Manchester-based firm LPL are staying ahead of the curve by rolling-out their first Artificial Intelligence (AI) product to accelerate their market leading volume remortgage service.
The team at LPL know a thing or two about residential remortgage work. After all, they currently complete thousands of remortgages a year, acting for private individuals, companies, portfolio landlords and lenders up and down the country.
“The tricky thing about remortgage work is timing and managing client expectations” confides Louise Stephens-Pantoja, Head of Operations at LPL. Most mortgage offers are only valid for six months with some specialist lenders making offers contingent upon completion within ninety days or sooner. “In an ideal world clients would formally instruct us as soon as they receive their offer. In practice, often this isn’t the case”, continues Louise. “Clients formally instruct us with a month or two to go, so the clock is ticking to get their remortgage over the line in time”.
It is also common for clients who are not familiar with the process to require more support. Many people believe that as soon as they have their mortgage offer, that is it. They may not understand the legal process LPL and other firms have to go through to protect the interests of their clients and the lenders they represent. The industry average from offer to completion is twenty-eight days. More complex cases, such as leasehold property, can take considerably longer.
It is fair to say that LPL is no stranger to using technology to streamline and automate their processes to handle significant volumes of remortgage work and meet the needs of their clients. For instance, onboarding and ID verification are both done quickly and easily online.
LPL wanted to keep pushing the envelope to make the process even quicker. “We wanted to see if we could use AI as a support tool for the team to allow us to get through more cases, more quickly”, Louise explained.
When LPL first came across Orbital Witness they saw an opportunity to increase efficiency and move cases through the process more quickly by using AI to review the most time consuming cases.
Orbital Witness has an established customer base in the commercial property arena, including all five ‘Magic Circle’ law firms, and only this year arrived on the scene in residential conveyancing with a new AI product offering specifically designed to help residential conveyancing firms accelerate title checking and reporting.
LPL decided to deploy Orbital Witness on the firm’s leasehold remortgage files where the time it takes to review the file were typically longer. With Orbital Witness the title check can be carried out as soon as LPL is instructed without needing to wait for a case handler to become available.
Only a few months in and the data already suggests the partnership is working. Louise tells us “the product has significantly sped up the title review period allowing us to get documents out to the client for signature much earlier. We’ve seen cases where the time taken to carry out the title review process has been reduced by up to 50%”.
“Orbital Witness has helped us to provide a slicker service which in turn reduces the number of phone calls and emails that we receive from clients and brokers looking for an update. From someone who deals with client complaints, I can say – it is priceless!”
Rolling out an AI product
We asked LPL what the reaction had been from their lawyers to the news that the firm would be rolling out an AI product.
“It is fair to say everybody was a bit sceptical about it at first, perhaps even a bit nervous about AI” admitted Louise. “However, we encouraged the team to be open-minded and not have preconceived ideas. Even the strongest sceptics now acknowledge it has worked really well. The experience has been really positive and when we checked the results there was nothing to be concerned about”.
This article was submitted to be published by Orbital Witness as part of their advertising agreement with Today’s Conveyancer. The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Conveyancer.
