Interview with Jesper With-Fogstrup, CEO, Smoove plc

Since joining Smoove plc, you’ve talked a lot about revolutionising the conveyancing market. How has that been received? And do you feel you’re making progress?

I have now been in the business for almost a year and I’m even more certain that there is a huge opportunity to make the home moving process better for everyone involved. But I can’t deny that there was some apprehension about how my thoughts on this would be received, both internally and across the industry.

So, it’s been incredibly encouraging to see how widely that desire to improve the experience for our clients and partners is shared among colleagues and externally. Across the board, there’s a clear drive to view things from a more customer-focused perspective and find ways to ensure that moving home or refinancing is more transparent and less stressful.

In the last year, we have set out ambitious plans to make the home moving and ownership experience better for everyone. Customers tell us the process is not simple – it’s frustrating, stressful and moves at a snail-like pace.

I’m really pleased with the significant progress we have made, developing a strategy and roadmap that centres on increased investment in technology and people. Focusing on developing our technology and bringing new talent into the business means we will be able to deliver a customer-centric, data-driven experience that brings real value across to all our industry stakeholders.

Are digital options making a difference to the current conveyancing experience?

If you speak to homebuyers and sellers, very often they have little idea of what conveyancing even is, or why it’s important to their transaction. All they know is that a legal process is going on, which they are distanced from and often have little idea of how it’s actually progressing. Given that, it’s little wonder that they feel the process is less than transparent.

Yet digital solutions offer a great way to ensure that clients are ‘in the loop’ on what’s happening, as well as ensuring the process is frictionless and more efficient.

Encouraging the industry to embrace the technological advancements that are being developed is the only way that we will be able to remove the frustration felt by many. We obviously have a strong digital brand in eConveyancer which is widely used by brokers and it is reassuring to see the number of partners now using our home moving platform DigitalMove. It has been a real success, with over 60,000 cases handled through the platform to date. DigitalMove provides a secure digital platform that has dramatically reduced the time taken to get things moving on the legal side. For example, we have found that house purchase cases instructed through DigitalMove remove two weeks of administration for the consumer which makes for happier broker customers. At the same time as we adopt new technology and digital products, it is important that we don’t lose sight of the importance of ensuring we are building secure operations and putting in place cyber security processes to protect our customers’ assets and information while giving them confidence in our systems.

Speeding up the legal side of a move doesn’t just leave the clients in a better position, it also means that brokers receive their mortgage origination quicker, so everyone wins.

Has the pandemic impacted the way you view those digital options?

In my view, the difficulties of moving home over the last year and a half due to the pandemic have only further highlighted the role digital solutions can play.

COVID-19 brought additional complications to moving home especially as it limited interactions that would normally have taken place in person.

However, by moving things online and making use of the technology available through DigitalMove, homebuyers and sellers were able to complete those sales.

Inevitably, there have been some who viewed technology with suspicion, no matter where it was being used in the property market. I’d like to think that the last year and a half has made clear that digital options have not only enabled the market to keep moving during unprecedented challenges but have probably fast-forwarded the adoption of technology by a number of years as the industry returns to a degree of normality.

We can’t rest on our laurels though. The current model of DigitalMove is just the start, there’s far more that we can do. We are investing in developing more products and greater functionality and have set up an innovation hub that will allow us to build, pilot and evolve new digital products in live environments, which will provide valuable insight to shape future services and experiences and will allow us to refine them prior to broader rollout.

How important are mortgage brokers to your plans for Smoove?

Most people who buy a home make use of a mortgage broker, and with good reason. If you want to secure the best possible home loan, then why wouldn’t you want to tap into the expertise of a professional who can identify the lenders who are most likely to look favourably on your application?

Similarly, if you want to work with home buyers and sellers then you have to recognise the importance of the broker in that move.

From our perspective, we want to find ways to help make the conveyancing experience more open and transparent for brokers as well as their clients. It’s why it’s so welcome to hear from advisers about the benefits they are already seeing from digital experiences like DigitalMove. The improved transparency offered by the platform means brokers are spending far less time having to speak to stressed-out clients who don’t know what’s going on with their cases.

Brokers will know that their clients are becoming more conscious of how businesses operate too, from both an environmental and societal perspective, and that will have an impact on the firms that brokers partner with. DigitalMove is already having a notable environmental impact - we calculate around 20 million sheets of paper to date have been saved thanks to customers not having to print out and fill in physical forms. Across the business, we take our impact seriously and are always looking to operate in a more responsible way, so brokers with clients who are socially conscious can rest assured that they are working with a like-minded firm.

We are determined to offer more value to our broker partners too, by continuing to identify further partner firms to work with who can boost the service brokers provide to their clients. Our panel mix is also very important to ensure we have the right balance of legal professionals for brokers to access across the country. I’m really pleased that we have seen a 14% increase in the number of conveyancing firms joining eConveyancer recently which means we are in an even better place to meet everyone’s needs.

Brokers using eConveyancer can already help their clients with digital wills and tap into the Just Move In home moving service, but this is just the start. We want brokers to know that by working with eConveyancer they and their clients not only benefit from a top-class conveyancing experience and robust security but a host of additional services and revenue streams.