Conveyancing software tackles the challenges law firms and clients face in conveyancing
November 11, 2024
ProConvey
Conveyancing software including conveyancing onboarding, TA forms, ID and SOF Checks, Searches, Indemnities, Smart eSignatures, Quotes, and more.
The conveyancing process in England and Wales is widely accepted as a slow and cumbersome process that needs digital solutions to support conveyancers and the workload. The challenges for sellers, purchasers, vendors, and professionals are significant, with multiple national and international reports (e.g., World Bank’s Doing Business Index 2020 (UK 41st), multiple MCHLG reports and government manifesto promises) highlighting the challenge.
The Conveyancing Association white paper - Modernising the Home Moving Process (November 2016) - compared the home buying process in England with the processes in Scotland, the USA, Australia and Denmark. The research found average USA transaction times of 4 to 6 weeks, compared to 12 to 14 weeks in England. In Scotland non-mortgage transactions routinely completed within five working days. Internationally, despite an overall ranking of 8th, the UK ranks 41st for registering property in the World Bank’s Doing Business Index 2020.
>1m homes change hands annually and 70% of buyers (66% sellers) enter transactions expecting them to fail (MHCLG-2018). Even pre-Covid stimulus/browsing restrictions, 30% of property sales failed before completion (MHCLG-2019) costing UK homebuyers £607m p.a. (Wiggywam-2019).
The 2018 MCHLG ‘Improving the home buying and selling process’ report highlighted 3 key areas for improvement within the home buying process:
a better consumer experience
reducing time from offer to completion
reducing failed transactions
The overall Government conclusion was that there is no ‘silver bullet’ – no one single change which will improve the home-buying process. It is a combined problem which demands improved ways of working in the face of an existing structure. Currently, sellers have little support and lack appropriate knowledge about conveyancing, which leads to missing or incorrect information and costly corrections in time and money. This takes time for the conveyancer to rectify and communicate through the chain. Errors are also missed because of this complexity creating further issues.
The Law Society’s Conveyancing Protocol sets out 70 steps and procedures that should be followed to facilitate an efficient conveyancing process and completion. These comprise a mixture of customer data requests, legal questions and surveys, checks and searches. If issues are identified, these are often poorly expressed between counterparty solicitors and clients. Response times to requests vary between local authorities and depending on available information quality. Lengthy waits can add weeks to the time taken to buy and sell. BEIS research found that around one in seven of all buyers and sellers incurred additional costs because of delays in the process, with blame generally placed on conveyancers.
Current issues identified in research with conveyancing in England & Wales
Conveyancing is the legal transfer of property from one owner to another and is the most used legal service in the UK. It is, however, often criticised for not being efficient, effective, or consumer-friendly and is instead described as stressful, time-consuming and costly for buyers and sellers alike – with over a quarter of house sales falling through each year. The average time taken to complete a sale from initial listing of the property stands currently at approximately 19 weeks. Delays can lead to additional costs and increase the risk of transactions failing.
The fundamental issues that are still affecting conveyancing have been identified as:
Consumer inexperience
Most home buyers and sellers are relatively inexperienced and unfamiliar with the conveyancing process. Whilst there is a wide range of information available online, it is often confusing and clients are left in the dark for almost the entire transaction.
Lack of digitalisation
Some parts of the home buying and selling system have been improved by technology. However, all too often, as mentioned in the blog Dombat by Dominic Batstone, the process is interrupted because of avoidable problems such as incorrect information, illegible documents, incorrect attachments, incorrect correspondence addresses, unsigned documents being returned and even USB sticks sent in the post. Further technological developments are needed to help make the process simpler and faster.
Transaction failures
The UK Government estimates that over a quarter (estimates vary from 25% to 33%) of all home buying transactions fail, and some 25% of buyers and sellers who experience a failed transaction incur costs of more than £1,000. The UK Government estimates that the total losses incurred by buyers and sellers through failed transactions amounts to hundreds of millions of pounds each year. More precisely, an article by the Property Reporter (2021) estimated that sales that fail before completion are costing the UK homebuyers £607 million every year.
Time to complete
The home buying and selling process is complex and can take months to complete. The average time from offer to completion in England and Wales is thought to be between 12 to 14 weeks, whilst the time taken to complete a sale from initial listing of the property currently stands at approximately 19 weeks. Leasehold properties typically take two to three weeks longer to buy than an equivalent freehold property. Delays can lead to stress, additional costs for those involved and can increase the risk of gazumping and transactions failing.
Human error
Conveyancers and their clients are only human and as such they make mistakes. These mistakes can cost valuable time during a transaction. These errors add weeks or months to the conveyancing process as they need to be queried, rectified and then re-checked to ensure the completion of the sale.
For conveyancers, the complexity and disjointedness of the English system has created a suite of problems which make efficient, transparent navigation of the process challenging. The core issue is that buyers (and their lenders) need to be satisfied that they have all the information necessary to proceed with their purchase. This spans core questionnaires which sellers often complete without support and knowledge of the process, implications and general legal understanding.
The conveyancer will use the gathered information to create a contract pack, which is the foundation for the entire conveyancing process. Errors in the pack lead to more enquiries, more work for conveyancers, slow processing, loss of money and transaction failures.
In 2007 to try and combat the above issues, the Government introduced Home Information Packs (HIPs). HIPs put sellers of residential properties in England and Wales under a duty to provide a pack of standard information to potential buyers when marketing the property for sale. The HIPs packs were not greatly received as the technology available at the time was not sufficient for the idea. The packs also cost £200-£400, putting people off placing their home on the market.
ProConvey is designed to tackle these issues head on
ProConvey conveyancing software takes a whole process approach to these challenges. With a dual focus on creating effective client support tools to collect accurate information alongside intelligent deployment of APIs and data collection to maximise digital efficiencies, ProConvey is an open-ended platform which reduces conveyancing time by up to 50% and cost to conveyancers by up to 70% per case. Central to this is the simplicity of the online portal for law firms and their clients.
ProConvey fully guides clients I the transaction to create an exchange-ready pack, covering the general information, The Law Society TA forms, supporting evidence, and upfront enquiries required based on their answers. The platform guides clients through all required tasks that provides a fail-safe for incorrect or missing information, human error and communication issues. ProConvey guides clients through compliance tasks, the pack completion, supporting answers, prompts additional information and resource gathering and more. By creating a fully furnished, 100% complete pack, with additional information going beyond the usual TA forms, it exceeds normal conveyancing practice, reducing enquiries and workloads, and ultimately reducing completion timescales and failed transactions. It also ensures the end user experience is addressed and the process of selling or buying a house can be simplified and less confusing and worrying for sellers and buyers.
ProConvey is a novel digital solution aimed at addressing the underpinning challenge which is shared across the conveyancing process. Fundamentally, this is the process of gathering the necessary data, swiftly and without error.
One of the main struggles with conveyancing is a necessary reliance on the selling party to provide the information and appendices in the correct format fundamental to sell the property, as well as providing third parties/stakeholder details for checks and confirmation. Each form and answer provided, and request for information must be conducted correctly, or delays will follow. ProConvey simplifies this process for conveyancing teams with its user interface, integrations, workflows all within a branded online portal, and supports clients from the first step to the last with simple step by step tasks that complete all of the necessary steps, providing HMLR legally-binding eSignatures, ID and source of funds checks and more, in a desktop and mobile ready web application branded to the law firm.
ProConvey continues to strive to create the most sophisticated digital platform to improve the conveyancing process in one simple platform to reduce errors, ensure all information is to hand and tackle consumer frustration.
By adopting ProConvey law firms can benefit from:
Less enquiries
Required enquiries are raised quicker
Answers to enquiries are quick and simple
Less fall-throughs and quicker completions
Improved quality of service
Improved conveyancer/firm output
Increases in time available for quality conveyancing work
Less time-consuming admin work
Improved selling or buying experience and happier clients
Added value to the service offered from conveyancers for the fees paid
Wider benefits include:
Improved communication between all stakeholders
Fewer complaints to the Ombudsman with improved service
Possibly encourage people to move more often leading to more income for the government
Less stress for all stakeholders (especially buyers and sellers)
Improved conveyancing time to completion
How ProConvey addresses the issues identified in 2018 MCHLG ‘Improving the home buying and selling process’ report
Consumer inexperience
The easy-to-use mobile-ready platform gives an overview to clients of the tasks involved whilst selling or buying a property, alongside further pieces of information and advice at each stage to guide, prompt and support the process, keeping clients on track.
The paperwork currently used in conveyancing does not provide clients with enough additional information. ProConvey both tailors each question based on the type of transaction and provides guidance in multiple formats to address common issues when completing the forms.
Lack of digitalisation
The article Digital Conveyancing – A Call for Action Not Words by David Jabbari published on Today's Conveyancer states that the current conveyancing process is far from ‘automatable’.
ProConvey is a fully digital platform that uses other established digital products to create a one-stop hub for all conveyancing needs. The platform provides conveyancers with an exchange-ready packs with client onboarding, ID and AML and source of funds checks, payment on account facilities, protocol forms, further situational client enquiries and replies, conveyancing searches, indemnity insurances and more.
Most digital conveyancing software requires a "leap" from one programme or platform to another or a desktop application. ProConvey does not require using multiple platforms and is a cloud-based branded online portal and can be used as a standalone or bolt on product with API's integrating established services i.e., Conveyancing searches, ID and AML checks, all within the platform.
Transaction failures
ProConvey allows sellers to complete their contract pack before they have sold their property, and even before they have instructed a conveyancer in some cases. If a client can be sale-ready by the time an offer is made then there are less transactional failures and break downs in chains.
When completing a ProConvey pack the seller is prompted, based on the answers they provide, to supply all relevant and necessary information and supporting evidence, also going above and beyond a normal contract pack. This means conveyancers can benefit from a 100% fully furnished exchange-ready pack which leads to less enquiries, less errors, less communication backlogs and annoyances, less transactional failures and on top of that, much faster and smoother transactions. All at the click of a button.
ProConvey pre-empts and alleviates the stresses, burdens, issues and annoyances widely reported that cause delays and failures.
Time to complete
The time taken to onboard a client, create onboarding letters, carry out ID and AML checks, conduct Source of Funds checks, process payment on account, and create a contract pack is on average 2 weeks. ProConvey users see this reduced to hours, with clients completing all relevant tasks in as little as just 2 hours, allowing the law firm to get on with the lead work immediately.
The easy-to-use platform leaves no room for error and a broad range of additional information assists the client with each question and task. Additional documents can be uploaded anytime throughout the questionnaires and all forms are submitted 100% complete and error-free. Conveyancers just need to download a zip file to find a significant part of the work already done, which saves time and allows them to manage their workload more efficiently.
Book a Demo with ProConvey
If you’re ready to see how ProConvey can transform your conveyancing process, book a demo today. Discover first hand how ProConvey’s all-in-one conveyancing software can streamline your onboarding, reduce administrative tasks, and provide a seamless experience for your clients.
