Conveyancers Want ID Property Portal Like “Border Control”
Estate agents are to be given back-up to help confirm the identity of property sellers – if the Conveyancing Association (CA) gets their way.
In an attempt to cut back on property fraud the CA is to lobby the government for a centralised ID Verification process – one which includes the use of high-tech biometrics.
In the White Paper ‘Modernising the Home Moving Process’ the CA said that “given the sanctity of the Registers’ and the amount of money involved in property transactions a centralised Property ID Verification process should “warrant as much attention as border control.”
Land Registry should host “secure portal”
A secure portal organised via the Land Registry will lead to better security for everyone involved in the sale of a property, it argues. It also means that overall responsibility for identification of both seller and buyer would lie with Land Registry while the estate agent’s role would be to identify the seller by meeting them in person at the property they will to sell. The conveyance and broker meanwhile could check for suspicious financial activity.
Mortgage fraud meanwhile is currently at its highest level in five years thanks to more sophisticated technology used by fraudsters. This allows them to intercept genuine emails and supply fake bank details. Then there is the threat of such viruses as Crypto-locker. This targets emails and attachments and results in PC users being asked to send money to the hackers in order to regain access to their documents before they are permanently deleted.
It’s hoped that by introducing a centralised system for house sales, the process wouldn’t just be more secure, it would also quicker. That’s because it would do away with the need for all professionals involved in the sale to carry out their own ID checks.
E-Home Reports to speed process up even quicker
Another CA proposal for ensuring property sales are achieved quicker is the introduction of an e-Home Report. This would contain all the information needed for the sale with artificial intelligence identifying only the relevant documents necessary by a particular user. Meanwhile a conveyancer would check that all the information was in order. In this way any problems would be identified at an earlier stage of the sale.
As a bonus to estate agents, it would also cut back on duplication of forms – since it would already include the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations checks – and lead to an easier sales process. Not only that but by logging in to the portal both the seller and buyer would be able to check for themselves how everything was moving along – rather than demanding the estate agent chases the sale along.
A spokesman for the CA described both the ID verification process and the E-Home Report as a means of “effectively jump-starting the [property sale] process.”
He added: “By having a digital paper trail of all communications, it is easy to keep track of all documents and transactions, and equally, looking forward enables parties to project completion times.”
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Blog by Avrillo.
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