Technology plays an increasingly important part of the home buying and selling process. The majority of home buyers now use online property portals to find properties and most are using similar technology to make the buying process more safe and efficient. The customer journey in conveyancing has been improved through technology using tools such as price calculators, online chat and portals showing the conveyancing process in real time. Embracing technology in conveyancing is becoming ever more important.
As the cyber-crime threat increases, technology is looking for ways to protect both law firms and consumers from financial and reputational attack. To put this threat into context there were over 2.5million scam alerts from the public regarding governmental departments in the last 3 years. A recent report, Fraud the Facts 2019, found that authorised push payment fraud (convincing individuals or businesses to transfer money) increased by more than 90% from 43,875 attempts made in 2017 to 84,624 in 2018, costing £354.3 million.
It’s important for conveyancers to use technology to protect themselves and their clients. Cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated and so subsequently is the threat to law firms. The cost and the know-how needed to protect firms and consumers can be prohibitive for smaller firms which is why picking the right technology partner is becoming increasingly important for firms of all sizes. The initial fear around GDPR compliance has subsided however the threat of a data breach is ever present. Recently, British Airways were fined £168m by the ICO for data breaches. At Redbrick Solutions, our secure document sharing portal uses Two Factor Authentication, so that you and your clients can be confident that sensitive information cannot be intercepted.
Adopting new technology also helps meet the expectations of consumers. Increasingly, consumers expect to have services provided to them at their convenience and on different devices. To meet these expectations, firms need to provide services in the same way. At Redbrick Solutions we deliver a high level of service to clients by providing automatic 24/7 online case tracking. Details are updated in real time, enabling clients to have access to case updates at their convenience. Text and Email messages can be pre-programmed into workflows so that they are sent automatically at key milestones, keeping clients up to date, improving client satisfaction.
Law firms can protect themselves by providing the best service and can use technology to free up fee earner’s time to provide the human touch and so help clients through these important transactions.