InfoTrack, Author at SettleIT

The ACT closes in on eConvaceyancing mandate

July 27, 2020

The ACT closes in on eConveyancing mandate On June 1, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) introduced amendments to the Electronic Conveyancing National Law (ACT) Act 2020 and the Land Titles (Electronic Conveyancing) Legislation Amendment Act 2020 (ACT). The changes mean the ACT is slowly introducing elements of the e-conveyancing workflow to assist lawyers and conveyancers with the transition prior to mandating. What does this mean for you? Now that land titles in the ACT are kept electronically it follows that lodgments should also be filed electronically. The aim is also to protect against fraudulent activity. In an effort to enhance compliance, the onus now is on lawyers, conveyancers and financial institutions (if necessary), to complete; Verification of Identity (VOI) of their client and a client authorisation form (CAF). Lawyers and conveyancers are also required to retain supporting evidence proving they are allowed to deal with a particular property. Important dates to note: Monday 17th August 2020Banks will begin creating workspaces and lodging standalone Discharges and Mortgages. From this date financial institutions can create workspaces and send invitations for Refinancing where the Settlement Date is on or after Monday August 31. Monday 7th September 2020Legal and conveyancing practitioners can begin creating workspaces and sending invitations

New NSW building law could be a game changer for apartment safety

July 22, 2020

New NSW building law could be a game changer for apartment safety Matthew Bell, Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of Studies for Construction Law, University of Melbourne This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Three years have passed since a cladding-fuelled fire claimed 72 lives in Grenfell Tower, London, on June 14 2017. The construction industry and its regulators around the world are still grappling with how to create effective regulations to ensure dwellings are built to keep their occupants safe. The New South Wales Parliament passed two important bills last week: the Design and Building Practitioners Bill 2020 and the Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Bill 2020. This put in place two important pieces of the “jigsaw puzzle”, as NSW Better Regulation Minister Kevin Anderson put it. The Residential Apartment Buildings Bill in particular could be a game changer and is the focus of this article. The law is expected to take effect on September 1 2020. New powers to order serious defects be fixed The centrepiece of the legislation is an ability for the Secretary of the Department of Customer Service to order the correction of “serious defects” in residential apartment buildings. In practice, the NSW building commissioner and his

3 solutions helping conveyancers to differentiate their firms

June 23, 2020

3 solutions helping conveyancers to differentiate their firms It’s been a big year, and we’re only halfway. Now is the time to look forward and think about what you can do to differentiate your firm from others. What strengths does your firm possess that can help you go above and beyond for your clients, enhance your reputation and do more with less? Do you have all the tools you need to help you demonstrate what differentiates your firm from the rest? Here are three solutions helping conveyancers enhance their client relationships and differentiate their firms. Settle electronically to reduce admin and do more with less resources InfoTrack offers an electronic settlement service, SettleIT, which allows you to outsource any upcoming property settlements. This means if you have never completed an electronic settlement before, or you don’t have the time or resources to do it yourself, you can rely on the Australian-based team at SettleIT to act under your instructions, post unconditional contract exchange, to provide a personalised fixed-price service. Furthermore, you don’t need to be registered with an ELNO like PEXA or Sympli as the SettleIT team are registered and can use their own accounts to do this for you. SettleIT can

Spotlight on QLD: Cyber Security and the transition to eConveyancing

May 15, 2020

Spotlight on QLD: Cyber Security and the transition to eConveyancing Lee Bailie InfoTrack’s General Manager of Products and Innovation recently interviewed David Bowles from the Queensland Law Society (QLS). They spoke about the state of play in Queensland, how COVID-19 may be affecting Queensland lawyers and where lawyers can turn if they are finding COVID-19 is creating challenges for their firm in everyday business. Currently with all that is going on with COVID-19 in Queensland, what impacts are you seeing on the legal profession? Well, these times are certainly fairly dramatic and it’s not just small firms who are impacted. It’s throughout the entire ecosystem – there’s been a huge financial impact as you can imagine and a great many firms are now doing work for clients that they know are possibly insolvent and they’re really very concerned that these clients relationships that they’ve built up over many years might be disappearing underneath them so there’s that. The financial aspect as you know a good many small firms that are under stress anyway and this has been a truly very significant blow to them as well on the whole in terms of just getting the work out the door. I’ve been

3 ways to complete your NSW Electronic Duties Return (EDR) or eDuties services

April 21, 2020

3 ways to complete your NSW Electronic Duties Return (EDR) or eDuties services Recently, Revenue NSW announced an update that commencing May 4, 2020, “all complex assessing and refund applications must be lodged digitally through our eDuties service.” This is a result of the unprecedented COVID-19 environment and the challenges lawyers, conveyancers and the financial industry now face since in person meetings have been put on hold and social distancing has come into play. So how does an electronic duty return work? Solicitors and conveyancers can self-assess transfer duty online and integrate with an Electronic Lodgement Network Operator (ELNO) for electronic settlements. Accountants and financial advisors can self-assess discretionary trust deeds, family trust deeds, unit trust deeds and security trusts. A list of transactions that must be processed on EDR can be found in the Duties document matrix. eDuties, on the other hand, is a portal that enables solicitors, conveyancers, accountants and financial advisors to lodge online, complex duties assessments or refunds that must be processed by Revenue NSW. Please note that eDuties does not replace self-assessment of EDR transactions. Since COVID-19, the legal profession has been under pressure to complete various elements of their matters electronically and ERD is another step in that shift towards

Say “Yes! I am open for business.” to your clients. Four solutions to maintain business as usual.

April 7, 2020

Say “Yes! I am open for business.” to your clients. Four solutions to maintain business as usual. Despite the current climate, you don’t need to put your processes on hold. Whether it be property settlements, verifying your client’s identity, signing important documents or keeping your sensitive information safe, you can say ‘Yes! I am open for business.” Here are four ways to maintain business as usual, in an environment when things certainly aren’t usual. Verify your client’s identity remotely, in lieu of face to face. Since COVID-19 and the necessity of working from home, as well as ARNECC’s updated verification of identity (VOI) recommendations, new VOI solutions are emerging almost daily. However, it is important to pay attention to what is being verified, whether official documents are checked against government records and if the security and privacy of your client’s data is guaranteed. InfoTrack’s remote VOI solution, InfoTrackID, ticks all these boxes. The Solution features four layers of identity verification smarts which are a first for the Australian legal industry. These layers of verification all work together to reduce identity fraud whilst adhering to social distancing guidelines and keeping clients safe. Amanda Spencer from Bridge Legal, an InfoTrack client, said “Once

How will eSettlements work when there are two providers?

June 11, 2019

How will eSettlements work when there are two providers? You might be asking, with two electronic lodgement network operators (ELNOs), how will e-Settlements work? Will I have to sign up to both? In order to facilitate competition between electronic lodgment network providers, it’s important that customers can switch between providers easily.The good news? The answer is how the ELNOs function together. This means interoperability. Interoperability will help enable switching (between two or more ELNOs) to be as frictionless as possible. This will drive efficiencies in the market as end users are able to identify and move to the best service. Interoperability is common in industries where data is shared between networks. For example, telecommunication companies. They operate by sharing data to facilitate calls and text messages. This enables consumers to communicate with each other irrespective of which network carrier they are a customer of.In an e-conveyancing context, interoperability is the ability for two or more ELNOs to communicate with one another via the sharing of an agreed data set, thereby allowing freedom of choice between which platform you use. There is currently an industry forum working through the possible solutions to competition and interoperability. This is a collaborative national approach

Don’t get caught out with the 1 July 2019 mandates

May 14, 2019

Don’t get caught out with the 1 July 2019 mandates Right now, in NSW, conveyancers and lawyers lodge around 84 per cent of all possible dealings electronically. This includes more than 80 per cent of transfers. We are now just weeks away from the 1 July 2019 mandate—when all mainstream conveyancing dealings must be lodged electronically—whether they are standalone or in combination—for example, a typical property transaction involving a discharge, transfer and mortgage. If you are a practitioner receiving instructions to act on a sale or purchase of property on behalf of a client, it is critical from now to make sure you prepare your dealings for electronic lodgment if you think the matter will settle after 1 July. In these last weeks leading up to this milestone, please do not hesitate to contact ORG if you need support. We will also be out on the road talking to practitioners across regional NSW and in Sydney. And we will continue to update our website with resources and information to support your transition. You can find statistics, including a breakdown of subscriber uptake by area code, on our statistics page. Here’s a few more resources that can help right away: FAQs Training workshops How

The evolution of eSettlements

May 2, 2019

The evolution of e-settlements Despite its increased prominence and continued growth, the sharing economy won’t completely replace traditional economic networks anytime soon. It’s more likely to force existing industries to become more like the collaborative platforms that challenge them, with potential benefits for everyone involved. As the adoption of eConveyancing increases, there is a real threat that some lawyers and conveyancers won’t be able to make the transition and may be left behind. This is due to several factors such as the inability to price competitively, difficulty upskilling resources, a gap in technology knowledge or challenges with adopting new online processes. How can we transform these threats into tomorrow’s opportunity? At InfoTrack we have been thinking about how we can support our clients with answering this very question. SettleIT (in its newest form) has been further enhanced to offer our clients an opportunity to book their e-settlement processing needs via a shared economy of settlement agents.The objective of this service aims to provide all practitioners with an opportunity to continue operating and potentially expand into other areas of practice by accessing professional support on demand, without having to invest in IT or upskilling resources, and without having to be registered with

In the Torrens system, registration (without fraud) is still trumps

May 2, 2019

Three ways you can remain productive and effective when working remotely In the current climate, working from home or away from the office has become a necessity rather than simply making headway towards a flexible working arrangement. Now more than ever, the health and safety of people is leading the way. But even during times like these one big question remains; are we as equally productive at home as we are in the office? Do we get more or less work done working from the comfort of home? Some will argue they are more productive with less noise and interruptions, while others find tasks to complete around the home that distract them from work. So how do we combat this? Here are three tips and tools to ensure your firm can continue to work anywhere at any time, combatting that productivity lag. Think about how you communicate with staff and clients If you’ve been working from home for a while, there might be a sense of isolation from your team. It’s important to use tools beyond email and instant messaging that replicate the feeling of being together. Video programs like Zoom and Microsoft Teams are easy to use and allow

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