Last year, HM Land Registry said it would accept Qualified Electronic Signatures (QESs) for residential and commercial property transactions to bring more security and ease.
According to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from Novus Strategy, despite conveyancers being invited to use QESs since the start of August and 1,194,439 applications being received from 5,964 firms, only one QES was recorded.
Novus Strategy said the low take-up showed that firms need to “redesign the customer journey and reconfigure their operations”.
It added that increasing use of QESs would show “other important steps” have already been taken by the industry to “unlock the potential of frictionless property transactions”, and this would “take time and careful planning”.
Claire Van der Zant, CEO of Novus Strategy, said: “We were surprised by the lack of uptake, but there are practical reasons why adoption would be constrained.
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“As consumers, we all understand what an e-signature is and how user-friendly this technology can be. However, for businesses in this space, the challenge is bigger than simply adopting new tools and adjusting internal processes.
“In the case of QES, adoption is impossible without an interoperable digital ID solution. And they will only work effectively alongside wider changes that reduce the friction in the data hand-offs between different actors in the transaction.”
She continued: “Conveyancers would point out there’s very little out there in the way of integrated solutions for QES at the moment, and they’d be right. There are almost no QES solutions that combine with that essential digital ID component.
“More broadly, they need a strategy that enables data interoperability and trust frameworks beyond their vertical. This is what’s meant by Horizontal Digital Integration, and it involves redesigning the customer journey and reimagining how to connect with the wider ecosystem, solving issues like interoperability, trust and liability simultaneously.
“So, digitisation alone isn’t the answer. QES is now available. To fully leverage this opportunity, industry needs to reframe strategies to look left and right of their part of the transaction, embracing HDI as the key framework to unlock opportunities like QES to bring efficiency into the home buying and selling journey. It’s encouraging that the Government is introducing digital ways of working, but achieving that adoption requires a different approach.”
