Uberisation is perhaps the very last term one would associate with conveyancing and property completions. Yet, with new technology advancements within the legal and proptech space, the term slots in very comfortably indeed.
What is uberisation?
In short, it’s using technology, such as online and mobile applications, to aggregate and innovate transactions between clients/consumers and providers of a service. The innovation part is crucial. Uberisation is a very specific solution to a particular problem. It’s about transforming an existing industry by introducing a clearer, more transparent way of transacting, whether it’s ordering a pizza or purchasing a property.
Uberisation is a neologism coined on the back of the popularity of Uber, a technology platform that revolutionised the landscape of taxi fares by directly connecting drivers with passengers via a mobile app. Since then, Uber has expanded its services to food deliveries and courier services, but the idea remained the same.
Other companies adopted similar principles when serving customers, like Dominos Pizza. Today, we can use an app to order a delicious meal within seconds and track the entire process as we wait for it to be delivered. Dom, an artificial intelligence bot, clearly explains each step of the order by providing visual cues and progress notifications. Although users can see their order being prepared and when it’s on the move, their pizza doesn’t reach their door any quicker. Undeniably, however, seeing the order progressing is still reassuring.
Can the conveyancing process be uberised?
Selling or buying a house is one of the most exciting albeit most stressful events in life, yet home movers have very little insight into the process. An average homeowner has limited knowledge of the conveyancing process, and this is one of the key reasons why the technology behind WeCOMPLETE is not only groundbreaking but sought after.
On average, we see home movers logging into their case via WeCOMPLETE 40 times. Further investigation shows that tracking was not the sole reason for checking the system, and those interactions were done outside of regular business hours. Tracking the conveyancing case is an integral part of the property completion, but more often than not, the home movers wanted to understand what stage their transaction is at and what it entails exactly. They want their questions answered.
Similarly, conveyancing teams progress the case through various technological advancements, such as digital onboarding, AML, document uploads, filing and electronic signatures, search ordering and returns, payment collections and much more whilst notifying estate agents and home movers as the case progresses. Quite crucially, thanks to applying technology, conveyancers are armed with an array of important information about a property, such as a title plan and a title number, a UPRN and flood risk assessment, plot size and information on boundaries, which in itself speeds up the process, but more importantly allows for all parties to confirm that all details are as they understood. This sharing of data means, if necessary, questions can be answered in week one rather than month four. Based on average completion times with the WeCOMPLETE system, there rarely is a month four!
The advancements in property technology allow agents to transact quicker, with many achieving 42% faster completions than the national average, whilst conveyancers report a 50% reduction in time spent on each case, halving the workload and alleviating the pressures on their teams.
By embracing the uberisation of the conveyancing process, WeCOMPLETE enabled estate agents, conveyancers, mortgage brokers, buyers and sellers to work in tandem towards faster property completions, where tracking is just a crumb of a large slice of pizza.