Moving with the times. Adapt, pivot, and innovate

BEING prepared and agile enough to respond to a rapidly changing environment has been a part of David Winning’s philosophy at Sydney-based Your Move Conveyancing. The founder and head of strategy has seen growth in his business at what many may perceive to be the most turbulent of times.

For he, and Your Move’s Chief Executive Felicity McAllan the need to pivot has no doubt dominated discussions around the boardroom table.

The pandemic and the nation’s economy have been formidable forces. But the external influences have not defined or restricted their business; they have instead emboldened it.

Clear thinking, focus and a preparedness to innovate has paved a strong pathway forward.

Australian Conveyancer magazine sat down with the rather humble business leaders who were prepared to share their journey through the good times and the challenging times.

AUSTRALIAN CONVEYANCER: What changes have impacted Conveyancing the most in recent years?

DAVID WINNING: It’s hard not to reflect on the Covid period. 

It brought forward a lot of people’s desires to upsize, downsize, change, see change. It accelerated the market incredibly over a good, sort of, two-year period. 

The past 12 months as interest rates have increased, cost of living pressures have made people rethink what their goals and desires are. 

That’s stabilised the market. The recorded transactions in NSW were down about 30 per cent year-to-year; July and August saw that stabilising somewhat. 

We’re starting to see it emerge a bit more now with the numbers starting to increase again.

AC: What changes should we be pushing for in the next five years?

FELICITY McALLAN: I don’t think there’s going to be much change, to be honest. 

The uptake of electronic conveyancing since Covid 19 has been a huge change and, perhaps there will be continued improvements in that aspect of service delivery. 

The biggest change I see happening would be for government regulations to create a standard across the whole of Australia. 

Federal regulation or conveyancing provisions, making sure everybody’s delivering them in the same way. However, for that to happen in the next five years would be a miracle. We are hopeful because that would certainly aid services provided for all the stakeholders across Australia. 

AC: What technology do you use to drive the business forward?

DAVID WINNING: We’ve been able to utilise a lot of the integrations with triConvey with our billing, trust accounting, searching, everything’s all in the one place. It’s been a really a significant component of us being able to provide services as efficiently as we can.

FELICITY McALLAN: We use triConvey as our CRM. It’s an amazing platform for us because of its integration, it’s searching and billing, that’s important to us. 

We’d prefer to have everything all in one package, so that’s something we look to adopt in the business, and that’s important for everybody moving forward in terms of workflows.

How they’re going to work most efficiently is utilising software with the ability to plug into different platforms and deliver the best service is vital. 

So, we are looking at the synergies and the repetitive tasks and working out how to save time and automate wherever possible. 

If we can simplify the monotonous tasks and make it easier for our team to servicing more clients, you’ll see revenue increase. 

AC: Is there a place for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Conveyancing?

FELICITY McALLAN: I don’t think AI will ever replace our industry. 

I believe that the face-to-face and human interaction with end consumers will forever be valuable. The best thing we can do is learn more about AI and how it can help us do things in the background that making us more efficient.

Intelligence is obviously a great advantage to everybody, but it’s learning how to adapt that into your workflows. 

AC: Is cyber-security a concern for your business? How are you mitigating risks?

DAVID WINNING: It’s a huge issue. The cyber-security space is somewhat unknown for conveyancers and solicitors alike. 

We all seem to be doing a little bit of catch-up in that space. Our clients’ email accounts are getting hacked, emails that might be getting communicated to their clients are getting manipulated, and suddenly, the client is getting an email that looks like it’s from their firm, or a real estate agent or broker, directing them to pay funds into an account and that’s where the risk comes up.

We spend a lot of time with our clients at the beginning of the transaction, talking to them about what account details they should be expecting to pay money into, and vice versa. 

We’re getting account details before there’s an opportunity for those account details or emails to be manipulated, and we make hard notes of that as well. It’s all communicated verbally as well. 

The banking industry needs to come to also the party in that respect as well, make it easier to adopt newer technologies that are emerging that mean that there is more security around in that space. 

We can’t pretend that we’re experts in this space. We need to make sure that we are relying on experts that do have the right types of education information and systems that they can help our industry with along the way too.

AC: How can Conveyancers stay up to date in this ever-evolving industry?

FELICITY McALLAN: By speaking to people, build networks, share ideas, speak with all the stakeholders and consumers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers and software practitioners. 

Just share and listen, it’s so important to understand how other people are viewing something and your own perspective, so you can discuss some challenge among groups. 

You can also stay abreast with updates, you know, through email. 

AIC offers networking groups that really encourage everyone to get involved with and allows them opportunities to meet people who might not otherwise meet.

AC: What’s your advice for Conveyancers looking to grow their business?

DAVID WINNING: People like interacting with other people, and the biggest thing that we found in the early days was that nothing really beats personal interactions with one another. 

Being able to pick up the phone, talk to them directly, go out and meet them for coffee, let them get to know you and vice-versa. 

That really helps to figure out your position are in the market, the services you provide to clients that’s going to be different to others: Is it availability, pricing, different types of technology that you’ve adopted? 

They’re the sorts of things that referral partners in particularly just want to know about.