A technology start-up which aims to automate dealing with additional enquiries raised in the conveyancing process has received “substantial investment” as accelerates the development of its product.
Collaborative Conveyancing, which had previously announced it has attracted investment from David Newnes, a senior figure in estate agency, says it has now secured further investment in addition to a substantial grant from Innovate UK. The company will use the additional funding for recruitment of key developers and personnel in addition to the continued collaboration with STFC Hartree Centre and AI development.
The business was launched in 2022 by Chris Harris, and Karen Babington, founders of Lawyer Checker and Solve Legal Marketing, which became Today’s Media. From the outset they describe how the idea was to tackle “one of the biggest problems in the home moving process”; raising and answering additional enquiries. The solution is described as “applying workflow automation with Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing to conveyancing, bringing an automated solution for property lawyers that classifies enquiries and structures responses to improve efficiency, visibility and fall through rates.”
Chris Harris, co-founder and CEO said
“Dealing with conveyancing enquiries manually remains a huge barrier to reducing transaction times when buying and selling property. Conveyancers report finding the “back and forth” rally of questions and answers between buyers and sellers lawyers suffocating and a cause of conflict between professionals. This timely investment allows us to bring forward our launch plans to ease the burden placed on property lawyers, and overall to benefit the consumer.”
Harris points to the increasing volume of enquiries raised on cases, often shared on social media, compounded by capacity issues and says that it now takes an averages 51-days to complete this element of the transaction, against 26-days in 2007.
A Today’s Conveyancer survey in June of this year identified that Media survey in June 2023 cited that 83% of conveyancers had seen an increase in enquiries this year.
Paul Saunders, MD of Legal Eye and another investor in Collaborative Conveyancing adds
“There remains an urgent need for a fresh approach to dealing with conveyancing enquiries. The outdated process to which we all are constrained causes unnecessary tension between all parties in a transaction and stifles our ability to reduce transaction times. Collaborative Conveyancing’s approach will be a welcome chapter in technological advances in conveyancing and it can’t come soon enough.”
