Ownership Check with SERV & Forms Live

Marc: Good morning, everyone tuning in! Thank you so much for registering and attending today's webinar. My name is Marc Persico. I am Forms Live's Content Creator and joining me today is Ben Slawitschka - who is one of Forms Live's Business Development Managers, but that's not all! Marisa Tenuta and Rais Rashdan from SERV (who are the private operators of the Victorian land registry) are also with us today. So, it's sure to be an exciting session. In today's webinar, we'll be delving into one of our latest features, which is Ownership Check, and we added that to the platform in partnership with SERV. How are you both doing today, Marisa and Rais?

Marisa: It's good!

Rais: Good, thank you.

Marc: Love it, could you give us an introduction to yourselves and SERV?

Marisa: Sure! Hi everyone, I'm Marisa Tenuta, I'm the Relationship Manager here at SERV, my role is to manage all the broker and industry partner relationships that we have. So as Marc mentioned, we are the private land registry operator here in Victoria, we also are fortunate enough to manage the data on behalf of the Governor General as well, also unique to SERV here in Victoria, we have a section within the business called land data, where we have connections into all the authorities, like your water, roads, and councils, so that our conveyances can purchase certificates to build their Section 32s. So, we have many brokers who license the sales data, like your CoreLogics and REAs, but also brokers who've also licensed the title data as well, of which you would probably be familiar with those as well. So, that's pretty much who we are!

Rais: G'day all! My name is Rais, I'm a product manager at SERV working on the ownership check product.

Marc: Awesome! Just a bit of housekeeping as well before we get into it. If you have any questions about this exciting new feature that pop up throughout the session, please send them through using the chat or the Q&A feature, and we will touch on them later when we open the discussion to our viewers.

Ben: All right, let's kick things off, shall we? So, just to for our audience, not sure if people know this but up to 30% of agency agreements could be rendered invalid simply by having the incorrect names listed as owners - this is obviously a nightmare waiting to happen, an area that invalidates commission, exposes to legal disputes, and waste weeks of valuable work. So, this latest feature, and subject to today's webinar, was designed to mitigate those losses. Ownership Check flags discrepancies before you send anything off for signatures - it cross references against the Victorian land registry office to verify ownership and authority to sell and rent as well.

Marc: That's right, thank you for the introduction, Ben! Now that we've given everybody a bit of context, let's open it up. So, what are some of the risks and situations that have led to the partnership between SERV and Forms Live for this new Ownership Check feature?

Ben: I can take this one, Marc....as we've mentioned, such a large percentage of agreements can completely fall through because of incorrect, false ownership details, and the fallout from this is significant! Most important, obviously, being with commission being lost and possible legal disputes - we want to make sure our Victorian agents are secure as possible when closing their deals. That's why we've decided to bring in this feature to our platform through our partnership with SERV.

Marc: That's great, and comparing this with the standard process, Ben - in what ways will this feature change how the Ownership Check is run for our clients?

Ben: Yeah, well, at the end of the day, this is one of those features that's just going to come in and take away the tedious manual process and make it as seamless and digital as possible - like everything within our platform!

Marc: Yeah, absolutely. You know, as opposed to losing hours chasing down the correct documents and waiting for certain details to get back to you for confirmation. An Ownership Check on Forms Live is as simple as clicking a button, and we'll be sure to give our viewers, a demonstration of that near the end of the session as well. For SERV, what data does the Ownership Check pull to confirm the authority to sell, and does it provide agents with anything that they might not usually consider?

Rais: Yeah, simple, Marc! We take two bits of data, the property identifier, which in your customer's case would often be the address, and then we look up all the titles that are related to that address, and we extract the proprietor’s names, and we match those proprietor names on title against the names that your customer has inputted onto the Forms Live platform. The one thing that agents might not consider is purchasing a copy of the title - very expensive - to extract the names. With Forms Live and Ownership Check, it’s simple, very affordable to do that check.

Marc: Great, and how long does the Ownership Check usually take?

Rais: As soon as you click that 'Check' button, it should take half a second -and we're working hard to bring it down to under a third of a second.

Marc: That's so great, we should also probably map out the benefits of SERV's check over arranging the required documents personally...

Ben: Of course, as we just mentioned, it's basically all done for you. You simply need to provide few details, such as a name and address, and the check will be returned relatively quickly. Since this is also coming from a trusted source, you can also feel secure and confident that the knowledge and that the ownership details have been accurately confirmed, and trust that you're staying compliant and have best practices in place.

Marc: How much is the investment for those who are interested in implementing this feature into their processes?

Ben: Good question! So, the pricing is still to be confirmed, and we'll be sure to communicate that as soon as possible. However, we would like to spotlight that this feature is available for you to use and not be charged for now for a limited time - probably for another two months or so, I would get onto it and use it as much as possible to see if it's right for you.

Marc: Yeah, that's right, Ben. Absolutely make the most out of it while you can, everyone...Another question for SERV is, in your opinion, why do you think it's important that platforms like Forms Live integrate these kinds of features into their technology?

Rais: Yeah, look, Ben's really nailed this on the head. Maintaining compliance is key - getting things wrong at the start of your process could have massive flow on effects downstream of that process. It's important for agents and conveyances in the beginning to make sure that everything is correct and compliant. Otherwise, you know, you're opening yourself up to all this risk, like legal disputes, loss of commission, and potentially wasting many hours of valuable work that you’ve already put in, moreover, increasing levels of compliance for yourself and your peers and within your industry, really builds that trust and reputation with the general public, especially with the new Tranche 2 reforms coming soon. So, SERV is proud to be working with Forms Live to enable Ownership Check onto the Forms Live platform and really help you maintain compliance easily and at a really affordable price.

Marc: Fantastic, well, that does wrap up the questions that I had for you two...and just for all our viewer's information, within Forms Live Ownership Check is currently available on the General Sale Authority, The Exclusive Residential Sale Authority, The Exclusive Auction Authority, The Residential General Leasing and Managing Authority, as well as the Residential Exclusive Leasing and Managing Authority. Now Ben, could you walk us through this feature so we can show our viewers how it works and what information is required to run a SERV Ownership Check on Forms Live?

Ben: Yeah, absolutely, let's show them how easy it is! So, we navigate to the sidebar and click the 'Ownership Check' tab, which Marc has pointed to there, if the form is finalised the address and name fields will be pre-filled, otherwise, you simply enter the address into the search bar as Marc is showing there, click on the property from the search dropdown, and it will auto-fill those details. Then we enter the first and last name for the required vendors, click 'Submit' to start the Ownership Check process. These are quick and easy steps. There's results and details can be accessed within the applicant results, and all names will be tagged as an exact or approximate match, which you can see on the slide here!

Marc: Great, thank you so much, Ben. We all felt that it was important for Forms Live and SERV to come together for this feature, so that our subscribers and the agents of Victoria can feel secure when they're closing their deals and won't have to worry about having processes held up while they wait for the required paperwork to be passed on for confirmation. You know, we understand that ownership confirmation might seem 'mundane', but it is the only thing that's keeping you from falling into problems like vendor scams and family politics. So, it is a really important tool to have in your toolbox, and hopefully you've learned a lot about the role it can play in your business during today's session.

Ben: So, if anyone has any questions now be a good time to ask them. Please let us know if you're unsure about anything, but if you can't think of anything now and you do later, Marc, I'm sure it's going to put our details up so you can reach out at a later stage.

Marc: Yeah, absolutely. We'll Give it a minute or so to see if anything pops up.

Ben: Yep, silence is golden.

Marc: Well, as we said, if there are any questions that pop up after today's session, feel free to reach out to one of our BDMS. They're both happy to discuss forms, features like Ownership Check, of course, pricing, and assist you with anything that you need - the details are on the screen now. I just wanted to say thank you so much to Marisa and Rais for joining us today. It's been great to have you on and hear your thoughts on the integration between SERV and Forms Live. Yeah, very much appreciated, guys! Thank you for joining us today, everyone. Just wanted to let you know that you'll receive a recording of today's webinar as well - so keep an eye out on your emails for that, and for future webinars as well.

Ben: Awesome. Thank you so much, everybody.