statutory right to give notice to your landlord under UK tenancy law (typically 2 months ending on the first or last day of your tenancy period). When you're ready, submit your Notice Date in your Yoho portal.

After you submit, Yoho fires the next two scheduled Release Events on your Contractual Rent Date from your Security Funds — these land in your landlord's verified payout account as your final two monthly payments. Any remaining Security Funds are returned to your original funding account within 5 working days of the final release. Yoho's coverage of this tenancy concludes after the second release.

A few things to know:

• Submit your Notice Date in Yoho close to your move-out date to maximise Yoho's coverage of your final rent obligations.
• Yoho doesn't verify the statutory validity of your notice — that's between you and your landlord under tenancy law. Please check Shelter or Citizens Advice for statutory guidance.
• Once submitted, your Notice Date is irrevocable for the Yoho product. If you change your mind and stay longer, your tenancy continues but Yoho's coverage does not reactivate.

Yes. Parents or family in China, Hong Kong, the UK, or elsewhere can fund your Yoho Tenancy Passport on your behalf.

Yoho accepts:

• UK bank transfer (FasterPayments) directly into the Yoho Segregated Client Account
• Regulated remittance providers (e.g. Wise), subject to that provider's transfer rules

Your Passport is registered under your name and your verified identity — but the funding source can be a parent or family member. Most payments need nothing extra from you. We may ask for a short source-of-funds confirmation when the person paying is not you or the funder you declared at sign-up, or if our bank asks us about a particular transfer — in that case we only need the remittance receipt for that transfer and a line explaining the relationship.

If your parent prefers to pay in Chinese Yuan from a mainland China bank account, message our team and we'll send a step-by-step guide for paying from a mainland China account.

Not at will. Once the Side Letter is active, your Security Funds are committed to the Release Event schedule written into it. You can't point a scheduled Release Event at a different account by asking — the nominated account can only be changed by the receiving party (your landlord or agent), in writing.

Money comes back to you in three situations, each with its own rule:

In every case the money goes back to the account it came from, never to a third party, and any Dispute Flag in place at the time is dealt with first.

Yoho holds your Security Funds in the Yoho Segregated Client Account at a Tier 1 UK bank, so we verify every account holder's identity as part of our fraud-prevention controls and the due-diligence standards of our banking partners — a standard step for any firm that holds client money.

The check takes around 5 minutes:

• Photo ID (passport or national ID card)
• A short Liveness Check (selfie video)
• Phone and email verification

See our Privacy Policy for the full breakdown of what's collected, why, and your rights.

Yoho is registered with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO registration ZC080431) and operates under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Biometric data captured during identity verification is processed by Sumsub as our data processor under UK GDPR Article 28 — Yoho does not process biometric data locally. For the full breakdown of what's collected, why, how long it's kept, and your rights, see our Privacy Policy.

Your Security Funds go to one place only — the Yoho Segregated Client Account — and you only ever see its details inside your own Yoho account, on the funding page, next to your personal payment Reference. A payment request that arrives any other way is not from us.

If anything doesn't match, stop, and message us through the Contact page before sending anything. Parents: the same rules apply to you — Yoho will never ask you to pay through a personal account.