Conveyancing to become paperless late next year

Paper-based property transactions, including bank cheques, title transfer and mortgage-related documentation, are set to become a thing of the past, with a single national electronic conveyancing system now scheduled for late 2012.

The first property e-conveyancing transactions are set from early 2013. Legislation will need to be passed by each state government before the e-conveyancing platform can be implemented, along with a reliable and trusted structure for digital signatures.

It follows a decision to abandon Victoria's stand-alone pioneering e-conveyancing system, Electronic Conveyancing Victoria, which was announced earlier this week as part of a series of deals leading to the rollout of PEXA or Property Exchange Australia. Despite a decade of endeavours there had been no agreement on a single national system with instead parallel work has been going on in a number of states.

Set to cut the cost of buying a home by between $120 and $130, the national system is expected to begin operating late next year.

It is intended to deliver annual efficiency gains of $240 million.

National E-Conveyancing Development Ltd (NECDL), a company backed by most states and the big banks, will own the national network. NECDL has signed a master agreement with Accenture to design and build the national e-conveyancing platform for Australia.

In return for giving up the intellectual property in ECV, Victoria is understood to have emerged with a dominant 33.7% stake in NECDL.

The delivery of a national e-conveyancing platform forms part of the Council of Australian Governments’ micro-economic reform agenda and is one of the deregulation priorities under the National Partnership Agreement to Deliver a Seamless National Economy.

Australian Bankers’ Association chief executive Steven Münchenberg says a national e-conveyancing system will mean major efficiency gains for the banking sector.

“The ABA has supported this initiative because on delivery there will be many benefits such as faster and more efficient processes, elimination of bank cheques for property transactions, easier co-ordination of settlements and greater certainty for all involved.”