Mills Oakley invests in automated conveyancing

Mills Oakley has invested in ConvX to disrupt the conveyancing industry.

“Until recently, conveyancing has been a cottage industry ripe for disruption,” said John Nerurker, Mills Oakley chief executive. “The time for that disruption has now arrived.”

Mills Oakley and ConvX formally launched their partnership at the Mills Oakley offices in Melbourne this week in an event attended by The Hon Philip Dalidakis, the Victorian minister for innovation and the digital economy.

“It is wonderful to have start-ups like ConvX as part of our digital economy here in Australia’s tech city driving innovation and transforming the way our industries such as conveyancing do things. Congratulations to ConvX and Mills Oakley on their partnership and joining forces,” the minister said.

The national firm is proud to become an equity holder in ConvX, Nerurker said, enabling the firm to offer clients faster and more efficient conveyancing. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Billed as Australia’s first online automated conveyancing platform, ConvX will use conveyancers, but will also structure the procedure into a step-by-step process to allow a network of on-call professionals to complete tasks as needed.

The platform offers an end-to-end digital conveyancing platform unlike electronic settlement and lodgement services such as PEXA, which deal with only the settlement phase of the process. ConvX will be fully compatible with PEXA and other settlement and lodgement services.

The service will integrate AI and automated technologies to manage transactions, automatically interacting with external parties such as banks and the State Revenue Office. The platform aims to improve the conveyancing for customers by streamlining processes, reducing errors, improving communication, and making the whole process painless, Mills Oakley said.

“Mills Oakley boasts one of the largest property teams in Australia and an enviable client base. Developer clients will be able to leverage ConvX to add efficiency and scalability to their internal conveyancing teams, while clients in the real estate agency space will be able to adopt ConvX as part of a suite of ‘value add’ services for their own clients. We are excited by the possibilities this partnership will create,” said Nick Stanley, ConvX chairman.

Mills Oakley has a particularly large property team that includes 12 partners and 75 staff.