The Case for Digitised Conveyancing

Encouraged by Customers and Regulators across an increasing range of uses, how will your firm take advantage of digital transformation?

We discuss Conveyancing as an example of a changing practice area….

Background and issues

Conveyancing has historically been a conservative field but pressure from many sides is forcing a re-examination of work practices and methods. Increasing customer demand and HM Land Registry decision to accept a range of eSignatures and ongoing consideration of video-witnessing have acted as catalysts for change.

Pressures include: –

• New entrants
• Consolidation of businesses
• Price sensitivity Vs internal costs
• Legislative and Regulatory process changes
• The risk and cost of human error
• Fraud
• Customer expectations Vs experience

If any of these resonate with you then read on…

Customer surveys consistently show that buyers and sellers found the process took much longer than expected, was far more complicated and lacked responsiveness leading to huge frustrations and stress.

Most people buy and sell houses infrequently, so a comparison of the customer experience with a purchase on Amazon is unfair, but in comparison with a loan financed car transaction, the other major purchase for most clients, conveyancing is way off the pace.

With all these external pressures eroding profits, the current human (and paper) driven approach is ripe for change. In just the same way shopping models rapidly changed, creating winners (early adopters) and losers (those who do not adapt fast enough, getting competitively wounded) legal and conveyancing providers are facing similar futures.

Caution when considering Digitising

Conveyancing is ideally suited to digitising. There is a repeatable highly regulated process, with defined gates, largely driven by paper and high values (so attractive to fraudsters). With HMLR now advocating integrated end-to-end digital capabilities to eliminate paper effortlessly, such convenience is the future.

But change is difficult to imagine and intimidating.

The problems include: Where to start? What to intercept and digitise? What will clients’ reaction be? How will we integrate with other organisations’ systems? Will this be wasted work with future legislation?

All valid questions that argue against an expensive big bang approach.

Digitising with LIP

Choosing the right toolsets will turn the digital journey from daunting to exciting. Our flexible solution, LIP, is a digitising and automation platform. It was conceived on the basis that rather than predicting changes, one should accept that disruptive change in all types of business process is the new normal.

Therefore, the solution had to deliver business agility quickly and cheaply. It needed to work with existing systems and fill the important gaps that would normally be done manually, such as emails with attachments and/or copy/paste activities.

The solution is used by many regulated organisations, such as The German Ministry of Finance, HMG Dept of Work and Pensions and many commercial firms. It prepares your business to deliver an immediate response to future unknowns

– FIND OUT MORE 

What this means

Organisations can opt to change only a small part of a single process, build confidence, and then move onwards to another part. For instance, automating KYC welcome packs, or completing and digitally signing TR1s (including use of Qualified Electronic Signatures) with HMRC.  

Example of a TR1 digitally signed: 

It allows you to complete more work, more quickly and cheaply, whilst virtually eliminating errors.

Imagine having full transparency of the status of all participant’s in a chain, together with their service providers (surveys, searches, mortgages, HMLR, etc.), where the exchange of information is mostly automated according to pre-agreed processes and permissions, and all signing and witness activities can be conducted online, securely with higher provenance than current practices.

For those firms mastering the current technology capabilities, Customers get better service, Conveyancers enjoy improved margins and better customer experience.

Next Steps

You can talk with us about any use case.

Or you could look at how your business’s digital maturity compares to the wider world which might help you establish a starting point for the next step of your organisation’s digital journey.