Lloyds Banking Group, Connells Group and LMS have partnered together to launch a new digital homebuying service.

The service, which has been welcomed by the Housing Secretary, has been developed to eliminate points of frustration and cut waiting and uncertainty from the process.

Lloyds described the current homebuying process as “slow, fragmented and repetitive” with an average time to completion of five months, and the lender estimating that around one in four transactions collapse during the process.

Issues that Lloyds customers commonly raise about the homebuying process include being asked to provide the same information multiple times to different parties, the late discovery of issues that cause delays, long periods of uncertainty with poor communication and transparency, and manual paper based processes.

Lloyds said the new digital homebuying service would aim to tackle these issues by moving critical checks and information earlier in the process, before sharing them digitally between relevant parties using a shared data-exchange platform from LMS.

The service will run on residential sale and purchase transactions within England and Wales, involving Connells branches, LMS panel conveyancers, and Lloyds as the lender.

Homes director at Lloyds, Andrew Asaam, said: “The process of buying or selling your home is too stressful, too slow, too laborious, and often collapses through no fault of your own.

“With this new digital service, we aim to cut the stress, increase the speed, reduce the workload for customers and limit the number of transactions that fall through. This could change the way we buy and sell homes.”

Housing Secretary, Steve Reed, also welcomed the introduction of the new service and commented: “I’m pleased to see Lloyds, Connells Group and LMS showing what’s possible by getting the right information to the right people earlier, cutting the delays and uncertainty that make moving home so stressful.”

By using the National Property Transaction Network (NPTN) from LMS, the service will mean that property, identity, and financial information can be captured just once and then reused by all parties involved in the transaction, bringing together estate agents, brokers, conveyancers, and lenders earlier in the process.

CEO at LMS, Nick Chadbourne, said: “The industry has spent years diagnosing the problem. NPTN is infrastructure that delivers the solution. This initiative signals a serious move away from siloed processes and toward genuine market-wide reform.”

Chief operating officer at Connells Group, Chris Rosindale, added: “Society needs a faster, more reliable, fully digitised housing transaction system that increases certainty, reduces fall-throughs and supports housing mobility. We believe in reform that makes the system faster, more transparent and more reliable and are excited to be part of transformation in the sector.”

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