Thomas Bee, founder of Matterhive, talks to Today’s Conveyancer about the pain of moving home, challenges conveyancers face, the proliferation of prop-tech, and why a German-based company is interested in home moving technology in the UK…
TC: What is your background and where did the concept for MatterHive come about?
TB: When I both bought and sold my apartment in Liverpool my conveyancing process took 11 months which is well above the average and was a pretty stressful experience. There were missed and miscommunications, multiple 35 reply long email chains with different coloured text to handle enquiries, third parties taking far too long to get back to the conveyancers, and a real lack of transparency in the process for both sides of the transaction.
One incident in particular made me think that there has to be a better way to handle the pre-contract phase of a transaction. After weeks without updates the buyer got in touch with me via the estate agent asking why my conveyancer hadn’t responded to their conveyancer, when I reached out to my conveyancer to ask what the situation was they proved that they were waiting on the buyers conveyancer for a reply.
There are lots of great legaltech tools for upfront information and client onboarding. Onboarding only takes a few days whilst the whole process takes months. When a transaction moves past sharing contract packs the process reverts to email or post for communications. There’s significant risk involved with enquiries but there aren’t many digital tools to help mitigate that risk or improve the experience.
As a software developer for a bespoke software agency who specialise in digitising legacy business practices so seeing the problems caused by lack of digital tools to manage enquiries, outline the status of different tasks, and coordinate all the parties involved in a transaction seemed like a difficult but worthwhile challenge to try and help solve.
TC: Why is a company based in Germany interested in home moving technology in the UK?
TB: I’m from the UK but have been working as a software developer for acrontum in Munich. Acrontum is a multinational company which builds bespoke software for clients big and small and has a lot of experience digitising legacy business practices. I decided to pitch my idea for MatterHive for the acrontum product incubator and got the funding to see if it’s possible to build tools to help conveyancers and their clients.
In Germany and many other countries in Europe they use a notary system which doesn’t have the same challenges with communications between the two parties. Because the process is so different we wanted to make sure we understood the process in the UK before committing to building anything.
We spent a year researching the current tech offerings and speaking with conveyancers to try and learn as much as possible about the processes and where we might be able to build something which actually helps conveyancers.
Once we could confirm that there are some areas for improvement with inter-conveyancer communications and propose a potential solution, acrontum were happy to fund the development of the MatterHive product.
TC: What is MatterHive
TB: MatterHive is a cloud based platform to digitally conduct the pre-contract phase of a transaction. Conveyancers can securely share documents, raise enquiries, chat, invite third parties to perform tasks, build reusable customisable workflows, automatically notify, and share progress with all parties involved in a transaction.
Traditional portals mostly focus on sharing updates between one side of the transaction, once a transaction moves past onboarding they are often abandoned because the real information is buried in email threads. Because the portals don’t have the ‘true’ status of a transaction conveyancers are being chased constantly which is taking up significant time and causing unnecessary stress and burn out across the industry.
We think that by bringing both sides of a transaction into a single secure room where all communications are visible we can cut down on the time spent searching for information, the time spent replying to chasing emails, and give conveyancers more time to focus on the important legal work they need to undertake.
Conveyancers often discuss how clients and estate agents don’t always appreciate the work that they do. By making the process transparent and visible to all parties, we hope that MatterHive can help demonstrate the hard and important work conveyancers do for their clients.
With how many Legal Ombudsman and PII claims are due to communications and enquiries we also think that digitising the pre-contract phase of enquiries can significantly reduce risk for conveyancers by providing a digital audit trail of the communications and enquiries involved in a transaction.
TC: Conveyancers face a proliferation of tech choices; what is materially different about MattherHive and how can firms make an informed choice about what tech they should invest in?
TB: There’s a lot of legaltech available on the market at the moment focussed on several different areas of the law and conveyancing; however, there aren’t many options focussed on digitising the pre-contract phase of a transaction. The enquiries and communications between parties takes the longest amount of time, the largest amount of effort, and is the riskiest part of a transaction. By focusing on this challenge MatterHive has a fairly unique offering.
Most conveyancers we speak to agree that there are problems with the current approach to communications between all the parties and that there is room for improvement. We want to build software which enhances the work of conveyancers, not dumb it down or turn it into a box ticking exercise. We think that our by building tools for the pre-contract communications we can help great conveyancers save time spent on chasing, increase client satisfaction, and reduce risk.
The best way to make an informed decision about any tech adoption is to try it out on a small scale and see if it works for you. Marketing material can promise to change the world, but real world usage can be quite a different story. Even if you try something and don’t find it useful, that feedback could help create a product which really does work for you.
It can be quite difficult for busy conveyancers to find the time to invest in exploring new technology, especially with so many new products in the space, but without conveyancers taking that time and giving feedback software won’t be able to meet their needs.
TC: What is the product roadmap for MatterHive
TB: We’ve currently launched our MVP beta and are looking for forward thinking firms to partner with to continue product development and make sure we have a solution that really works for conveyancers and their clients. This would involve free usage of the platform and interviews to find out what works and what doesn’t so we can continue to iterate and build the features you’d love to use.
We’re proud of what we’ve built so far, but only by working with and listening to conveyancers will we be able to build something which actually makes a difference.
Going forward we have lots of potential ideas for various features. Things like tracking the progress of chains, adding more CMS integrations, adding KYC or AML integrations, digital signatures, intelligent parsing of contract packs, summary packs for future sales of a property, and plenty more ideas.
Which features we actually build, how they work, and what they look like will all depend on the feedback we get from conveyancers. We’re always on the lookout for firms who want to be part of our trial phase and help shape the future of the product.
Thomas Bee is founder of MatterHive
