Settle Easy resets after administration with major technology push

Settle Easy had previously operated across Australia and built a position as one of the country’s larger conveyancing businesses by settlement volumes on PEXA. It also served as the exclusive conveyancing partner for Aussie Home Loans’ Aussie Conveyancing service.

Its administration, overseen by restructuring and insolvency firm Salea Advisory, put the future of approximately 85 staff in doubt and prompted Aussie Home Loans to move its ongoing in-house conveyancing service to Bond Property Lawyers.

Under its new owner, however, Settle Easy is continuing to trade, with active client matters progressing through the ownership transition. The business is accepting new work in NSW, Victoria, and Queensland.

Speaking to The Adviser, Kim revealed that Legal Easy was specifically created to acquire Settle Easy.

“Legal Easy is the entity that we set up to purchase this law firm. It’s not an existing law firm that acquired Settle Easy. It’s a newly incorporated legal practice that we managed to get registered right before settlement,” he said.

Kim said Legal Easy had not originally set out to buy a conveyancing business, but added that it saw value in acquiring a brand with an established reputation among clients.

“We saw it as an opportunity because it was genuinely a great brand with great client feedback and testimonials,” Kim said.

“It was a trusted Australian conveyancing brand. There was no mention of conveyancing work being done offshore and, in fact, all of the conveyancing was done locally, which I think is one of the differentiating factors with some of the other players out there.”

However, Kim said the cost of delivering a locally based service had contributed to a business structure that was difficult to sustain at scale.

“But that also meant the operations were very expensive,” Kim said.

“So even though services were being provided at such a high level and clients were happy, I think the economics were not sustainable for the business to grow and sustain at its level.”

Technology at the centre

Legal Easy’s plan is to retain experienced Australian conveyancers and lawyers for client-facing and legal work while applying its own technology to administrative components of a property transaction.

“We weren’t thinking of acquiring a conveyancing business at all, but because we have built our own technology to automate conveyancing, we saw it as an opportunity to put our technology at a much larger scale,” Kim said.

“We saw it as an opportunity to prove that our technology would work at scale if we acquired a much larger conveyancer.”

Kim said the system would be used to automate tasks such as reminders, document handling, and transaction calculations.

“Our conveyancing system is an automation solution. If we know, for example, a certain condition is due on a particular date, a reminder that is going out to seek instructions from a client can be easily automated,” he said.

“Once you know the purchase price and what the client is buying it for, calculation of stamp duty can be easily automated, as well as title fees.

“If you bundle up all of these little automations that can happen in the background without conveyancer having to do them manually, the amount of time you will save across a matter is actually significant.”

A smaller immediate footprint

While Settle Easy’s brand has been preserved, the company has not retained its previous nationwide operating footprint.

Kim confirmed that the new owner had made a deliberate decision to continue in NSW, Victoria, and Queensland and added that staff in the remaining states did not continue with the business.

“Not all staff have been retained. We’ve made an intentional decision to only keep New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, so all the staff members in the other states unfortunately didn’t continue with us,” he said.

“But many of the staff members in those three major states continued on, and they still continue to be employed by the Settle Easy brand.”

Kim said the company’s focus during its first months under new ownership had been on implementing technology and reviewing the systems inherited with the acquisition.

“If we break down 12 months into stages, I think our first three months’ focus from 1 July, being the acquisition date, has been implementation of the new technology and revision of all the existing processes,” Kim said.

“We are near finalising re-operationalising what the process looks like.”

Selective partnership approach

Once the operating foundations are in place, Kim said Legal Easy would turn its attention to carefully selecting growth partnerships and added that the company was in early discussions with broker groups and aggregators.

“From October onwards, our focus will be more targeted partnerships with agents and lenders that want to work with a premium and reliable Australian conveyancer,” Kim said.

“We are taking a very selective approach of who we want to grow our business with, because this is for us not only a long-term business, but it’s a business that is part of someone’s most sentimental decision in their life.”

He said Legal Easy was open to working with larger groups by integrating its local conveyancers into their customer ecosystems.

“We are talking to several broker groups, aggregators and franchises out there, but because our initial focus has been on building our sustainable infrastructure, we are strategically not aggressively pursuing that path at this stage,” Kim said.

“We are very open to supporting these larger groups by plugging in our local conveyancers to form part of their ecosystem.”

Kim said that the longer-term intention was to restore the company’s nationwide presence.

“We will definitely go to all other states and territories,” he said.

[Related: Aussie moves to new conveyancer as Settle Easy goes into administration]