Conveyancing moves into the 21st century

From a business perspective we recognised that providing legal services for all Australians was very important, and one area that we all play in at one time or another is property law.

On the other side of the coin, that buying/selling time is quite exciting for most people and we recognised that there are 300,000 transactions annually in the property environment; that’s something we wanted a bigger share of.

There’s probably a conveyancer on every main street of Australia – how will Slater and Gordon’s Conveyancing Works be different?

We’ve got 70 offices around Australia, so we’re in many areas already.

I think we do have that local edge but we also bring a technological edge – we really provide our clients with a great range of assistance including online access where a client can follow their transaction through the process.

We have a messaging service that tells a client when the contracts have been received or alerts them to a key milestone in the process. We’re also able to alert other key stakeholders – the real estate agent or the broker – in the process.

Keeping all the key players up to date is critical to our success. I think we’re also competitively priced; we may not be the cheapest in the market, but the difference we bring is that we have the supervision of lawyers behind us.

Every one of our files is supervised by a lawyer; we have specialist lawyers in the conveyancing field who work closely together to ensure we transact the business as professionally and effectively as possible.

What’s the prime reason – legally speaking – that contracts would not be exchanged on a property?

Finance is obviously the biggest one. That said, we have a termination rate of 13 per cent and the majority of that is around finance, where someone has got a loan from a broker or bank and has failed to declare everything when they’ve gone through that process.

Another area is around building and pest, for example if someone has built an illegal garage or deck and doesn’t have the appropriate approvals, they may decide not to go through with the sale.

But I’m pleased to say it’s rare for contracts to terminate once you get to that stage.

How can brokers get more involved?

We’ve done a lot of research around our conveyancing clients and found that the brokers are considered almost the ‘white knights’ of the lending process – they help people realise their dreams, get the borrowings that the customer wants for the family home or the investment property.

So what we want to do is work closely with the brokers as the process moves forward. From my feedback from brokers, they’re saying [in regards to conveyancing] keep the process simple and give us a way that we can refer the business very easily.

Is it all about referrals?

Yes, the broker refers the client directly to us, they can send the contract directly to us, or they can tell the client it’s going to be Slater and Gordon’s Conveyancing Works when they sign the contract with the agent.

Our next step is to take that platform to a point where the broker has direct interaction with us, and from the feedback we’ve got that appears to be what brokers want.

That’s then communicated to all key stakeholders – we’ve gone unconditional, finance has been met, building and pest has been met, settlement has been agreed – and the brokers are a critical part of that.

Are there any issues around a broker doing the finance and then being involved in the conveyancing – which basically is ensuring the finance component can be met from a legal perspective?

Yes, all the brokers we’ve spoken to have said the relationship needs to be at an arm’s length. We’ve been asked if we’d ‘white label’ and I don’t think that is what brokers are after at this stage. Brokers want to refer; they want to be able to refer to an institution themselves. We understand that brokers might recommend two or three conveyancers and we’d hope to be one of those because of our service, our low price guarantee and our vast network of offices.

E-conveyancing is the buzzword at the moment. What actually does that involve and does that represent opportunities for brokers?

E-conveyancing is an electronic settlement process and it is a great process for us to move towards. It basically allows land registries, financial institutions, conveyancers to transact together online at the settlement point. Being able to take that online is going to greatly improve the efficiencies in the process. I think the term does cause some confusion. I think people think there’s going to be some online package that everybody can plug in and go, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to done before that happens – you have to get all the different states onboard, all the different financial institutions and that’s going to take some time. But it’s great we are heading in that direction.

What’s the financial inducement for brokers to offer Slater and Gordon’s Conveyancing Works over a competitor’s?

We don’t offer any financial incentive for sending work our way. We found it would be just too difficult [to pay a commission] because a client could think, ‘Why is the broker getting a kickback? Why aren’t I getting any benefit too?’ So we decided to step away from that.

So what’s the incentive for the broker?

Brokers get to work with our BDMs and we’re out there speaking to brokers and I don’t think anybody else is doing that in the marketplace. At the end of the day if we’re giving a recommendation or a referral to use a certain service we want to know that it is going to be provided at the highest level of competence. If there’s a feeling that there’s any problems in the process, say the client may not have got a phone call in a couple of days, at least the broker can pick up the phone to their BDM with us and go, “What’s going on here?” The BDM has a channel back into us to find out what has actually occurred.

So it’s a service offering for brokers over a remuneration offering?

Yes, that’s the core of our focus: how do we give the client the best service possible and secondary to that is how are we giving great service to the key stakeholders in the process. At the end of the day we’re there to ensure there’s a smooth process for the transaction to occur and we want the settlement to occur and everybody to walk away happy.

Is Slater and Gordon’s Conveyancing Works trying to disrupt the traditional way conveyancing is done and do you expect any backlash here?

I think that’s a very fair question. When we introduced this new model we did expect that. A disruptive environment is one I’ve heard a few times. But people are becoming more and more aware of the opportunities that are out there and, of course, the web is what’s doing that. You want anything these days you jump on Google. For us it’s about providing a great service at a fair price, and that hopefully our clients will recommend us to other people. We find about 46 per cent of our business comes from either recommendations or from previous clients, so we think we’re doing a pretty good job of servicing the clients that do come to us. I also think this idea that people can still charge $2,500 for conveyancing is an older model, while we feel that where we are positioned at the moment offers a fair and reasonable price for a great service.