New mortgage tech forecast to make Australia a world leader

Patti Eyers, chief executive of mortgage processing firm First Mortgage Services, said her experience of being part of a group that operates in 60 countries made her realise that Australia was “quite far behind” in terms of automating the settlement process.

However, Ms Eyers said the emerging e-conveyancing system would make Australia “far advanced” than other countries because it would leapfrog their level of automation.

In countries such as New Zealand and Canada, they do have the e-conveyancing capability there, and live,” she told The Adviser in a video interview.

“But what you’ll find in some of those jurisdictions is electronic documents are exchanged but the dispersement of funds is still a manual one. Australia will surpass that once the platform is at its full capability.”

Ms Eyers said PEXA would have to charge a reasonable price if it wanted the public to embrace e-conveyancing. People would also have to be open to new ideas, she added.

“We’ve had this manual, labour-intensive process for an awfully long time for that settlement piece of the process, and old habits are hard to change,” she said.

“So take-up will be a key issue for PEXA – they’re certainly focused on that and I think have made good traction in that area.”

Ms Eyers told The Adviser that brokers would benefit from e-conveyancing, because the system would be more efficient and transparent, which would lead to better customer outcomes.

[Related: E-conveyancing will mean more competition, inquiry told]