Tech issue sparks property settlement delays

THE Reserve Bank of Australia apologised on Thursday after conveyancers were hit this week by a central bank system issue that caused an outage of payments and PEXA property settlements.

PEXA, the nation’s dominant online property exchange network, said it regretted the disruptions on its platform after the RBA technical glitch on Tuesday stalled the processing of some payments, including property transactions.

Conveyancers nationwide were affected by the outage, with hundreds of settlements unable to be processed on Tuesday due to the unavailability of file-exchange services.

In a statement, PEXA said the RBA “technical incident” impacted financial institutions and caused delays to property transactions scheduled on the PEXA platform.

“PEXA appreciates that this issue is stressful for our customers and people who experienced disruptions. We regret the inconvenience caused,” a PEXA spokesperson said.

The company, which facilitates most property transactions in Australia, said the RBA launched a fix late on Tuesday, triggering settlements to process and complete.

Operations resumed and continued as usual from Wednesday morning, it said.

The RBA said around 500 property transactions were caught up in the outage, adding that it was now working with industry and in “regular contact to support recovery and resolution”.

“The RBA apologises for the disruption caused and recognises the impact this would have had on financial institutions and their customers,” an RBA spokesperson said in a statement.

“As there have been no further system issues at the RBA since late Tuesday evening, customers experiencing difficulties with transactions or payment delays should contact their own financial institution to discuss the matter.”

Dott & Crossitt head of compliance Adele Brincat said the outage delayed 33 settlements across the firm’s operations on Tuesday.

“That’s essentially 33 sets of clients that have plans change at the last minute and we had to make alternate arrangements for them,” Brincat told Australian Conveyancer.

“The biggest issue was with the ones that were due to settle around the two o’clock mark on Tuesday, they started settling and just never settled.”

“It was very stressful because it meant we had our team all scrambling.”

Shakila Maclean, principal of All Hours Conveyancing, was another practitioner impacted.

“I don’t think we’ve ever experienced an outage, a problem like this. We’ve had outages but they’ve usually been fixed the same day,” Maclean told Australian Conveyancer.

“One of ours didn’t settle Tuesday, it didn’t settle yesterday, and we’ve had to resign off for today.”