Remortgaging via digital conveyancing - bank claims ‘UK first’

Shawbrook has become the first bank in the UK to offer limited companies the ability to remortgage using the digital conveyancing platform, PEXA.

Traditionally, property settlements involve a significant amount of paperwork and manual processes. Shawbrook has streamlined this by partnering with PEXA to provide a digital platform for individuals and limited companies, where all parties involved in the property transaction can collaborate, exchange information, and settle the transaction electronically through the Bank of England via PEXA Pay.

This includes activities such as transferring property titles, completing financial transactions, and lodging documents with relevant authorities.

Shawbrook, alongside the customer’s broker Clever Lending, has now completed its first limited company remortgage using PEXA for a professional property investor with an 11-property portfolio. Benefitting from automated valuation models (AVMs) and a fully packaged case, the whole process took only 28 business days from full mortgage application to completion.

PEXA’s research illustrates that remortgaging is a major event for property owners. Despite its importance, 33 per cent of those surveyed have experienced delays in the past and 13 per cent faced unexpected costs associated with the additional time

Working with PEXA, Shawbrook says its objective is to continue reducing the time and effort on administration and to minimise the frustrations that the traditional remortgaging process can create for investors and landlords. Further work is now underway to fully integrate PEXA into Shawbrook’s application journey and to support remortgage journeys where it could soon be possible to complete a transaction in days – not the three to four months that the industry currently accepts as standard.

Claire Rankin, director of specialist lending - real estate at Shawbrook, comments: “We’ve continued to build on our evolving digital strategy, adding to existing innovations such as MyShawbrook portal, which provides automated underwriting decisions.

“Extending PEXA to limited companies is a further example of Shawbrook delivering against our technology ambitions, removing the unnecessary friction of manual completion payments, which will now benefit more customers. We’re glad that we are now able to further enhance user journeys and enable more property investors to benefit from a smoother, more efficient process, as demonstrated by this first completion for a limited company client.”

And Andrew Lloyd, UK chief customer officer at PEXA, adds: “We know that property transactions are still too painful and take too long here in the UK and launching limited company capabilities is the next step on our journey to enabling a smart, seamless and secure experience for those buying, selling and remortgaging property. We look forward to continuing to work with innovative partners such as Shawbrook to make this journey a reality.”