Proptech company says its ethos closely matches Charter

Proptech solutions provider e4 Strategic has become the latest company to sign up to Landmark Information Group’s Project 28 Charter, which aims to bring together lenders, conveyancers, estate agents and technology providers to reduce the time between sale agreed and exchange to 28 days.

The Charter comprises eight practical commitments to help tackle delays and improve information flows between involved parties. These include earlier instruction of seller-side conveyancers, greater provision of upfront property information, better access to trusted digital data and secure sharing of key documents.

e4’s VERSA platform connects parties from mortgage offer through to post-completion through structured digital workflows and allows shared case visibility and secure communication, the company says. It says its approach reflects that of Project 28’s ambitions.

An ambitious target

Andrew Vaughan, head of customer management at e4 Strategic, said: “The 28-day target is ambitious, but that is exactly why it is useful. If we start from the assumption that transactions will always take three or four months, we risk designing improvements around the current process rather than questioning why it takes that long in the first place.

“One of the lessons from working closely with lenders and conveyancers is that delays rarely come down to one major problem. It is often the accumulation of smaller issues such as information being requested more than once, a query sitting unanswered, an update being missed, or one party not knowing that another is waiting for them.

“The test should not simply be how many transactions reach exchange within 28 days. It should be whether we can remove enough wasted time and uncertainty from the process that taking more than 100 days becomes the exception rather than the norm.”