With connectivity and collaboration one of the ambitions of the home moving process LMS throws, has thrown its hat into the ring with the launch of a new network; National Property Transaction Network (NPTN).
LMS Commercial Director Travis Scholes, discusses the launch with Today’s Conveyancer in a Q&A published below, taking the learnings from its current live pilot, LMS say they are now on a mission to ensure more organisations, and in return customers, can benefit from a trusted network. Scholes explains the impact it will have on the home-buying and selling journey, who can get involved, and how.
TC: What is NPTN – why did LMS launch?
TS: The home-buying and selling journey is taking longer than ever. Over the past three or four years, I’ve attended many events and heard all the ideas around how we can improve the journey – ultimately, it became clear that LMS can play a role in proving some of these concepts.
Sharing data within a trusted ecosystem, whilst enabling truly agnostic and open access, is a concept LMS believes in, and through our recent trial, we’ve managed to turn it into something real.
Although we only launched the pilot in September, we’ve learned a lot by working with our existing partners and new stakeholder groups and have gained valuable information from the live data.
This is no longer a concept; we can actually see people engaging and working with a live transaction network.
We’re making access to data easier, regardless of organisation size, platforms, legacy tech, and how they work. We’re not asking for huge fundamental changes, and we’re not asking you to change who you work with; we’re enabling accessibility via an open-loop platform.
NPTN sits behind an authenticated platform that’s already trusted by the industry and has large-scale distribution; our unique position exists because of working for 30 years in this space.
TC: How does NPTN impact the home-buying and selling journey?
TS: We’ve managed to create a single place, where all stakeholders can access authenticated data.
Customers only have to provide their data once – at the start of the home-buying and selling journey. Equally, stakeholders have all the data they need from day one, and they can trust the providence of that data.
The impact is clear: access to more reliable and shareable data supports informed decision-making for every stakeholder at the earliest opportunity, contributing to a smoother process and quicker completion times.
For the customer, a single access point that reduces duplication and makes their journey easier and more efficient, and will, support quicker transaction times.
Our ecosystem already provides secure and key services for a large chunk of the UK mortgage market. We know how to build for scale, we are truly user-led in our development and, importantly, we know what our role is: we are here to facilitate.
TC: What role is data playing in this?
TS: Data is pivotal, this isn’t new. Providing universal and trusted access is what has been the challenge.
In the past, upfront information and data sharing haven’t worked due to a lack of data standards. Multiple suppliers manage and interact with data in different ways. Therefore, the standardisation of data becomes quite difficult, and sharing becomes even harder. However, there’s been so much development in this area over the last 18 months, with the Open Property Data Association (OPDA) and Property Data Trust Framework (PDTF).
The PDTF is a framework which allows data to be standardised, provenanced, and shared in a meaningful way. Providing access to data at scale, across all stakeholders, is truly innovative.
Over the last 12 months, we’ve been working with the OPDA to implement the PDTF, and how we reuse data and distribute it in a way that is secure for our stakeholders. It’s been a tough journey, but the efficiencies and possibilities are exciting.
TC: Can you tell us about the sandbox component?
TS: The way we have leveraged our ecosystem up until now has been very much to support LMS customers. However, The Sandbox enables us to share our findings so that other established actors in the industry can learn and benefit from our network.
By providing synthesised data in a controlled and secure environment, actors within the industry can test and refine their theories to see if they genuinely benefit the conveyancing journey. And, if a theory is successful, it can easily transition from the testing stage, within The Sandbox, to a live environment.
Ultimately, if you have an idea and want to work with us to deliver it, The Sandbox gives you the ability to do that very quickly.
TC: Who should join NPTN?
TS: The value of a transaction network lies in its users, adoption, and distribution.
I invite anyone from the industry to get involved to see how NPTN can benefit them. I also see the expansion of our ecosystem and shared learnings as an opportunity for many industry professionals to influence and shape the development of products and services, and, therefore, the industry.
So, whether you’re an estate agent, law firm, lender, vendor or part of the broker community, I encourage you to reach out to us and get involved.
I’ve said it before… we know the technology works, that we can share data at scale, and we can already see the benefits. What we need to ensure is that this works for everyone. That it is easy to adopt, and we consider as many use cases as possible. We can only do that by opening this to all and getting your feedback. The response so far has been very positive with people contacting us directly to find out more about how they can get involved.
Interested in finding out more about NPTN or getting involved? Fill out the contact form and we will be in touch!
Travis Scholes was speaking with David Opie at Today’s Conveyancer
3 responses
Not sure about the name Sandbox. It hurts the eyes to think about it never mind the whole enterprise being ‘buried in the sand’.
Other than that and provided it protects confidentiality as between conveyancer and client, even it its not what the estate agent wants to hear, then it sounds promising
The term “sandbox” is used in technology to communicate that the system is in a “safe” mode and not attached to any “live” systems, so any issues discovered in the sandbox testing do adversely impact anything which is already being used and relied on.
I’m not sure how you can say “data” is reliable. Home owners are being “fleeced” and “leased” – none of this ‘data’ is going to tell people if they are being taken advantage of. They’re just going to say “yeah whatever” and sign what agents ask them to sign and then realise late on that whatever ‘data’ they were given is just that – cold hard ‘data’ with no ‘legal advice’ as to whether or not what they are buying is a good deal.