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NatWest, Coadjute launch blockchain consortium for efficient home buying process in UK

Fri, 29 Nov 2019, 06:27 am UTC

National Westminster Bank (or NatWest), a leading retail and commercial bank in the United Kingdom, is spearheading a blockchain consortium initiative with Coadjute, a real estate blockchain network, in a bid to streamline the home buying process in the UK, Forbes reported.

Other participating members include Dezrez Estate Agency Software, Redbrick Solutions Conveyancing Software, eTech Surveyor Software, Search Acumen Property Data, Conveyancing Data Services Property Data, LMS Panel Management Software.

In the existing setup, the process of home buying takes around three months to finalize. By leveraging distributed ledger technology, the participants expect that this could be cut down to three weeks.

The consortium’s work will build upon Coadjute’s initial trial that was built on R3’s Corda platform and hosted on Microsoft Azure. The objective is to move the entire end to end house buying process to a decentralized network.

Underscoring the complexity of conveyancing as a key pain point, Dan Salmons, Director of Mortgage Innovation at NatWest, said:

“The Coadjute consortium has brought all the parties involved together to create a single mobile app, and used distributed ledger technology to make the customer journey safe and seamless. We believe the approach has the potential to be a real game-changer, not just for our customers but for the entire property market.”

As the home buying process involves a number of players, including banks, property managers, sellers and regulators, the sharing of information across these parties in a secure manner is quite difficult. Blockchain technology can help address this issue with its ability to maintain data integrity and privacy in a seamless manner. It can also help enhance the efficiency of the process by eliminating the need for third-party middlemen.

The report said that the project’s ultimate goal is to provide NatWest customers with “complete transparency over the entire home buying process via a companion app.”

“The promise of blockchain technology is gathering pace day by day, and it is use cases such as this one that are testament to its potential to transform industry status quos. The property sector is one which has benefitted – and will continue to benefit – immensely from digital transformation, overhauling processes that historically have been lengthy and cumbersome,” David E. Rutter, CEO of R3, said.

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