The third edition of the British Conveyancing Awards is just around the corner. Alongside a new, larger venue and a new headline sponsor in Groundsure, #BCAwards2023 is all about recognising and rewarding the herculean efforts of conveyancing superheroes who, despite hurdles aplenty, continue to go above and beyond to help clients move into their dream home.
Ahead of the splendour and celebration on the 21st March, Today’s Conveyancer will recognise those who help make the event possible through a series of “Sponsor Spotlight” pieces. Here, we speak to Residential Conveyancing Team of the Year sponsor PEXA.
First of all, tell us who you are and what you do
Evolving from a government initiative, PEXA is a world-first innovation that has modernised the Australian housing market, bringing financial institutions, lawyers, and conveyancers together through our platform to help 20,000 families a week safely settle their homes. Now we’re bringing our technology to the United Kingdom, beginning with England and Wales.
Working in collaboration with the Bank of England, we’ve introduced a secure and resilient way for PEXA customers to complete housing transactions. Our technology will work alongside progressive lenders, lawyers, and conveyancers in the United Kingdom.
We launched with our remortgage solution in September 2022, and will follow with a sale and purchase offering launching 2024.
Could you explain the magnitude of PEXA’s digital remortgage platform which was successfully launched in earlier in 2022, and the impact this could have on transactions moving forwards?
PEXA’s technology is a world-first innovation. Our platform brings lenders and law firms together in a single collaborative environment, allowing them to attend to lodgement with the land registry and financial settlement, two parts of housing transactions not traditionally actioned together.
To facilitate the exchange of funds, we have collaborated with the Bank of England to establish the seventh net settlement payment scheme to settle through the Bank of England – the first since Faster Payments in 2008. Known as “PEXA Pay”, it is the first payment scheme dedicated purely to property transactions. PEXA Pay allows funds to move directly between lenders, generating efficiencies and reducing risk for lenders and firms alike.
How do you plan to build upon this technology and expand its capability over time?
PEXA is iterative software, so what it looks like today is not what it will look like tomorrow. Looking to industry – as well as to our customers and future customers – to help shape our product roadmap is part of how we operate, and we also have the benefit of more than a decade’s worth of learnings from Australia to consider and apply in the UK as well.
Our recently launched remortgage solution will continue to be enhanced in line with customer feedback. While we do this, we’re also developing our sale and purchase offering, which will be released in 2024.
What should conveyancers expect at this early juncture from PEXA’s digital sale and purchase solution set to launch in 2024?
This has to be the question most asked of us, and we love that there is so much interest! We have a dedicated team focusing on discovery for this, exploring the end-to-end journey, and uncovering a suite of pain points and opportunities. Although PEXA’s expertise sits in the downstream area of the process – lodgement and financial settlement – it was important to us to form a full view of the experience to understand how we could help.
What we can share at the moment is that we will be developing features from our remortgage solution and expanding them to support the best proposition possible. Several product options have been developed, and when we’re able to share more, we absolutely will.
Aside from the digitisation of conveyancing, what do you see as something conveyancers should look to with excitement as we move into 2023?
We meet with lenders and law firms every week, and it’s clear that there is more focus on ever before on the consumer – not only the experience they are having with the lender they’re borrowing from, and the firm they’re engaging with, but on the broader challenges they’re encountering as a result of increasing cost of living pressures.
What we have seen first-hand in 2022 is the industry collaborating to really focus on improving the home buying, selling, and remortgaging experience, drive forward change, and work better together with all parties who are involved in a housing transaction. We feel confident that digitising conveyancing is not just the icing on the cake for what looks to be a very progressive year ahead, but only possible as a result of industry collaboration, which is what we expect to see more of in 2023.
