SAI Global Forms Strategic Alliance with Rundl

SAI Global Forms Strategic Alliance with Rundl: Efficiency and Automation Transforming the Conveyancing Process

Sydney, Australia, 1 July 2015. SAI Global (ASX: SAI) today announced that it has formed a strategic alliance with the open business network, Rundl, to radically improve the efficiency of conveyancing processes for all parties involved in property transactions.

Property buyers and sellers, as well as business professionals such as lawyers, conveyancers, banks, mortgage lenders, real estate agents and others can benefit from open access to the Rundl software combined with SAI Global’s virtual Settlement Room. The combination gives every person involved in a property transaction real time visibility of how the process is progressing, enabling all parties to share documents, resolve any issues, verify information and finalise settlement requirements and processes on-line.

Settlement Room was developed by SAI and brought to market late last year to improve industry efficiency and reduce settlement failure rates. Settlement Room has already facilitated more than $15 billion in transactions. Rundl was developed in 2008 by its founders, technology specialist Graeme Perkins and lawyers Richard Bootle and Ian Perkins, to facilitate multi-jurisdiction conveyancing and improved collaboration with non-local clients of their legal practice which is based in the NSW regional town of Nyngan. With 10,000 more efficient property transactions delivered at a value of nearly $3 billion, they released the Rundl open platform in January this year.

There has been strong take-up of both platforms in the industry already with over 8,000 solicitors and conveyancers currently using Settlement Room, and nearly 2,000 property transaction participants using Rundl since the open platform release, with a large number of those involved in multiple transactions on both platforms.

Such convenient and open access between parties will transform the current experience a buyer or seller has of the conveyancing process whilst bringing considerable efficiency and accuracy benefits for all the professionals involved. This represents a major improvement in the delivery of core conveyancing steps compared to the opaque, paper and physical mail / delivery based system which has been in place, largely unchanged, since the mid 19th century.

To date, technology to bring the conveyancing process online has largely focused on the very final step of exchanging funds and property titles at settlement. Whilst this is important, it does not address the lack of visibility and collaboration that are the root causes of most of the stress, complexity and settlement failure encountered by property buyers and sellers and the business professionals involved in fulfilling property transactions.

The alliance between SAI Global and Rundl addresses this issue directly with all parties to a property transaction able to interact and collaborate in real time in a digital environment from the very outset of a property being listed for sale, to the final stage of settlement. Rundl removes the need for parties to make and receive numerous phone calls, send and respond to emails and chase up documents, simplifying, speeding up and improving the conveyancing process for both consumers and professionals.

Kim Jenkins, SAI Global Executive General Manager said: “As the largest provider of property settlement services in Australia, each year SAI is now involved in more than 600,000 transactions”.

“We are critically aware of the importance of continually striving to advance efficiencies in an industry which manages vast amounts of money and transaction risk for individuals, small businesses and large corporations every day.

“SAI has helped the industry to significantly reduce settlement failure rates over the past 5 years with SAI’s settlement failure rate down to less than 0.016 per cent in the past year.

“We are very confident that our collaboration with Rundl will deliver further widespread efficiency benefits for all parties involved in property transactions,” Ms Jenkins said.

Ian Perkins, Rundl Managing Director said, “Rundl’s primary goal is to reduce stress and improve the property transaction experience for both busy professionals and consumers”.

“Rundl quite simply reduces the time and stress for each participant involved in the conveyancing process, allowing the professional more time to focus on servicing their customers, and the property buyer and seller far better over-sight and confidence in the progress of the transaction. This provides 24/7 visibility and comfort to, what for many will be, the single largest transaction and investment they will ever make.

“We believe the combination of Rundl and SAI’s Settlement Room is a major game changer for the property industry that openly delivers beginning to end of transaction benefits to all property industry participants, consumers and professionals alike,” Mr Perkins said.

A common approach shared by the two platforms, Settlement Room and Rundl, is that they are open software environments that can be utilised by any business professional involved in a property transaction, regardless of whether they are an SAI Global or Rundl client. This is an inclusive approach that welcomes open access and integration and allows all parties to participate and share the benefits of collaboration, irrespective of their business’ size and sophistication.

The SAI / Rundl alliance will provide an immediately scaled and proven capability for all of the conveyancing industry to communicate and collaborate, in a way that augments and supports the industry’s existing business models and processes without necessitating mass process change, IT investment or higher credit and liability undertakings for individual operators than they already carry.

Investor Inquiries
Peter Mullins – Chief Executive Officer, SAI Global Limited +61 2 8206 6182, +61 450 775 123
Geoff Richardson – Chief Financial Officer, SAI Global Limited +61 2 8206 6805, +61 429 314 698

Media Inquiries
GRACosway: John Frey +61 411 361 361

ABOUT SAI Global Property Division
SAI Global Property Division is Australia’s largest provider of property settlement services. Servicing an extensive clientele across Banking and Finance, Legal and Conveyancing and Professional Services, SAI Global Property Division is also one of the largest providers of information services in Australia, delivering more than 7.5 million information products nationally during 2014. SAI’s services, and applications such as Settlement Room and Conveyancing Directory, help SAI clients to manage the process and risks associated with property transactions.
For further information please visit www.saiglobal.com/property/

ABOUT Rundl Pty Ltd :
Rundl now brings the sophisticated engagement benefits of social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn to business collaboration in the property arena. Consumers are used to 21st century collaboration and communication tools in their social lives and value those benefits such as apps and digital tools, group decisioning, instant messaging, up to date newsfeeds, one to many communications and critically, the ability to share defined information with selected audiences. With SAI, Rundl can deliver an exciting multi channel digital environment, including laptop, phone or tablet, to consumers and property professionals alike. Participation in Rundl is free and cloud based, importantly offering both consumers and professionals the tools for digital engagement without having to invest in software.

The Rundl platform has been designed to ensure that the IT and participation thresholds for property sector participants can be readily met. This is demonstrated by the fact that since release of the open platform at the beginning of 2015, people and software collaboration via Rundl has been accessed by nearly 2000 buyers, sellers and property professionals (including lawyers, mortgage brokers and real estate agents) with just over a third participating in at least two transactions.

See this video link for a 60 second consumer focused overview of Rundl: https://www.youtube.com/watchv=fw62nb_pRek
For further information please visit www.rundl.com