A South African technology business says it has launched a new panel management platform that will “simplify the onboarding process for conveyancers and improve panel management and oversight for lenders”.
In the company’s native South Africa, e4 Strategic built a platform that connects all major stakeholders involved in a property transaction including mortgage lenders, conveyancing firms, major municipalities, tax authorities and the Deeds Office, South Africa’s equivalent of HM Land Registry.
Since launching in the UK in 2021, the company has invested significantly in developing its VERSA platform, delivering a similar journey in the UK property market.
Now e4 Strategic says it has complemented this technology with VERSA Assure, a “reimagined” panel management platform.
CEO Simon Slater explained:
“It has to be easier to manage panel firms and for them to stay compliant. Yet this is only one part of the picture, the real challenge is for all parties managing performance, risk, and delivery outcomes once a case has been offered. That is where efficiency is won or lost. VERSA will benefit conveyancers tremendously, with small gains and variations in behaviour across a large panel compounding quickly, affecting pipeline certainty, conversions, resource planning and ultimately the customer experience.
“For lenders, VERSA Assure is built to provide more flexibility, automation, improved oversight and real-time panel governance. We are delighted to have another key solution in our product journey ready for market.”
On a recent Today’s Conveyancer Podcast, Slater explained the origins of e4 Strategic in South Africa and how he identified a similar opportunity in England and Wales; to improve the relationship between lenders and conveyancers by digitising the core interactions that sit at the heart of every transaction.
Explaining more about the Assure platform, Slater added:
“…with lenders having thousands of conveyancing firms on their so-called open panels and these firms processing thousands of mortgage cases each year, VERSA Assure, e4 Strategic’s panel management solution, has been designed to automate onboarding, provide greater configuration, and linked with VERSA Convey will provide measurable oversight of how panel perform at the post offer stage.”
Alongside providing lenders and conveyancers with real-time firm-level analytics and case tracking, the software caters for conveyancing expertise, allowing for the allocation of cases by specialism such as buy-to-let, limited company, shared ownership, new-build and HMO, and enables the monitoring of transactions at a case level.
