Those of you who have enjoyed the joys of an end to end property transfer settlement through PEXA will be well aware of the incredible efficiency, and time savings created through the electronic financial disbursement of funds with the click of a button! Why then are manual settlements still acceptable and why do we tolerate the inefficiencies of cheque payment and paper exchange in property settlements? We are in the digital era where we expect instant response times, accessibility, control of data and finance and are not constrained by office locations. Cheque payments are error prone, get lost, bounce, are administratively labour intensive, and take days and days for access to cleared funds! It appears that the purchasers via conveyancers and lawyers should be demanding a PEXA settlement, or at the very least attempting to create a change of behaviour in the industry and demand that settlement disbursements (stamp duty, registration fees, utilities, rates etc) from the lender are paid electronically. Until greater awareness and movement to change is created, the old manual time wasting exchange of paper and cheques will continue.
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