The paper chase for law firms handling property sales in Australia could be over by 2012, according to the timeline announced for development of a national E-Conveyance platform. Accenture has been appointed to design and build the long-awaited initiative.

Disparate efforts from state governments have been discontinued, with existing IP handed over to a new company – National E-Conveyancing Development Ltd (NECDL) - which is majority owned by Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and WA state governments.

The system, known as “PEXA” (Property Exchange Australia), is intended to remove the requirement to use paper-based systems for completing property conveyancing transactions, including the transfers of title and mortgage-related aspects, and the various payments which are involved. 

Despite significant effort over the past 10 years to develop a national conveyance platform, there has previously been no agreement on a single national system.  Instead, parallel work has been going on in a number of states, including Electronic Conveyancing Victoria, the National Electronic Conveyancing Office and others.  These streams of development have now converged under NECDL.

NECDL was established in early 2010 in response to the inclusion of e-conveyancing on the COAG agenda and has sought to bring a commercial and a national focus to this task.

Alan Cameron AO, Chairman of NECDL, said the agreement with Accenture constituted a major step forward for e-conveyancing in Australia.

“NECDL has purposely sought to align the key stakeholders behind e-conveyancing and to bring a strong commercial focus to delivering a national system.  We now have in place all the necessary elements to begin developing the system.  All parties will now see some concrete development steps in delivering an e-conveyancing system for Australia. 

“The announcements today signal a significant departure from where e-conveyancing has been in the past. We are looking forward to continuing our dialogue with the key stakeholders in this project: property lawyers, conveyancers, banks, other financial institutions, information brokers, and all State and Territory revenue offices and land titles offices. These parties will be central to the successful implementation of a national system,” Mr. Cameron said.

PEXA is expected to move into an initial operational stage in late 2012 with the first property transactions occurring after that date.

Further details of the e-conveyancing platform were outlined in a discussion paper released by The Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council (ARNECC).

It notes, this “will essentially be a web-based "hub" for parties to a conveyancing transaction to electronically prepare and settle the transaction and to electronically lodge  the documents for registration at the appropriate land registry.

“The NECDL platform will not directly alter or update the data held by a land registry, nor create a national land registry.  It is a gateway or channel for documents to be presented for lodgment with the existing land registries.”

Access to the system will be restricted to lawyers, conveyancers and lenders, and it will not be open to the general public.

Legislation will need to be passed by each state government before the e-conveyancing platform can be implemented, and a strong, reliable and trusted structure for Digital Signatures developed.